Why is SL work so undervalued?

I just saw Cristiano on another forum offering 2k a week for professional, daily writing work.
I certainly don't intend this as an attack on Cristiano or anyone else, but it got me thinking...
If you wanted to hire someone to write for your website, and it wasn't SL-related, how much would you have to pay them?
Why should people in SL be earning slave wages for REAL hours of REAL work?
It's not like this is some game where you kill monsters. It's real photoshop work, real 3D modelling, and real programming. And real writing, in this case.
When will "SL developer" be acknowledged as a real profession?

When the linden dollar is worth about 250 times more than it is today.

LF

You'd have to pay them a minimum of $150 per 750 or 1000 words, depending on the kind of news media or business. $2000 LL is only about $8.40 right now. If you can just toss off something like a forum post and get paid $8.40, maybe a quarter of your usual hourly rate, as a kind of game passtime, you could justify it, I guess, but I'd have a hard time doing it -- except sooner or later even *I* begin to wonder why I am providing so much free copy for this game LOL.



I agree. That's why I advocate ending this inane tekki-wiki "let me do it for free" culture. The same people -- now you -- who whine that I am cruel to newbies and don't understand the value of loss-leaders in business, or that I don't understand the value of providing public-interest work in a developing new media, now come forward and whine that wages are too low. Huh?

Could you please connect up the dots, Eggy? If you doubt me for one moment, go over and read that poor hapless newb's thread about how he can sell his wares, and all the idiotic "for free" stuff being offered, and all the slams of me for saying, hey, could we stop flooding this market with freebies? It kills the economy and kills initiative and creativity.

People persist in seeing this as a medieval guild village in some game where you pound gold somewhere and sell it to trolls. That's the problem. It is a game culture. It is not even Internet commerce culture. It is savage, medieval, game-guild and game-troll culture.

I try to pay people's work what they are worth in RL, but probably at 3/4 or 1/2 what they could really get. The reason is that it is an unknown market, and one where I can't justify huge outlays in labour costs when I don't see the consumer base ready to pay me for my costs and my products for sale (rentals and land). I tend to have to adjust with each patch and adjust with each slam on the economic system, and adjust to the harsh reality of people's stipends at $500/week being the upper limit of their spending in many cases.

I'm happy to look at this more as "real photoshop and real writing" when it is not a game and an entertainment space where people play store and play house (myself included). But then I might actually not find it very fun, and would go elsewhere or just set back and be one of the entertained but exploited classes hosed down by the scripterati and the uber architecterati.

It really is a troublesome economic problem. All these game geeks were collected and subsidized and then did all this free stuff for years, including for LL and for newbies and for each other. They all had pretty good welfare though and some even have free land for life. But now what? They are bitching that they can't get paid like RL? It's funny to me that this discussion would start to appear as the seams between SL and RL begin to disappear with the advent of streaming video.

And you're going to have a hard time convincing the masses of non-technical, non-creative people that they should be shelling out those kind of RL rates in a game where they don't have a ready-made way to make income except to be sex slaves or play Tringo all day.

I view the tekkies of the world as something like car repairmen -- charging too much, deliberately mystifying their work, creating barriers to understanding for the common person, failing to empower the common person with the abilility to do simple repairs themselves. I've made sure I learn all the computer geek stuff myself, so that I don't have to become dependent on someone who charges me $150 for 3 hours while he runs Spybot with a knowing leer and lectures me about doing defrag more often and maybe makes one regedit. I've learned to see through this bullshit.

I'm not ready to pay top dollar for geekdom in a game. And I've paid more top dollars for geekdom in this game than most, if you actually look at what I've worked on. I find it is an impenetrable favor bank, where people threaten to withdraw favor ("work for free" and refuse payment for work base on whether they "like you".

The idea that a guy makes a mall, gives spaces for it for free to those whose content he clears is emblematic of the kind of culture and closed economy we face.

I think you must end that culture -- or at least strenuosly challenge it and try to provide some more gradated competition to it -- or you will never see Eggy getting paid for his geeky powers at what he is worth.

You were the one who said you were happy to have SL have "a little bit of Eggy" everywhere. What happened? Now you want RL Eggy to get paid. But SL Eggy said he'd do it for free because he gets paid so much in real life, it would be silly to charge, and it's a game for fun, anyway.

I'm sure some people do get paid fair wages you just don't hear about it.

Think way back when "home pages" were all the rage. Everyone would ask

"do you have a home page?"

"Yea, check it, I have red text on a yellow background, its awsome"

"Oh, I can make that red text blink for you"

"Cool! That's even better!"


People helped each other out for free. Now places like blogs.com charge you $10 a month to do it. So I guess the community has to get big enough until there are so many people that don't know the basics, or don't care to know, who will turn to SL builders for help.

If you did not intend it as an attack, then why just not start a general thread on the topic instead of singling me out, Eggy, since you are labelling my offer as "slave labor"? I certainly think that many SL "developers" are well compensated. Anyone making $5000L, or $20 USD off of a copy of a texture they sell over and over again is certainly acknowledged. The same goes for selling a weapon for $1500L, a car for $2000L or anything else honestly, no matter the cost. The seller establishes the value. Beyond the initial development time spent, the rest is just a bonus. People pay for what they find value in - that is the nature of the market, in SL and in RL. Hell, some of the highest compensation in SL is in the land market, and they don't develop a damn thing, they just trade an existing commodity. It is all about the market.

The $2000/weekly salary is to post little blurbs like "Second Life update on Tuesday", not to write War & Peace, Eggy. For someone to spend 5 minutes a couple of times a week to write up a small blurb, or even an hour here and there for some extra SL money is hardly the same as a normal writing gig, thus the salary. I have had so many responses to it that I still have not been able to follow up on them. Paying the equivalent of $20/hour USD for the amount of time commitment the position would take in a month is quite far from slave wages. Perhaps I should pay the much lower prosititution wages so it can truly be slave wages, instead of trying to give someone an opportunity and just having you malign it.

I think it's like being an unpaid intern at MTV INC as opposed to a paid one at Joe's Spooge Mopping Inc....

I see several professional writers responded to Cristano's ad - that tells me it's less about the damn L$/RL$ and more about getting a fun SL gig - the fruits of which will be at SLUniverse.com.

Possibly from the writer's POV, it is an addition to their resume and presence on the net.

Um, Cristiano, just a second here. In your zeal to stop Eggy's slam on you over your underpaid writing gig (which I agree is mainly just a resume booster for somebody or just something they toss off to get some game cash), you don't need to slam another class of people, giving in to the usual class-hatred of land "barony".

Somebody who bothers to follow auctions, calculate costs, mark up land, parcel it, sell it, either in parcels or in communities, build on it, etc. is doing a lot of work. And one of the reasons their work can get some compensation is the presence of people in the market who just flip land. That gives it value too. When it has value, it boosts the economy. As soon as there was more-valued land in the game, as soon as some barons began to sell their old inventory for less in the old world, the value of the Linden against the dollar shot up 20 real-life cents. So don't knock people who add value to the game, especially when their value-add actually does involve work. It may not seem like much work to you to buy an overpriced island and let it sit there in the game. But try to sell it sometime on a regular basis and you'll see there is work involved in advertising, networking etc.

Honestly, the hatred and allergenic reaction to commerce in this game, especially land-related commerce, is a real killer.

Nobody should have to accept a writing gig, and be bullied into thinking they should "care about the game" and "not care about RL/SL dollars". That's tripe. It's OK to get paid for what you are worth. You have a choice not to do this in this game, you can just hack around. Or you can try to get paid some of what you are worth, and some do -- it is an economy still in transition.

We must end the climate of intolerance to all forms of commerce and end the vigorous promotion of the selfless wiki. These are killers. My strenuous opposition of this climate and this culture should not be confused with "spewing hate". It is for the good of the virtual society in which we live.

No, carrying water is a lot of work.

Um, Prokofy, your self appointed importance always makes me laugh. Your biggest problem by now is that you have established that there is nothing at all you won't complain about. You are the quintessential impossible to please person, no matter what anyone does. Nothing impresses you, nothing makes you happy, nothing is ever right or good or important except your own narrow view of the world and contributions to it. Hell, you don't even seem to like your own stuff, actually. Self-loathing is quite evident in your rantings.

The funny part is, you will slam "content barons" to high hell, but god forbid someone mention the vaunted "industry" you are in, then you wax defensive about how important your work is, while slamming those who create things instead of reselling them. Typical and expected, honestly, but not germaine to any of this.

You're right. And no one has to do any "...shoulds..."

yeah, Prok is right on this and being a little older and wiser than before, i can see that is is reeeally easy (for me at least) to diss the land barons as they are visible in a sometimes negativly perceieved way (ALL of the land behind mine was bought by Anshe Chung at the same time for example) but that's just one way to play this game (and the land in question is not expensively priced, she just got it first), the people who make the interesting and game changing scripts are the ones we celebrate, I'd like to congrate the 'feild of dreams' script writter and the Money Tree creator yea!!!

I would add that what you are worth IRL is relfective of the purchasing power of a market economy of billions of participants. In SL we have 20,000. Now even Anshe Chung realistically cannot afford what some professional services cost, assuming she makes the stated $100,000 a year out of the game. A lot of the time these services are paid for and retained by major corporations or insurance companies.

For example I am near the bottom of the billing tier in the egineering firm I work for. Even so, I am billed out at around $95 an hour. Now I am involved in a building project that consumes about 80 hours a month of just my time. Now assuming I wanted to be a builder in SL ( there are much better ways of making money *grins*), who could realistically pay even 95 an hour for a project? (And yes I get paid MUCH less that I bill out for!)

In Southern Californa, in an urban environment, a 512 Square meter house can go for as much a USD $700, 000 (or more in some areas). At 225 to one or so (i am not sure of the exact conversion rate) this comes out to something like 15.75 billion $Linden. For a 512 house! Wanna buy mine, you can have it for half that!

Simply put the wealth does not exist in SL to sustain real world costs. Christiano has offered wht he thinks is a fair SL price for writing. A writer has the option to accept or decline it, and that sets the market rate for a writer. The SL economy is defined in SL, not in RL. One of the very realistic issues you must keep in mind that this is a hobby economy. Most people (myself included) pay to play here. Its an escape from a regular job, and frankly If I worked as hard as Prok and Anshe do at this, it would almost be a full time job. People like me don't have the money to spend real world prices on designer clothes in SL. I spend enough on that RL. Ultimately this is a game world, entertainment, and not a professional one. You are worth much less here. So am I.

The work of people in SL is not undervalued, but the work is valued at the economy can tolerate. If I made a product that takes 5-15 minutes in Photoshop, I cannot charge 1-3K lindens for the item; the market can not bare it. The average stipend is under 1K currently; people are trying to shop on a budget. I try to never charge more than $250L for an item, which is hard but I don’t feel like price gauging people and there is something to be said for sheer volume. The salary of 2,000L a week is more than twice what many avatars are receiving as their weekly stipend, and many people would jump at the chance to more than double their weekly income.


The problem is some people can not detach Second Life from reality and think of things within the realm we exist here. The fact that lindens can be converted to cash does not equate lindens to cash or content created in second life to the same equivalent of “real life” items. As much as we all love our virtual land, homes, and items. The current legal system in the US has not caught up to the level of technology that exists in virtual worlds. You have extremely little recourse in the US Court Systems for virtual lands and goods, that will change very soon, but for now, if you get screwed here, you just get screwed. There being said everything when it comes to cost and value in SL has a imaginary * next to it, that should remind you the value of the it is only your perception

You know - my (well paid) IT job in the US pays 650,000 Rupees ($15,000 US) in India. Slave Labor? Only if you were going to expect that worker to "live" in the US.

If my home in Michigan was transported to India, it would probably cost a tenth of what it does in the US.

Its all relative, I think. Things get confusing when you mix economies & exchange rates. In a sense, the Linden is a currency just like Dollars, Rupees, and Pounds. Each with their own economies and going rates.

L$2000/week for in-game work isn't so bad - when that money is being spent in-game, IMHO

Travis

I agree with Jennifer that it is Game-World and that the very people clamoring now about not getting paid what they are worth are the ones who made it Game-World all along by giving out stuff for free and hacking around with their friends and making the wiki stuff.


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Er, Cristiano, sure, I must seem like Eeyore or Joe Btswe1!@#$@%@ to you
but the fact is, I never slammed content barons. The phrase is not mine. Those threads aren't mind. I don't attack content barons for what they do. This is some Fig Newton of Your Imagination.

I'm sure I must seem negative indeed when all the game's negativity is ascribed to my persona. But I never slammed content barons. I want them to live well and prosper. I want them to charge what they are worth. I will save and pay their prices and add value to the game.

I do want them to stop doing stuff for free. And also to stop slamming the middle levels of game play/econonomy that has has to happen somewhere between the first awkward newbie t-shirt in "appearance mode" and the scripted presto-chango-three-in-one airplane/ship/motorcycle thingie.

I want them to get over themselves as far as their reluctance to let people resell their goods in a second-hand market out of an ill-conceived notion that this "harms" them or "steals from them." But those are more rarified arguments about commerce, and not a slam on the activity of content-baronry which I support first and foremost by my shopping in this game Maybe I have to go inworld and buy your particular stuff for you to stop this repeated misconstrued grumbling that I slam content barons -- which I don't.

As for slamming my own stuff, gah, where do you get that? I boast of my own stuff. I guess you missed the memo where I told everyone I had distressed weathered boardalks and Tiki *long* before the Lindens did in the New Continent. I love my little stuff in my game to pieces. I can be content for hours making some little house work or invention which I am proud of, even if others laugh with their sophisticated scripterati/architecturati stuff. I do not suffer from self-loathing. Again, this is a Fig Newton of Your Imagination that comes with a ready-bound cliche that anyone who makes sharp criticism of the status quo is somehow a self-loathing Lozer.

Thank you, especially given the fact that in a week, the position I was advertising for takes less time than hosting a single one hour event. Where are the people paying $2000L per event?

Prokofy,

I just have to ask, what is your weird fixation on wikis all about?

that's all true

but the answer is

because second life is viewed, by professionals, educators and business owners, as a pointless video game running on a hopelessly proprietary, non-scalable platform. why would you pay anybody to assemble something in such an environment when you could just pay them directly for the textures and algorithms.

We ridiculed and took "content baron" and "feted inner core" away from him, so there has to be a new term for people Prokofy doesn't like. I suggest we expedite the process of taking 'tekki wikki', 'scripterati', and 'megabuilder' away in order that we see what other wonderful terms can be dreamed up.

Whether you like it or not, Cristiano is running a business. A business cannot afford to have more expenses than revenues. Regardless of what the nebulous so-called "real world wage" [is] would be, Cristiano pays what he can - what makes sense - what works.

And I applaud him for doing it. He is creating economic activity and providing employment for the citizens of SL.

Such is the way economies are built. Read your history. The idea of a minimum wage is still foreign to many parts of the world, and the United States certainly did not begin its industrial revolution with it.

Kudos to you, Cristiano, for providing SL with some positive economic action.

And if your own personal situation is too developed to accept his wage offer - then dont.

Just my two.

Seriously, have you ever tried to lift a cubic meter of water? It's a lot heavier than it looks.

Uh, "content baron" is not my term, not my thread, and you've come to the wrong address on that one.

Whatever your efforts to "ridicule" it only remains more valid.

You don't be taking any terms away from me, hon, because I will go on using them.

Wikis are part of geeky Internet culture like an old-fashioned barn-raising. They are so inherently "good" that no one dare criticize them. But I do because they create a culture of dependency, adulation, self-reference, etc. In a Pinocchio game trying to become a real boy, it's important to start having real things cost real money, I guess...or not.

I agree with Khamon, it's still a game. That's OK with me, I guess, but I wish everyone would get over the pretention that it isn't.

Cris - I'm a latecomer to the discussion, but I wanted to commend you for creating this SL "job." I can't tell you how many newbies have asked me, "How do I earn money in SL?" For those players who don't have "traditional" SL skills or talents, opportunities such as this benefit not only the individual, but the SL economy at large. Content and/or land barons should be lauding these opportunities, as they ultimately translate into increased consumer spending.

PS: I also think that SL wages will begin to mirror RL wages when the market can bear it, not before.

People are pushovers and will do this type of work thinking it will add to their resume. As long as people undervalue themselves, others will exploit them.