Gullwing's proposal: Group rental/purchase of private sims

Okay, this is an idea. If adopted by LL, it could potentially have far ranging effects on our world. I encourage discussion, debate and feedback, which is why I’m posting it here in the forums, but I’ve put a bit of thought into this, and ask that those who respond do the same.

Group rental/purchase of private sims

-LL agrees to set up private sims for interested groups of residents. They may have to form an actual group in order to manage the land properly.

-The land is divided into 1/16 “shares”, which are paid for by the group members, billed directly to them by LL. These shares may not be subdivided, but prospective group members may buy in on as many shares as they wish for a proposed sim, in increments of 1/16 (1/16, 1/8, 3/16, etc).

-LL agrees to allow transfer of shares to new owners, but not to allow shares to be subdivided. A shareholder in a private sim may transfer one, or several, or all of their shares to new owner(s). The new shareholder is only responsible to LL for taking over the old owner’s maintenance fees; any other transactions, i.e. additional money to recover the startup cost, is between the two residents. For example, a person with 1 share can attempt to sell their share for a monetary amount, in the classified forum or on ebay, in order to try and recoup their initial outlay of funds; sim startup costs. If the land is not selling at that price, they can lower it, or even give the land-share to another SL resident; as long as that person contractually agrees to take over the monthly maintenance fees to LL.

-The sim is set to a lease period for longer than the typical monthly period, say perhaps quarterly or annually. My recommendation is for an annual lease, billed quarterly. Each share of the sim costs its owner its equivalent portion of both the setup fee and the monthly maintenance fees. For example, if I wanted 2 shares, or 1/8 of a sim, I would have to pay $125 of the startup fee and $25 per month for maintenance fees. Since these are Private sims, the maintenance fees are aside and apart from any monthly maintenance tier that the resident is using in the public sims. Residents are obligated to the lease, even if they leave SL, unless they find someone else to take over the maintenance fees for their land. If they leave the sim shareholder group, or SL, before the lease period is up, they can transfer ownership of their shares and land to another outside party; to someone within the shareholding group; or continue to pay for the maintenance fees. If someone leaves and cancels their credit card, essentially breaking their agreement with LL, then the server may be shut down unless the remainder of the group pays for the continuing maintenance fees, or finds a replacement for the departed group member.

-LL creates and employs a better system of land permissions for friends, group members and guests that may be visiting or occupying the parcels of land on these group sims.

-LL creates a set of governance tools, a “checklist charter” that cover a wide variety of situations and possible problems/disagreements, and go beyond such simple concepts as Mature/PG, Safe/Damage. These should be retained, along with a wide variety of other methods of describing what can and cannot be done in the sim, and how these rules can and cannot be enforced by the private joint owners of the sim. Examples include: Public nudity? Graphic sex? Graphic violence? Wanton killing? Repeat killing? Push/imprisonment scripts? Abusive language? Offensive visual material? The shareholders in a private sim may even use this charter, if they choose, to give shareholders in the sim permission to commit acts and actions that guests/visitors may not. The Checklist Charter should also address ways of resolving disputes and settling future issues, and indeed for even allowing future revisions to itself. Leader for the island? Y/N Permanent or temporary? How long are their terms? Is there an island enforcer/policeperson (to enforce bans or other decisions of the shareholders)? How are tie votes broken, in votes and elections? By the island leader, who withholds his/her votes except to break a tie? By a Linden? By a designated representative of another private sim? Do future shareholders need to be approved by the group? By a simple majority, or by all who participate in the vote? Do future changes to the charter require a simple majority vote, or do they require affirmative votes from all who participate? Are their zoning ordinances? Malls allowed? Clubs? Single stores? You begin to get the idea. Each group of shareholders can decide for themselves, within a wide scope of areas, how they will manage their land, and govern themselves. In fact, they should be able to select options on the group charter in such a way as to have nearly no perceptible level of self-governance, if that is what they choose, but that may not be the best thing for them when they need to resolve conflicts or other unforeseen issues. The governance tools should be designed not only to be self-creating (as in, LL creates the tools, then the residents can do what they want with them, without Linden involvement), but also to hook in with the rest of the game engine. For example, if a sim shareholder group has decided that their land is to allow nearly any type of foul play imaginable, and a guest visits and repeatedly gets imprisoned, script-pushed, killed and launched, that guest is NOT given the option to abuse-report the people who are doing those things; because those actions ARE allowed in that private sim. The guest always will be given the option of leaving, if they do not agree with it.

-LL adds tweaks to the world map and UI in order to let residents know when they are in public land, and when in private land. A resident can look at the sim as a whole, or any 1/16 parcel within it, to be able to see both the general permissions given in the sim, and any specific permissions that may relate to them. “You may not build or edit in here, but may run scripts of your own”.

-Any voting that has to be done in a group-sim, is done through a person’s shares. A person simply has as many votes for an issue as they have shares in the sim. If I have 1/8 of the sim, I get twice as many votes as a person who has 1/16, and only half as many votes as someone who has ½ of the sim. A person gets more or less votes because of how much of a stake they have in the sim. Tie votes have to be solved by a mechanism that the group must decide on.

-The group must decide on an island shape, allocation of land areas, the Checklist Charter, and all must agree to the lease term, before being given the go-ahead to receive an island. They must do this on their own, in their own time. Work will not begin on the sim until all group members have agreed to the charges and been billed for the first term of the lease (say, the first quarterly payment of a 1-year lease).

-Group-owned sims are not given dwell. At all. Instead of dwell, they are receiving a significant, guaranteed monthly discount on the maintenance fees for sizeable portions of land, and reasonable prices on the land itself (the startup cost). Dwell is reserved for residents in the public areas, who are exposed to higher potential per-meter land prices and higher per-meter maintenance fees, and for single owners of private sims, who risk a good deal of capital on their projects. They also are given the opportunity, if they want, to party re-write the TOS, in areas where it affects their sim only, and privacy from the rest of the grid, if they desire it.

Benefits to Linden Labs, and in general the population of Second Life:

1. Linden Labs no longer has to try as hard to predict what sorts of new sims people will want. They will still create new public areas, but it does not become as big a concern, because they will be fulfilling direct orders for private sims at an increased rate. The groups that get together to order a sim, will tell LL in very clear terms what they want.

2. Group ownership of sims, already technically possible presently, now becomes truly feasible, because the project is not dependant on, say 8 people who all pay the Landlord of the sim through private means. It’s difficult for any group of people to get together and all trust one another, particularly when they only know each other in virtual form. By having the members billed directly, LL has a built-in system of trust, because the residents are doing business with the company who runs the grid. By allowing the shares to be transferred to later owners, LL builds in a confidence that it will not be a wasted investment, doomed to fall apart in several months and all money lost. By offering such reasonable prices on the land, LL offers a middle ground between small homestead owners and hugely expensive landowning projects that presently doesn’t exist. By allowing a detailed and powerful Charter governance tool, LL allows private sim shareholders the ability to manage their little land in the way they deem best, be that with lots of restrictions and rules, or nearly none at all.

3. By creating governance tools for the private sims, those who desire self-governance, can have it. Those that do not, can stay in the public sims. The whole set of governance tools should be designed from the ground up to minimize the amount of involvement the Lindens have to have in settling problems or petty disputes in the private sims. The private sims can become a crucible for the very idea of self-governance in virtual worlds. Hopefully, the social structures that work best, will stay around the longest, and the ideas used in those sims will tend to propagate to other new private sims. Just as people quickly learned to combine different permission sets to accomplish their needs and find what worked best, so the group sims will also begin to find out what sets of governance options will combine to give them the type of land they want most. Second Life becomes even more of a social experiment, the sort of thing that just kind of happens.

4. Super-groups can begin to form, based around a central idea, mode of governance or themed builds. A group of say, 8 shareholders go in together on a themed Medieval sim. One sim is all they can afford; however, they are confident that other, similarly-minded groups will also get together, and willing to have next-door neighbors. All Linden Labs needs to do is provide “room to grow” for promising concepts. Fantasy, scifi, medieval, parkland, mall supercities, who-knows-what-else? Instead of subsidizing themed sims that Linden has to pick and choose, and afterwards monitor, LL only has to allow space for sims, and “space” in a virtual world is an easy thing to manage. Servers can be packed up and “relocated” relatively easily. Entire themed lands can begin to form, all fueled by groups of people paying $13, $25 or $50 per month, none of whom could have gotten in on “the game” if they had to pay $195 per month. No longer limited by land as it is, with already-in-place landowners who don’t want to sell their parcel to fuel a group build, outrageous land prices, and prohibitive monthly maintenance fees, new projects can get off the ground, perhaps with relative frequency.

5. Here’s the biggie, which many of you will already have seen. LAND PRICES. This could effectively drop the bottom out of the land market, because once Private Sims enter the price range of what average residents can afford, many will no longer be willing to pay silly prices for public land. If land is selling at crazy high prices, a group of people need only get together, agree on the form they want their sim to take, and order a private one direct from the source. Land prices will tend to level out quickly, and this will be compounded by the groups of residents who give up or sell their land in the public areas in order to migrate to private group sims. The land that they leave behind will add to the available pool, further lowering the average price for land.

6. I recommend 1/16 be the smallest divisible “share” of a group-sim. The shareholders going in on such a venture get a substantial discount on their land-fees, under such a system, and in order to be permitted these savings, they should be willing to take on a sizeable amount of land, noticeably larger than a 512 or 1024 meter2 homestead; and be willing to accept a longer-term lease on their “shares” of land in the sim. The concept is analogous to SL subscription fees; for example someone who gets their monthly subscription to SL for $6.00 instead of $9.95, because they commit themself to a full year’s membership.


Thoughts?

Some telling statistics of the reduced prices for group members in a share-held sim, broken down by share size. Calculations for US/GOM rates have assumed a $1.25US/$250L exchange rate.

This model also assumes that the current pricing model would remain the same for group-owned sims, something I think that LL would be willing to do, in exchange for the longer-term landowning agreements and larger land-sizes that residents would likely grab for; also in exchange for the increased ability for LL to subsidize group initiatives through this program.

1/16 Sim (1 share)
m2 = 4096
monthly fees (if public) = $25.00US
monthly fees (if private) = $12.25US (48% discount)
# of prims = 936
Price of public land if bought at $5/$10/$15 L per m2 =
$20480/$40960/$61440 L
Price of land in share-held sim (server setup) in $US/$L =
$62.50US/$12500L ($3L per m2)

1/8 Sim (2 shares)
m2 = 8192
monthly fees (if public) = $40.00US
monthly fees (if private) = $25.00US (39% discount)
# of prims = 1872
Price of public land if bought at $5/$10/$15 L per m2 = $40960/$81920/$122880 L
Price of land in share-held sim (server setup) in $US/$L = $125US/25000L ($3L per m2)

1/4 Sim (4 shares)
m2 = 16384
monthly fees (if public) = $75.00US
monthly fees (if private) = $48.75US (35% discount)
# of prims =3744
Price of public land if bought at $5/$10/$15 L per m2 = $81920/$163840/$81920 L
Price of land in share-held sim (server setup) in $US/$L = $250US/$50000L ($3L per m2)

1/2 Sim (8 shares)
m2 = 32,768
monthly fees (if public) = $125.00US
monthly fees (if private) = $97.50US (22% discount)
# of prims = 7488
Price of public land if bought at $5/$10/$15 L per m2 = $163840/$327680/491520 L
Price of land in share-held sim (server setup) in $US/$L = $500US/$100000L ($3L per m2)


By standardizing the price for shares in a sim as a straightforward division of the whole price, smaller shareholders wind up getting a greater discount. This both encourages "small-time" residents, money-wise, to get in on group projects/builds, and discourages "big time" players from being able to get more land, more cheaply, the more that they spend in a share-held sim. A person with more land in a given sim has more "votes" in shaping that sim, by virtue of the larger stake that they hold in it. But it does not get easier to purchase more and more land, just because you have more money. The amount of a sim-share will be the same, regardless of whether a player buys in on 1 or multiple.

Also, this allows a player who wants an odd amout of sim shares to accommodate themself, without having to jump to the next level. If I own 1/8 of a share-held sim (2 shares), and a friend in the same sim is suddenly faced with a financial crisis and has to leave Second Life, I can take over their 1 share and only pay more for that amount.....let's say for several months, until they return or until I can find another resident to transfer the share to. I go up from the 1/8 price, to the price for 3/16 of the sim - 3 shares. I don't have to jump up to the "1/4 maintenance tier" just for that one extra share.

A similiar system could probably be adapted for the public sims as well, but I would advise NOT doing this, primarily because there are many residents in SL who do NOT want any form of self-governance or governance toolset, or be beholden to the other landowners in their home-sim. They should have a great deal of "public" land where they can roam around in and own land in, without being subjected to these things. Also, the creation of a "governance toolset" will result in a great variety of different forms of self-governance, often varying from one sim to the next. The residents of SL, both those from public AND private sims, should have a large area of the world where they can depend on the "rules" being the same in large, contiguous areas. This helps to avoid the frustration of "I just walked from one neighborhood to another and suddenly the rules are different"

i'm going to summarize this proposal because i think it's definitely a step in the right direction, but it's a bit of a read:

1) allow groups of residents to buy sims.
2) make the smallest share 1/16 of the sim.
3) payment for the sim is upfront.
4) the sim group can set up a government (which is actually creating contractual terms for how decisions are made)
5) shares can be transferred, but only in 1/16 sim units.

i think y'all should read this proposal and poke at it to make it as good as possible.

Ok - who does LL deal with and how are payments made?

I'd be in favor of a number of ideas in here - and have proposed many in the past myself. I don't think it should be so onerous as far as the rules go. How about this - Linden Lab offers up a grid of a sim that divides it into 16 slots, and individual members of the group can reserve however many of them they want for themselves. When the group gets all 16 slots filled, LL will set up the sim and charge the members in a similar fashion to how the islands are run.

To avoid getting into any contract complications, each parcel would be sold to an individual resident and that would be the end of LL's involvement.

After that, though, it should be up to the community to set whatever rules they might want on transfer of property, and generally allow people to group their land or sell it as they please, the same way they can in ordinary sims.

The whole advantage to the community comes in the initial sale, which would allow a whole group to chip in on land at the reasonable price an Island owner pays, and not have to fight the land barons or people holding small parcels hostage in the middle of the territory.

If your idea requires any sort of LL intervention, mediation, or work in general, then don't bother. LL's work is in the code area, and they are flooded as it is.

as i understand it at this moment. aside from billing and placing the sim, and the renewing the lease, there is no LL involvement.

but maybe unhygienix cn clarify.

HG has the right idea. Apologies if I'm not expressing everything clearly enough, because it's a big idea with a lot of different parts that tie in and interrelate.

The idea is that:

1. Private sims are currently available, and the price-per-meter is quite affordable for both maintenance and startup, when compared to land-prices in the regular world. The overall price is still so expensive, however, that it effectively cuts out all but a few residents who use it for business or a very expensive hobby.

2. LL allows residents to engage in commerce to a level that a person could conceivably rent a sim, or several, as the private manager, and "sublet" to other residents. The other residents would pay to them on the side, probably in $US if their lot is anything on the larger side. This is really not very workable world-wide, however, because

-it requires a level of trust between the landowner and tenants that can be hard to have in a business relationship in SL.

-The situation only lasts for as long as the landowner/tenant relationship goes sour, or a bunch of residents suddenly move out, bankrupting the scheme, or the landowner decides they've had enough of SL and leaves themself.

-The resident must pay smaller, but still significant sums of money, to "rent" land that is NOT in their name. Their name is not on the property, the land must be group-managed VERY carefully with a land permissions system that is currently inadequate for these extended situations. They have NO resale rights to the land, and that is again assuming that the business venture lasts long enough to still be there when they would want to up-and-move. The level of personal "investment" that an individual feels in this game knowing that a parcel is in their name, that they have resale/transfer rights to it, and that they are doing business directly with the World-Owners CANNOT be overstated. It is this "personal investment" that is the alchemist's formula Linden Labs is looking for, as the world reaches critical mass and the company's profitability, or lack thereof, is decided.


3. Although they are not directly managing the themed areas like Lusk and Darkwood, LL has shown a great desire to foster and subsidize group endeavors of all kinds, anything that would generate cooperation, creativity, goodwill and social interaction. This idea does so, in fact it builds the concept right into the framework of the game.....Residents Get A Discount On Maintence Fees And Regulated Land Price In Group Sims. As projects like Tartarus show, the logistics of creating a group endeavor can kill the project before it even gets off the ground. Fortunately, they are recovering from the Island Death when they lost their server, but under my idea, it need not have happened. One generous/business-savvy landowner willing to shell out $1000, then $195/month can be hard to find, but 16 landowners willing/able to shell out $68 each, then $13 per month, CAN be found in here. Not only that, at these lower levels, I believe that many of the residents sitting on 512 m2 parcels, or not even in on the land-game at all, would jump at the chance to more affordably express themselves in here. More than this idea of subsidizing group endeavors, LL would be creating a way of making the endeavors self-organizing; it takes the work off of Linden Labs, once the tools are in place. LL no longer has to try and predict what sorts of Group Ideas will find attraction......they will just simply HAPPEN, as residents get together and decide for themselves what to do with these newly-available share-held sims.

4- The next question, then comes: How to manage these group-sims? How to deal with backstabbing, troubles, trifling arguments or other issues? The idea is, LL doesn't WANT to deal with these problems of disputes between landowners in private sims; and in a larger sense, all of Second Life doesn't want them involved in these issues either, as it is eventually detrimental to the improvements/bugfixes/upgrades that we want from LL. The less time that LL has to spend solving problems between landowners, the more time they can spend on what matters most, and what they can do best: Improving and extending their Virtual World. The obvious solution, then, is a governance toolset, to allow these areas to self-manage as much as possible. Just as much of Second Life is Lego-like, the governance toolset should be as well. We can mix and match shapes in a huge variety of combinations, to Build objects. We can Program them in a myriad of ways to do what we wish with them, by Scripting them. We can import Sounds, Textures, Animations, Music, Clothing. We can mix and match the sets of Permissions on most of these, to determine how they may and may not be used by others. The system isn't perfect, but it is DAMN good. LL doesn't create most of the objects, animations, textures, vehicles, etc that are available in-world. They just create the TOOLS, and make a few examples to get the residents rolling. Everything else just Happens. Just so with governance. If they make a decently powerful toolset for self-governance, the residents can decide for themselves what to do with it.

5- Ok then, so why 1/16 of a sim? Why not throw private sims out into the open, and allow people to buy into them in any amount they want? Because it would destroy LL's pricing scheme. Even my plan, as proposed, would likely have consequences to their long-term business strategies, but not being an economist or privy to their financial status or plans, I can't say exactly what those effects will be. I proposed this in the form that I did, so that people would have to make sacrifices in order to move into these group-sims:

-they have to have a gameplan when they ask for an island. The group will have to have settled on an island shape, a group governance charter, have enough members, and all be prepared to have their credit cards charged for the first quarter BEFORE the island is delivered. This even opens up more business opportunities for other residents; landscapers who can design whole sims to the needs of a group and offer up the .raw file, ready for the Lindens, also advise them on the concerns of surface height and land permissions. Some groups, like Awakening Avatars, could serve as a meeting place for people interested in shareheld groups....post bulletin boards of different proposed islands/themes/governments, to which people could reply, with how many shares they want. People can meet and greet, decid if they get along well enough to work together, and go from there.

-They have to be willing to jump in on a larger parcel of land, even though they'll be getting a discount on it. The smallest parcel that they can have is 4096 m2

-They have to be willing to be liable to their "share-lease" for a longer period of time, and must find a replacement on their own if they wish to leave the agreement before lease ends. Again, I recommend a 1-year lease for sims, billed quarterly. Startup costs and quarterly payments are made in advance of the first day of each quarter.

-They have to be willing to come to an agreement on a number of things such as permissible actions, permitted/zoned/themed content in the sim, and methods of dealing with unforseen issues. Among themselves. Without Linden involvement, whenever at all possible. Essentially, they must agree to be in some manner beholden to the other shareholders, but they get to decide, as a group, how to manage themselves.

-They have to be willing to give up dwell for these projects. Dwell (assuming the dwell system is kept in future updates) would be reserved for people who pay higher maintenance fees in the public land, and for single-owners of sims, who risk a great deal of capital on their ventures. The benefit to the share-holders, is as I stated above, a much cheaper way of buying and maintaining land, and having greater resources to express themselves either as individuals or group.

-They have to accept that they are becoming part of a social experiment, that what is being subsidized is not only group endeavors, but the very idea of self-governance in virtual worlds. Excepting areas where there might be a universal breach of the TOS (for example, posting a resident's RL personal private info in-world, ANYWHERE in-world), these private sims would have the ability to rewrite the TOS, partly, for their own corner of the world. They could state that something which is considered griefing in public is NOT griefing in their sim, for example.


I've a few ideas on what should be included with the governance toolset, not so much specifics, but in a general sense, to allow share-held sims to create as great a variety of self-governance forms as possible, and even to allow for a private sim's reform of governance later, to ensure the survivability of sims past their original shareholders/owners.
This post is long enough already, though, and RL beckons at the moment. More perhaps later today, or tomorrow. Thanks for all who contribute to this thread, as I realize this is a New, Rough, Untried idea, and I truly wish to see if it might have merit, after being debated, tossed around.