A difficult business question

I wouldn't let that hold you back if you are creating these things. I have purchased (and I'm sure everyone has) things that I used a couple times and enjoyed but have not pulled them out of inventory in over a year and have no use for them now. You could advertise it as a RP item or "Great for Haunted Houses" as a couple people mentioned. If your morals are still getting the best of you then put a "Not responsible if your friends hate it" disclaimer at the bottom of the ad.

Oh...and the Collider Death CX was talking about is fun. I keep that on a lot, I don't get bumped into often but when I do and fall over it usually makes for good conversation. I have made a friend or two that way.

It's not a case of "what I'll sell them", Teejay, it's a case of doing the best I can to make sure they're not wasting their money. That means making absolutely sure that they understand that no matter how many castles they buy they'll never be a princess, and no matter how many booby-traps they buy they'll never be Blofeld.

And yes, I'm sensitive to this. This is partly because, in my younger and more foolish days, _I_ was conned by a game called Achaea which used exactly the same trick to get people to spend money. I don't want to do that to others and I don't like to think that SL as a whole is doing it, either.

The "learning by experience" argument seems fairly bad to me. That's like saying someone "learns by experience" when they lose all their L$ by giving debit permissions to an unknown script. Yes, they do learn, but it's not the kind of experience people should generally have!

Absolutely right!

I built a mountain park on 1/4 sim--just for the fun of building. I don't advertize--don't even think I want crowds of people there... but I still needed to buy a rope bridge, ferry boat, climbing rope... I was truly appreciative of the builders who sold that stuff.

I've also built an aquarium that no one ever visited (except my own friends) and am just beginning a coffee shop venture that I don't really expect to make me rich either.

Point is: when you start out on one of these ventures, you may be thinking of ho people will use it, but you get the most satisfaction out of doing the work and enjoying your own creation. You don't worry about the L$250 you spent on a trap door that only 3 people have fallen through in a month.

It seems to me the items you described do have a use in some builds. If you are worried about how someone uses them, people can be annoying with a simple plywood cube if they choose to be. I could see having a trap door or two at my castle. If someone is exploring when I'm not there, then it is their own fault.

Well, if everyone thought that way, Alan Shepherd would never have allowed himself to be stuffed into a rickety capsule sitting on top of a few thousand pounds of high explosive and shot into space.

Some people are going to purchase those products, be very imaginative and create a popular build that others will enjoy for a long time. Others will buy, and not be as successful but really enjoy the building experience alone and others will fail miserably but, perhaps, learn a valuable lesson in return.

You can't know that and people will try things regardless. If you are capable of providing a quality product for a specific use and enjoy the process of making it then why not?

I don't think that's a good analogy - he took the risk himself, with eyes wide open, to learn his own lesson.

This is more like building a rickety wooden model of a dart, calling it a "spaceship", and then because this is not the same world that everyone is used to, people come by and think that hey, maybe that's what a spaceship is in this world, so they buy it and then when it collapses under them, you just say "well, you could see that it was only a wooden model of a dart so what did you expect?"

It's not the same as someone who spends US$100 setting up an avatar and themed build for the "character they want to play" on SL... and then realize that no-one else is coming over. Amongst other things it would be perfectly possible to warn people about that.

Personal feelings are not right or wrong; they just 'are'.

It's hard for people to grasp, when floating in a world of morality and ethics.

For instance, consider a tiger.

A tiger may want to eat Cuddles, your pet hamster. He may have been raised from a cub with Cuddles, they may have enjoyed good times together. He may know it's socially wrong to chow down on Cuddles.

But the fact remains... at the end of the day, the tiger simply feels like Cuddles would make a fine, tasty snack.

Is that wrong? Nah, that's just being a tiger. Tigers have feelings like that. It's just how it goes. Feelings are not right or wrong. They are simply... valid to you, on whatever scale of importance that you assign to them.

Another example: say an old man meets a charming young college co-ed cheerleader. He may treat her with the utmost respect, all the while his personal feelings might cause his mind to stray to less than respectful fantasies. Is he wrong somehow? Nah, he's just a healthy old man. *Acting* on feelings is where morality and ethics get involved.

* * * * *

So... you feel it's wrong to be doing a certain activity that might cause harm to others. That's great! That means that your personal worldview isn't in a whole lot of conflict with society. More people like you would make a better world.

But on the other hand, one can't blame the tiger for feeling (and doing) otherwise in this case. There's no law, or societal taboo against making those products. They aren't being forced on anyone.

That's my take on it, anyway.

But that is the risk of sl in general. That won't change depending on whether or not you sell your products.

I think you are misplacing your good intentions. As a business person (okay maybe it's not 'big' business) you should be thinking about selling as many as possible, without concern over how people net out financially in the future.

I think there are many volunteer organizations where you can satisfy that side of you that wants to help people make good decisions. Devote some time to them, donate money, whatever. Then you can be the conscientious businessperson I think you are saying you want to be. I just don't think you can combine concern over a consumer's well being with sales.

So, selling those things does lead to people getting ripped off, but it's OK because everyone else is doing it?

I already do, at several of them. But it would be the ultimate in hypocrisy to be helping people make good decisions while at once profiting from them making bad ones, n'est-ce-pas?

That's not what i'm saying. Someone can make the best looking build in sl, it doesn't mean people are going to want to see it. Your products would have almost no effect on whether or not people get disillusioned by sl.

I haven't spent any money of my own yet in Second Life, I'll make that decision somewhere down the line, but I don't think I need any warnings or guidance as to how to spend it. I don't need someone to think for me.

If you are making a product that does what you designed it to do, and are selling it and advertising it for what it is, without deception, then how the end user uses it, or doesn't use it is no concern of yours. If that bothers you, then don't sell it.

Not at all. I think you're being a little silly worrying that the trap door you're selling is contributing to the financial demize of your customers, or to a less than enjoyable experience of people who fall into one of your traps. You're the last person in the chain of buyers and seller that should have that concern.

re finances: you CAN'T be charging so much that people are going into the poor house from buying your trap door. So they have likely already bought land -- the most expensive part of this endeaver. Maybe they spent time building or spent money buying a castle. Why wouldn't you sell them the trap door they NEED to make their vision complete?

re experience: if it makes you feel better, renouned gaming expert Jesper Juul writes about failure to achieve goals in games. There is an allure to a 'spectacular failure.' In other words, if my goal is to explore a house, but I fail in this endeaver because I've fallen through a trap door and land in the ocean with man-eating sharks... this is still a fun experience.

I have no objection to them buying the door, IF that's what they want. But if they are building the castle because they think it'll make them a queen, then they should have been warned off from that before they started building or bought the land. (And yes, I really think that SL should do so, right in the early stages.) By the time they're buying the door, it's too late, but I can save them a little.

I was wondering the same thing... why do you care? maybe their SL dream is to be left alone, not socialize and have boobie traps in their house to keep others away.

If we all worried that someone would no longer find a use for something we sold them, none of us would be selling anything anymore.

same could be said for hair for example... do you think I wear every hair I ever bought ... nope, some just sit there never worn except once...
do you think the sellers are feeling badly because oh gosh someone might night constantly wear the hair they sold them?

bottom line, if you want to sell it, sell it, if not, then don't

we can not make that choice for you

Well hello there, how you doin'? Oh no wait, thats me! ahhh

And anyone who enters SL, pays the necessary price and/or fees for enough land to make a build, is also doing so with their eyes wide open, to learn his own lesson.

I love it. I type and type trying to explain myself and someone comes along and summarizes it all in two short paragraphs. I agree completely.

Sure. But hair, and most avatar accessories, don't fit into that category. You buy hair because you want to look a particular way and it lets you look that way. Ok, you might potentially be buying it because you want other people to think you have good-looking hair, but that's less likely.

On the other hand, why would you ever buy a trap door if you weren't expecting that someone else would fall down it? If you don't really want anyone to do so, why not just do without the script and just pretend that that prim is a trap door? Second Life still is not real, making something out of prims does not make it any realer than just imagining it in your head, it just allows you to share it with others.

Um.. I don't see that they're actively buying and building on land with the deliberate and pre-considered intent to find out whether or not what they want to do is possible in a virtual world. Instead, they believe that it already is possible, and they doing it.

question is why are you so worried about someone buying the door? as I said if you want to sell it, sell it, people will buy it if they want to buy it

why should it matter to you so much why they want to buy it??

I am really confused by all this... this is not a question of morals, this is not a question of you being bad selling someone something which would (I assume) clearly state what it is...

now if you were selling it as just a door, then yes that would be wrong, but putting clearly what it is, is not wrong

just sell it... or not... up to you.

all this is starting to feel like an advertisement now.. talk about it enough then sell it then everyone will want to come see what it was...

Let me put it this way, I have quite a lot of items in my inventory, that I paid for thinking they would be useful for a project I had in mind. As it turned out, either the object didn't actually suit the purpose or the project never materialized or just failed miserably.

Do I blame the content creator I bought from for ripping me off for an object I ended up not being able to use? Of course not!

I made the conscious decision to purchase those items. It was my own failure to follow through or simply a last minute change of plans that rendered those items of no real value to me. It was no attempt by the content creator to rip me off.

You seem to want to try to guarantee that no one has any negative experience in Second Life. Admirable perhaps, but not very practical. To do so would probably make it so that any positive experiences would be hampered to the point of not making it worth the trouble of logging on.