Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

Never saw that coming...

But the idea to saw off the half of the surfboard while acrobatic balanced surfing on two half boards then, one foot per each, on top of the shockwave - is kind of bizarr, isn't it? Could be the top-attraction at the next annual artistics festival in Monaco. M. Kingdon with one foot on the smut-board - some water - the second foot on the clean board and rotating his arms like a windmill, to hold balance. I die laughing.

/me points at "without people like that... the people who get a blast out of terraforming using grenades... they're never going to dream of doing the things that make Second Life work".

Business decisions that piss off the customers have another name. They are called Bad Decisions. If you make your customers stop spending money, then you've made a bad call and need to correct it.

If your customers are quitting over the voidsim BS, then you cancel the next price increase to avoid further losses.

If mainland is running in the red, give people a reason to buy there again without driving them away by jacking up prices elsewhere.

If your new product is causing a loss of funds to the company, STOP SELLING IT!

If there is a tech problem which causes performance issues, don't blame the users.

If the law says no real money payouts for gambling, you say that games of chance can only pay out in Zorkmids instead of Lindens and Zorkmids cannot be transferred.

If you need a clean area for businesses and new users, you create one and build on that rather than turn the entire mainland upside down and shake it.

If you need an example of how to fail at running a company, just look at LL over the past two years.

They might fall, but nobody paddling around in the hotel pool is going to push them off... no matter how business-like the hotel is.

Just tested!

Under current implementation.

An Unverfied NPIOF account
"CAN" access group land with both Do Not allow access check boxes enabled.

Linden Labs hasn't banned games that pay out in funny money.
Kicking all those people out of their OpenSpaces would have been better than raising the price?
You can't have a circus without the clowns.

You cannot do that trick with youtube.

"?" make the URL invalid.

--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3x3FNlleU

ETA: oh i haven't seen that video in years!

You don't need to, it's already got the necessary ? in there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3x3FNlleU

Priceless!


.....(you forgot that bit at the end of your post!)

What i think he meant, is that LL should have stopped selling Open space sims once they felt it was going to be problematic on their overall stability and bandwidth.

As things stand, they sold the product continiously for 6 mths and 15,000 Open Space sims later decided to hike Tiers (in 2 phases-the concession!), impose Avatar limits and soon to be scripting limits.

It means, if selling new voidsims is causing LL to start losing money, you stop selling new voidsims. I didn't say a thing about the existing ones - the customers bought a product LL offered and LL should have left them alone with them. Instead LL blamed the customers for their mistake and tried to correct it via predatory price increases. Result is loss of customers, loss of sims, loss of income, no return to the mainland and severe loss of trust with the remaining customers that will take years to rebuild. And without that trust, big island and mainland purchases are gone, as are any big businesses that might have entertained notions of building there.

/me agrees - either they let that product continue to sell like crazy and screwed lots of people by delaying a price change they knew they had to make or they totally didn't notice that thier fastest selling product was losing money for 8 months. Both bad..

Sale of a sim is not a single event, it is an ongoing process. Stopping that process, which was where they alleged they were losing money, would have meant closing all those sims.

We can argue about whether the level of price increases were appropriate or not, but that's a different issue.

I'm also not arguing that they handled it well, overall.

They claimed that the true costs of the sims didn't show up until there were enough of them in operation for long enough to make a difference to their support costs. That's not all that unlikely, given their cowboy reputation.

I was skeptical of the long-term viability of their product for a while before the announcement. I opened a JIRA suggesting that they be throttled back in July. See http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2627. Reading through the comments again, I'm compelled to repeat... "Well, we have the Linden's answer to load on OpenSpace sims now. sigh".

You evidently haven't been around very long.

Based on past performance, that is exactly what LL will do. Ignore any and all suggestions and do what is all ready cast in stone as far as they are concerned.

Asking for input is used as a distraction for the masses while they go forth with their plans.

Huh? If' I'm selling flapjacks for 5$ and they cost me 6$ to make, I just stop selling flapjacks while I continue to sell waffles and muffins. I don't have to reach down everyones throats and pull out the previously sold flapjacks though. (eww)

Seriously, that makes no sense. Discontinuing a product line means all the previous holders of the product have to give them up? If Ford stops production on the Taurus, they go out and steal all the Tauruses on the roads? Where in the tao of Linden, Pooh, or Beezelebub do you see that? LL should have closed their production line for Voidsims when the problem first became apparent. That doesn't mean all the voidsims already sold had to be confiscated. (Although such a move is clearly no longer outside the realm of LL's cracked reasoning...)

..but they stated there was no support for Open Space sims to begin with.

I hope this is the place to comment about "Adult Content" changes. I hope I am not too late.

Linden states "Our goal is to make Second Life more enjoyable for all Residents by giving them GREATER CONTROL over their inworld experiences." This a a good and noble goal. I agree completely with this goal.

Have a content rating system and allow each user to CONTROL the type of content they wish to see. This simple idea achieves the above goal.

However, when a new user signs up and is DENIED access to the full breadth of SL experience unless they submit to some verification process, how does this give that user "GREATER CONTROL"?

Pretty sure it was also stated that this is a thread about Adult Content and the issues that affect us people who make adult products and content. You people worried about the openspace issue might get heard better over in the OpenSpace Issues - you have a whole section over there just for you.

Please let's get this thread back on topic. It is imperative to my business that i keep up with all this but it's difficult when I have to sift through irrelevant chatter.

Thankies.

We were all too late - the stinky feet were cast in cement about 4 months ago and now we just await the inevitable.

Some of us bark here because we hope and pray an investor in SL sees it and asks M what the H*ll he's doing.

Sorta - but it's really just one more step to get the full breadth of the experience. It literally takes 40 seconds (60 seconds if you aren't sure where your wallet with your SSN or Driver's License is) to fill it out. I spent more time picking my name.

=====

For me, the big concern here is places like ours. We make adult stuff plain and simple. We make "mature" stuff - sexy, revealing outfits and things like that - and then across the street we have a ranch and wharf where we have fishing and horseback riding. It's separate in the way we have laid it out and when you come to the ranch there is little danger of wandering in and seeing something overtly adult unless you take a real close look at it. Until now - a blanket - "mature" has worked for us. Yep. You should be an adult if you come here, because there is stuff your kids probably shouldn't see, but your experience at our location is most likely not going to be "adult" in nature unless that is specifically what you came there for.


Now, with this, I have to set up three separate shops on three separate sims (or at least two - if I keep the "mature and g rated stuff together" but my costs go way up because I have to maintain a certain level of prim overhead on each lot. I can't have the "one sim - all the prim overhead is good wherever I need it next" benefits. So I have to spend more on land to account for growth.

True, I could move the horse ranch to an adult area and keep everything together - but imagine all the couples who have met at our place and gone riding and had a good time together - most of them probably never would have met if the "Adult" flag was up and it was assumed that we must be a place for fetish ponygirls over there.

To me - it's not a matter of how I'm going to get the people to come to our stuff. The way this whole thing is shaking out right now it appears more that my problem is going to be able to figure out how I can possibly afford to get my stuff to the people.

<added>
I should also add that the "Most People do not come to Second Life for an "adult" experience" statement might be somewhat true. But an equally true statement would be, "The people who DO come to SL for an adult experience are willing to spend a whole lot more money on things."

If it weren't for our adult stuff, there is no way we could possibly afford the other quarter sim upon which sits our horse riding and fishing areas. While that area account for over half of our land and prim usage, it accounts for less than 10% of over revenue that pays for its existence. I'm sure I'm not alone in this in saying that the "fine cultural" contributions we make in Second Life are made possible only through the actions of those who spend money on the stuff that's getting tucked into the corner of Adult Land.

Not that I'm griping - I'm really not. I just want to know what is going on so I can plan for it and be ready. I will need at least a month (and at least $200 out of my own pocket because I don't have mainland property) to make a smooth split of my businesses and to have everything located properly. So I need to know what's up and soon so that I can be ready for it when it hits the fan.

</added>

This is a misunderstanding. They give us greater control, because they are controlling us greater now. This was meant. And "over their inworld experiences" meant: we have now much new bureaucracy on the next viewer-UI with wich we can toggle around every minute, depending on our moods. Say,if you feel PG in morning you can bump on some labyrinth borders until noon, say, if you feel Mature in afternoon, you can bump on some labyrinth borders until evening, say if you feel adult at evening, you can go to Ursula, and if you feel PG, Mature, Adult as changing moods within 60 seconds, you can play mastertoggler on high speed. This gives you much control over your inworld moods.

This they meant. And if you are unsecure about what to feel when you create or buy a specific ingame item, then you can call a Linden employee who comes then, makes a review and then he will teach you if that has to be a PG, Mature or an Adult mood.

Great!

Then they should have slapped resource limits on them instead of raising the tier on every one of them by +65%. Or said "hey, stop abusing these things or we will get pissed!"

But the product isn't a flapjack, it's a flapjack subscription service.