The SL economy, explained

*snort*

Argent was already mucking around in virtual worlds in 1985.

Let me try a different way of putting it..

If Desmond Shang were new now, I expect that he would be able to make money. However, I do not think that he would be able to be Desmond Shang as we know him now. He would be far more likely to be one of the quiet content creators cashing out large sums - especially if, in this alternate reality where Desmond is a newbie, we presume that someone else created Caledon. This in turn may mean that newbie-Desmond would not actually turn out make money, because I don't know what Desmond's motivation is, but if the creation and management and design potential of an area like that is a part of it, for newbie-Desmond it is gone.

I suspect there is money to be made, if the sum-total of what you want from SL is exchange of labour for currency. If it is not, though, then it's not so clear. Most of the markets that are potential gateways to more are saturated precisely because of that fact.

I completely disagree, Yumi.

If "newbie Desmond" didn't build something as appealing as Caledon, and become just as involved with its residents, his product wouldn't be as successful. Then or now.

And "newbie Desmond" would realize this, adapt, and build a different kind of product instead - possibly not even a land area (I recall the real Desmond began by selling gadget-type items at West Trade Imports).

Assuming that steampunk is an important passion for him, I expect he'd be working within the existing Caledon.

Umm, what makes you think he's not cashing out large sums now?

Of course it would be a different product. Your case stated that Caledon already existed.

My point is that those who come into SL simply to make money fail. Those who develop a passion for something and devote themselves to it MAY succeed...providing it's something that captures the interest of enough other people.

But that's exactly what MY point is, too. I know that this is the received wisdom, but there have in fact always been successful businesses in SL that started purely to make money (Anshe Chung being the most well-known example)

But the real point is - if newbie-Desmond's passions were community building and Steampunk, then he wouldn't be able to indulge them in a world where Caledon already existed. True, he can build it, but if those are his passions it's unlikely he will (since Caledon is already exactly the kind of place he would build, and having a passion for building a community may well preclude him from wanting to split one). He'll get to indulge what he enjoys in the existing Caledon, but at most he'd become a Pandora Wigglesworth or Ordinal Malaprop, not another Desmond Shang. And that's assuming that, without that aspect of "ownership of a part of the world", he'd still be motivated.

But if his passions were the almighty dollar then.. well, he'd just adapt and do something else.

Yumi: most people have MANY passions. And most people who start businesses, ANYWHERE, fail many times before they come up with a successful business, often in quite diverse areas. SL is not magically different from RL. The SL economy is not magically different from the RL economy.

Start doing something, anything, and in its evolution you will find your passion. Also will find what works or doesn't work in sales.

...the little hairs onna back of my neck are tingling... laughs


There's only one thing to be reasonably sure of... I'd not be quiet in any form


If I may, there's one other view to consider. Don't think of me as small but successful, think of me as a failed Anshe or a failed Adam. Perhaps closer to the truth, too. I coulda been a condendah!

I was around then when they were, too, on another avatar... just very preoccupied. At the time I was running my RL biz *and* consulting as an EE, many many hours a week. At the time, the good cashflow of engineering consulting looked pretty good... I didn't really identify what Adam and Anshe saw until 2005 or so.

And my 'big chance' was in late 2006, or early 2007 ~ had I advertised "Desmond Shang backed regions, no covenant, IM for rates" there's little doubt that I could have had a few hundred income generating regions by now, easy. But as stupid as it might sound financially to pass on that, it just didn't seem all that interesting to me. That's why I don't do it now, either.

And I think there are more opportunities to come. Remember that before Caledon ever existed, Anshe made her first million. Million! Her estate was *huge*, as were others. I was a flyspeck, and had to borrow 4096m of land from a friend to even get my shop started.

I daresay the disparity between the barons and everyone else was *bigger* in 2004 and 2005 than it is now, by a lot.

I don't know about the saturated market notion. I'm not the first horse/critter maker in SecondLife, but I do well enough in real dollars. I think the key is to provide something that is different enough from what's already out there. If you just offer more of the same, the public reaction will no doubt be a collective yawn.

To go back to the Caledon analogy, I don't think New Babbage (for example) would have succeeded if it had tried to be a Caledon clone. But while its founders wanted a steampunk sim, they also had a distinctly different flavour in mind than that of Caledon. New Babbage might never be as large as Caledon, but it is absolutely successful. But again, it's not really competition so much as a different product.

Not to mention Steelhead and Steeltopia.

Agreed. Wonderful places, each with their own distinct personality-- and successful, to boot.

And as I've said, that's still just a design choice by LL. And SL is not magically different from any other online entertainment product, either.



Sure, but as long as you're only talking about business success, the passion for the almighty dollar will rule. Building one thing isn't much different from building another; pure building on its own doesn't satisfy any passions other than a passion to build. The difference is in what you get to do, and the experiences you get to have, as a result. And those can be saturated, even if the money market isn't.

I don't feel that my experiences are saturated at all. Quite the contrary, I've had enormously good fun. If I'd been just focused on the money, I probably wouldn't have picked horses. As I said, others were already in the equestrian business. But I wuv poniez. Oddly enough, they ended up being my most successful item, perhaps because I was happy to put the time into their development. I don't think it was a generic "need to build" (although I do enjoy modeling in general)-- it was a passion for cute fuzzy things.

Yumi, what happened to your commitment to set aside your disbelief and try?

Virginia, I guess what I'm asking is, what do you do that is "horsey" given that dragging prims or using Blender is the same whether you're building a horse or a double decker bus?

Argent, what makes you think I didn't?

Because there hasn't been enough time for you to have really given it a shot, and you're already back complaining because SL is too much like RL.

Even a week of emptiness and silence is hard to bear.

but you decided, perspired, and persisted. and now, voila! you are a success. in other words, you got off your ass and did something. and i, for one, am proud of you.

Oh hai, can I be proud of Des, too? Good Guv'neh, have a biccie.




Well, a vertex is a vertex, but when I'm having a good day modeling, I'm not thinking about the software, I'm thinking about what I'm trying to create. For horses, that meant a fair amount of time studying my Muybridge animal motion studies, and lots and lots of pictures of ponies

I mean, dragging prims might be the same for anything in the sense that moving a paintbrush is the same for anything. But that doesn't mean some painters won't prefer portraiture to landscapes.

/me melts

There was an idea in the first post that if six residents pass around the same money that it didn't really count as six transactions. If that principle were correct, none of our RL money would have any value, because only the very last transaction in which a particular dollar bill (for example) was used would count.

The OP is focused on who gets the final RL value. In her view, only the person holding the cash is okay. All the other people who handled that sum are losers in some way (in her view), since she doesn't count the goods and services they received as having monetary value.

If you look only at the passage of money in and out of SL, it's a zero-sum system unless the exchange rate changes or LL injects money into the game (by giving prizes or grants, for instance).

The point of view of an individual resident can be drastically different.

It's not remarkable or rare for a user who puts no RL money into SL to generate income in SL. It's also common for a user to put RL money into SL and make no income in SL. Neither is a winner or loser. They simply have different behavior.

If you look at the earth from space, you could think, "Sunlight goes in, heat radiates out. What's the point of it?"

.

Plus, it obstructs my view of Venus!