Camping chairs, $L, and fun

That would be interesting to game, a lot more challenging than camping chairs.

An AutoIt script to make the avatar say things in chat, and a script that teleported it from club to club, if that's possible, I haven't played with the new teleport functions much yet, but if that's not possible then a tour using Hank's transporter ought to do it. Some scanning to find avatars.

I run a business cause it's fun and I think most people who run a biz in game think its fun too. The money is certainly nice, but it's because it's fun--that's why most do it. If someone takes a job in SL that isn't fun, it just seems silly to me.

Of course there is, and most really fun things in SL are free. Exploring, meeting people, socializing, playing games. I'm not sure who you think is saying that SL is just about buying stuff from content creators.


They aren't going to cut stipends altogether. That would likely affect the economy just as badly if not worse than doubling the stipend. The money supply really needs to grow with the population for the economy to remain healthy. They would have to create a whole different process to infuse new currency into the market if they got rid of stipends.


What's wrong with buying lindens to have fun? My first month here I bought well over $100 in lindens and had a blast buying fun stuff with it. I got a lot more bang for my entertainment buck than I could have in other places. Do you think content creators should not be compensated for their work? If so, why do you sell things, coco? Why not just make everything you make a freebie? And do you sell the lindens you make to pay your tier? Or do you give all the lindens you make away to newbies?

As for giving away money, I don't think people have a problem with generous people giving away money. I've given lots away, and as a newb I was given a lot too (from friends, money balls, Tringo, etc). The problem people have with money chairs has to do with the way it games traffic, dwell and the DI. No one dislikes money chairs because they don't want newbies to have money. That's just silly.

I'm willing to bet that there are people at LL who spend lots of time studying the money supply in SL and how various money sinks and bonuses affect the economy, the currency rate, etc. If LL thought they could increase the stipend without adversely affecting the economy, I'm sure they would. It would be very popular.

What indeed. What indeed.

/me watches sadly

You won't listen to me... but don't keep watching the forums. It will sap your enthusiasm and drain your soul. And you'll end up like me, embittered at the knowledge that intellectual and spiritual leaches thrive among us.

...

Forum debate is one of the things I find fun about SL! Don't take that away from me, you old meanie!

Yes, its harassment.

Your going to start harassing others now???

I totally agree with you.

He doesn't like me because he knows I am right. People should get 1000 lindens a week. Too bad if the Linden falls in value.

Second Life is suppose to be a place to Relax, not a place for a second Job.

Well for starters, the person who is saying that SL is just about buying stuff is the same one harassing me in these forums. No matter what I say, he is right there with something negative.

*Scratches his head*

Someone clearly missed the basics economics class from high school. The benefit of any form of currency does not come from its numerical value, but from it's purchasing power. If a loaf of bread costs $50L now, and if one starts handing out $1000L a week to everyone, it will not take long before inflation causes the price of the bread to rise to $1000L.

Increasing the money supply does not make for a beneficial situation An open market economy would adjust to the influx of money and reduce the purchasing power accordingly, cancelling out the intended effects in the first place.

What's the point of giving out $1000L a week, if one is unable to purchase any more than they used to be able to at $50L?

- Newfie

I tried that line of reasoning on him, Newfie.

Know what the problem is?

It's a line of reasoning.

I'm not oblivious to economics and inflation, etc. (Although I would point out that money in the real world doesn't exactly have a history of staying at the same purchasing power, and its rather artificial to expect that it should here.)

I'm saying that worshiping the economics and controlling inflation (mainly so that content creators can continue cashing in solid real life U.S. bucks) can kill off the entire venue.

Then it won't matter what the Linden is worth.

Without customers, none of it counts.

coco

Oh, okay. You're right, content creators shouldn't be able to make money here. That sounds like a good plan. Let's print that money!

Well of course. But it's not going to be fun to me when there are no customers for my business, and/or they have no money to buy things with.

I think that most of those fun things are rather fleeting. Most players (not all, and I know some true exceptions), eventually want to settle down and settle in. Part of that is buying stuff.

Well, I would definitely hope not. But it is one of the last bastions remaining, along with dwell. I agree with you that some currency always needs to be infused. There are others, though, who want the stipends to go away. And with everything else going away (dwell is next, Robin has more or less said), it's not unreasonable to believe that the Lindens agree with those who think stipends should go away. One argument often given for this is that they are a "crutch" and people are "lazy" and a lot of other adjectives. The real reason, though, is people want to sell them their own money.

As I've said, I think buying Lindens is a good option. Lots of people have wished they had that option in lots of games! I remember when TSO implemented the ability to buy a size 8 lot from them for $29.95. I sure wish they'd had that when I was spending months preserving my pixel fingers off to save up enough to get a size 8 lot, which I had to do before I could even BEGIN my own fun plans!

But not everyone likes the psychology of that. Lots of people like to feel like they earn their own way. Stipends are enough of an entitlement to seem like they are earned, i.e., they are a player's justly made money. Beyond that, a player might fly to money trees, win a game, sit on camping chairs. But all of that has the feeling of being "earned," rather than buying money (or in a sense "cheating" one's way to a size 8 lot, not that I would have felt very much that way about it).

So, buying money as an option, yes. As the ONLY option, no.

I know that the traffic, dwell, DI are the problems, but some people also hate the fact that a newbie has gotten money through these means. Every way - except for money trees - that I ever made money when I first got on SL (and still make a bit of it sometimes) has been ridiculed on these forums. Others don't like the looks the chairs give SL - a lot of people sitting around doing nothing isn't exactly good looking or great PR for the game.

coco

You wanna know what might really kill off this entire venue? Runaway inflation that makes it difficult for people to pay their tier by cashing in their lindens. Rents for stores and apts that double in matter of months, land prices that shoot up to 14L per meter on average. Those things might have an effect too.

Huh? All that will happen is that as the value of the $L falls, the price of everything will go up. The purchasing power of that $L1000 will decrease a lot. Basic economics.

Or, LL could do what every other game does. Hire an entire staff of content creators, eliminate in-world content creators and pass the salaries of their new employees on to people in SL as monthly fees. A good animator in San Fran can easily make USD 100,000 a year I hear.

If I knew some scripting and had plenty of web space I'd so write a 'SL Feedback' app.

Generally a mini-guestbook people can sign up for, and leave short (512 character or so) comments about others. Sort of like rating, but instead of rating numbers, you rate with a comment. And no, it would not be anonymous --- too easy to game or harass that way.

Wonder if anyone would go for such a system.

You're trying to explain economies to someone who doesn't understand anything whatsoever about economics and value.

SL is FREE. That freedom gets you the ability to build in sandboxes, make whatever you want, chat, and even some FREE money (stipends, start up funds).

If that's not enough, guess what? You're SUPPOSED to go to premium if you're anything more than a casual player, or buy L$.

Geez. Not everything in life is free! Some peoples' sense of entitlement really irks me! The original thread is about a way for new players to get some money through "grinding" - guess what else is called the grind? A job! That does not mean this thread should be hijacked by the "everything should be free so *I* can have fun, economy and content creators be damned" crowd.

Regards,

-Flip

My customer base is growing under the current system. Isn't yours? I don't see things falling apart here. Things are growing at a nice steady rate.
Who is saying this? I read the forums a lot, and I don't see many arguing this. There might be one or two threads where someone was arguing this, but honestly they are rare. Further it would be suicide for Linden to just remove the stipends. How many people would tier down and revert to a basic account if they removed stipends? Tons of people. The allowance/stipend that comes with the premium account is 90% of its real value.

You are setting up a straw man argument. You should go read about it. You do it a lot.


It's not the only option, it's never going to be the only option. Again show me the people arguing that it should be the only way to earn money.

Very definitely, I agree totally with what you've said.

It's a balancing act. I think it is going too far in the wrong direction, and the balance is being tipped in the other way.

If it were up to me, I, too, would err on the side of not causing runaway inflation. But we did not HAVE runaway inflation to begin with, and yet these things are still being taken away, one after another.

coco

I hope you are right about the stipends not going away. My impression is that there are people wanting them to go away. I should start a poll!

My customer base is growing, but there is no way of knowing why, because there is no way to parse out all the contributing factors. But I definitely don't think my customer base is growing because events stipends were cut, ratings bonuses were cut, DI was cut, or dwell is going to be cut, or stipends might possibly be cut. In fact, I think my customer base might have grown faster were it not for those things.

I feel that if these changes keep going the way they are, it will ultimately hurt our customer bases, and may have already, for all we know.

coco

Here's a stupid idea:

let's mint two kinds of currency in SL. The Linden dollar with US value and a scrip kind of money that can be issued to the "knobs" and "low-skilled people" who are dead set on mining or crafting or whatever other kind of mindless level-grind people can't get enough of in other MMOs. Someone will be happy to set up currency exchanges inworld. Jobs for the jobless! Club owners can pay people in scrip to stand there in their clubs and push up parcel ratings!

Nevermind. SL just isn't that kind of world.

Actually, the linden was going down in value at a significant pace before some of the recent changes, like the bonus removal and the changes to classified ads. In the first four months that I was here 1000 lindens fell in value from around $3.90 to close to $3. The past month or so has seen a pretty stable linden, around $3.75, but it's still sliding a little bit, and there are siginficant amounts of lindens building on the sell side of the equation.

In my opinion, the recent changes they took did stabalize the linden. I know the evidence isn't conclusive, but at least I have some evidence. It's right there on the chart here: https://secondlife.com/currency/market.php (Just click "all" under the volume chart.)

Oh and I appreciate that we agree on something

I'll give you that, coco. You are definitely right, the removal of bonuses may have slowed growth as a trade off to stem inflation. Economies are really complex and hard to predict, but I agree with you.

It makes a world of difference when you phrase things like this, than when you say things like "there will be no customers left".