Forcing You To Buy to Enter a Sim?

One downside to this now is as in the 'Hello ' thread it's not practical to recommend the Greenies to newbies now, and I guess in the long run that will seriously effect their retail sales and thus contribute to the demise of the Greenies Islands.

While I don't mind people using a scheme like this at all, it's just a bussinesmodel that doesn't work. People can easily camera control their way around the place for free and get the idea.
-If LL doesn't include Cam control to zone entry barriers, nothing will change this.
-If LL doesn't allow sizable and/or movable zone barriers over the z-axis, nothing will change this.

To run a scheme like this effectively, you'll need a LOT of interactive content which requires your avatar to be in the middle of it, not just pretty views.

Simple as that. Basically, these are things some people of other professions (the aforementioned pay-before-entry ones specifically) have asked for for ages. Black Swan and Greenies are excelent examples of other uses for something like that. But we'll have to see what LL is going to do with all this. I doubt any such "privacy/restricted" viewing will be implemented any time soon though.

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This is an environment - not a game. No gameplay - no game.

Quoted for truth. Probably the best way to describe SL would be "an extension to experience teh intarweb in 3D".
1) You can use SL for games and business alike - Just like the rest of the internet
2) You can create your own place - Just like you can have a homepage
3) You can create stuff to dress things up - You don't want to know how many people just create buttons and background images for others to use.
4) You can communicate with others - Similar to the rest of the internet.
5) There is loads of paid and unpaid sex - OMG! It's the internet!!!!!

So let's see.

$195L for entry to a place where I can pay $10,000L for a piano that doesn't do anything except consume lots of prims, or $6000L for a giant fetus. Or have my movement inhibited by invisible alpha prims. Great deal so far!

I see the OP's point. Once you've seen the build, which I saw last year, you've seen it. It hasn't changed. So it now boils down to it being a shopping center I have to pay to shop at. It's not a social space. It's a really extraordinarily beautiful "shopping center", with really extraordinarily expensive products.

My initial "knee jerk" reaction to this was, NO WAY!

However, we do see this model in use on the 2D web all the time. If you want to access the "real" content on the site, you have to pay a subscription fee to get in.

But they really have to provide enough of a sample at the entrance so I can see if it is something I am interested enough to pay for. If the entrance area is not compelling enough for me then I will just move on.

But if it really just amounts to having to pay a fee to enter a shopping area then, thanks but no thanks. There really has to be something of interest and more than just a static build. If I can take away something of value, even if it is just having been well entertained, then perhaps the fee would be worth paying.

There would need to be a compelling reason for me to return on a regular basis for the fee to be worth it. A static build that doesn't change or provide additional content wouldn't cut it.

All of that would have to be described, up front, in a compelling manner before I would pay the fee.

Would there be a way to maybe keep track of the time that someone is in the sim and only allow them so much *free* time to get a quick look and also keep a list of who had been there for free already so that everyone only gets one free look?

I think the mistake that many of these art sims make, as beautiful as they are, is that they aren't designed as social spaces so they don't encourage people to stay and socialize. I don't personally feel that there needs to be constantly changing content. If I loved it the first time I'm still going to think it's great the next, but there needs to be a reason to hang out there and socialize so that the sim builds some kind of community, be it roleplay, a club, events, or just plenty of poseballs that provide neat areas for friends or lovers to hang out and enjoy the ambience. At least that's my theory.

That is a different problem. Once you make the choice to go there, why shouldn't people pay a little bit? Now, these sims have a lot of work to do to communicate what's changed, what's happening, etc. but that is separate from the choice of paying to go in. Once you make the decision that the place is worth seeing, why should you not pay a little something? I think we need to take care to not conflate the two issues.

I do not have a problem with paying a small fee for something that I want to see or do. I have been to the Botanical Gardens a few times and would probably still pay a fee because I have not seen every bit of it yet and it is one of my favorite places to take people or explore on my own. There are a few others that just do not come to mind right away. But those sims have lots to explore and it is very nice and fun exploration.

you should be ashamed of yourself!


what's the world coming to?. they'll be forcing us to buy burgers at mcdonalds next!!

YES! FORCING US!!

In general, I agree with this. I guess for me it depends a bit on the payment method. For a token fee to enter on each visit, I would want something to tell me what is there to make the fee worth paying. I can then pay the fee and enter, if I like what I see I may be willing to pay again for repeat visits.

If it is going to be a larger fee for long term access, then it becomes more important to describe what the ongoing value is going to be before I pay.

You are playing dress-up with an avatar. You are playing at building your home or your empire. You are playing at visiting imaginary places and taking rides. You are playing when you go to an RP sim and Role Play. You are playing when you shop at an imaginary mall for imaginary clothes. The only thing real about Sl is your relationships with the people you meet. SL in a virtual world MMO. It is a game.

"Game:

1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime."

Just like
-reading
-watching telly
-chatting with some friends on MSN
-sports
-sex
-shooting the neighbours' homing pigeons as they fly over

Non of those are exactly "games". But they're all activities providing entertainment and/or amusement. They're also all a pastime.

and Best Buy forces us to pay $50 for their games!

The world has gone crazy!. Programmers should work for nothing. All they do is sit on their arses all day.

Most of your sentences hit the nail on the head... *You* are doing this, *you* are doing that, etc.

Second Life isn't a game. There is no gameplay in it. Second Life is an an enviroment in which *you* can play games if you find them or make them, but it is just an environment in which all sorts of things can be, and are, done - games, play, socilaising, business, etc.

The word "gameplay" is very visceral meaning different things to different people. As far as I'm concerned, everything you do in SL is gameplay. The only part of the game that is not gameplay is the people you are interacting with.

The term "environment" is also too broad. Your logic seems to dictate that if it's an environment it can't be a game. However the two things are not mutually exclusive.

"You doing this, and you doing that..."

By that logic, if I were to log into WOW and sit on the ground and do nothing I would not be playing WOW therefore WOW is not a game.

I think you are laboring under the assumption that a game has goals and a set of rules. This is not true. A game merely needs to provide entertainment. SL provides entertainment in the form of a virtual world where people can create, buy, sell and socialize.

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"Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world video game launched on June 23, 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007."

Really.. All they do is type. What's the big deal?

And anyways, screw your business model. it's a farkin game. Get a job.

I think Greenies would have done better if they'd held events ahead of time, letting people know what was to come, and providing freebies as prizes at the event. If it is 99 lindens for a ring, why not have a few costume contests, and give the rings as prizes? Or a few of the outfits? Essentially, advertise, give people early warning, and then close the sim to make it private?

No, I wouldn't!

As for the Disneyland analogy, sadly we don’t have Disneyland down here in little old New Zealand…..only hobbits.

If a major philanthropic organization sponsors a big rl international conference to address how to make the world a better place and they have concurrent activities in SL so that people who can't travel to the rl event can still meet and participate is everyone involved playing a game? If they hire a developer to set things up in SL for them and the developer is someone who makes their real life living doing this kind of thing is that person playing a game?

The developer hired me to create some of the buildings, signs, and displays. I was paid in $US. I didn't think of it as playing a game.

WB Kaimi. Missed you.

Thanks Mac, I missed you too. Now I'm working on catching up my email...