The Download On Second Life's Meltdown

Yes, I do.

Sex is undoubtedly big business in SL, and it's not in any danger. Gambling may have been a significant part of the SL economy, but it was certainly not a critically needed part, and the world will adjust to life without it.

*I* am amazed at people who claim to love SL but can't wait to rush over here to these forums waving whatever is the latest half-assed report and crying, "SEE? SL is going to die!!!"

I wish I could be as blind as you... The world would be a much safer place... Or at least appear that way. SO when does your Linden Labs check come during the week anyway?

Mind you those blind people need lindens to help guild them around sl. How they can say there is no problems on sl is just unreal. Then again these are the great fence siting people on sl. About all sort of issues, they can neither say its bad or good, because they don`t really know themselves.

The one thing that is missed in this entire thing is that Ginko failing is actually what saved the exchange rate from completely free falling. If you think about it, 100,000,000 Linden dollars that people were counting on in one way of another. Some of these people will just say, oh well, I knew the risks and go on their marry way, others will however need that money for whatever they were saving for in the first place.

It is just going to be a changing economy. Things have changed 1000 times in the past and they will continue to change in the future. If this ban would have come a year or two ago, then it could have been the doom of SL. At this point, since many people knew that casinos were on the way out with the ban on ads, it is nothing more then a shift. The land prices are going to suffer more then anything, but that is really easy to fix, release less sims. They have cut it from 16 to 10 a day, so they see that too.

When he makes statements like "most people are doing...", and "most of the money is being spent on...", the first question I have is: what kind of analysis did he perform in order to arrive at that conclusion? He didn't -- he is only expressing his opinion, based upon his limited exposure to SL.

Don't be swayed by hype or hyperbole. You know whether SL is good or not -- for you. Make your own decision based upon your own experience. Forget about these headline making dorks.

He said prety much as it is, infact a very huge part of secondlife spenders (ppl that actualy bought L$ with their CC's) were people that gambled at those private sim nocamping/nolag casinos at high stakes, secondlife prety much became The gambling platform and is realy the sector that moved the economy to new highs, 2nd was ofcourse sex (now 1st). Ppl will ofcourse try to say oh look theres so much more money in this and that but the fact is nothing is comparable in revenues, not even close. When i checked the numbers today we did hit a new low: US$ Spent Last 24h: $966,725 LindeX Activity Last 24h: $184,934 and there hasnt been any downtime to blame on, also at the 3 major stock exchanges there have been a declining lately WSE has dropped from 2 to 1,5, ISE from 2 to 1 and slcapex from 0.60 to 0.40. Before things will get better they have to become much worse.

yep..I was sure I said that in another thread...

Banning gambling will not kill SL. Corporations leaving SL will not kill SL. Even if sex is banned, SL will not go away the next day. The part I really find amusing is that years ago, people were saying that a corporate presence in SL would mean the end of the world.

Ultimately if Linden Lab wants SL to keep going, the big issues have little to do with the economy. The make or break issue is stability. If they can't fix all the little annoying technical issues, people will leave. Believe it or not, there are still a few of us who consider the Linden dollar to be play money. We aren't here to run businesses. We are here to be amused. If we can't enjoy the world without losing inventory or crashing every five minutes, we will leave.

Based on my own experience I see LL failing because of their treatment to thier customers and I never once brought up the "g" word. You all did.

OH your right SL will never go away 100%. But it will not be anything like it is today. The same thing happen to Traveler!. Which at this point would most likely be a good thing for SL anyway if it lost about 50% of the people.

You mean GOOGLE?


Strange how some can say all is well on sl. When infact its not even close.

Lol. The name "David Ewalt" and the word "journalist" should never be used in the same sentence unless it is a sentence like "David Ewalt is not a journalist" or "David Ewalt is an example of what every good journalist should aspire not to be."

David Ewalt is a hack with no research standards and no educational background in journalism (he has an undergraduate degree from a fourth tier U.S. university).

If you want to see how easily his poor standards of journalism get picked apart check out this article by Carl Bialik (a real journalist who writes for the Wall Street Journal) in which he takes apart another Forbes article about rankings of the "drunkest cities" for which Ewalt provided the "research."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115756654401855352.html

Ewalt is the last source one should rely on for whatever the state of Second Life might be (or pretty much anything else for that matter).

Ok I just watched this. That guy who they interviewed is a moron who doesn`t know wtf he`s talking about.

There is ALOT, ALOT, of money going into fashion. Not everything was/is about gambling and sex. And he called us losers, LMFAO this guy is the loser going on forbes interview without knowing the facts.

(I do know that yes there is alot of money that went into gambling and sex, but he`s making it out to be like thats all there was and is, and that is not true)

ok, he thinks we are losers. I could give teh exact quote where he says that, but you can watch the video. He goes on to promote WoW as an example of an effective social networking 3D world.

I can't help wondering whether or not WoW is in a far stronger position to implement advertising or product placement on a mass scale in a corporate-friendly fashion, comapred to SL.

Basically, he was speaking to the corporates. And the corporates can only see a platform that isn't so good as an advertising platform. There are corporates who have done this successfully, and I have ideas on how it could be improved (which I would be happy to part with for silly sums of money and steady employment).

SL itself won't collapse as long as the residents are there, because we are teh ones who pay the tier on all that land. And while we cheerfully shun most (not all) corporate builds for the mediocrity they are, we are generally more than happy to trade with each other in the ways we always have done. The non-gambling non-sex economy was here long before corporates and the LL banhammers came down, and they will be here long after the corporates leave us alone.

i think your perspective is really shaped by the circles you run in.
from where i stand, gambling was a tiny fraction of the economy. every casino i had ever seen was a yawning, empty cavern. perhaps i am wrong, i never visited a dedicated gaming island, and i never saw people throwing money at the pokies.
as far as sex goes most of the obvious fans of sex areas that i saw were noob males with default shape/skin/jeans and a freebie prim cock. and the females wore clothes out of the badgirls freebie box. then there's the endless skyboxes with freebie sex furniture, etc. i dont personally see money being spent there either.
i see the lions share of the $ being spent on land and tier.

I've seen better amateur production quality from no-name youtubers.

I love how they talked about "The Bank of SecondLife" as if it were some official LL run entity.

And is it just me... or is there something really odd about her mouth?

Nevermind... can't bother waiting for replies... I gotta get back to pixel-bumping a one-armed bandit.

*cheers* Same here, FD.

Sex is huge in real life as well, by the way. Look at the amount of money made annually by the pron industry in the real world, never mind real world prostitution, exotic dancers and the like. The difference is that in the real world, we pretend that doesn't exist by (1) zoning these places so that you're not always stumbling across them and (2) simply tuning them out when we *do* come across them. Once you hop on the internet, where there is no "zoning", of course sex is everywhere and is hard to ignore -- so we designed filters for that, which work some of the time. Then people come into SL and say "OMG look at teh sex!!" as if that's supposed to be some big surprise. Of course there's a sex industry here and of course it's huge because (1) there is a lot of "demand" among human beings for the sex industry, even in RL where it is regulated and limited and (2) as we all know well, sex on the internet in general is huge. No-one should be surprised that it is huge in SL, and for people to mock/shun SL because of the sex is like people mocking/shunning the internet because of the ubiquitous pron sites. Just makes no sense whatsoever to me, to be honest.

I am always surprised by hearing that SL is about sex and gambling. I hear so many say it and then follow it with something like "of course i don't gamble and don't do pixel sex".

SL is about sex, and gambling, and building, and creativity, and selling, and dancing, and relationships and friendships, and exploration, and .. and.. and..

SL is about everything that happens in FL, plus a few things that don't happen in RL.

SL is about everything that happens on the internet.. in pretty much the same proportions.

Thank god! It would be really freaky if it wasnt...

imogen

The guy has been saying SL will fail for over a year according to that clip, so he's not exactly unbiased. He's right about sex and gambling being big factors here. However the gambling ban was last month, not a couple of months ago and we're still waiting for the dust to settle.

He also thinks WoW is better for social networking because they have guilds. Well there are groups here where people can network so he's also missing that point. He says people need to have something to do, well there's plenty to do here.

But say the past 3 months its been a nightmare. Nothing compares to these last few months. Last year was a nothing campared to now.

Whenever there are reports about SL on RL TV, they usually involve the 'undercover journalist' going into SL in the form of one of the standard newbie avatars and going to one or two not very exciting looking places, flying somewhere and possibly meeting another resident.

It's sad how when negative threads about SL are posted on this forum, all of the haters come out like flies on doo doo.

If you hate SL so much, why are you still here?

SL mirrors real life people.

Is there sex in SL. Of course there is. Sex is big business. We all love sex.

Did gambling thrive in SL. Of course it did. Gambling is big business. People are greedy.

So what's new?

I will say this. Sex and gambling have never been a significant part of my SL. Oh, I know it's there. And you will easily find it if you look for it. But it hasn't been a large part of my SL world. There is so much more to do here and we all know this. Of course you have to be predisposed to want to do all of these other things.

As has been posted before on this thread, sex and gambling is the predominant activity for newbies when first joining SL. Sex and gambling are the first thing that newbies gravitate to when they first join SL. You go to any of these sex and gambling places, and you see nothing but newbie avatars with freebie clothing roaming around acting like fools. Rarely do you ever see a polished long term resident in any of these areas.

Stop making a big deal about nothing.

As much as some of you would love to see SL fail ... it won't. It will just continue to evolve until it finds its equilibrium.

So relax and enjoy the ride.

And if you find that you just can't stand the ride ... then jump off and move along.

But by all means, take a deep breath and stop the hate.

Damn.... (Tear starts down face).... Your so right...


Come on everybody... Join in!

There comes a time
When we head a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can't go on
Pretneding day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God's great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

Send them your heart
So they'll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stone to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

When you're down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well, let us realize
That a change will only come
When we stand together as one

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me


CAN YOU SMELLLLLLLLLLL.......... What? SL's cookin...

"We are all a part of
God's great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need "

Yes... of course, lets make SL an official religion.... for some, it is already.

Support your religion... SL you are a God, and i am not..


wonders what the odds are on SL meltdown...hell, that makes me feel horny...