lemonade sellers to Businesses: SL economy to scale?

<<Fizik slapped my hand, and has told me to delete this thread.>>

I suggest that we'd find ourselves in a game.

Why?

Is there a new Linden?

This is amazing. Which question did Fizik find threatening? Or was he simply following orders too?

It was a good post. Fizik is just feeling out of sorts because his post got the heave ho to Off-Topicville.

The deletion of this smells like the FIC, don't dare suggest development in the economy, it threatens their current sheltered positions.

I just don't get it. They were good questions. Why would a professional like Fizik demand their deletion? Why did River bother to tell us that it fell that way instead of just deleting the post? Smells more like River playing us for amusement.

Uh, no, Khamon, it's obviously a vast FIC conspiracy.

Hello,


1) An issue he raised was a contentious issue regarding the European laws of VAT online gaming and MMORPGs. As of 2003, all companies supplying Europe with content/gaming/morpg have to collect and pay the European union VAT.

They don't pay, we pay, they just collect it.

This means every player in SL who is part of the European Union, paying between 17.5% and 22% extra on top of their monthly fees.

If this sounds crazy, here is a link to what happened over at SOE

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/everquest/news_6070864.html

I asked him to delete the thread, as it was not an opinion shared by the Spacethinkdream team, it was his personal opinion.


2) Also, I asked River to expand on his ideas and resubmit them in a much broader context. River is working on that now, he will post a pdf of his findings etc.

Erm you don't pay the evil, faceless EU the VAT - you pay your national government. Some try to blame the EU for VAT but it's a little partisan and doesn't actually add up.

It just affects all citizens of all countries in the EU.

TSO also charges VAT to EU players. It's the law afaik.

However I think the way it was done in TSO was that you paid it when you paid in a European currency. The US has sales taxes too - don't online games and things qualify for it?

Why is it crazy? It's just a sales tax.

I'd also love to know when people are posting not in a personal capacity. I certainly presume that everyone posting is doing it for themselves, not for their employer.

Are your comments also company policy? Are we to presume that your company has right of centre politics?

Thanks for the clarification and the link Fizik. That's an interesting and confusing issue that needs some discussion; but I can see where you wouldn't want the stated opinions presented in any way that might link them to Spacethinkdream.

I'll look forward to reading the paper and the subsequent postings.

FIC was originally an acronym for Feted Inner Core, a term coined by Prokofy Neva to describe a collective of Second Life accounts whose owners worked closely with Linden Lab and therefore received preferential treatment and weilded great influence over the development and operation of the project. Philip calls it an "interesting myth."

Am I missing something here? Is this some sort of master/slave thing? Does anyone else wipe out their postings if you and your 'team' have problems with them?

I presume he is an employee. If think spacethinkdream is a rl marketing agency.

Avalon. and Spacethinkdream are owned and operated by a commercial company. The names Fizik Baskerville, River Dusk et al. are owned and are registered trade marks of those aforementioned company.


Also, River has some great new ideas that are about helping new designers create a business that 'could' compete with themore established SL businesses. Therefore, I want to make sure these ideas are seen and discussed etc. Hence, why I asked him to create a pdf. and expand on it.

If you've ever seen our clothing tutorials, we are planning on creating a pdf similiar to those. They will be about 'in world business ideas' etc. Too date, and from the emails we have had, our tutorials have helped over 23,000 people (total downloads)

Considering the history of SL forum "discussions" related to Avalon, it's perfectly reasonable for Fizik to assume that we will consider anything he posts as a corporate policy, goal or objective.

Well this predates me and I've been in SL for 9 months. Most people will never have heard of him or his company I imagine.

I've heard of him and them but don't know any of the history.