Either Philip's account got hacked - or dwell is gone.

No, creative just simply does not mean profitable. Being creative as well as profit-driven gives you a certain advantage in that enterprise, but it's very possible to be

(a) profitable and not creative in the slightest;
(b) creative and not profit-driven;
(c) creative and profit-driven but not profitable.

Examples abound of all three of those.

Oh sure. It's not a x=y sort of thing, but it's a GREAT BIG STEP. If you're creative, you have a hell of a lot better chance of being profitable than someone who isn't creative. And if you're creative and not profitable, you can probably fix that with work.

I'm not particularly profitable mainly because I don't personally need to be. The stipend FAR FAR FAR more than covers the tiny amount I spend on myself and I usually wind up looking at the upper right hand corner of my screen going 'what the crap am I supposed to do with THIS now' and giving it to random people.

Ok, let's say you invest in an online service. They give you a business report that includes: "We've reduced our costs significantly by driving 1000 users away, thus allowing us to lower our bandwidth costs." Are you happy?



Which is not quite the same as making a profit.



So in other words, you're saying that because anyone can get paints and an easel, thus anyone can paint the Mona Lisa. And it just doesn't work that way in practice.

Also, there's the issue of needing to have an idea in the first place. That's.. not really something you can do work on. The person who made $1m from the Million Dollar Homepage had to work very hard once he had the idea, to get it to work - but he admits that he had the idea in 10 minutes while sitting in a cafe trying to work out how to get rich.



From the user's point of view, though, it's not their fault that big builds costs money. For a user who doesn't create things, you're competing against other MMO games (since SL's unique feature, creativity, doesn't apply to them) and none of them have that issue.

If they weren't *paying customers* and also weren't doing anything interesting enough to draw more *paying customers* in, then yes I would be happy, because if I invested in the company I am only concerned with their financial well being. But I sure as hell don't own LL stock and I am willing to bet you don't either.



If you can somehow lose money or only break even by selling things that you made using only freeware tools and freely available textures or what have you, then you are doing something wrong.



I'm not saying anyone can make the Mona Lisa. But the Mona Lisa is not the only item in the universe that has ever been interesting to any person, now is it? They might not be able to make the BEST of something, but they can definitely make something salable.



It's not the builder's fault either. It's nobody's 'fault', it's just the way things are. Let's experiment: Walk into a restaurant, order and eat a meal, then tell the waitstaff that you're refusing to pay because it's not your fault that it cost them anything. After all, they're competing against other restaurants here, don't they want to keep your business? Let me know how that works out, boss.

And the unique feature comes at a cost: You can create anything and do anything and buy and sell anything inworld, but don't ask the admins for a lot of content. It's not their job to make it. If you want everything in the game to be made by the makers of the game and spoonfed to you, go play GrindQuest: The Game or whatever.

But they are doing something interesting to draw in paying customers: they're acting as the audience, as the crowd, as the people who the paying customers get to be better than. They're the people who see the thing you built, who come to the club.



You still have to pay for land, vendors, placement in Find, classifieds...



How can you assert that? You clearly agree that it is not possible for anyone to make something of "the best" quality. Yet if you thus agree that there are some quality levels that are out of reach to certain people - then on what grounds do you claim that the "saleable" quality levels are not in that set?



Yes, that's a restaurant. But SL isn't a restaurant. In the majority of online games, people are used to paying a single subscription for a month and then being able to do - pretty much - whatever they want in the world for that length of time. They may not be the best right away, but they're guaranteed to be able to get there in the end. Now compare that to SL. They don't have to pay a subscription, but they do have to pay whenever they want to do anything. They're never guaranteed success. Is it any surprise that they consider that to be worth less money?

I get the feeling that so many of the "capitalists" here are only in favour of capitalism as long as they are succeeding. I think you can only really claim to support capitalism if you still support it even as the bailiffs are knocking on your business's door. But people here insist on saying "we have to do it this way because creators should be rewarded for their work" - ignoring the fact that basing economics on what "should" or "shouldn't" happen is the standard of communism. Until someone comes up with a game or club or something in SL that's so appealing that people will use SL to play/be in that game/club even if they otherwise hate SL, then the user's experience is a far greater cause of them not buying L$ than them freeloading. If you think the majority of online gamers are just worthless freeloaders a glance at WoW's subscription and player count statistics should remind you otherwise, you just have to give them what they want..

Just to clarify--those Money Trees were there at one time. Whenever I create a new update of the Money Tree card, I teleport to every tree on the list and confirm it real and at (or near) the location listed.

BTW--I also appreciate the IMs from people when Money Trees have vanished, too. From what I've observed, many people seem to put Money Trees out, and then pull them fairly quickly. I'm finding I need to update the list monthly--but don't really have time to do so.

'cuz McDonalds and Starbucks still exist.

Oh, you said exactly the right thing. That's what made it so ironic... in praising Linden Lab's actions you explained exactly why Linden Labs has screwed up again. Linden Labs should have done what you said rather than what you meant.

That's what I was trying to point out. Not that you'd made a mistake, but that Phillip had.

That's one of those things where different authorities and traditions disagree. It's considered normal in American written English, yes, but it's not universal outside the USA.

I can't speak for Travis or Yadni, but New Citizens Incorporated isn't going anywhere. We are well set to weather whatever the fallout is from the loss of Dwell. I expect us to be here as long as the grid is up

As my experience goes, free members are no different an audience than premium members. There is no way I can tell who is who, so as an entertainer who provides these things, I don't discriminate.



Actually, I've seen quite a few residents lately taking the door-to-door approach, selling their wares in-person. While I don't particularly care for this method, suggesting that spending tons of money to sell your product is neccessary is completely not true. Sure, the big players in content creation use them. That doesn't mean you have to. Think outside the box.



I guess I see this as a non-point. You buy what you can afford. If you can't afford it, then don't buy it. If you really want it, you have several options including, but not limited to:

1. Saving your small stipend to get the money for it
   
2. Going to Lindex and buying the money for it
   
3. Looking for a job to make money for it
   
4. Creating something to sell to make money for it
   
5. Using your own talents to make something similar to it
   

People will buy things if the price is right. The UFOnly store is a very good example of this. The things there are of a decent quality and the price is extremely reasonable. I know several people whose entire wardrobe consists of items from shops like this one, and no one looks down or makes fun of the "po' ass basic." But it's just like any other MMO. If you want your WoW character to have that Sword of Smiting +9, you best be ready to pay the gold for it or spend your time hunting down the sword yourself. If you want your avatar to look as goreous as you can in SL, you best be ready to pay the L$ for it or spend your time creating the avatar yourself.



No online MMO garauntees success. I know I've had my ass handed to me in many a game, and I had to spend time bettering myself and my character in order to meet certain goals.

As far as considering things in SL "worth less money," that is a personal determination. If something is worth something to you, then it's worth spending money on. For example, I *really* dislike Sylphie's shoes, even though most of SL agrees she is the best shoe designer in SL. However, I don't place any personal value on her shoes, so they aren't worth a whole lot to me, where as to someone else, they'd be worth their asking price or more.

If someone believes they are worth something, then they should be ready to pay the associated price that comes with it. That doesn't differ through any MMO. People just expect things to be free because their membership was free, and I still stand by my thoughts that makign membership in SL free was a generally Bad Idea, but thigns are what they are now.



In a way I think I agree with this. It was a bit confusing to read.

Communism, last I checked, was the merger of government and corporations to create a powerful ruling body, a situation which SL doesn't have. SL runs on the same situation as the US does: if you want something, pay for it. SL even outdoes the actual US model, giving everyone the same set of creation tools from the start. It's what each resident does with them that matters.

As far as the whole paying for events part, again, no different than real life. Before you start saying, "This is SL. Things don't work in SL the way they work in RL. I play SL to be in a game not in RL," did you ever think for a second that those are some of the reasons why people are generally out of money, why the value of the L$ keeps dropping, why people in the entertainment industry wonder why people don't reward them.

If I thought I had any pull at all, I would organize a "Day without Entertainers" and organize something. You think the people that work to provide you with entertainment shouldn't be rewarded financially? I would like to think people would think otherwise if there weren't any around. (Sadly, I know enough of SL's whiny userbase enough to know they'd just come on the forums, whine about having nothing to do, and then say "STFU this game sux im gone bye"....wait.....I'm actually fine with that.)

Yay!

After talking this out with some fellow coonspiritors last night, we came up with some ideas for saving Second Life.

1. Replace the basic stipend with a Basic reputation bonus, one that's based on reputation points earned in the past month only. That means that for a Basic to get a stipend, they need to not just log in, but convince people to rate them positively. Sitting on a camping chair chatting to other broke people will actually cost money.

2. Implement Premium dwell. Premium members are paying Linden Labs money, feed a little of that money back to the places they visit, because those places are why they're paying after all. The premium dwell would be equal to L$100 plus L$10 for each 512m of unused tier that week, distributed to the places they visit.

3. Make avatars get hungry. Dwell actually fits in the economy the same place food does in the real world - food sales subsidise all kinds of things in real life. Every day you get one Linden Snack for "breakfast", and a Linden Snack is good for an hour's time online. You can buy Linden Snacks on any parcel at a rate set by the parcel owner in a range of 1-10 Lindens, and you can set an "automatically buy Snacks" option in your preferences. If you run out, you fall asleep and can only IM people and listen to local conversation until you eat again. Linden Snacks can't be hoarded: after a week they're stale and not worth eating.

They do hire "volunteers", and pay them nothing, and they seem to run Linden Lab like a co-op. I don't know about the organic produce, but I don't use any artificial fertilisers on my land and my particle recycler converts spent particles into fresh non-toxic prims... so I'm doing my part. Are you?

You do get paid for people hanging around in your club. Every bar or club in the real world, even the ones with a cover charge, makes their money by selling drinks... and in some cases food. Every movie theatre is heavily subsidised by snacks. Franchises in parks and zoos always cost more than the corner store, because you're subsidising the attraction with the price of your meal.

Avatars don't drink or eat, so that source of income simply doesn't exist. Instead, we have dwell.

Er, we had dwell.
Almost no clubs outside real "hot spots" have a cover charge these days. There's too much competition. In SL, that effect's even bigger... you don't even need a premium account to rez a club in a sandbox and pop up an HTTP dialog on newcomers pointing them at your audio stream.

There's absolutely no way to replace dwell and the DI with "voluntary contributions" or access fees.

No.

People who pay nothing for SL are being denigrated because they are getting stuff for nothing. Persecution is the next step.
You tell us, you're the one getting indignant.

Which people are these?

Honestly. You tell me. Who are the people saying "everything should be free"? I see two things here that you might be objecting to, but neither of them have anything to do with "everything should be free". One is dwell, and the other is the idea that basic account owners might be ostracised now that they're not worth dwell. Neither of these have anything to do with "everything should be free".

I assume you're not in favor of ostracising people, so let's look at dwell.

The people getting dwell were, theoretically at least, people who are paying Linden Labs hundreds of dollars a year for the privilege of creating content that's compelling enough to attract more paying customers to Second Life.

The only problem with dwell was that people were being paid for attracting "free riders" as well as "paying customers". Take that away, stop having free accounts counted in dwell, and there's no way to "buy dwell" with picayune camping payments.

How do you have time to go to work when you are playing all those games?

I feel like I've read like a gazillion posts in the last 24 hours where people are saying everything should be free.

What, you're saying that there's fewer malls and residential tracts and more pure entertainment builds? I'm sure not seeing that.

Most of the mainland is a ghetto. You have prefab houses, half-finished builds still in plywood, malls, gambling dens, stores, and the occasional large residence - usually with a security script of some sort to keep anyone from actually visiting. Places like Rodeo are few and far between.

Go hop around the newer islands. A hell of a lot of them are simply malls, or in some cases even single stores, with little or no attempt at any other content, and another big slice are high-end residential estates. Of the rest, there's hardly an estate without some kind of gambling machines or tringo parlors on them. I've been running around talking to the people who seem to be doing interesting things. Most of them are hoping to start charging for access to pay for their builds, but nobody's actually doing that... and they've already started disappearing.

One day, about the best new build I saw was a Tringo parlor disguised as a swamp. Without some kind of feedback for the impractical, is a *good looking* mall or gambling den the best you can expect to find?

Then it shouldn't be difficult at all to find one.

Blimey. I can't remember any at all. I've seen a lot of posts saying "you dwell types just want everything to be free, you spend money on broadband, LL doesn't owe you anything, get your hair cut blah de blah" though.

Dwell or Developer's Incentive? They're different things.
Not it wasn't. The Developer's Incentive cut was announced, and is over. There was no mention of a dwell cut at that time, and when asked about Dwell the response from Linden labs was that they were not considering dropping dwell at that time.
You don't have to kill dwell to stop that. All you need to do is stop having basic accounts shedding dwell, so it no longer pays to have alts camping to get paid for their dwell.
the simple fact is that a violin was meant to produce beautiful music. If I pick one up and don't produce beautiful music it obviously has no purpose. Of course I should give up on it and try something else without actually trying to learn how to use it properly.
If they don't modify them in response to changing circumstances, and just cast them aside without any attempt to make them work, they will simply produce one system after another that will be gamed one way or another.
There is a certain amount of "college guys on the weekend" vibe coming from LL, yes. Did you read about The Big List Of Things To Do? Have you seen the appalling parser bugs in LSL? Did you notice that they've managed to break permissions worse in the latest release and they still haven't fixed the "animated after teleport" problem? What about Havok 2?
I've already found places I used to visit that are no longer there, because of DI being cut. I'm sure that places I visit that are supported by dwell will follow.
Ask me again in a couple of months after this completely new screw-up from Linden Labs has shaken out. If you don't get an answer you'll know what the answer is.

What does dwell (an incentive for worthy builds) have to do with events? Or were you offering to sponsor worthy builds as well?

You're right, that wasn't accurate, but frankly, I've read so much doom and gloom, negativitey and general whingeing it's becoming a blur. There has been a lot of complaining about what people can afford and what they expect in return, and I feel a lot of that is unrealistic, and that a relatively small amount of money disappearing will somehow eradicate anything cheap or free, somehow impair their ability to create or enjoy. There definitely has been statements like 'dwell is one of the few incentives to create', which I stongly disagree with, and with a bit more imagination the small income dwell generated could be replaced.

Statements like SL will become nothing but malls and sex clubs as a result of this are just silly, and that has been stated many times, but there are many many things that are free, cheap, for general enjoyment that don't factor in dwell. There's enough resourceful residents out there who enjoy providing these things that will always find a way. It just isn't that bad a thing, or that big a deal.

You're paying for your sim by selling stuff, not by providing a high quality attraction. If you're getting L$100 a week in dwell from your sim you're getting fewer visitors per square meter than I am, and I'm getting most of my dwell right now from swampland.

So what I see is that what's going to rise to the top are the same places that are rising to the top right now: stores and gambling dens. And if you have compelling content in your store the rest of your sim could be a flat unimproved plain (as a good many are) and you'd still make just as much money...

So what this means is that "offering an entertaining sim" is going to be even less of a reason for stuff to rise to the top.
the only complaining I've been doing about the market stats is about the people who have been arguing that the way to "fix them" is to reduce the quality of the SL economic simulation even further. Because for some reason LL actually believes that's a good idea.