The ultimate content creation: wealthy customers?

I've been struggling with something, and I thought I'd just put it out here and see what other folks think.



Background:

I've sold a variety of things for a while now (4 months). I enjoy business in Second Life. But I've noticed something as my business matured:

My customers changed, too.

In the beginning, I got my start from the adventurous, the curious, those just popping by. Without them, I'd be nothing today.

Time went by, I listened to my customers, made an effort. My products evolved, and so did my clientele.

Now I'm regularly getting sim owners and ridiculously wealthy new members for whom spending 75 USD a month on SL land is not the slightest issue.

I can't build big enough or expensive enough to suit many of them, and every time I thought I've made something 'over the top' - it's not even close. I sell a 350-ish prim chateau for $L 5000, and people regularly ask for even bigger. !?!?!?



Issue:

I'm beginning to think that unconsciously, collectively, most of the businesspeople in SL are responding to the customers of Q1 2006, and in doing so are shape the customers-to-be in 2006, 2007, 2008 and beyond.

Before the arrival of the mega-corporations I suspect we shall see the mega-consumers.

What does it take to be comfortable in SL? The politic answer is 'nothing at all', but honestly most people want homes, want to look nice like their friends, fit in.

This feeds upon itself: the bar inches up every day.



What will the average new resident be like in 2008?

- A person with a 200 USD of disposable income for SL every month?

- A person with several hundred dollars of land, purchased content, high tier, and little to no hope of personally creating the fantastically artistic, scripted items of that time?

- Will there be a relatively small, scary-rich population that calls SL their home?

- How much of it is egged on by us, the business owners and content creators?


Something to think about.

Desmond, I suspect you are right, and it won't take until 2008. Remember the hoopla as SL approached 100,000 registrations at year end? Its grown 25% since then, only one month later. A mathematician could tell you the annualized growth rate, but we may have passed the tipping point toward the rapid growth part of the classic population "S" curve before it hits maximum growth potential.



What the injection of "hot money" into SL may also do is fund the financial success of creators such as yourself. If someone is ready to drop hundreds of US Dollars for a virtual mansion or to landscape a private sim closed to all but them and their invited guests, the contractor also gets the choice of spending the payment within SL or converting to US Dollars. So, we may see a "ripple effect" or "trickle down" as a result of big spenders coming in.

We may also see the same grumbling as the "old timers" mutter epithets about the "rich newbie money" coming in and "Californicating" the market prices on property. I'm sure they have similar epithets in Europe. Fortunately, I suspect that we can count on LL to just poop out a steady flow of virgin sims if the value of raw land rises above their idea of "par value."

This is my concern also Desmond. I see SL heading in this direction and it is disheartening to say the least. If Linden Labs continues to ignore this trend the "community" will soon be made up of 500 invisible private islands and a few sandboxes.

As in every developing civilization, there will always be an evolution of classes that span the economic spectrum.

There is no reason to believe that SL will be any different.

there already are at least that number of islands, the majority of which are private


and overall people will become less resistant to the idea of using RL cash to fund virtual play, its essentially inevitable... you don't really think in 2050 people will be shouting OMG you are asking me to use real money in a *GAME* ?

nah, there will be some big money people who want big money things, not all will want consumer goods tho... In my two and a half year history in SL i've only ever bought two things, a $10 linden tshirt with a banana on it on my first day, and land.

Thats not to say I haven't spent a *HELL* of alot on land.. but pretty much everything else we've managed has been our own creation.



There will be more consumers, there will be bigger pockets, and there will be people who do quite well servicing them.

But as with all things, there will be many many more people willing to pay $1000 for something than there will to pay 10,000, very likely *more* than 10x as many... of course... there is more competition down at the 1000 end than at the 10,000 end...


Overall find your niche... if you are finding people are asking for bigger, fancier things from you, take the time and do that, if people are asking greater accessibility from you, take the time to work on that...


as to those 'capacity' graphs, that works when you need to eat healthy food, drink sanitary water, and be sheltered from rain... it has next to no real bearing on a virtual world where with some minor growing pains, you can always 'add one more' sim and one more user.

all those annoying physical manifestations of need etc are gone, SL is a world of luxuries, people don't *need* anything, but they want stuff, and they will pay to get it... and there is 'no limit' on how many houses desmond can sell... just like with sims and users, there is always one more, waiting to go, at no cost.... welcome to the digital world


now thats not to say that success comes at *NO* cost... its just not as much an issue of percentages as it is with time. A big ticket buyer may come to expect some big ticket service, and expect you to be able to do things such as alter room dimensions, color schemes, remap textures to match a theme, etc...

my three cents anyway

I'm not sure the scale of this is correct, I know lots of people who are far from ridiculously wealthy for whom over $100 per month for cable TV is perfectly reasonable.

SL IMHO is a far better buy.

There are also folks of modest means who will spend hundreds in real money to visit a fantasyworld in which folks getting low pay dress in giant mouse costumes and prance about in the hot sun entertaining them. Or labor over a smoky wood fire baking cookies the old fashioned way telling about how things are "here in Williamsburg." Or who dress like scantily clad "wenches" and dance about on the deck of a "pirate ship" in Los Vegas as "pirates" chase them.

All for the entertainment of a much smaller number of folks who spend "real money" on a fantasy simulation of a world they could not actually live in. Sound familiar?

What this means is even rich folks may want to actually pay or "incentivize" other people of lesser means to come and "live" on their property simply for the entertainment of watching them. A "private" sim can get very lonely without denizens.

This means jobs, people, for avatars.

Wah, many intelligent replies.

I studied the graphs but I still don't quite understand the 'why'.

To me, 75 USD a month is still a ridiculously large amount of money.

Paying for two sims a month equates to a luxury car, doesn't it?





Contributing to a beautiful estate honours everyone involved; I should count myself lucky in that regard.

While I rarely leave my land, I've helped set up architecture in some sims I can't even see on the map (I had to briefly join a group).

What I saw in some of these was beautiful beyond words. You would barely recognise these sims as part of 'regular' Second Life, especially the mainland.

Checking an object or two, I've found the sim owners to often be talented designers in their own right. Purchasing from me was mere convenience - they could have created anything I have ever done.




But while I loved contributing to some of these secret gardens, I am beginning to fear 'big money' in Second Life for a different reason.

Second Life is not Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. But an unethical rich person may be able to play it that way.

How many people are willing to be 'slaves' - not for roleplay or personal pleasure, but for $L? Maybe this is going on already?

Money Talks...

Actually, an increasing number of people in developing nations do make a "living" gold farming, dancing in SL clubs, or otherwise "grinding" for game "plat" convertible to real currency.

See: SWEATING THE DETAILS, New World Notes, March 30, 2005, about the fact that this "apparently happens on more traditional online role playing games, where it's possible, for example, to earn gold coins or whatever else the official currency of the realm happens to be, by having one's character perform some simple, mindless task like mining or fishing for hours at a time. With enough low-paid laborers doing these tasks on a battery of workstations, the theory goes, it's possible to auction off a large block of the currency on a site like eBay for a profit."

And the follow up: THE FLAT WORLD DANCERS OF CHINA, New World Notes, April 13, 2005, about "Hsiao-Tsing, the Chinese girl who came to Second Life on orders from her boss to make the Linden Dollar equivalent of two bucks a day, or be fired."

And the New York Times last month:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50E16FC3A550C7A8CDDAB0994DD404482

And the International Times Herald:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/08/business/gaming.php

And also, on a blog at Univ.Chicago Law School: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2005/12/gold_farming_cu.html

You know, I'd heard of some of this stuff but never really connected it in such a way until just now.

"Farming" always seemed different to me because I've assumed farming for game money was more a 'big operation' kind of thing.

As a content creator maybe I am one of these people as well? Though I still think of Second Life as a hobby.

That story of Hsiao-Tsing is very sad. Though I have heard many sad stories on the internet, even of people dying and they turned out not to be true. I have become jaded, a bit.

I wonder most about the escorts. While certainly some (most?) do it for fun I wonder if any wake up the next day feeling shamed or dishonoured.

Some of these residents will make up the new class of legends in the coming years of SL. They're dedicated to working gladly for 10 hours a day at the price of 1.5kL$ to 2.5kL$. Price varies on which group of workers you ask and how the Linden dollar is swinging.

At that price we're talking like 9$ USD a day, 90 cents an hour, to have someone on staff. Everyone of these great people, that I have dealt with in the past, find cut and pasting responses and dealing with basic English no problem. Most have been around and logged hundreds of hours with the SL client so manipulating outfits/attachments and overall use of the client they manage to handle at an expert resident's level.

I've seen a similar trend. Or maybe I started making really expensive things lately ? I think some of it is explained by the simple fact that, as SL improves in content and entertainment value, people become more eager to pay for it.


Here we use the word "rushflating"

I think perhaps, part of the 'bigger and better' aspects going on in game now are also connected to the extending experience of the players. Those who are familiar with the game are becoming increasinly adept at creating and are taking chances on making things that are far more advanced than had been seen before.

Creators are constantly challenging themselves to improve their creations. They continue to create nicer, more realistic, bigger, more complex, etc.

This in turn connects with the consumers who are seeing that there is so much more possibility than there had been in the past. Their demands increase because they come to realise that they can have anything at all they want in this game. Nothing is impossible and coming from the real world where that is not nearly so true, into a game like this, it can take a little time for people to realise the full scope of what is possible in this game.

As people gain more experience and learn this, the demand for "everything" increases.

99.9% of the escorts ask prices they could easily "earn" sitting in a moneychair (ok back when it was good money so to say) so this should answer your question....

Dishonored is a cultural question, but if you boil it down it is another aspect of RP, there is quite a difference even between phonesex and SL.

If you want to earn enough to pay your ISP i would not recommend Escorting, so its pretty shure to say next to noone makes it to "make a living"

I run a sim wich has for RP purposes a group doing "Escort" service, the Lindens exchanged over this service are at best laughable, even when buisness is high, if you want to make money build a mall and hire prims for vendors out, i tick it of under "luxuries".

As faar i can say there are folks wich have the kink to pay and folks wich have the kink to get payd.

Will there be high paid escorts? Maybe in SL terms, but highest i have seen was 1500L per half hour, wich is in most countries a good hourly income, but as faar i am aware you dont earn that every hlaf hour, if someone is lucky twice a night, so here too i would suspect that theres more RP interest than economical interes.

For the simple reason, if your desire is cybersex you will get it for free all over SL as long you are a someway decent person, and so faar i havent meet non decent persons in SL.

Indeed. I've been known to blow a bunch of money in SL on occasion, and I'm pretty much working your standard college just-above-minimum-wage kind of job.

SL offers a greater return on my dollar in terms of Fun, is all!

The larger question is what other roles or services could be provided (other than "escort" services) for which well-off visitors would pay well enough to support providing role players with a steady hourly wage? After all, the folks dressed as the famous mouse in the famous theme park are paid by the hour, perhaps with health benefits and bathroom and re-hydration breaks in the staff-only caverns beneath the park.

The "flatland dancers" mentioned in the previously cited links are paid by the hour to look good, dance and converse, not more. Much like "hostesses" at auto and boat show booths in real life. Surely there are other potential occupations possible given the platform potential of SL.

For example, we see an influx of gawking tourists into the more popular Gorean lands, some even asking the colorfully-clad citizens to pose for snapshots with the visiting observers. This has to kill the RP buzz for folks recreating an alien culture in a planet beyond observation from Earth. These tourists are (one suspects) drawn by the fact that some of the Gorean sim playertowns now routinely show up on the top 20 "Popular" locations, drawing tourists curious about "what this Gor thing is." Yet most Gorean sims have an interest in allowing in visitors that recognize and accept their form of RP.

This raises the opportunity for the management of these sims to either close them to anyone not on a "white list," or rely upon some border controls. Border guards / immigration officers could either be volunteers (gets old fast) or paid workers with permission to use scripted tools to exclude/restrain griefers or to permit entry to those passing the "smell tests" set by management.

I suggest that as such sims become popular enough to be visible, and inhabited by folks prepared to pay for it, they may choose to invest in paid workers to control access. After all, that "velvet ropeline" is routine for hot nightclubs that aim for a certain ... panache.

That's just one random idea for a real-wage job for avatar enactors ... others?

Let's have some fun with numbers!

If we assume the monthly growth rate stays constant at 25% per month from now on, then you can figure the annual growth rate like so:

After one month, the population is 1.25 times larger.

After two months, the population is 1.25 times larger than that, i.e. (1.25 x 1.25) times larger than the orignal population...

After twelve months (one year), the population is

1.25 x 1.25 x ... x 1.25 = 1.25^12 = 14.55 times larger than the original population. That works out to an annual growth rate of about 1355% (= 100% x (14.55-1.00)).

By this reasoning, if the population was 100,000 on Dec. 22, 2005, then the population would be 1,455,000 on Dec. 22, 2006.

If we assume a monthly increase of 20% instead, then the population will increase by a factor of 1.2^12 = 8.92 per year (792%). So the predicted population on Dec. 22, 2006 would be 892,000.

If we assume a monthly increase of 15% instead, then the population will increase by a factor of 1.15^12 = 5.35 per year (435%). So the predicted population on Dec. 22, 2006 would be 535,000.

As you see, there is great sensitivity to the assumed monthly rate of increase. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

There is also the question of what the maximum possible population of SL might be. That is, what is the "carrying capacity"? I have no idea...

It depends on things like the number of people with broadband internet access, the number of people with a powerful enough computer (and graphics card), the number of people who would be wililng to give Second Life a try, and the number of people with some time that they can (and want to) spend in Second Life.

I think there are a lot of jobs wich could proof to be income rich so to say.
It will mainly depend on how the social structures for, cultures develop.
If you take the mentioned Gor sims for example, if the players there indentify strong enough with there "homeland" and each pays 2$ per month you could easily think about employing a few people to play boardergueards 24/7 in shifts, at a moderate RL income even (maybe to compare to an McDonalds counter job, if i had to choosee i would know wich to choose<g>


It will depend mainly in how good SL grows in terms of people indentifying with SL and coughing up a few bucks per month to fund such jobs and have theese services.

1) The service has to be desired and 2) badly enpough by the population of an sim to fund it.

I dont think money will be here the real issue, few people have such an low income but enough time to play SL, wich needs a someway decent ISP and PC, if you can afford booth something about 5$ per month should not be an iussue, so its more a question of the want, not the can.