Is Xstreet out of control?

Sorry, but my opinion on that is "too bad".

I make significant freeibies that "flood the market" and take business away from others who want to profit on similar items (for example, MLPV2, a free script set that powers many menu-furniture products in SL -- at the expense of others who sell similar scripts).

Sorry if you think I make SL a worse place because I do this for free. But I heartily disagree: I think it makes it a better place. And I enjoy and encourage the "competition" from those who sell products.

No argument there. I suspect that RL issues are forcing their hand on the adult content thing, but they simply fouled up the open spaces sim business. But this kind of goal moving happens in RL all the time: a good business plan gets whacked due to a change in conditions that couldn't be predicted, and often due to silly mistakes on the part of others.

Give me a exmaple of a content creator who is creative and successful.....and trying to milk the market.? I'm not quite getting this.....you might be right, but i'm struggling to visualize such a person.

This part i agree with.....and the Verification process might be the kick starter of that occuring.

I didn't say the market would ever collapse...even if all the Quality designers left the building.....you'd still have a grid full of average to cheapo designers around.....not to mention the freebies,BIAB's,full perms and stolen content-lol . In reality the ones that leave, will be replaced by the feeders from below to fill the void....with a new pecking order.

Sorry end of story .....LOL..................

We'll have to disagree then

Can you imagine if we all flooded the grid with freebies....where would the market be?
Its hardly surprising the mentality of Noobs coming into the game are expecting everything to be "Free".....i can't tell you the number of times i had visitors come into my shops asking if there is anything Free here!. The culture and the mentality has certainly changed a lot since 2007 that's for sure......and i think the Content Creators are partly responsible for that.

You brought up "creative and successful". Not me. I'm not sure what it is that you're trying to visualize here, or why.

My only point is I won't miss those who leave SL because it's not profitable enough for their business model. There are plenty of content creators with successful business models, or who simply create for the fun of it.

I think it's OK for SL to be JUST A GAME to lots of people.

I think it's OK if they like to make cool stuff and give it away for free, or have "hobby stores"
I think it's OK if people spend significant resources developing sophisiticated, high quality products, and plan to make a hefty profit from it.

I think it's unfortunate for them, but just a fact of life, if someone comes along and releases a competing product at a price that undercuts their profit model.

I'd hate to see SL become a world where someone with a little talent and limited funds can't apply a little elbow grease and create a valuable product with a viable market.

If I've given the impression that I'm trying to say anything more than this, I apologize for not being clearer.

Oh -- you mentioned BIABs. There are two kinds: those with legitimate content, and those violating license agreements. The latter are reprehensible, harmful, and inexcusable. The former are ... well, not my favorite business model, but they do no serious harm.

So getting back to the OP topic....most of companies in that sector selling their guitars between say 500 to 1000 L for argument sake.....and here comes Mrs X reducing her prices from 1000 L to 10 L!!!! There's undercutting and there's undercutting.......but i don't think you'll find too many RL examples of such an extreme case.....hence my comment of "playing business"


Just for the record, there was a big storm here in 2007 or 2008 (can't remember), it actually started in SLEX (now XStreet)...when Ahnse Chung announced that she was going to undercut the whole SL market and sell each of her products for 10 L and would employ around 100 employees to make this content, this was to cover practically every sector of the economy.
There was a big uproar first in SLEX forums, which spilled over into In-world as Ahnse Chung protest groups sprung up....and i think it carried onto RA forums too. There were strong feelings against this from many Content creators worried that they were going to lose their businesses to this marketing strategy

I was not one of them, because i knew Ahnse could never dominate the market with this ploy, the Grid had outgrown her and diluted her presence.....she left it a couple years too late.! Maybe if she had tried in 2005 say...it might have had legs!.

Well its to do with this comment you made below

See post 71

for the context directly preceding your quote of my text above. As I said, I didn't bring up that phrase, you did, but evidently forgot, and now this is all way off on a meaningless tangent, so let's drop it.

As far as content creation in SL goes, the sort of price "undercutting" is perfectly legitimate and not even ethically dubious. It's not like RL, where there's things like overhead, acquisition, equipment, and employee costs to consider when choosing the price for an item. It may have cost this person absolutely nothing but -time- to create his products, and L$9,800 is no more or less arbitrary, or "proper", than L$10 if that's what he decides his time is worth. That some other person thinks their time is still worth a few hundred lindens, that's their choice as well. I just fail to see where any "boundaries" were actually crossed here.

Well it seemed like the SL content community felt strongly against Ahnse Chung's attempt to flood the marketplace with her 10 L products back in 2007/8. You can research those forum threads yourself.....so obviously yours & Lear's opinion are not shared by all!

You said "than L$10 if that's what he decides his time is worth"....there lies the problem initally that time was worth 1000 L to that same person......by the time the SL door was being slammed it became 10 L

No, its legitmate alright just in the same way "Lava Inside" decided to swamp the market with all their "Free" products for 3 weeks before switching off SL. I have to say i felt rather sorry for those that are in the business of making Club and camping gadgets .....i guess in a few months time everything will be back to normal for them!

no i wasn't saying you said it would collapse..i was just expressing that myself..i think a lot of people see changes as bad even if times are a bit harder..
companies that survive hard times usually do very well after..it's like tough love hehehehe
a big shot of experience that helps a business mature..they adjust and move on and are even tougher the next time something confronts them..

I have managed to survive and still do rather well, despite all the changes and hurdles placed in front of me in both the Content and Land economies.....however having started at the back-end of 2006 in both....i feel i can make a comparison from how it was, to how it is now....we didn't have such a "freebie" mentality & culture as we do now. That's the one big noticebale difference. I'm sure there are RA regulars here, that began trading from 2004 or so.

Hmmm. I just gave some of my stuff to NCI as freebies. I'm going to hand over more. I have a few $1L items floating around. Am I part of the problem or the solution?

This whole topic is rather silly.

Anyone can charge whatever they want for anything they make. Another Shop gave away their skins. Relance gave away their whole store. ETD gives away hair. Lots of people do things like that for a variety of reasons. When I closed my in-world store, I held a sale where most items were $20L for three days. My choice.

Oh yeah, I bought the guitar package!! LOL I have no idea what I'll do with it.

ya 2006 was and early 2007 was pretty bad for freebies lol..
not much texture to them that is for sure..i believe if freebies were mentioned back then or asked for ..the first plce to come up was free dove and maybe a couple of others..
now they are just everywhere..and who really shopped that much on SLxchange back then??

i think i was filling my inventory with DE designs and anyone that had nice texture work back then..
when i finally ran my limit on in world lindens from the blue button i ended up speaking to someone saying that i could not buy anymore..lindens were like 3 dollars a 1,000 lol..
that's how i ended up finding and starting my SLxchange account..i needed more money hahahaha

now it's on the front page of the site and everyone uses them..it's a one stop shop for freebies and you can't go anywhere in world without tripping over them lol..

where you were working the business side of sl back then till now i was working the shopping end..if your store had products i liked..i was buying everything i liked at one time..
one friend called my shopping sprees legendary ..i about fell out of my chair when he said that hahahahaha but i guess in a way it was true lol...it was not uncommon to spend 20 to 60k in one store at one time..
now i make my own things and hardly shop anymore..
i think there is also more information now days on how to make things so that has a bit of impact as well i believe..

omg lol you almost made me wet my monitor!!

That's fine....it all feeds into why we have the "freebie" mentality & culture now. When you have this sort of occurance playing out 1000's of times its not hard to see why and how it developed.

I guess for me a more controlled economy like the one proposed by BlueMars 3D VW is a better business model for me personally......maybe i'm no longer suited to this Wild West styled economy...that's not to say i'm going to pick up all my toys and leave....just means i should also try and focus elsewhere.

I think freebee as far as culture goes is more noticeable now because there are less creators now as a percentage of the population than there was back when I started in 2007. More noticeable because there are more people, as a percentage and in total, who arent creators and dont make any stuff at all. And as user-player-consumers then, like all consumers, they are driven to obtain the best bargain for the amount of money they have available to them. And the best bargain anyone can get is stuff for 0L.

It's a shame that i can't walk into RL stores and pick up some "freebies", it would be handy in this recession! ......some free electricity wouldn't go amiss either!.

Maybe i'm old school..if you can afford to have a PC system, you can afford the electricity to run it and you can afford to pay for your Internet connection.....then surely you can afford to drop 5-10 USD a month for cheap entertainment!

I have been involved in those Adult Content threads......but the one thing i would have liked LL to have done from year dot, was not to have FREE accounts....each a/c should have been registered with a credit card (or alternative) as a minimum...even if were not to be used.

Thats how SL started. Is why I didnt join up in the beginning. I wasnt sure about LL back when they first started. I had no real idea who they were or anything about SL either. When LL opened up access to basic accounts I joined. Explored for about 2-3 weeks and hit all the freebee shops and took everything I saw =) Fell in love with SL, became a Premium Member, bought my first home and have since gone on to spend a small fortune. A fortune for me anyways =). I doubt that I would be here at all and spent what I have, had I not been able to do it this way. Im a typical consumer in lots of ways and there are far more people like me in SL now than there were when I started. Is my observation anyways.

I think also that sometimes the focus on newbies is misplaced in that many owners dont look beyond the new newbie (of whom there are zillions) when trying to grow their businesses. I think the most important new person to SL is the person who after a few days/weeks of exploring and trying it out, have decided to make a committment to their new-found joy and put their own money into it. If only because when they do theyre buying.

I don't see anything in the BlueMars info that would indicate it's going to be any more controlled than SL other than some "cities" will be pay to play and some won't. Content will be whatever the creators decide it should be. EDIT: I'll also add that if their website is any indication of quality, they're in trouble already. Borked. Missing links. Etc.

Really what's driving the freebie culture is the accumulation of things people have made and set free into the wild. Pixels are unlimited. Unlike that real world clothing store you mentioned, it costs me no more to "make" 1000 articles of clothing as it does to make the first one. So there's no good parallel with a RL economy except software to a certain degree.

But really, how many people want to spend $5 US (say $1250L) over and over on pixel outfits for their pixel barbies and kens?? A LOT of people are just here for the chat and other stuff that has little to do with what they look like. My stuff generally sells at "afterthought" prices. Like hmmm -- that's cute -- it's cheap -- I'll take a shot on it. (And yes I put a lot of work into them but it's a labor of fun, not profit.)

LOL I did too and have no idea what I will do with it either!

Maybe I will buy one and we can start our own SL performing group and get paid oudles of L$'s to perform lol

Juist a thought Marketing and add on coming? Seems like a great way to build a database of potential buyers too