Employment Opportunities

It really is boiling down to more and better tools isn't it? "If you build it they shall come."
Goodnight all

Yumi, I'd really appreciate it if you would stop trying to paint those in SL who are here for the pure, consumer fun of it as losers. It's rather mean-spirited and I'm sure no one appreciates it.

We have all payed for entertainment. Ever last one of us, I say with no fear of contradiction. Books, movies, board games, buying a TV...

Paying for entertainment does not make one any form of lazy or incompetent. I know of no one who belives that it does, save perhaps for you.

The LindeX and any other L$ for real-life money exchange makes SL the perfect entertainment spot on the 'net: You can pay for what you want to use, and pay for it alone. You don't have to maintain an account with monthly/quarterly/yearly payments if you don't care to, you don't have to spend any more money on SL than interests you to do so. That's one of the most consumer-empowering things I've ever seen, second to an an evironment that allows any consumer to easily become a producer should they want to, with no real barriers to market entry.

This idea that the consumer is somehow inferior is utter rubbish, I beg you to reconsider your stance on it.

Yes Jonas, this is why they are called Suckers..

Somebody comes along, gets the knowledge for "Free",
then turns around and utilizes their new skill for profit.

Didn't Bill Gates do this to all the hippies who dished out
free ideas, products, etc? I just love altruistic people.
They are the biggest suckers on the planet....

This is probably one of the best land/econ posts ever. I've never understood why so many people seem to feel like buying L$ is "losing the game" and selling L$ is "winning". I hear a lot of this type of sentiment when I talk with newer residents in-world. It's something that maybe should be better addressed.

I know the answer for the most part but need some backup to present to other people.

Your traffic for example 2400 does not mean 2400 people have been to your land/store.
But rather maybe 40 people have been that day and each of them has spent 1-2 hours at your store.

I believe there are even more complex issues at hand. Like if some-one logs out whilst on your store you gain all the 'traffic' they have accumulated from other land and store vistits upto logging off at your store.

Can some-one point me in the direction of some kind of breakdown of how this works that I may present to a 3rd person.


Many Thanks

I 've actually started a service exactly as Barbarra Blair has said. However this idea had been in the making for about 3 weeks. It is a in- world job listings service, that provides help wanted and for hire listings. I have taken note of alot of suggestions on the forums and some are in line with the current business plan. I hope to be able to eventually implement a lot of the suggestions made but only see it being fully developed with the help of better group tools.
Stop by JOB FINDER in Dasom to get a better idea of the service I'm offering.

sounds like a plan...just may later on today ty for the info!

Yeeeeep! Please don't misunderstand me here! I'm not the one doing that, and it isn't my point of view. I'm only reporting on experiences I've had with others in SL.



Well, you haven't met the folks I met when I was a newbie. Not the helpers - just other newbies and people I met around (mostly in the sandboxes). As I've mentioned before, around them I was told that buying L$ was "not an option" when I pointed out to people they could do it to get stuff, told that anyone who did was "sad", and was actually mocked by three people for being a Premium member (one who actually said "ditch the Premium membership, why can't you just earn the money?"

Presumably this is because they've all been brought to SL by the "you can make real money here!!" adverts. Result: a strong anticonsumer culture which new people are getting dropped right into.



Well, it's not really my stance, but it is - unfortunately - the way things turn out in SL. A user who creates will typically have a universally better - and cheaper - experience than one who doesn't, no matter how much they spend on L$. I didn't make SL that way; it's just what I've observed.

For each person who spends more than 5 minutes on your parcel, the parcel scores points equal to the % of their time on SL that day, that they spent on the parcel. (A "day" being midnight to midnight, SLT.) So, if someone stays in your parcel for 10 minutes, and played SL for 20 minutes that day, you score 50. If they stayed for 15 minutes, you score 75. If they stayed for 5, you score 25. If they stayed for 4, you score nothing because they did not spend 5 minutes on your parcel. Logging out on a parcel does not generate any dwell, nor does it transfer any dwell from other locations to you.

Because the "businessman" role is the one one that Linden labs talks up all the time, so newbies get an idea that SL is an economic game like Risk or Monopoly. It's not, it's a general role-playing game platform, like Steve Jackson's GURPS is in the tabletop game world... and there's lots of other roles people can have, they just need to know about them.

As my post said I would have to think about it, but honestly I'd probably carry on.

You're peeve of being bombarded is one of the reasons for the 1:1 classes I charge (and it's nothing like a living wage) - it's a psychological thing I think. They're paying for a clearly defined service, so they appreciate that there are limits to it. As a mentor they think you're a volunteer there to help them (correct) and see to assume that it's a full time commitment on your part (so wrong).

well i'm sorry you met a bunch of narrow-minded people when you were a newbie, but is it possible you're taking anecdotal evidence just a little too far?

i agree with Jillian. There is no *right* way to engage in Second Life. Make money, lose money, buy L$, sell L$, IGNORE L$... whatever makes you happy.

ok, so you met some people who felt that they could tell you the right way and wrong way of doing things. Well, this is Second Life. You get to ignore them and make your own decisions -- which you do. But stop telling the forums how everyone in SL thinks.

*claps*
I know someone working on that.

"Improved Camping" technology sounds good to me; turn campers into movie extras, providing zombies for your goth sim, pedestrians for your city street, diners or chatters for your club/cafe, alien drones for your spaceship, or whatever suits you. Some of these would require costumes, so if that's what you need, provide a freebie costume, or take it out of the first ten minutes. It would multiply the benefits of current campchairs (drawing crowds, generating dwell) while adding value to builds that would not otherwise have considered current campchair technology. Some people might even hire on as genuine NPCs interacting with visitors.

Some residents might be willing to pay for non-sex escorts, as well: paid personal actors to bolster a specific fantasy they're roleplaying.

Why isn't there scarcity of resources?

An intuitive way to extract prims from the landscape, for instance, might help to create "jobs" as well as open up a whole new market.

No danger of anyone accusing you of being an altruist, RachelBonkers Diversion, (maybe a half-true-ist... but not an all-true-ist). The knowledge you give away for free here certainly won't profit anyone.

--
Jopsy -- I'm not a Jonas alt. I've never claimed to have paid for my stipend.
Someone else does that.

Becasue it would limit SL as a rapid-development platform/user made world sort of thing and force everyone to become part of the "economic game". SL's strength is in not having to be anything the individual doesn't want it to be.

Frankly, it seems that everyone is already a part of the "economic game" whether they like it or not. The way I see it, there's two points to this "platform," socializing and economics.

I'll admit, the idea doesn't fit the "feel" of SL, however the concept wouldn't change...at least not drastically. I guess you could liken it to FDR's "New Deal."

edit: it would probably beat chair camping as a starting proffession.

If I wanted to mine or otherwise do automated bullshit in order to *create* I would have picked another game.

Besides - why should I have to mine for a resource I've already bought and own? If I own the land - I own the prim allowance that goes with it..

Again - if I wanted to play any of those type of strategy games, there area many I would have chose. I chose SL to create, and to do so I pay for what I use - playing John Henry diggin up da prims with my trusty sledge gets away from creating and into useless tasks.

And without people creating - you don't have jack in second life.

I think sometimes you 'great economic minds' need to remember that your precious L$ is only worth something if someone wants to SPEND it on something.

I tried one of those sort of games for about five minutes once. That's about as long as I could chop wood for before I thought 'f@#k this'. I'd hate for anything this banal to be introduced to SL.

How can you even discuss the economy when there is no such thing?

In SL:
you don't need to eat,
you don't need to drink,
you don't need to rest or live anywhere,
you don't need to move around (since you can fly and instantly teleport yourself wherever),
there is no inherent comfort or fun factor in anything your avatar might do,
you don't need to use or refine resources in order to build or produce anything.

How could there be employment opportunities or an economy?

Actually, my reading your posts for some time suggests that is your stance. CrystalShard did what so many do when confronted with the question "how do you make L$ in SL" - she offered up options. The option to buy L$ was offerd up in the spirit of "if that doesn't appeal, there's LindeX" kind of way. Hardly judgemental, and an understandable point of view considering her interest and success in making salable toys and gadgets.

You were the one to paint it as the option for losers. It's my observation that you do that quite a bit.

I'm willing to take you at your word that you do not actually feel that way about folks buying L$. Unfortunatly you are definately perpetuating that bogus idea by forever bringing it up and trying to suggest such negative intent at every turn. SL is not an us-against-them sort of game. It's not even a game, in the strictest sense.

Winning and losing aren't relevant - it's a spot on the 'net to come to for socialising or playing all kinds of games or living out a little fantasy.

It's also a good place to privde the toys and props for those games and fantasies - and get payed a little for providing it. A few have even proven you can make a full blown living using SL - but that doesn't make them the "winners", it just makes them successful at something they wanted to do. Thus thier success does not make anyone else the "loser".

If goods are being traded, you have an economy, I'd say.
And yes you use resources to build or produce something. For one, labour (human capital) is a factor of production and a commodity. Land, virtual or not, is a resource. More broadly, ideas, skills, talent, and creativity are resources.

Here's a good primer--

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828

Another good resource that deals with the social and economic aspects of MMOs--

http://terranova.blogs.com/

There is also an article in this months Wired magazine about MMOs (of which an entire article was written on a certain SL "enquirer" site) that includes an article on MMO economics by the above paper's author, edward castronova.