A difficult business question

Yes, and that's fine. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't certain applications which would be doomed to fail no matter how diligent you were, and where the content creator would know _in advance_ that a) people might buy the product for those applications, and b) if they did they would be doomed to fail. Is it still right to profit from those people? At least, a warning could be put on the product.

I'm not sure why using your products would doom a project to fail any more than any other project in sl, some things work, others don't.

If you want to put a warning on your products, go ahead. If it bothers you so much, don't sell them.

You seem to want to warn people that SL may not fulfill their dreams. I don't think your trap door is the way to do that ... SL is LL's product, the trap door is yours. Fwiw, dream fulfillment is what SL is all about, and I think it does pretty well at that. How many dreams are fulfilled just by having beautiful and healthy avatars?

Think of this scenario. A shy guy builds a dream-come-true room for a lady he knows, and asks her to drop by his place for some reason when he's not there. She walks into his house as usual, when, surprise, she drops thru your trap door and sees the room she told him about that she always wanted. She is thrilled by his paying her so much attention, they get together, happily ever after.

You can't know what people use your products for. Advertise them truly and you shouldn't worry.
.

I struggle with this too about what is ethical to sale or not a whole lot but in different areas
usually around quality, whether or not item is original or high quality enough in my case since I am more of texture artist.
Yet if I was maker of scripted objects and I knew how to make a device that could possibly be misused regardless of what it was created for, I would have really hard time releasing its sell.
That is just me, I guess somethings regardless of possible profit is just not worth it for me if selling it is going to make me feel bad or concerned.

Desmond, I am so glad you understand me

I struggle with this too, however I overcome it by just putting the item out there, if ppl want it they will buy it, if not then so be it

do I think that because something doesn't sell I did a crappy job... nope, I just guess that ppl have tastes different than mine

as for the moral debate... I think there is no debate

Wait a minute... so you're saying that acting on the fantasies would be wrong?



*damn*

Absolutely. If she senses even the slightest hint of it and subsequently drags him by his tie into a closet, he might get a heart attack or something.

Bad, I tell you. Bad, bad!

*benny hill bumper music plays*

Dirty old men!!

I have made and sell several attack animals or creatures and most people who see the demo's I have set up seem to enjoy it. There is an Attack Shark that will swim any course you set up for it and will attack anyone who comes too close, bumping and pushing them while spawning blood in the water. Also a Pirate Ghost that guards a treasure chest, attacking anyone who comes to close to it; as well as Piranha and several other creatures, some from nightmares.

I have never had anyone complain to me about getting attacked by these creatures, but have had people hang out at the demo's playing with them for hours and having great fun.

But do you warn buyers that all people interested in these creatures will probably be at the demos?

i agree. i have plenty of textures i bought and didn't use, hair i liked but never really got to wear, and other gadgets i thought might be funny then forgot about them, or just didn't get the opportunity. except for anything that's shoddy quality, i don't blame any seller for a bad purchase decision. i could have planned better, or just sat on my money. sometimes buying the thing is the fun part. going out shopping with friends and picking up goofy things is a nice day out.

the best you can do is create quality products, be honest with what you sell, and provide good support. if you want to educate people on how the sl social system works, that's a noble but entirely separate cause.

/me makes mental note to decline any invitations to visit CX's home in the future.

One of the items in my store is a set of animations for a couple having an argument. Yelling, slapping, shoving each other... that's about as anti-social as you can get, right? When I stop in my store, I routinely encounter people on the demo poseballs shouting "lol don't take that tone of voice with me!" It's a game, it's silly, it's fun.

You are way over-thinking this; not everything needs to be serious. Heck, while I don't know how common this attitude is, for my friends and I every interaction is done with a wink and a nod toward the fact that none of what we're doing is real. My friend Gypsy's best seller right now? A gag he made for tying together a person's shoelaces so that they trip when they try to walk.

Well, I think people are not wasting their money.

If I wanted a booby trap, I would want a booby trap and I would buy a booby trap.

If I want a castle, I will buy a castle.

And I'd want these things to be available to buy.

I wouldn't want someone protecting me from inflated expectations I never had in the first place, by making sure I couldn't buy these things.

coco

I've got a lot of things in my real-life HOUSE like that!

coco

And that . . . is a Good Thing.

coco

Personally,I have tons of crap in my inventory that is useless,but I liked them. So I bought them. Go ahead and sell it,I'm sure there is a market out there.

Except if they find out, with a jarring crash, that it isn't actually possible after all.

Ok, I'll accept that maybe people will pay some attention to the trapdoors or attack sharks etc, but it may not be what the buyer is intending. If they're thinking the reaction will be "oh my god a shark, be careful!" then they're going to be surprised when the actual reaction is "lol a shark, hey which one of us is it going to bump, hey look I can sit on it lulz!"

Tying people's shoelaces together so they trip? It sounds fun, but it would be griefing to do so without permission (since stopping them moving is equivalent to a cage)

You're quite right that nobody should be denied the opportunity to buy things if they have reasonable expectations. But at the same time it seems irresponsible to create a situation where, potentially, the majority of trade could be created by the unreasonable ones.

Everyone on the main grid is supposed to be adults. If something doesn't work, they move on and try other things.

"Life of Pi"... Richard Parker, anyone?

Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that they have _spent money_ which they've now lost. Now, yes, maybe it was only a few L$, but to the person in question that's possibly made the difference between using their credit card and not doing so, which is much more significant to them.

As I say, there are games and virtual worlds out there which basically work by selling items to people with a surrounding false image of what the effect of having them will be. While SL might not do that deliberately, it will still become comparable to them if it does it accidentally.

Yumi, I don't really get your intentions here. I mean, it's one thing to simply feel a certain way (in which case just don't sell those items,) but to start a thread asking a question and then spend several pages typing a rebuttal to every person who suggests you need to chill out just seems, I dunno, odd.

If you would pay me a visit I promise I'll behave myself... (note to self: drain the shark tank and return the beasties to the Linden sea).

"CX"