Just How Bad is the SL Economy

Well thats fair enough....if you spend that amount of time creating desirable items i would think its only right to protect one's property. That makes perfect sense to me and if i ever get around to loading my store with a new line of Menswear, your history lesson has pretty much made up my mind that I should set Mod/Copy permissions.
Who in RL would work for Free? (not many)......why should i in SL?

This is true. And guess what, based on history.



Wrong, it does work that way in SL. Things will last for the life of the game, but i can show you inventory form 2003 to 2005 that absolutely looks dated and in need of replacement and are now obsolete.


Yes, swap meets and flea markets took off big time in 04 thru 05 when the permissions started working. And you know what - content creators got pissy about it, for fear of what you said above.


And with this statement, your understanding of how SL has worked is lacking. What you said above works in a vacum, not in the dynamics of SL.

You can't hurt the designers since your scenario could never happen. In a perfect storm, sure, but the reality is that most people are not going to leave SL by means of a fire sale. Exact opposite - before No Trans became rampant - people left SL by means of dumping their inventories on friends.

So that whole scenario is just a Chicken Little Sky is Falling fallacy, for SL at least.

Its not a weird reply at all. Its an analogy to RL
If you think SL will enjoy sustained growth for years to come without the "bubble bursting" then i think you'll be in for a surprise. The scenario Katheryne played out, would accelearate that process.

Before i got involved in content, i started out as a kind of Land Baron ( I still have those holdings).....and i can tell you now, that the Land Economy bubble burst awhile back. I am member of the Conciege Info Group where a lot of the large Land Barons reside....and from monitoring the Group Chats there's more selling of SIMs and Estates going on then "buying". Most of this was brought by a number of LL policy changes over the last 18 months (Open Space sims fiasco, dumping more Mainland sims creating 3 more continents which drove prices down across the board, imposing VAT made European estate owners making them less competitive, gambling ban saw Casino SIM owners sell off their SIM's)

Hell. even Ahnse Chung is selling off sims like tomorrow, she was SL's Queen Bee once upon a time.

So don't think that Content economy is ever lasting, plus like i said before there are technological ceilings in SL. Can you make a 2 min sound file without chopping up multiple wav.files?

But what has all this got to do with peanut butter, mud wrestling, or even my wasted hours playing tennis on the Wii yesterday? Can we please get back on topic and talk about those things?

Yet again....

What does this have to do with Katheryne's assertion that things do not get dated in SL? Or that content creators will be outsold and have their businesses challenged by swap meets/flea markets reselling content?

That is what my replies are pertaining to. I am not seeing the correlation. however in your replies.

Lol Phil.....you're a card!


I enjoyed 10-pin bowling in Wii....until i nearly threw my arm out! Boxing can be a bit energic too!

Do you think the possibilities of improving the creation of fashion Garments in SL are endless? The plateau for growth and improvement is always very steep at the beginning with new technology (i.e VW 3D platform), then over time the improvements kind of taper off. That curve can only be accelerated agin once LL introduces new tools to work with...e.g sculpties, so that bar for innovation is raised once again. If LL doesn't introduce anymore "goodies"....that technological curve will eventually flattened out. There's also a limitation to what the LL software could ever handle....its not infinite. Why can't we produce 2-3 min. sound files and play them in SL....hell you could do that in IRC Chat channels back in the 90's.....it could mean by introducing such a sound format might cause excessive drain on the platform resources. (i'm only guessing)

Well.... Duh! That pretty much speaks for itself! What retailer, real, SL, or otherwise, would want to sell the rug out from beneath their feet? Of course the permissions practices changed after that big free-for-all! The game was young then, and people learned from that!

There's another reason permission practices changed: As prims evolved, there became more of a need for the customer to have to make adjustments to her newly-acquired clothing; and I'd imagine many a skirt got permanently ruined in the process. Today, modding a skirt or dress to fit is still tricky business, but is far less risky now because most items are now sold copy/no-trans as opposed to trans/no-copy.

As for your history lesson: That was then; this is now. I don't know if you've noticed, but the game is evolving a lot more slowly now than it did then, and that's a normal thing - as the system matures, fewer and fewer radical changes are made. And, I agree with you - I would not be caught dead wearing a lot of what was created back then, especially before the flexiprim hit the system. But we are not going to see any kind of real radical changes to the game mechanics for the foreseeable future, which means clothing made today will likely still be viable next year. You may not ever wear last year's fashions, but I reckon there are a LOT of us in-game who are a lot less fashion-concious; and newbies are almost never fashion-concious.

So, while my prediction may be a tad drastic, it's not unrealistic. As your history lesson clearly stated, it already happened once; and it can happen again.

Would it help if I told you I've been posting these things from a large vat of peanut butter?

Katherin you realise that you argue with someone that is in SL since almost it's infancy?

Personally i saw the perms get worse now, the age of "nomod" prim attachments. And i hate it your product can be as gorgeous and cool as you want if i can't change anything on it it's useless, it's trash.

Definitely! The image of you in peanut butter is a great start to my day

Now about that nude wrestling....

well said Katheryne.....you decribed it in a slightly different way to me...but both paths lead to the same Exit door!

Your entire post was based on the idea that resellers would outstrip the actual original content sellers if things were copy.

Sure, if an outfit is copy people will unload it if they are so inclined and L$ conscious. Will it hurt the economy to the point of impacting content creators - SL history says no.

No doubt content creators will lose sales as someone chooses to buy a dress from a 2nd hand shop as opposed to going to the main store, but in the end that is no different than freebies circulating and perpetuating the ability to live in SL without ever making a purchase or buying Linden.

The sky would not fall. People would innovate, and create more often to keep their inventory fresh and their older stuff dated. The market would bear it.

Age/Experience does not always equate to wisdom. Fmr. President Bush has been in politics most of his life, and look what he's managed to do to this country.

Sometimes it takes a fresh perspective to blow the cobwebs out of common sense and keep history from repeating itself.
I agree. Setting objects to no-mod really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Scripts - yes. Textures? Perhaps. Clothing and other prim-based objects? Why?

LOL!!!

Let us break it down...



Uh... Nephilaine Protagonist shatters that myth, as do many other fashion designers in SL.

What?




People are continually finding a new use of a prim shape and then integrating that new shape into their content. Pre-Sculpty era SL shows a direct innovation of prim use from 2003 upward, changing continuously as time goes on. Sculpties only magnify this ability.

Creativity does not flatten out.

Just a glimpse at other grids shows you that we are not "flattening out" any time soon technologically either.



Bad guess.

That is usually what the people say who are lacking in both age and experience....

I have to come in here with a 'sensible' type of post.

There *IS* a limit to the "possibilities of improving the creation of fashion Garments in SL". I understand what Rene means by that, and it's perfectly true. The limit can only be extended by technical improvements, such as sculpties and flexis were. What there isn't a limit to is the designs of texturtes that are created for the items. Perhaps that's what you mean, Briana.

If i spent 100's of manhours creating & introducing a line of clothing, i sure don't want to see it end up in a reseller's shop at half the price!

You can't make an economic forecast based on 5 year history, VW's are still in it's infancy....the growth and improvement curves are misleading. If LL does not introduce anymore gizmos like sculpities or special lighting....those tech improvements will flatten out over time. Then the deciding factors will come down to unique designs, unique textures and unique styles and not from technoloigal inprovements......which in turn could mean older stock will have a longer shelf life
as the workmanship and the use new tech.methods will be similar in quality to the latest styles. The differential won't be like compairing an outfit made in 2004 versus one made in 2007.

No, maybe the sky will not fall.....but maybe a lot of participants will fall off in the process. I've often heard of fashion creators themselves suffering from burn out and having to lie low for awhile....."create more often to keep their inventory fresh" is easier said than done!

That may be true, but it doesn't mean that "Age/Experience does not always equate to wisdom." is wrong. In fact, it is absolutely right.

Exactly.

Never said it was wrong.

I spent 100's of man hours creating 10,000 prims worth of furniture. I surely do not care if i see it in some reseller's shop at half the price.

You didn't break anything down, those are just assumptions much like the rest of us. You say bad guess relating to sound files......then answer this, why can't we upload a 2-3 min wav file into SL and play it. What prevents this?......it's easy to criticise people's answers, but i don't see you offer up any explainations as to why it can't be done.

Creativity doesn flattened out..correct, but the tools you have to work with could. Unless LL overhaul the whole platform and re-build it in a different way as to allow more innovative tools.

How many prim shapes are there? Are you saying they are infinite? I can only see 13 standard prim types in my build menu! Are there more hidden away?

Ok.

Prim type v. Prim shape, ftw.