Simple economy fix - LL, are you listening?

Oh noes SL costs money !

And what have they achieved by trying to accomplish their goals? A failure that does not pay for itself.

Marketing.... given the tiny amount of the 168,000 people that play who do make thousands a year, anyone can see that is basically a lie.

Anyone should be able to achieve the goals of SL. The simple fact that most never do is a testament to where SL goes wrong. A company which prioritises tasks on the basis of what people feel like rather than what is needed, where success is measured by "spreading the love" is hardly a capitalist organisation. It seems like the vision and the reality are very far apart.

Lewis

I never expect to play the game for free - thats what basic accounts do, but that's another story.

Your signature says that you buy islands. What a surprise. You've got plenty of money, no wonder you're against anything that might hurt your precious 'investment'.

Lewis

Well, you can't expect people all around the globe to be on SL 24/7, now can you?

I spend maybe 3-4 hours per week in SL, on average. I used to spend a lot more, but RL got busy lately. Lets say that 5 hours per week is the average, though. Further, lets say maybe 10% of those 170K residents are alts, so the real number is more like 150K. There are 168 hours in a week, so I would expect, at any one time, if all 150K users were "Active" (at 5 hours/week), there would be about 750,000 man-hours per week of logged in users.

I don't know what the actual daily average is, but for that scenario, that's only 4464 users online all the time. The real average is probably half that, so we can probably assume about half the 150K users don't come on, or so infrequently to not matter.

Adjust the numbers to fit reality (daily average simultaneous users, total # of hours per week), and it seems that SL is pretty damn healthy to me.

- Jon

I appreciate the correction thank you FLip.

What goals ?

If you mean "make money off SL" then I have to repeat that SL costs money, overall. LL has to take money from residents to pay for electricity, bandwidth, salaries, etc... This I think we agree on.

This fact means that the total amount of money that comes out of SL and goes to the residents is negative, thus not everyone can make money off SL, ever.

When LL manages to get SL sponsored by other people than its residents, then, maybe everyone can hope to make a little money off SL. Besides, not everyone is interested in working hard enough in this virtual world / game / whatever it is to reverse the tendency (cost of SL) and actually manage to get some of the residents' money. I never expected to be able to do that, I just did what I liked to do in SL and it happened almost by itself. Maybe you should try to do it, too.

Lewis

yes if you have the money you can accomplish much. its called a free market capitalistic economy/society Dear god I never ever ever thought I would say these words, but, when itcomes to you - Jamie Bregman is (gulp) right.

YA RITE !

Don't get me wrong, I really wish I did.

The other aspect I don't believe your seeing Lewis is that part of the Second Life plan is to have 1000's of programmers and artists around the world, build this into whatever it is going to be. To pay for them to do it all themselves would cost millions of dollars in employees, etc.

The talented people that are helping BUILD Second Life do not spend their time doing what they do for FREE. They have spent years learning their craft.

Figuring out a way to get as many talented people working in this game for "FREE" is one of the brilliant concepts the Lindens have implemented.

Lewis, I can't tell if you're coming or going. Can you?

Anshe Chung built a virtual empire out of USD $10.

So anything is possible.

MY GOD! Boliver actually agreeing with me on something.

This truly is an extraordinary event!!

A proposition: If it works, projects like SL could save the planet.
The question: Earning money at a virtual job?

Good grief! This is a rather impotant proposition to become sidetracked from. Optimistically, this project becomes the future economy where a living wage does not disproportiantely upset the resource based natural economy.

Pessimistically, this project fails and the iceburgs sink my children's homes.

Last chance? Count your chickens people.

If you haven't yet, you ought to:

http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/06/1929205&tid=1

Okay, you consider SL a failure; THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL HERE? Please leave us in peace already, kthxbye.

"Anyone should be able to achieve the goals of SL." Huh? The great thing about SL is you SET YOUR OWN GOALS. LL doesn't set them for you. You're obviously looking for a game, and you're obviously barking up the wrong tree. Just go back to TSO so you - and we - are happy.

Regards,

-Flip

Actually Lewis, I do think anyone with sufficient RL funds who wants to take a chance at possibly making a RL living could do EXACTLY that.

Land Markups right now are on the order of 300-400%.

If you were willing to settle for 200% and undercut current "Land Resellers" I am sure you could be very profitable.

Or you could come up with the next game (Like the maker of Tringo)

Or you could find something that would be valuable to the residents of SL that SL is missing, and make a product.

It's really no different than Real Life Lewis.
Either:
1. You have to have money to make money
OR
2. You have to have a really great idea, product, or service.

As such, there are TONS of ways to make money in SL, but, considering your view on SL being a game rather than a platform, I doubt very seriously you have entertained any of these ideas.

As such, I do not believe the failure is with LL's marketing of Second Life, I personally believe the failure is on your part to look past SL as 'just a game'
Wherever you end up & whatever you decide to do

Good Luck & best wishes,

Jessica

Check RL. Only 5% of people are independant, and less then 3% are affluent.

You see, good and bad attitudes work in SL, as well as in RL. Only about 2-3% of people bother cultivating attitudes and mindsets that allow them to conduct a successfull business or successfully invest in one. The rest won't invest or start a business unless they have assurances that they won't have to go out of their way to do it, and that it's impossible to fail. They never see that opportunity, or are scammed by someone who knows that that's what they want to see. Meanwhile, the real businessmen and investors don't wait for every light to turn green. They go while knowing that they might lose. And many of them make it to the other side where they are making decent money. Then they get to hear from all of the people who "Can't" do it because the lights aren't all green, and how it's so unfair that others get to make a profit when they don't.

SL promises you the potential of making money. They do not guarantee it. (I personally shy away from anyone who claims that anyone can make money easily. It's usually a bold-faced lie.)

I'm not there yet, but you won't hear me complaining about someone else making an honest profit. My congratulations to you, one and all!

Lewis, I have a simple question for you. How many books have you read in the last year on business, investing, or sucessfull mindsets?

Catnip

can anyone point me to one bit of evidence that LL is in financial trouble? I laugh when I see comments like this with no merrit to base it on.

I have a simple answer for you. None.

There is a real life that I need to live, not an online one. Circumstances just don't allow me to risk giving up everything to chase a virtual |dream. Should I ever find myself out of work, with spare money (which is unlikely), then I may consider doing something about it.

Investing is gambling under another name, and for every person that 'wins', many others 'lose'. I consider it unethical.

"Positive thinking" is only self-deceit. It doesn't change the way things ARE, it just fools you into thinking that they are different than they actually are. The only people that win with postive thinking are the people who make their fortune selling books, tapes and 'self help' courses to mugs who think it will actually do something good for them.

Jessica stated in her post before yours that "land markups are 300-400%". So basically once you have bought one island, cut it up and sold it, you have made possibly $3000 pure profit for what could be just a couple of day's work and a risk. Spend 1/3 of that on another island, you still have around $1500 profit, and the chance of more if your second one sells. Now you tell me how that takes skill or talent, rather than just money? I would say pretty much anyone could terraform something, hack it up, and sell it. I know I certainly could.

Lewis

/108/07/96578/1.html

Mentioned in the last post on page 1 and taken from the article referred to: "For now, the company isn't profitable, and it's not clear when it will be, said Catherine Smith, Linden Lab's director of marketing. "

Lewis

A note to you lewis. There are a ton of players in other time zones, a ton of people that dont play daily, people that work in r/l etc. You wont ever see a ton of people logged on because of those reasons as well as some residents are alts for other people so how do you contest that. That is a fact!!!

Fact of the matter is this happens in r/l as well as SL to say its not a real job is kind of out there on the edge of being looney - delusional. Real Estate exists in r/l like it does in SL. Its a viable source of income in the real world as well as the virtual community where real estate does exist so you just debunk it. Remember that these people buy islands terraform and build them up and have alot more options to do so now. So they are using a viable skill and talent! Your also state finding it unethical that some people can do more then others. (Checks for holes in space-time continium around lewis to see what parallel dimension he is living in). That statement u made again out there on the edge. Frankly it exists in the real world we can all do a job in the real world as we all cant do a job in SL. It takes a skill set some people being naturally talented or some people learning it. Having people work at a trade they do and then not letting them make profit makes no sense. The only way the basis of what you originally said at the start of the post here is if content creation becomes completely free and sold for free while getting rid of every last linden. We end up with a tedium that just is the Sims online and we all know wtf that game was like. Now seriously look at SL in this world not in your own little happy communists styled Carl Marx type of eutopian society!

I don't need to contest it because the figures are entirely unproveable.

I don't know how many are alts but if even 5% of players have alts (my guess is its more) then that is 8450 players that aren't actually "real players", just duplicates of existing ones.

I would guess that during busy times a lot more people would be logged in than the 'dead times', however the figure rarely changes much - which would indicate that rather than the coincidence of one person logging out the same time that someone else logs in all through the day, people don't actually log in or out much at all.

The only way that anyone can really know is for LL to release actual figures of paid accounts v basic accounts, how many log in on an average 24 hour period, and averaged over a week. But I don't see them being very willing to divulge that information for exactly the same reason EA refuse to release the figure of people still playing TSO - the truth is dangerous to release.

Lewis

Which part of "any idiot can terraform with little talent or time spent" are you having difficulty understanding?

Lewis

not any idiot can terraform you can load up your own textures now and edit the raw data of land we will see alot more skill in terraforming and land masses of estates (sims/islands) in the future or havent you kept up on updates?!