The Proposed Adult Continent Policy Has Resulted in Good Press for Second Life

Well to me it seems more a natural response, an reaction based upon a wish to see stability and to preserve an existing emotional, social, and/or financial investment, in some cases, of (real-time) years spent within this virtual world.

Philip Linden wanted to enact a social experiment - the result seems to be in part that people feel invested in it. To me that is a good thing.

Historically it HAS been true with SL that whenever a big change hits in time the lost users will be replaced and the more creative types will adapt. Weather the trend will continue? who knows? I think it will. But I am also talking very long term. I don't see that as arrogant just a statement of how it has gone before and an opinion that I don't think its likely to change.

The stipends issue had to do with the onset of free accounts. It used to be that that basic accounts got 50L a week (older ones still do if they log in) and Premium acts got 500L a week. With the onset of free acts that changed to nothing for basics and over several iterations downward 300L a week for premiums. There was a huge uproar, LL did what it wanted, SL went on.

Putting the payment info into the profile proved to be a blip on the radar screen as well. It did not become the big discriminating issue many feared it would.

Yes many will choose not to move and close shop instead. I am probably one of them as I stated earlier. But on the grand scale of SL I will be replaced and missed by very VERY few. Will I be in SL still? Probably but not as a business owner until something truely PG sparks my interest. Who knows maybe I will go back into the prefab business

The fact is LL has its collective nuts in a vise. Between the bad PR they get from the adult stuff and political pressure to seperate porn on the internet from the rest of the net, they are acting preemptively. I can argue till I am blue in the face that this isnt the right way to do things. But they seem to have decided the only wiggle room is the implementation.

Ciaran, maybe we should bring back the McCarthy era trials and witchunts to try to out the Lindens? If they're actively trying to sway public opinion under false pretenses then it's a bit shady but the chances of getting anyone to admit that they're a Linden and actually be able to back it up is pretty small. That being said I have my hunches on possible Linden alts and I'm pretty sure that Prok is actually a Linden even if s/he doesn't realize it.

On the topic of shots like Xcite, if LL does the smart thing which makes it on an island by island basis instead of an estate by estate basis, in which you can have differently rated islands in an estate but every parcel on an island forces to the island setting, then I don't see people like Stroker being noticeably effected and the change could actually be a good incentive for people to move to islands so that could work out well for LL.

Gordon - re island incentives - well other than the higher tier for a private island, or am I mistaken in that.

Oh and I did not read your post as arrogant, not everyone who states that this will balance out is being arrogant, it's in the tone not the words or ideas.

I hope LL did cost effective and other studies, I assume they must have. Perhaps even consulted shrinks as to how people might react, etc. I have noticed the responses seem to be following the 5 stages of grief...

I try not to sound arrogant, although I may joke from time to time that I know everything that isn't the case. Your right about the island tier and I didn't even think about that since that is a strong disincentive along with the fact that unless your actually going to use all the space and/or powers afforded by a full island it isn't really worth it. That being said, everyone will do their own calculations based on their own needs but since there are always people on the line between buying an island or not I think that this may tip them back towards it even if the Lindens have pushed them pretty far back from the line recently.

Good post....very much things i have said in the past.

I often find the type of people referring to a "Sky is falling group" are usually those that have very little to lose in terms of real money investment or time investment into a business.

If one is already verified, doesn't own any land, doesn't have a business and spends most of their SL time socialising or exploring.....that person really isn't going to be effected very much to any LL extreme policy changes. That person's main issue might be the freedom of flying and not running into "Ban lines" or something trival like that!

Maybe we should ask Stroker 3 months down the road after this policy change.
My bet his target audience would have shrunk due to the numbers not wanting to be verified and those NPIOF workers in the Adult sector who might be out of a job.

Probably true, but my bet is 3 months after that he will be laughing all the way to the bank as the sheer population increase gridwide will bump his sales up higher than they are now or would be as the people walking through the door will actually have access to money quickly.
If LL do the segregation properly they may have a population of real users well above leaving SL as it's current Porntopia. I also wouldn't be suprised if after this is all implemented a name change for SL is in the works to leave that image behind.

Jesse and Tegg, how could anyone possibly 'name names' (ew, anyway? *Name names*?) or instances when the change hasn't happened yet? *scratches head*

For instance every male av that doesn't want to be a Ken doll for its SL lifetime will need to shop 'adult' shops. Now imagine a good percentage is unable or unwilling to age verify. And that is just one product, in one type of business which will be affected by all of this.

I don't think the moving to another continent is the main impact here but the kids coming into SL will have a big one, and so will the info gathering bit.



Heh.

None of the big players should be badly effected by this Gordon, I'm sure some of them have tried to get LL to create an area like this (let's not forget LL did say that some adult sellers had contacted them). Whether the LL idea is what they wanted is another thing.

I'm not in the sky is falling camp on this matter though, I've said that the adult continent is a good idea but is not being executed well. If I wanted to open an adult business I'd absolutely do it on the adult continent.

There will however undoubtedly be losers in this, be it via loss of business, loss of land value, loss of workers.

Some people will no doubt do very well out of it.

I agree with you about many things, but I really think you've got it all wrong about what the effect of this will be. The percentage of NPIOF and otherwise unverified residents will plummet once any real age restriction is put in place--and would have already if the previous IDV experiment hadn't been such a trainwreck.

I'm 99% sure that Ursula will be a bonanza for anybody lucky or conniving enough to get "forced" to move there--and a bidding war of unprecedented proportions for many operations stuck without land on the few hundred sims LL will eventually allow themselves to dedicate to this.

In fact, however, I'd also wager that they'll soon change their tune about it being free to move there if "asked." They will make an enormous windfall on auctions there, and it will be just too much revenue to squander it by giving it away to lowly Mainland residents with grievously offensive content. Instead I suspect they'll do some sort of parcel-level server-side muting, such that existing Mainland (and Estates) can stay intact with the old, IDV-era parcel restrictions, and they'll be able to keep for themselves all the Ursula auction revenue from eager Adult industry bidders and speculators.

There will also be Adult-only Estate mini-continents, of course, competing for those bidders, but for all the reasons that people own themed Mainland instead of themed Estate land, parcels on Ursula will command a huge premium.

WOW! As each of your points failed in logical argument and you had no comebacks you resorted to THIS???????????????

They were your words not mine, you didn't actually refute my points, you moved the goalposts and started new ones. There's a bit of a difference there, my point was x, you were arguing about point y.

My point stands, some places will go out of business on the back of this move.

Erm that's a dangerous game to play.....history has shown that LL (via Jack Linden) love to control Mainland pricing, we have seen this on numerous occasions with 1000's of additional Mainland sims being placed to the East....the effect was to drive the average Mainland price on the other continents downwards......and it succeeded!

It would be rather ironic if you spent 100 k on a small 4096 sqm plot in "Adult World" only to have LL add a several hundred additional SIMs to the Adult continent next year.....what will be the value of your 4096 sqm plot then?

You want to take this chance? Have we as a community not already learnt
how LL manipulates and controls the Mainland market pricing?

Oh, I agree; I'm not speculator enough to buy any Adult land that I can't get by sleazing-up some of my existing Mainland and trying to get it "invited" to move. I see Ursula as just another link in a chain of LL actions designed to generate auction revenue while bleeding value from owners of existing Mainland. I'm just getting tired of always being the one that's bled.

Yep, i'm having the same idea as you.....sleasing up at least 4000 sqm to get an Adult rating!.

I'm not an SL land baron, so perhaps I just don't have enough understanding of how the virtual real estate market works.

If it's true about what I've read that the adult businesses use a more resources on average than non-adult, and being on the new adult continent will be a lag nightmare, I can't see it being an attractive thing to have.

Sure, adult mainland may be a limited resource, which is one factor that drives up prices. But garbage is garbage; limit it as much as you want, and it doesn't make it more valuable.

To avoid the lag nightmare, businesses will have to buy a buffer on the adult continent. So you get your 4096sqm for 4096sqm swap; but now you need to buy another 12,288sqm just to have the same functionality as you used to have. A ton more expense.

If the new adult continent will be a lag nightmare, it seems to me that moving one's adult business to a private estate is a much more attractive option. The alternative of private estates sets a cap on the sell price of adult mainland.

If you believe that the new adult continent will be awful place to run an adult business, it can't simultaneously be true that the new adult land will be valuable and fetch a premium price. (Unless some sort of obfuscation of information causes people to think they are buying something better than they are getting, or there are a significant number of residents who don't think before they buy, either of which could be true.)

And courts often invalidate those agreements when the party imposing the unilateral change acts in bad faith.

Companies put unenforceable provisions into contracts all the time. Why? Because as long as you believe it, they get away with it.

What I said is document your losses. If it turns out you have no losses, then you have no problem. If you don't document your losses now, it's too late to discover after the fact you should have.

Losses aren't necessarily in future revenues. It's the total balance sheet. Whether or not future sales are affected, the fact of the matter is there is going to be cost associated with the move. That is a loss.

Anyone who just hopes that things will work out, and find out later that they don't, will also find that it's too late to do anything about it. Start documenting it now, so if you do have a case later, you can actually present it.

If the sky doesn't fall or whatever, hey, great, the sky doesn't fall. That would be a wonderful thing.

But just like any business transaction, if you are just kinda trusting the person with whom you are doing business, and not treating that person at arms-length, you are being foolish with your money.

So, here you're implicitly accusing Linden Lab of illegally scamming money out of its users by restricting adult content to a specific area. A link to the court ruling invalidating LL's right to do this, please?

Hmm, oops I didn't mean to name someone.
I imagine actually a good percentage of males can age verify and will put RL money into SL if the online porn industry is anything to go by, the only reason many don't in SL is because they don't have to

I play SL for fun, not for money.

Fun to me requires buying/renting land, and the cost of doing so far exceeds what I pay for other games I play. I still do it, when bored with other games. (If you disagree and feel that SL is not a game, then I will readily agree that I am in in the wrong place and should move on.)

Except for building on land, SL is not fun since nearly everyone I meet is focussed on money or sex. I already have a job and am happily married. (my apologies to those I haven't met who aren't focussed on either - we are far out-numbered).

There is the possibility that those who are focussed on money subsidize those who are focussed on fun (I am quite willing to pay for my fun here, it's just the SL is a lot more expensive than other games that are more fun.)

But I suspect that SL has catered to the "wolves", and don't have enough "sheep" like me to sustain them. So a policy change that attracts more sheep might be useful to them.

I'm also thinking about the classic economic error of selling their resources cheaply as opposed to using those resources and adding value to them (i.e., if there's money to made from selling sexual content, LL would be better off economically if they did that themselves, rather than providing "resources" for others to profit from. That also dooms my preferred playing style too, since all I would do with their resources is plant pretty flowers and such.

Supply follows demand - if there is a market for it, it would already be obvious. No one is stopping 'sheep' as you put it, from playing SL or shopping in SL.



Well that is just it - you imagine. Right now it's all anyone can do, imagine. But it proves nothing, merely saying it.



You were active in the discussion threads - you must've seen that many who even might want to, cannot do so as it stands now.

Also is it lost on you that given the option, nearly everyone *chooses* not to?