Subsidies.

One of the ongoing dynamics I notice in the game is between the "creators" and "consumers." I use these labels cautiously becasuse i know they are more general that precise. The are applicable only in the context of this thread, and specifically do not apply to any individual.

In general, my understanding of the so called "creator" mind set is somethign like this: If you want to get paid, make something! Or if it is worthwhile it is worth charging for! To the "creators" dwell, stipends, bonuses, and free stuff are all subsidies and detrimental to the SL economy. Creator's point to problems such as inflation or some other devaluation of the linden as the pressing problems in SL. Many of the creators are quite wealthy, and would stand to lose a lot of $US should the linden drop in price. But not all of them are.

In contrast my understanding of the "consumer" Mindset is that they come to SL to socialize and generally have little or no interest in figuring out how to make clothes or widigets, or animate things. Many consumers enjoy being able to afford prim hair, fancy cars, nice skins, big bling, houses and tv sets. Many of them buy money off the 3rd party networks. I do't think many of them hang out in clubs thinking they will get rich on money trees, slingo and contests. However the consumers on the whole tend to think of stipends, dwell, bonuses, and even some free stuff asn "entitlements." In general they come to SL for entertainment, and exepect that there will be some free activites that they enjoy.

This dynamic is at the root of SL, because I think the question of who is the SL meant to entertain and reward, will on the whole affect how the game develops and grows,and what the community expectations will be. Who do we make the game for the creators, or the consumers. Is SL a means of making money, or is it a means of having fun? If the plan is to accomodate both, how do we reconcile these differing points of view? There are a number of questions raised by this dynamic tension. (of course it could be that this is all in my head, but somehow I don't think it is).

From my own perspective, SL is a game. It consumes my entertainment dollar (at an alarming rate) and I have no interest at all as using it as a source of income. I do not feel I should be forced to make something to be entertained or rewarded. I pay a good bit of money to LL everymoth for the priviledge of being entertained. While I expect that in general, I will have the pleasure of making my own entertainment, I do not regard the stipend as an unearned subsidy. I earn my stipend by paying real world money to LL.
Simillarly I see bonuses and dwell as entitlements since they are the mechnasims which reward people for being active and contributing to the game world. They are the Lindens way of saying thanks for making our product better.

In my mind I see the consumers as the ultimate driving force in the market as the number of members expands (in the real world the number of people buying stuff far exceeds the number of people making stuff). I don't think these peopelp are lazy, I just think they have limited interest in learning to make stuff. Beisdes ultimately the market will never sustain 100% of people who want to make something, it willbee too saturated. So from my own perspective I think if we are to strike a balance between the two mindsets, then stipends and dwell and bonuses need to be kept in place. Personally I believe the stipend should be tied to tier level, but that is simply becuase if I put more resources in the hands of the lindens, I should get more resources from them. And not just in the form of a right to own property. (sort of like a liquid return on my liquid investment lol).

I do agree that noone should be able to get rich on a subsidy, if you want, say, a Second Skin, then you will have to save a bit, earn a bit, or buy a bit on the GoM.

Also one other thing I have noticed is there is a lot of contempt for the clubs expressed in the forums, like going to clubs and playing slingo makes you a second class citizen. Well sometimes, going to a club is just plain fun. And we would choose to do this over playing in the sand box, even is we have the skills to build cool stuff.

Jake,

You've summed up just about every dispute I've ever seen on this forum, and done it free of invective. Good job. But surely you know by know that any effort to analyze, classify, ponder the nature of SL society will get jackals out in droves to defend their take on it or deny that these differences even exist or say that in fact it's their God-given right to be the privileged and, er, dare I say, feted creative class, or that it's their entitlement to be the subsidized consumer class. Like I've often said quoting Will Wright, 10 percent of the people will make the content to entertain the other 90, if you just make the right conditions for them to flourish (as I add) (and I would add further if you make sure the 90 percent can survive, too.)

What will come of this thread? Ten pages and a Jeska-closeout? 4 pages of sincere pondering and a dwindling away? 3 pages of flames and a forget while some scandal supercedes it?

I think the chief nugget I'm drawing from your post here is that the Lindens' payout of dwell and stipend is a product you purchase with the subscription price and the tier. I like that idea. It's like you get the free pen with the checking account, but you get the calculator if you buy the 30-day CD at the bank.

But...we were just informed by the RL media guy contemplating Philip Linden that it isn't a game subscription but a time share -- a lease of real estate.

What I marvel every time about when I see RL media and Philip Linden celebrating real estate and the land market is how on earth they can keep doing that and not bringing some of that celebration right here into this game where it is needed most, by celebrating land barons and developers on their website, by making nice nods to these land barons instead of slights and slurs ('for many a symbol of everything that is wrong about this game' etc), and making the jackals who attack them at least stay at bay for awhile. Honestly, if they put one tenth of the energy put into media celebration of real state into protecting land rights from those who want to strip them away right here in the game, we'd be so much better off.

Well if LL leases real-estate, then stipend, dwell, bonuses and the like are necessary infrastructure.

My take on it is that LL provides the infrastructure and the tools, and a good deal of their effort is towards enabling content creation. Content creators then use those tools to provide entertainment for consumers. Consumers who don't wish to be creators or have a job in SL can buy L$ from one of the exchanges. That provides the incentive for those who spend their time working instead of playing. It seems fair and simbiotic to me. The problems arise from people who don't really understand that dynamic and bring their expectations from other MMORPG's that have artificial economies based on pushing a button to make cheese come out. If they expect SL to work the same way they'll be disappointed.

Work, play, and pay... everyone pretty much has to pick two of those.

yep.

And it's another great post by Chip Midnight! Ladies and gentleman, give the man a hand please. Thanks. I'll be here all week.

Hehe, thanks Lo. Try the veal!

I do both SL and MMORPG, and the difference is like that of a world.. and a box. But on the topic, I am both a bit of the creator and the consumer. I don't buy what I can /easily/ create and I buy what I truly either don't have time to make or the desire. To me, the stipends, dwell, and such are just fixtures that are needed as a boost to fledgling creators and to the consumers. I couldn't afford to upload anything without either denying myself the time to create (AKA, Getting JOB) or praying for sells to suddenly boost. So, I am happy to have the stipend

Oh, Chip, I understand it all too well.

Consumers who don't wish to be creators or have a job in SL (what job in SL? scriptor? escort? There is very little else) can buy lindens from one of the exchanges, you say.

That provides incentive for you to keep working, you say.

It seems fair to you. It seems symbiotic to you.

The problems arise from people who don't understand that dynamic and expect an artificial economy, you say.

I say the problem - but you don't know it yet - is that I refuse to make Chip Midnight rich by buying his stuff. And I refuse to make Chip Midnight even more rich buy then turning around and buying money from him through GOM. Money I gave him in the first place.

That means, I'm going to make my own stuff, and my own stuff to sell. When more and more people think like I do (and I predict they will), who will be left to buy our goods?

If making stuff is pretty much all the game offers, who will be here besides those of us who make stuff? I think you depend on a constant stream of people who come in, look around, buy a few things, then ultimately leave (especially after their favorite club closes down). I don't like that idea of the game. I want people to come in, find a number of choices of things to do for fun and to be productive, and hang around for years.

Personally, I have incentive to build things that ISN'T money. I work hours and ages. With no hope of necessarily ever selling the thing. For one thing, what else is there to do that's fun on the game? Sure, I like to be entertained, and to go around, play at the fair, and all that.

But I have said it time and time again, people like to feel productive on a game. This consumers/creators dichotomy is a false one.

People have to have a way to make money that doesn't consist of giving their rl money to you through GOM.

You keep stating the way it is, and saying that people just need to "understand" it. I do understand it, and I'm saying that isn't the way it should be, and that can't stay that way forever if the game is going anywhere.

Don't be so complacent with your dogma that there are people who make things, and then there are people who will give the people who make things their money, and that is the way it is and thus ever will be, so sayeth Phillip. Things change. Could be that notion doesn't work out well in the long run, or even in the shorter run.

coco

Coco, TSO is down the hall to the left.

Moreover, an "economy" in which you can earn money only by scripting and building or selling land is to my mind the very DEFINITION of an artificial economy.

coco

How about us combination creators/consumers? I own a very successful shop in SL yet I still think that LL made a mistake in trying to "fix" the economy by cutting off so many Lindens to non creators. I say give the socializers and consumers more money by golly. The more money they have the more they will spend.

I forgot to mention... TSO will cost you $9.95 every month rather than the one time fee of $9.95 you paid here. Enjoy

What about those who pay every month?

And you think there is no class warfare? I'm so sick of this, "You're a basic member, you get enough," argument used to try to knock down my cogent analyses of the game, its players, and its economy. How about speaking to some of my points? And, of course, thinking about them first.

And I don't want to hear any of this go back to TSO stuff. Your idea that a person can't think clearly about this game because they are too spoiled by other mmog's is pure nonsense.

coco

Yes Susie, there is a whole LOT of us who simply dabble in content creation and are consumers as well. As a matter of fact, I would be willing to believe that many content creators are also content consumers.

There are myriads of different types and combinations of types of players, and that goes for their skill sets and interests as well.

I am tired of all this pigeon-holing. It is simply not reflective of what SL really is. It is also not productive. If anything is holding SL back, it's this need of a few to slap labels on everyone, and then pin the blame for the shortcomings that they perceive with SL on those they have neatly compartmentalized.

Nolan, one of the Lindens themselves - I think it was Robin - classified the players as consumers or creators.

coco

Coco, with all due respect, SL can't be all things to all people. It is what it is. If you're not happy with the system it's built around there are many other games out there that might suit you better. That isn't meant to be snarky. It's a simple statement of fact. All of this has been explained to you dozens of times already. A world where people only pay that tiny one time fee and then don't pay anything else either to the developers or the people making the content and destinations can't survive. It's not a charity. The only other option would be to have everyone pay $14.95 per month like in every other MMORPG. People would stop creating content for any reason other than their own amusement and the choices of things to do would become less, not more. If you'd rather spend your money monthly enriching a big corporation like EA rather than one of your peers like me that is certainly your choice, though I don't particularly understand the mindset.

I think this bears repeating... work, pay, play: pick two

Then I disagree with her, although, I have a feeling that she meant it in a much broader sense.

OK, Chip.

1. First all, I don't think it's "pick two," because pick two would mean I could pick pay and work. That doesn't figure.

2. I am not someone that needs to have things "explained" to me dozens of times already. It's not a matter of you telling me how it is, and then me "understanding."

3. It is not as easy as be happy with everything as is or go elsewhere to another game. Maybe it would help if you understand that I don't just play a game - I try to make it better. I did that with TSO (and succeeded to some degree), and I will do that here, because I want to make it better. Could be I'm wrong about how to make it better, but the point is, I am not trying to wrap the game around my own personal needs. You should have understood that by now. I try to improve the game BECAUSE I like it.

4. Why not make you rich instead of EA? I don't think it's that so much. I think it's more that I'd rather make LL rich than make you rich.

5. "A world where people only pay that tiny one time fee and then don't pay anything else either to the developers or the people making the content and destinations can't survive. It's not a charity."

You really need to excise your idea about the one-time fees out of this whole argument. Cause it has nothing to do with it. Most people either convert to premium or just don't play much at all. Though there is a way to cancel even your basic account, I believe, I doubt seriously if anyone ever does that. That's why the list of members have so many people you've never heard of on it, with no posts to their name. That's why the 30k players is misleading, because half of them never paid more than that $10 and never played again. That's why when I asked at Bingo who all was a basic member, there was no other basic member there. Or one that would admit to being basic, anyway.

Your statement about basic members is also not true. I have survived. I've been here three months and I have not only survived, but thrived, in my little basic member way. Ever look at the cost of living on Azure Islands? Come visit me sometime.

As I've said before, there isn't that much difference between $50 a week and $500 a week. You know five cents may not be a lot, but just because 50 cents is ten times more than 5 cents doesn't mean it's a whole heck of a lot either. So when I talk about needing a way to earn Lindens, or needing support for entertainment, and everything else I ever talk about, I'm not thinking of basic vs premium members at all. Nor should you.

6. I'm talking about taking the game in a direction where there will be more casual players, and more people to buy our goods. Where entertainment venues won't constantly be stomped flat. Where there are REALLY 30k members, who are playing because they are having fun.

As long as it's a little sandbox for you and me to build our toys in, you and I may be happy, but our customer base will dwindle. And they will have no money to spend at your store. It's nifty right now that to get that money, they have to turn around and buy it back from you, but that engenders resentment, and doesn't work out well in the long run for players who like both to have fun AND feel productive.

Give them their stipends. Give the entertainers financial support. Boost the dang stipends, even. Give people a way to make a few Lindens in the game without having to be creative geniuses. Give them their clubs and Tringo and other things that are FUN. That way lies more players, and more importantly for you, Chip, and the other physical content creaters, more CASUAL players who, unlike me, won't be cutting into your profits. And who, because they are having fun - on this GAME - will stick around to buy your things even longer.

To heck with GOM. I admire the Lindens idea of it being real estate, or a world, rather than a game, but I think that is impracticable. They are a game. Either they grow, by appealing to more people and by providing more means of making Lindens for the casual player, or they remain a playpen for a few creators and an ever-decreasing number of casual players checking in . . . then checking out.

coco

I agree with you that SL needs more activities to entertain casual players, but LL isn't going to provide that. They're depending on us to do that. SL was built from day one with that as the basic premise. They can provide us with better tools to help enable that, but simply printing more L$ isn't going to do anything to help the situation. As it is with the number of hours I put in to creating products and providing customer service I have very little time to "play" and after expenses I make per hour about what I'd make working part time at McDonald's. Asking LL to mint more money is asking me and every other serious content creator to take a pay cut. I'd create less and I'd provide less customer service. I'm sure I'm not the only one. While I agree with you that there needs to be more to attract and keep casual players/consumers, simply throwing L$ at it won't change it and in fact would likely cause it to become more of a problem.

How should one make money, then? By picking it off the bush from which it grows?

"Give" is not the word I would use to describe what I do when I click on vending machines in SL. I'm not aware of ever having "given" Chip anything, despite my having several of his creations in my inventory.

If we must use the word, I'm unable to understand how my "giving" a content creator money is anything vastly different from them "giving" me the products of their knowledge, skill, and time.
My money is, after all, a product of my own knowledge, skill, and time earned in RL.


People like me, who create nothing here, yet appreciate the work of people who do create with sufficient ability to make me want to possess that work for my added enjoyment of SL.

People like me, who find that their work is at least equal to the money I had to earn in RL which enables me to purchase it.

And people like me, who neither "give" away their money, nor expect anything of worth "given" to them in exchange for the privilege of not being construed as greedy by the recipients of their labors.

I understand that that is the idea, Chip. And I reserve the right to be wrong about this business about ultimately entertainment being able to support itself. After all, it's all one big experiment.

But until I see signs of that happening, I will continue to be gloomy about the prospects of entertainers. And until I stop hearing friends leave SL saying they hate it and there's nothing for them to do (besides socialize and admire), then I will feel more hopeful about it.

I also don't like the idea of inflation in a game. After all, I saw what that did to TSO. And according to the guy I talked to in Texas, who works converting games to Mac, all games contain this risk as long as they put ANY money/Lindens/Simoleons into the economy. I understand the whole self-sustaining thing.

So if I'm wrong about it all, so much the better. But right now, it is so limited. The only thing that is self-sustaining is knowing how to build and script. Hence, I build. Seems to me that if things continue on that way, there will be way too many builders and scripters, and not enough "consumers" who also don't have enough money to consume with. In fact, already seems too much that way, as the market is so saturated with so very much to buy. Thousands of things to buy. No money to buy them with.

So I don't think it's going to work out very well if it keeps going in this direction, inflation or no. You don't want to make things too easy, but then again, you don't want to make them too hard - or pointless - for the average player. There's a threshold beyond which you get into more work than play, and I think things are going that way.

But if I'm wrong, cool.

coco

P.S. Vestalia, you are the kind of player I want more OF.

I find the ideology that there are just those who create and those who consume who must be lower life forms (feebs and choads?) to be really loathsome. I'd like to think that when considering formulas like Will Wright's 10 percent make the content that entertain the other 90, that there is still a great deal of respect for that 90 in that they are needed more than anyone to keep the system going. They are customers, and not just mindless consumers that make creators rich.

The Lindens have started using this term "casual player" to denote those "new people" or "mass people". Older players are picking up this term, too. It's their way of distancing themselves from these people and making them seem, well, casual. Informal. Not serious. Not *producing*. Not contributing!

Ugh!

THey have no idea how serious those casual players can get. They've never met Cocoanut Koala! And they never met Prokofy Neva! And there are lots more of us where we came from, and we came not from TSO, but from the world of RL!

You can wish us away, but then you're not going to have a game. Coco is oh-so-right that it's about making a few people rich, so far, and them resenting like hell if anybody tries to break that up, open it up, differentiate it, make it more heterogenous. Ever notice that all the attackers in the forums are the leaders of each sector, Coco? There can only be one skin-maker. One animations-maker. One vehicle-maker. One eye-wear maker. One clothes-maker. One non-Anshe land-baron. One weapons maker. You get the idea. There can only be one, Coco. If there were two, they'd have to share. Unfortuantely, with their ideology of scarcity, that makes them scrabble and even lash out. They haven't figured out yet that more adds value and when there is added value, there is more for everyone and they will not be hurt.

I think there are lots of ways to make this economy more differentiated. We don't want jam-making like TSO when we come in the door, but having to turn tricks or sit in Tringo isn't our idea of doing a heck of a lot more than jam. So there has to be a lot more differentiation. This could come in the area of not just content creation but education, services, middlemen, marketing, more refined forms of entertainment.

What's needed to support that more granulated infrastructure for the economy is Lindens! The first thing the Lindens have to do is enforce the TOS equally! They are doing so much more of that, and it is a joy to behold. More is needed. Next, they're needed to listen, and not in town meetings, and not in pre-selected FIC groupings by topics they come up with, but in focus groups. They need to have the courage to actually break out of the magic circle of listening to the same old advisors and start convening some focus groups with TSO players, There players, World of Warcraft departees, new players, land owning players, whatever it takes to break out of the mold. Maybe they don't have the time for such teaparties, but I think a little bit of it could go a long way.

Coco, I feel a deep sense of revulsion, a great inner chill when I see what goes on here, not only on the forums, but in the game. It's really so sobering. But I do keep my ideals intact and I do have faith not only in the Lindens but in some of the older and newer players who just walk around the robots. So I encourage you, too, to keep the faith!

I'm convinced that our sacrifices are not in vain!