Things will get worse if they ever get better

I only meant play time need not go down even if spending does. I was responding to those who guessed spending might go up because of the economy going down.

I didnt say it was good for the SL economy. All I meant was ..

SL playtime can increase even though average US dollars per day do not increase.

We have over a year of Flat LindenX activity proving that.

The part that I find interesting is about how some of these places remain open. Most of my home sim (mainland) is occupied by a very large and well built mall. For months the traffic there has been close to zero (got worse after the owner pulled out her camping benches).

The shops have gone from eclectic, to a few resale ventures (biz in box overpriced freebies and near freebies) run by members of the mall's owning group.

With little or no rental income, and maybe a few $L a day of sales, what would drive someone to pay the enormous tier burden on the land?

Also, why does someone buy high priced property on the waterfront to build an enclosed mall? Land here goes for close to $L20 per sm. The owner could probably make a decent income doing residential rentals. It's a prime sailing area here.

I wish I had that kind of money to throw away.

You seem to be confused as to what SL is. This isn't a "system" and nobody is guaranteed traffic. You either figure out how to get traffic by using your creativity to tap into what people want or you cheat with bots and campers. It's pretty much an either/or.

Starting up a sim business without any kind of plan is the most frequent reason for failure. Hundreds and hundreds of people have bought sims on the speculation of "I'll just rent it out and make money." A foolish proposition unless you really know what you are doing and are prepared for the work it involves. The reasons for failure in SL are the same as in RL:

1) You start your business for the wrong reasons
2) Poor management
3) Insufficient capital
4) Location
5) Lack of planning
6) Over expansion

If your friend is covering tier and having fun with her sim, nothing else really much matters.

Apparently some seem to think so. They're afraid of the forums. Hence, the cry for mods.

They wouldn't have lasted 2 seconds against Prok.

LOL

Or that Bitch-We-All-Know-And-Love "Ulrika".

I miss her sometimes. Most stubborn-I-Am-Right-You-Are-Always-Wrong Female I've ever encountered.

It was fun arguing with her!

As to the economy stuff.....

The gas argument is correct. BUT- eventually folks will have to make up for high gas prices by cutting back more & more. First to go would be the "Night Out" entertainment. Eventually, for lower incomes, broadband might be the next to be nixxed. I've worked with people who had to go back to Dial-Up just because $60/month for broadband was too much.

I guess it all depends on how much you're willing to part with your entertainment dollar.

I still believe, although I might be wrong, that the greatest danger to SL is a consolidation of the creator base robbing SL of its most unique feature (its customizability). The problem is that SL has evolved based on its business requirements so far, and now it can't back out.

Why do the same malls sell the same things over and over again? For the same reason that this happens in RL - marketing and production costs to be competitive have risen so high that nobody can take a risk on a non-established market.

LL would never do this, but - what if they did, basically, say "reduce the start-up costs of a competitive new business, within two months, or we pull the plug?" It couldn't be done. We can't evolve out of the box we're in. And that's scary. Because although LL won't say that, the market reality might - not anytime soon, but some day..

I disagree, because niche items have a way of getting around. The trick is in finding a niche. This is how one becomes a market leader - you find a niche, go big, and do it well.

Okay, I will bite too.

One of the main reasons I am here is my ongoing interest in virtual economies and I would comment that virtual worlds have virtual economies and to be fair they do not always correlate to first life market conditions.

Within Second Life, there are perhaps three main engines of growth; they are sexual, monetary, and social. The three are interlinked to a degree.

The gaming ban, and the more recent financial services/banking ban hit the monetary driver; the ban on age play hit the sexual driver. By and large, the social aspect engine has not been impacted to date, although it will be interesting to see if any Facebook type link up detracts or enhances social growth.

The Open Sim project may on balance compliment Second Life as it gives folk a chance to live the experience of owning a Sim albeit on their own computer. It may encourage another engine of growth, that of the builder/scripter/texture creator who only desires to project themselves into a world of their own creation as a type of escapism from real life. We are a social species and sooner or later, such individuals will want to share their world.

Land is a means to an end and personally, I would think land prices and margins for Land Barons will be dictated by Linden Labs as well as the virtual market.

On another tack, I also visit another virtual world, World of Warcraft. There is also a strong economic element to WoW because of the need to purchase equipment of all types as you both play and level.

I can only speak for my own realm there (WoW uses shards rather than an continuous universal grid) but I have noticed the gold price of certain basic staples such as Stone, Copper, Cloth, and Potions has been dropping sharply recently.

There is always a reason, and in this case the cause is due to players awaiting the add on uplift, The Litch King, due in April/May. Currently players are not levelling so much or fighting as they may be awaiting the chance to develop new professions and classes.

I think that until you get to the scale of earning a realistic first life income from your virtual world such as the likes of Dreamland, Caledon, or Azure Islands etc, first life economies have little to do with virtual growth. After all is a plunging first life stock market going to prevent me buying my next Gun upgrade in WoW (A Dwarf Cannon type machine gun), a flying Mount, or for that matter stop me spending £12 per quarter within SL? Unless of course the game company goes skint in real life -

Finally I would be interested to read any comments on The Lord of The Rings game. I was reading through the manual last night and I gather there is an economic element there too, which includes homesteading. Can anyone comment on that?

and even more shops _re_sell the same things... that can be had as freebies elsewhere.

That's true, but SL doesn't generate niches in quite the same way RL does. I mean, I was actually talking with an established creator here, and they agreed that "most of the things which aren't made in SL yet, aren't worth making - because even if you have them there would be no social interest, and so having them would make no difference".

That creator reminds me of the fellow who advocated closing the Patent Office, on the grounds that "everything had already been invented".

I would buy an island SIM if it were not 1675 USD and 295 month. Not sure what I would actually buy one for... but the old 195/month seems better - what was the cost of the island then?

That statement could not be less true. Niche has always been the way to go, especially when starting out. There are a bazillion people building houses in SL. Where you want to start is niche - low prim or modern or fantasy or gothic, etc...

Start with pearl jewelry, get famous for it, then branch out.

Start with modern furniture, build a following, then branch out.

Start out making the formal gowns, build a following, then branch out.

Do one thing, do it very well, own the niche, then expand out as your business grows.

But again.. that doesn't work so well in SL because of the normalising effect of the social world.

Low prim, modern, fantasy, and gothic aren't what I'd call niche products on SL at this point!

The problem with new niches is that, unlike RL, if you buy a house that's too "unusual" in the perceptions of others, they won't want to come over. And if nobody comes over, then there's relatively little point in having your own house in SL - you don't need it to keep the rain off, after all!

That problem is compounded by the fact that if there really is a completely new niche in SL, there's a strong chance that the people who are interested in it will not be staying in SL right now, because they will be arriving to find that their interest is not supported. And if you make the first house in that niche in SL.. then those people will be arriving to find that all there is available is one house.

You know what, Yumi? If I followed your negative philosophy about everything that "won't work" in Second Life I wouldn't own a sim nor would I own a very successful niche business. Everything you say won't work or doesn't work is something I've done and it did work.

So, end of argument for me.

I'd rather live in a world of endless possibilities than one where everything just turns to crap so why bother.

Well, um... you've said that niche is "the way to start". Now surely, if somebody (including yourself) has already occupied a niche and been successful there, it isn't a good starting niche any more?

Yes, you may have been successful, but what about the next generation? Now, yes, there are still new things under the sun. But what about 50 generations down? Already the real world is running out of new ideas and space to express them - and it's causing damage to society - so why should SL be any different? And is SL ready for when that day comes?

And finally.. my attitude hasn't developed in a vacuum, you know. If SL gave me this outlook, why could it have not given it to others, too, who might be similarly limited by it? How many didn't stay?

It seems to me that the SL economy is fine and growing.

It is also pretty darn resilient. It bounced back from the gambling ban, it bounced back from the ginko debacle, and it seems to have handled the banking ban with hardly a glitch.

Activity on the Lindex is growing at a good clip. It seems like 70,000,000 lindens exchanged daily is the norm now, while just two months ago it was more like 60,000,000.

Something is driving this increased activity. Perhaps it is more people staying in and playing on their computers because of the current money crunch. I know I am going out less each month because of increased cost of my bills.

Yes, there is a lot of over-saturation in shopping areas, duplication of sales, and freebie resales. Given the amount of L$/wk people are willing to spend, the number of frequent players/sim and the mediocrity of a lot of the material, it's no surprise that many sims will be empty. I think the bigger question is "Why aren't more sims empty?"

OK, I'll jump in.

My business started when I created a niche item. I worried to death about opening a store with only one model of the item and spent a lot of time creating at least two or three to open up with (which I managed to do).

I have spent nothing on advertising except for the land parcel fee that my shop sits on (been open 3.5 months now). I've now got a list of items that my customers have requested that is long enough to keep me busy for several months, creating new items.

So, one of the follow-on effects is that if you create something that folks have been waiting for, they'll be glad to give you ideas for other similar or complimentary products (in most cases).

Just have to find that particular niche. And, surprisingly, I've just recently found a niche in what I've always believed has been an over-saturated building and structures market.

Just have to keep innovating, keep thinking, keep plugging away at it.

Right, like iPhones and in-car live navigation systems. Nothing new about either of those and they aren't making any impact in our RL, hm?

I'm sorry, Yumi, I just don't agree with you. There is ALWAYS room for new ideas - new, better ways of doing things, or opening up whole new activities that nobody had thought of before (like entering a virtual world through a computer...).

I think the same goes for SL - yes, the bar gets raised in that people won't spend money on junk, but as SL matures and newer technologies come along, there will be people who find new ways to use it to make our SL experience better.

We need to encourage people to think, not discourage. If you can come up with the next great thing that everyone in SL *must* have, then you will become a success.

Good luck to everyone out there with an open mind who is trying new stuff, it is much appreciated!

There are communities with stores that make few sales.
It is not always about how many $L they make every day but more about someone with dream and few spare rl dollars, and they end up deciding what is more important is their friendships and Creating. What often is paid to land owner is the relationships that are gained and evolve are biggest parts what is involved in keeping those communities alive.
They figure out ways to deal with the burden of the tier or they don't and end up using the area as canvas for themselves and their friends to create in if it remains.

Both of which have been around in some form for years, and have closed lists of top manufacturers. And neither of which are something that a new entrant to the market could start with.



Yes, but then who will you sell it to? The failures?

That's _if_ the residents who wanted it stayed around in SL to wait.

Yeah I just upgraded my computer from gas to electricity, so much easier to get into SL too