Brainstorm session: will variety survive?

I'm about to head home from work, and I'd love to go into detail point by point on your concerns Coco. I'll have to do that later tonight after I get home.

I did want to state one main thing that pops into my mind based on your post. The fact is, SL was created to become a world and platform for the future metaverse/internet. All of these things you say the internet cannot provide are part of what the dreams for SL will provide. You say it cannot happen, but many dare to dream that it can. And work daily to help reach that dream.

This has not happened yet. But the goal of SL is there. The people who it attracts most are going to be those who want to see that goal come to pass, and are going to work and strive to make it happen. SL is not a game, it was not created to be a game, and thus should not be treated as such.

Does that mean that in its current state it is only going to appeal to certain people right now? Yes. But one day it will look much different. It will never be a game, and should not be marketed as such. In fact the Lindens have stated as much themselves. However, just as in the game of life, there is a goal with SL.

Make that goal your game, and I guarantee you will find a fun challenge.

That's my philosophy exactly, Pend

Could we hurry up & pass prop 244 so I can have that as my sig?

On my internet, I have found amazing artists, fascinating learning resources, really funny short films, games and social networking sites. Some -- a lot -- is done for free, because it's fun for the creator, and some are businesses charging money. I, as a consumer of content, get a lot for free because of the advertising model.

i know people say advertising sucks, but when they didn't want to pay, and they didn't want to see ads, well... guess what... internet companies went out of business. But what happened? A little time went on, people wanted stuff after all, and now you have businesses arising once again that would have failed 3 years ago and actually pulling it off. Perhaps that's analogous to what we're seeing here?



but that's it -- they HAVEN'T. They haven't paid $50 for software and $10 a month to play their game like they do in other games. They paid a one time $10 for perpetual usage.



I don't know... people will do and create a lot for fun, love, or curiousity... hell, most of what i've built in SL over the last several weeks has nothing to do with creating products for sale.... it's all been for fun or for friends.

We've seen some really big projects like this. But there won't be many, I agree, or a lot of really great ones, unless there is a better incentive.




you may be right, but I find SL a helluva lot of fun already, and it's like a command line prompt compared to what it could be technology-wise.

If LL is paying for games inworld, how is this different from Sony paying designers and coders to build everquest?

i'll write more later

Pendari, I don't need a pep talk, or - might I even suggest - some kind of indoctrination into the mysticism of it all.

I am not saying it's impossible. I'm pointing out why I don't think it's probable. Because - it hasn't happened on the Internet already. I will look forward to your post when you get home, going into your ideas in more detail.

coco

As a new player, I was rather surprised to be paid for attending events. The main reason you "can't" charge for events is because no one else is. When event support was cut, I expected to see at least a nominal fee for events to begin but they didn't. When rl funding of the arts was cut, places cultural institutions began a weaning process of sorts which began with a recommended donation. A donation box with posted fee structure (newbies less than a week $1, 1 month $5, 2 months $10, perhaps?). Also rates for sponsors of various levels. So you say you LOVE Spittoonie or Chicago? How much the price of love? Of course people will cheat and not pay. It's free now, so what's the difference? And a change in expectations from free to fee is the goal. The major step in making this work is for older players to get out to see these builds - (Torley, how can you be leaving just when we need you to head the ROAMans, that new group dedicated to exploring SL's cool builds?) - paying that fee, making that donation, sponsoring an event. Corporations routinely sponsor events without commercials. "Brought to you by" in the event name, a booth displaying the product.

What makes you say that? Only basic members paid just a one-time fee. Everybody else - including, for the most part, everyone who creates entertainment or much of anything else - pays monthly, PLUS tier fees, commissurate with the physical size of their needs.


Exactly! That is what is so sort of circular about all this philosophy. Why desire to recreate the Internet? If LL doesn't pay for games inworld, then they won't get games like Everquest. Because people will be off somewhere playing Everquest, the real thing. And the creators of those games will be off creating real games, for real money.

And if they don't pay for entertainment inworld (I prefer to use the term "support," because other incentives than outright money could be provided), then they won't get much. It will be just like the rest of the Internet. I have spent a fair amount of time at the Metropolitan Museum site, but how many others have? In terms of numbers or time spent per capita? Compared to, say, Pogo.

So what is wanted then? What will be so special about Second Life? Without entertainment, it will be barren, not just now, but all the way into the future, where presumably it will serve as a sort of an alternate Internet, just with more graphics.

Fortunately, we'll still have Tringo!

coco

An advertisement on my Cincta boardwalk would be redundant next to yours, but if you'd care to drop one on me I'd be glad to put it up in Portage.
We really need a way of advertising events beyond the specific hour. Places like Chicago, the Ganymede Art Fair, The Touchstone Fair, builds that are not tied to a specific time suffer from the current format.

Really..what kind of events would people pay to attend, and of those types, do you really think enough would pay, the overhead would be small enough, and the effort/time investment small enough, to make it worthwhile in a business sense to the entertainment provider?

And really, how much is product endoresment/advertising at events really going to bring in? And how much would it be worth to the sponsor? I can't imagine too many content creators are really gonna be all that keen on forking over money for the small amount of sales influence this type of activity will have.

Folks say, "I'd pay for a really well done, interesting event", but how much and what type? If it takes land, alot of time, alot of effort, and some cash on the entertainer's end, you probably aren't gonna be willing to pay as much as it would take to cover the cost of the event.

It's a content creator's world, with most entertainment being done by those that just like to entertain, have some ideas they'd like to try out, want to get an in-world name for themselves, or are just, in a sense, role-playing.

There are no business success stories in Second Life built soley around events or entertainment. They are all land barons, content creators and scriptors.

I'm not even saying this is a bad thing. It's just a fact. And events will continue. But I think we will, and are, finding that quality, elaborate, or well-thought out events and entertainment builds are becoming less and less, while content creation/markets/malls/buy me!'s are quickly spreading to cover most of the virtual world.

There will probably always be some great events, mostly hosted/created by those that have money and the liesure to do so, but I don't see it ever being a successful business model in Second Life, at least without some sort of non-user financial support. And I don't have an easy answer as to how that support can work, without being gamed or taken advantage of.

Well to be honest if LL wants to pursue SL as a tool, then it needs to adress dispute resolution and questions of legality in a major way, or SL will have a difficlut time becoming a vehicle for external commerce. If SL wants to create the metaverse, why bother with $linden dollar at all and make the US dollar the Direct exchange in the game? LL may have expressed a goal, but in the mean time they have a game. And games need players. Its nice that people can protect the value of the linden, and make enought money to pay for thier porsche, but such a market is not indefinitely sustainable.

Sure you can say "lets create a culture where people pay for entertainment" but that ingonores the fact that LL is competeing for evtertainment dollars anyway. It may be fun to play Unreal SL, but due to the technology limts and the physics engine, it will never be Unreal Tournament XXXX. Same with golf, and with many other aspects.

To my mind SL is not capable of producing competitive entertainment content ( I have et to see anything in SL that compares favorably with what can be done with stand alone products -even the fishing game). The fun of SL is that it is like tinkertoys-you can make stuff and create stuff and chat with freinds and have avi sex and all sorts of stuff. For me being in SL is the entertainment. Therefore to keep my entertainment dollar flowing SL needs to facilitate things that entertain. The predicatable chorus of "they should have charged for spitoonie" is all well and fine, but things can go broke just as fast because you are trying to carve off small pieces of a small pie. In other words, noone seems to think that the quality of the entertainment offered may not justify a basic memeber spending 20% of thier weekly income on admission.

If people were so anxious to sponsor events, why do we not see corporate sponsorship of builds? Because people need to keep thier money to pay for theier on thier shop, or to pay rent on thier house or buy the porsche, or whatever. I have asked and asked on what basis people assert that increasing stipend or any of the other things suggested to improve entertainment would cause a hunge influx of money that would ruin the economy. And noone has really addressed that point. Its chicken little: Increase stipend and we will all go broke!

On the flip side I truly cannot say how many new users get put off because people come here and find that they really can't afford to play the game without a job and they don't want to work. I know there are gaps in my freinds list for this reason.

Now Look I am happy with SL as it is. I like it and I keep coming here, but sometimes We have to ask ourselves what would make the game better and more accessible. Somehow I think saying that anyone who won't spend $4.00 per month on $1000.00 linden doesn't belong in the game anyway is an elitist and condescending attitude. I don't know what the answer is, but the protecting the value of the linden at $4.00 per 1000 is not the holy grail.

sorry cocoa, at the office and writing fast. of course there are those paying premium levels (I am one) but the majority of members remains basics. I tend to think of premiums who are engaged in the game and aren't waiting to be entertained (even if they are hoping to be entertained )




maybe. You're right, it's a risk. But you won't know the answer unless you try.

here's the thing. I've done mergers and acquisitions at various times in my career. In that business, we used to say that games companies were really hard to sell (compared to, say, a systems management software company). Why? because it is a hit-or-miss title business. Just because a company had one hit does not mean they can repeat it.

LL's experiment is to say, you are right, we cannot always predict the hits, so we'll allow millions of people to create their own hits and out of those, many might fail, but some will be hits.

This isn't going to happen now. The tech platform isn't anywhere near what it needs to be. This is the vision.

If someone doesn't buy into LL's vision, and doesn't find SL fun, then why are they here? They SHOULD go to EQ. There's nothing wrong with that. Most online gamers already do go elsewhere. SL's population is tiny compared to other gaming systems, for obvious reasons.

As you can tell, I love the vision of SL. I have tremendous fun with SL as it is now, and the people I have met, but I see SL as a SHADOW of what it can be. I also see the risks, and you raise very good ones, but I don't believe the future is written on this experiment yet.

And look, at the end of the day, Benchmark invested here. LL will run itself like a business because they have obligations to their investors... so they will evolve their business plan as necessary.

I would also be in favor of the one time fee.

cat

Chip, I'm tired of you going through my desk and stealing my notes on forum posts I want to make.

Absolutely agree 100%. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money. Everyone who clamors for forking over more money never seems to realize that the money needs to come from somewhere. If you're not paying Linden Lab, you'll be paying GOM. Or something. Because people need to pay the bills, be they Linden customers with tier fees or Linden Lab, with bandwidth fees (and countless other fees, I might add).

see, you say "never" but I think it WILL happen...it may just be a year or two from now .... hell, it may not even be Linden Lab that pulls it off, but I think it will happen.



you disagree with the argument that inflationary pressure would be problematic?



US$4 a month? elitist? Maybe if I said $20, I would agree... Look, I'm not saying they're a bad person, just that they don't make for a very good *customer*.


Cocoa, Jake, fundamentally I love that you are trying to improve SL and make it more enjoyable. I push back because I'm not ready to give up on the long-term view. Maybe a middle ground is necessary -- we will see

And David, I agree that services biz is damn tough in SL right now. I still think that once the technology improves, and real immersive entertainment is possible (race car track... golf... dog fighting... detective game), that this will change. Big projects will always require some sort of financing/investor ... works that way in RL too.


fun discussion I know I'm being verbose lol hope ya'll don't mind

A friend and I planned an event many months ago, and decided that we would ask some merchants/creators we admired the works of if they'd like to donate in exchange for a sign that would give out landmarks and notecards to any attendees who clicked on them.

After mentioning it to a few people, and them mentioning it to a few people, and so on, we had so many donations of cash, items and services to give away that our 1/2 hour event turned into 4 1/2 hours. And this was before the event rules and subsidy rules had changed.

Sponsorship is definitely the way I would go if I wanted to host a venture without paying too much out of pocket.

People will pay to have billboards, and now classified ads, posted in world, so I don't see why they wouldn't also pay to have those same types of ads placed at events and project locations. I've had people offer me cash payments to place their ads in my store. (I don't accept them, but I will post up well done event notices for free if it's something that appeals to me personally.)

Foresti,

In faltionary pressure could very well be problematic. The question I have is how much pressure is problematic and how much is natural growth? I haven't seen anything that says a 20% increase in the money supply will cause a 20% drop in the value of the linden.

Further more I haven't seen any evidence that a 20% drop in the value of the linden will drive prices up, or prohibit people from creating things as it will reduce the financial rewards and provide disincentive. You see everyone is willing to argue the "chicken little" aspect that increasing stipend will cause a collapse. But I don't see any investigation as to what levels we are talking about. I know LL doesn't publish numbers, but I'd like to see an economics argument.

Also noone can tell me what it is the entitles people to have the linden stay at $4.00 per $1000, other than thier right to realize a higher RW income. I personally think that given the luxury goods nature of the economy, a minor increase in supply would lead to an increased availability of money and stimulate the market, this it the principal the feds use when they lower the prime interest rate. You raise the rate to control inflation, but somewhere in there is a balance.

Oh and I also feel paying money every month into SL entitles me to an in world income. this is not something for nothing, it is a return on my cash.

But mostly I think that a failure to sort out how best to facilitate the entertainment market is going to eliminate diversity and minimize options. It takes a lot of work to create entertainment expereinces, and so far people have tnot made money with them. I don't know if you could charge enough to make an SL expereince profitable interms of time and money invested.

Interesting, Forseti.

I look at basic members differently. I suspect they are mainly (a) people who rarely play the game, (b) alts, and (c) the rare individual like myself who manages to play on for three months on a basic membership and have it amount to anything, or any pleasure.

And in point of fact, I encounter very few basic members, and those I do invariably have traded up to premium. Some don't - I didn't for a while - but I believe most do, or they aren't really here much, if any, at all.

And many of the basics are completely gone, never to be seen again, since why would anyone bother to go to the trouble of cancelling a game that's not costing them anything and they can just let sit there, in case they change their mind at some later date? The idea of hordes of basic members running around, in my experience, is a myth.

Therefore, I tend to think of the players of the game as mainly premium accounts. They are, to varying degrees, engaged in the game, but they do tend to play it often enough to justify paying the monthly fee, whatever that requires in their personal outlook.

I don't think any of them is waiting to be entertained, or they wouldn't be here. They have obviously found some means of entertaining themselves. I can think of several primary ways. That doesn't mean, though, that those ways alone are good enough.

And I would say virtually all of them have hopes for even more variety of entertainment. I would say virtually all of them would like to see more events, more quality builds, more things to make us get out of our little building ruts and go "ah". Or have some different fun.

By my definition, "them" is "us." The problem then is, which one of us is going to go to the trouble to create this entertainment/culture/fabulous immersive build experiences? Because doing so, generally speaking, COSTS money without GENERATING money. Or much of any other reward, aside from the personal satisfaction. Without more than that built into the game, there will be less Spitooney, et. al.

I realize that this era is a bit of an experiment, as in, as you said, "You never know if something is going to work unless you try." All I can say is, they'd better not let things coast along this way too long without significant improvement; i.e., some sign that this method will work in some way. Because, at base, LL still needs to make a profit, or they won't be doing any experimenting.

"If someone doesn't buy into LL's vision, and doesn't find SL fun, then why are they here?"

You can find SL fun WITHOUT buying into the vision. If the vision means less fun all around - some fun other than just building things and selling them to each other - then the vision isn't a good thing to be pursuing.

coco

In some ways, yes, you're right. Some of the forms of entertainment can be found for free on the internet, therefore will have to remain free in SL, as SL has the boundaries and restrictions of the internet at this time. (I paraphrased, please correct me if I did that wrongly )

HOWEVER, I think you severely limited your list of activities that people participate already on in the internet and would probably pay $ for (maybe they already do and I just haven't noticed *grin*) if asked to.

1) Music Downloading sites. These were once free, and yes, you can still find "illegal" sites to use to download. But for the most part, people are now paying for the music they download. Napster is still a viable company even after having to stop allowing for free downloads. They're a viable company even with saying, hey unless you purchase purchase the music on top of your monthly fee, when you cancel, we'll take the music from your HD back.

2) E-books. If you don't want to read just a classic, but a recent, say Stephen King novel, you must purchase it. You can maybe get the reading software for free, but you need to purchase the book.

3) Certain chat communities. You have to register AND pay. They're viable too.\

4) Greeting cards. You can find them for free, but for the really spiffy ones, you gotta pay.

Things I think people would pay for if had to:

1) Celebrity chats. Come on, people would pay money to chat with say, Bono from U2, Paris HIlton, Brad Pitt etc. etc.

And now I have to end, work is done, more on this later

can i just say, nice posts everyone. i hope this continues this way -- great exchange of perspectives and -- lol -- no flaming

Jake, I don't think there is a scientific answer to the inflation question -- since while economists try to make economics a science, is usually doesn't play along. I think it's a combination of concerns about inflation (which were very real at the end of 2004 -- it's one of the first things I noticed when i joined in Nov) as well as the hands-off principle that LL is trying to uphold... even to the point of letting the Welcome Area spin out of control.

When it comes to the exchange rate, the number isn't as important as stability in my mind. I think if the number falls OR rises too rapidly that is cause for concern. Now we came down to 4 from a higher number, but that higher number was driven by land scarcity I gather.


Cocoa, I hear ya. You make some valid points. It would be interesting to see greater detail on member usage but I seriously doubt we will... it doesn't really benefit LL to share that info. You are right that you can ride vision/theory right into the ghost-town dust of a dead game. lol it is fun to be part of this...neither LL nor the rest of us knows how it's all going to evolve.

It's also important to remember that many things in RL we can do for free, we still choose to pay for, and the reasons we choose to do that. I can play video poker for free on my computer, and yet Vegas does not hurt for business. Not all of that is due to the opportunity to win real money, as many visitors here realize they are not going to go home winners. They pay for the experience, the atmosphere, and the company.

We can chat on IRC for free, and yet we pay SL to do it because the environment is better.

Environment, company, social interaction... These factors can make or break a venue and peoples' decisions to pay for it. There are a lot of places and events in SL I would be willing to pay for, and a larger number I wouldn't go to if they were free. It just comes down to personal choice, and what someone has to offer.

Celebrity chats?!?!?! Now THAT'S something I betcha people would pay for in this game! Hardly matters who, Paris Hilton, o.k., just about anybody famous!

coco

*imagines the new wave of celebrity avatars impersonating*

"Come and see the loooovely Nicole Kidman avatar as she gives her ideas on Katie switching to Scientology"

rofl