Why is SL work so undervalued?

I applaud Cristiano for creating the job too. There should be more and more niche jobs created like this and it would help differentiate the economy.

It doesn't matter if it is not real-world type valuation, because it is a transition economy.

When the culture of entitlement, freebies, apprenticing, etc. begins to ebb, there will be more space created for people to have these kinds of differentiated jobs and functions.

The difference in this scenario is that being an intern at MTV (et al) will afford you the opportunity to meet and greet people who may be able to do something for your career down the road. Writing stupid little blurbs on an SL-realted web site will lead to what -- a gig writing stupid little blurbs on some other web site?

It should tell you that regular people will pretty much whore themselves out to the lowest bidder so they can add the title, 'professional' to their name. Hey, if it floats their boat -- more power to them.

Actually we will. You can't say 'FIC' or 'feted inner <anything>' anymore without it being a joke. We've got the Freted Inner Chord, the Fetish Inner Core, the FIrC, and the list goes on. It's very much like the uncanny ability of homosexuals to take and embrace derogatory names such as "queer" and turn them around to wear with pride. FIC and feted anything have run their course, and are now good for a nice laugh if anything.


Exactly, that pretention gives rise to some weird drive that people need to "make it in SL" and must realize the "cost of doing business in SL" in order to succeed. So many people define success in SL as being about how many Linden or Real dollar they are making; it's refeshing that someone such as yourself can see through the pretention and see the open exchange of ideas, entertainment and learning that is possible.

Lol. Well, I may not be professional, but I will do it if you still want someone to fill the spot.
(I hope I don't get yelled at by others for this)

Those darn "regular people," they're always gettin' up to something! And it's usually high-larious!

Yes, I have often laughed at how many hours some of people sink into this game for monetary returns that are considerably lower than what one could make in RL.

But it is not a RL job yet, and Anshe notwithstanding, it has not scaled to the point where it can be for large numbers of people. No, it is still "entertainment", even when it involves "work" -- allowing people to play at "fashion designer" or "architect" and dabble in entrepreneurship. Example: an advanced programmer who makes $150/hr might take a few thousand $L for many hours of work because s/he wants to work on something neat.

If you didn't find these little commerce-challenges fun, and you COULD earn more in RL, then you'd be a fool not to just go make your money in RL and then buy L$ on GOM/hank/anshe etc.

Cristiano, for the love of god. You're smarter than that.
This is indeed a GENERAL thread, I dont give a damn what you pay people or how much work you put on them, I've always thought SL work was vastly underpaid, and that's why I announced my "retirement" a while ago, I'm not going to spend 3 days coding some random piece of crap for people who will bitch and whine about me asking them for L$1000.

Prokofy, I *will* sometimes do or give away stuff for free.
Thing is, most people want crap that takes me less than a minute to do.
LSL is a rather simple language where you can actually achieve something useful in a single line of code. For instance, a notecard giver.
I will sometimes code things "on the fly" as a response to a forum post, or give away simple scripts that I already had made a long time ago.
But then there are giant projects that require one heck of a lot more coding (and thinking), sometimes stretching the boundary of what LSL can do, and keeping me busy for a month.
I was offered 20k for it. That's what, 50 euros? For a month of work? Please.

Um...who is "we"? Linden Labs put the phrase "In the FIC" in the "account status" box on April Fool's. This is supposed to be the ultimate example of taking one of these vexing causeless rebels in the game and doing game-itsu on them and trying to game them back at themselves. But then they went and put "FIC Founder" in some boxes, thereby reinforcing my original point.

It remains a valid term and one I will continue to use, and I'm glad you got a good chuckle out of it, but it is a serious hindrance to the game.

There's no "we" that can "take care of" a person like me. That's where you're off -- you reinforce the very notion of the FIC with language like that which betokens your sense of yourself in a group that is called "We, the Intelligent Ones Who Understand What's Best for the GAme" operating against "Them, the Asshats, Who Fuck Things Up". You don't exist. It's bigger than you.

Quote:
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.



I personally don't have a drive to "make it in SL" because to me, it's like a big experiment. But I do think people have to play that experiment to the hilt, and realize the cost of doing business. I think you don't do any newbie good by telling him to just go suck up to older players, take their free stuff, hang out at their free lots, and apprentice with them and become part of their sycophantic society. Why?

The open exchange of ideas and entertainment can exchange precisely because it is a model that has real working parts like dollars. So I'm not for depriving anyone of that experience of what they cost.

The issue is that too many are selective about when it is just a game and when it should mirror real life. It seems as if this week is starting off with the feeling among the elite that it's just a game. That's good since I like those posts better than when they attempt to impose rl upon us.

The longer I play, the easier it is to read these people.

You're kidding, right? You're watching too much Bravo.

I totally agree, that it is about playing architect, playing store, etc. Definitely. And people get very caught up in it, which shows you how effective it is as a game. And the egos of people making their new fragile virtual play-selves that are "architects" or "mall owners" or "dress designters" are very, VERY touchy which is why you get all this drama-queen stuff in here. Sooner or later, somebody always gets mad at someone and then tries to invoke the RL status of a person, trying to expose them as a dweeb bank clerk or something when in SL they are some club mafiosi owner or something. That's what makes it such an effective game, because people really get caught up in it.



Who are the elite? Where are they? And when did they say this? I think I missed this memo. I still see quite a few elite making money like their lives depend on it.

I bill out at $50-150 an hour USD for writing jobs, but then I'm a technical writer with 15 years of experience. It's only slave labor wages if you have no choice but to accept it. If I was interested in a project, or wanted to expand a skill, or was just starting out, or wanted a portfolio piece then I would likely do a project for free, or next to free.

For some people this is a game, for others a business, for others... fill in the blank with your own ideas. I know a designer who feeds her two kids and keeps a roof over their heads with what she makes here, so the "only a game argument" might seem a tad thin to her. The arrogance of proclaiming an absolute for another person is what never fails to bemuse me. Why does anyone care how other people are using SL? Unless it impacts you directly.. go play your own way.

If the $L does ever have a close to 1-to-1 value of the USD then I think something will be lost. It will probably turn into Sony, Coke, Warner Bros, Old Navy and the amateur or merely beginning scripter, designer, builder will have a much more difficult time participating in the economy in any way other than a consumer.

I personally think that if large companies noticed SL we would all have a lot of work to do, and much like the "web developer" profession arose as a result of the increasing demand for web sites, "SL developer" would arise, creating real jobs paid with real money.

Ah oh - here it comes!

*Ducking*

hear hear



I don't think it's so much the exchange rate, surreal, as the scale of the market. If the market scales up and there is enough earnings potential here, you might start seeing really highly-skilled professionals putting *all* their effort into creating/selling products in SL rather than in RL or a mix of RL/SL. (I'm not saying that there are not already highly skilled people, just that it is not a full-time focus for most).

This will inherently make it much harder for every amateur to compete, although a gifted amateur with a lower price point should usually be able to put up a good showing.


We are arguably in the embryonic, world-evolving stage of the first virtual society of real scale... revel in it!

Yes, but for me it would be techwriting work, not getting to do animations, graphics, and building.

Taking this year off to live in Belize and screw around in SL has been very rewarding. I don't know that I would have done it if my primary profession was here. Of course, if it was... well then Ferran and I could stay down here until hell froze over because we would both be making serious money.

An intriguing thread, once you get over the inevitable personal attacks on entirely unrelated issues. Why to people bring of the FIC in every post?

I think that if Anshe Chung can make her money here, or if some desinger can feed and house herself and her two kids more power to them. But then ask them how much time they spend making that money. I'll bet its not done in two or three hours a day, hanging out dancing at the clubs.

I play SL cause I like to build things. Is there anyway SL could every be as lucrative as my RL job. Maybe. But not without spending all my time at it. SL is a game. People come here to play. That some people have taken it and made something more than recreational income at it is great. But the driving force of the economy is not land barons, or content baraon, or any of them. The driving force of the economy is what people who are here on a basic account can afford to pay to play. Not everyone out there is a content baron or a land baron, but a lot of people buy stuff. How? is every shop a gold mine? Or are a few doing well while many others make almost nothing?

I think a lot of pople do what I do and call this entertainment and say what the hell, its 15 or 50 bucks a month and I get house of entertainment out of it. The aren't scripting, they aren't building, they are playing. Some of them may even want to make $2000 linden a week writing simply beacuse they like to. These are the people who make the purchaes that make anshe chung or what ever designer rich. And the truth of SL's economy is that people who play want to be able to afford cool stuff in a limited budget.

I enjoy building. I am learning to build houses. Its a hobby. Sure its a marketable skill, an sure I'd build a house for dirt cheap against what a professiona SL architect charges. And I don't care about realizing dollar for dollar on time spent. There is no way I could, and keep my RL job.

Hell I like my job. I went to law school and I get paid to talk. Its perfect. But I also made a choice to be a lawyer over an architect. SL allows me for a few hours a week to undo that choice and play architect. I'll enjoy it for a while like any game, and likely when NWN 2 comes out with better av and building tools, I'll go back to that. Not all of us are here to be Anshe.

If someone is getting paid for doing something they love doing, 2k a week in Linden dollars is not such a bad thing.

Basically, someone who doesn't love to write shouldn't apply for the job in the first place.

There's a common factor hidden in threads that have FIC mentions.

Hmmm, reads as if you would make a great writer for Cris' little web site.

Um, yes, others bring it up, or enact it, and I call them on it.

I don't know why I"m not buying the story about the mom and the kids and the feeding and the roof. I guess I'm figuring there is a child support check, a subsidized housing, a grandma with free babysitting, a something going on in that story that we aren't hearing.

But even if the story does check out, there's a story of sweatshop-like work of 10 or 15 hour days with no breaks, paid vacations, or life insurance LOL. Just because you are totally engrossed and having the time of your life doesn't mean that you might not be in sweatshop-like conditions LOL.

And even if there are NOT such conditions, the fact is, you could count on one hand the number of people in this game who can do that sort of thing. It's just not the norm.

I fully agree that the game space has to be elastic enough -- and the people in it tolerant enough -- to tolerate all kinds of different economies or playing styles. And it is perfectly fine if some people, in their quest for a freer game space, lobby for the ending of free things, with their reasoning, and other people, who want it to be a dollhouse economy, lobby for their freebies. A world is born out of clashes of interests. Pretending they shouldn't exist or don't exist and that there is no FIC is just naive.

Addendum:
{
Several days ago, while researching this message, I read about an special island in SL. It is set aside as a 'safe' place for sufferers of Asberger's syndrome and perhaps other manifestations of autismas well. The purpose, is to facillitate social interaction in a non-judgmental, understanding space (unlike most of first life).

Today, a friend, who is a veteran social worker specializing in life-skills training, mentiond that she had read of the same thing, on her own. She is going to recommend this specially protected place in SL, to some of her clients. She has such a good reputation in her area, that she takes *all* of her clients by referral only. That is still another example of how seriously Second Life is being taken by an increasing number of knowlegable, early-adopter professionals in first life.
}



There are many news articles, demonstrating that SL is taken *very* seriously, as is the nascent virtual-physical economy interface. That interface between the virtual and 'real' economies, generated $880M in 2004. Regarding the physical economy, most of that is 'virtual' after a fasion too. As an example, the USA mints about $600B in currency annually, in an economy of over $6T. With the Economic Multiplier (or 'velocity of money) being at about 2.2 (the last I checked) That means that there is nearly $5T of 'virtual' money (called M2, while currency is 'M1') in our physical economy. These worlds are not as far apart as some seem to believe

SL and similar virtual worlds are taken so seriously, that some universities and even the U.S. military is using tem for learning and training. SL et.al. are so significant, that professional researchers as well as university students are doing research within the worlds for academic publication. and/or for probrietary knowledge bases.

As for scalability, LL's XMl/RPC/object-messaging system is so scalable, that it takes less than a day to add a new server. Look at all of the isands in SL. Every one of those runs on it's own server. SL may actually be getting large enough to qualify as a distributed-supercomputer.



Personally:

This is my first post to any of the SL forums, but I believe that I have found a shared intellectual home here, that I hope to be decorating with many more posts

I expect to begin posting third-party media support for my assertions soon. I already have four excerpted, attributed condensations prepared.

Any constructive criticism of my writing style will be appreciated.

Well being taken seriously as a means of making money and generating enough wealth to justify paying real world salaries are two different things. Online gaming is a Major economic force, as is the sside trade in accounts and money and objects. But there is a big difference between SL and RL in the scale of the economy and in the the available wealth. As someone pointed out, property in SL is nowhere near the the value of its real world equivalent.

I think everyone takes entertainment seriously as a business. But Saying SL justfies RL salaries for content makers I think is a bit off base. Simply put, in anu hoby an lot of hard work and talent goes unrewarded.

It's all Prokofy's fault. He set the standard when he took just 1000L$ for his "interviews" on SLH. Prokofy, does your endenturement contract have a buyout option? I need a some cheap labor for my beet farm.