The Rampant Anti-Business Climate in SL

Well alrighty then. I guess reading comprehension isn't your strong suit then

edit: I guess that sounded a bit snide. My advice (and you can take it or not) is to not assume that your economics classes will be of much benefit in SL. Feel it out for a while, experiment, talk to successful business owners, and be receptive to learning things... don't assume you already know it (and ignore 99% of everything Prokofy says).

Prokofy, it'd be easier if you list the things you *don't* want to complain about. I'm sure it's a much shorter list.

I wonder if the forums should be renamed the prokofys?

if it helps clarify things, separate economic theory from business reality. The two are different in RL and in SL. Economic theory is making progress at embracing human psychology and irrationality, but it has a long way to go, and every time someone thinks they have a model that works, they land face first in the mud (Long Term Capital Management anyone? hell, that bunch of economics nobel laureates lost ungodly amounts of money)

Yes, the basic laws of supply and demand apply in SL. Yes, a lot of the same business problems from RL exist in SL: how to price, how to get adequate distribution, how to capture market share and mindshare, how to deal with increasing competition, how to compete against low-end knockoffs, how "product" (off-the-shelf repeat production) vs "service" (consulting/customization) you want your business to be, etc.

And as Chip said, many of the dynamics of RL do NOT apply: "living requirement purchases" like food/clothing/shelter/medicine, inventory and supply chain costs, physical manufacturing costs for duplication, time-based decrepitude of products (there is no wear and tear in SL), etc etc

--

As a business person, I will provide loss-leaders, even free products at times, if it enhances my competitive position in the market. If it hurts someone, well that's competition. Business is not babysitting. With every change, some rise, some fall.

Excessive amounts of high-quality freebies will damage existing parts of the economy and force the formation of new business models, that is true. Until the masses get bored with those freebies and demand new ones... and who is going to pay for the time to create all these uber-quality freebies?

This does not mean I would welcome excessive predatory pricing by market incumbants either, but we are FAR from an anti-trust problem in SL right now.

Interfacing with influencers? This is not a new phenomenon. Costs of sales in RL is EXPENSIVE. And in SL, with its marketing and distribution inefficiencies, it is a pain in the ass. A smart startup seeks out innovative ways to generate demand and shorten sales cycles, and this includes hitting the key influencers in a market and doing whatever discounting/incentivizing is required to get that influencer on board.

I could go on but this post is far too long already...

Government paid incentives in free economies is pro-business.

Tax credits and financial assistance programs have existed for hundreds of years to encourage citizens to behave in a way that benefits a society.

It only makes sense to encourage hosts to entertain the huge percentage of residents that don't own land are in SL for the socialization and entertainment.

And while I support government incentives, they should never become a host's sole source of income. When you cross that line, it becomes a dependent welfare program.

I agree with Johnny Ming that the event support system could be looked at as a financial incentive to help clubs entertain the masses. But they were so gamed, that they ended up just being another statist engine for oligarchs: big clubs got the constant Linden grants if they were established, whereas new and little clubs often never got an answer from busy Lindens with their applications. This enabled big clubs to remain on the circuit and trap the avs to keep the high traffic and perpetuate themselves -- keeping high traffic is easy to do when you have a steady supply of event grants and you are rewarded for high traffic by getting in the popular list, which of course ensures you always go on having high traffic merely by being in the clickable list, even if you content starts to wane. That's one of the problems of combining game-type incentives like dwell and popularity lists with a "real" economy.



Answer: RL computer industry and mom and pop, who pay for all the college kids and highly-paid tekkies on the game lol. And the Lindens, who pay the stipends and things like the free-4096.

Do you ever stop making sweeping generalizations? Are these generalizations ever correct? Didn't your parents spank you enough when you were younger? When can we look forward to you leaving?

Ardith, if mom and pop aren't paying the bills for you, and you are not in the RL IT/computer/Internet business like a lot of people in this game (because of the requirements of those skills to succeed), and you fall in another category, well...so far I can only see there's one of your ROFLMAO.

Sure, there might be people from all walks of life on here, people who are nurses or doctors or lawyers and who also design skins or animations on the weekends and rake in Lindens. I realize that. I'm saying that most of the people who post, and who make pronouncements, and who run high-profile businesses in the game, tend to be in the computer industry.

Proving, once again, that you have no idea what you're talking about. I ran small events frequently during the days of the prior system, and knew many people who did. We were not FIC, as you will ignorantly claim, nor were we scipterati tekkie-wikkie anything. When I first arrived, trivia was a big thing in game and many people ran games. So long as the applications were made before the event (no less than two days) none of the other trivia hosts had problems getting the event funding. Primarily, this is because the event grants were given out with almost no verification or validation of the event. In fact, the exact opposite situation was observed in world. The established clubs often did not bother obtaining Linden funding because of its low value. This is in direct contrast to the newer clubs, who viewed the event funding as a way of freely advertising their club while making a relatively modest profit.

Oh... wait... now I've contradicted Prokofy. How will he backpedal?

There's nothing to backpedal. The established clubs by older players are the most successful, they are on the leader boards. Go look. You will not find any 30-day newbs on that list LOL.

I ran a smaller club with events that weren't sexay avatar contests so I know what when into events grants and I know some had the system set up and working for them efficiently week after week because they had their Lindens trained, I guess LOL. But I didn't, and some of my applications, fully filled out, even for legitimate events, never even got answers. Yes, they weren't very much. But quite a few people, old and new, did bother with them and howled when they were taken away. You seem to be saying "I can extrapolate from my own personal experience" and insist you are right based on your little anecdotal experiences. But I'm not doing that with mine. Instead, I'm reading the forums here, that's all. And I'm seeing people like Jenna Fairplay or Patrick Playfair howling about the changes to events, grants, dwell, etc. and they have had huge clubs. They may not be "older" in your book but they are sure older to me because I only got here in September.

IF there are newer club owners that are successful, they are a year old, not newbies. Or perhaps you are seeing some new alts of people who were banned and came back.

I think you might be surprised, PN.

A lot of the college students here aren't riding for free thanks to their parents... Plenty of us rely on scholarships, savings, and jobs.

A whole hell of a lot of us aren't in the IT/computer/internet buisness. This includes content creators. Off the top of my head I can think of major content creators -clothing makers, prefab builders, vehicle makers, scripters, texture artists, etc - who either are or are in college to become writers, teachers, photographers, city planners, architechs, military people, artists, etc. And I don't have a very big or unique social circle.

I think the lines between IT/computer and the modern-day business of art and architecture have become quite blurred. Without the use of 3-d computer modeling and great facility in using the Internet and computers, you couldn't be in those fields of art and architecture today for the most part.

Perhaps you are right. We have no way of accessing those numbers. My impression is that a lot of the people posting here are in the computer industry, whether fulltime or moonlighting. Again, you're citing your small circle but I'm looking at posters.

That's splitting hairs, PN... I type on a computer too, but that doesn't mean I'm an IT person because of it. I could write on stone wall with charcoal if I had to. You can draw and make blueprints without computers. You can't fix a computer without a computer to fix.

My circle includes a vast amount of forumites, by the way. I'm secificly refering to several of the people you decry, albiet it's not my place to out which ones are which.

What's really scary about this wrong-headed and pigheaded post is that Dianne thinks that just because someone criticizes communism, and cites some RL holdovers from communism, that they are somehow pro-Bush. What a terrible cliche and what an excellent example of the Chomsky problem on college campuses today. I didn't vote for Bush, and I oppose communism LOL. The two are compatible.

I don't call everyone fucktards, it's just the 6 or so who always slam me in posts needlessly, using little logic or rhetoric to advance their points.

I'm claiming that if the SL economy continues to be as hobbled as it is now with anti-business sentiment and anti-business constraints (of the order of the crappy group land tools or the interference in events posting, etc.) it will go the way of all other socialist experiments in mankind's history. Why does it always take ever-fresh victims and mass graves to keep proving this point? Remove human freedom in the name of providing human security or human betterment, and you end up with neither, and merely the loss of freedom.

OK, since you're more technically proficient than me, I can never find the mechanism for posting forum posts despite repeated scanning, post a forum poll where everyone can answer anonymously whether they are in the IT/computer/communications industries or in non-IT. Thank you.

This here is a textbook example of a rhetorical technique known as "missing the fucking point."

Wait... you previously claim that your generalization is based on the entire forum, but you've never actually conducted a poll? It's doubtful you've personally spoken with everyone on the forum about their RL occupation. So what evidence lead you to erroneously believe that content creators and tekkiw wikkies are all spoiled college students?

Oh yeah... the usual Prokofy Neva brand of uninformed dickery.

Well, YOU run a poll then? Because for some reason I'm just not seeing the damn polling option on my UI.

Honestly, this is what I think SL is really about:

Middle-Aged Stay-At-Home Female Part-Time/Low-Wage Workers

VERSUS

20-Something Male College Students with Help from Mom & Day and High-Tech Part-Time Work

I honestly think those are the major demographics of SL, and certainly the major demographis of those who post on the forums.


This is my very informal take on SL. SL is not about the age-old "Fathers and Sons" story, i.e. Turgenev, it's about "Mothers and Sons". Middle-aged women who like to play dress-up, dollhouse, bingo, etc. and design clothes and 20-something males who like to design weapons and vehicles.

The majority of players are female, and I'll bet the demograhics tend to be above 20. Where there are male players, I'll bet they tend to be in the 20s.

Linden Labs can correct me on this.

I know quite a few people on a personal level from the forums. They don't fit into your demographic assessment. And no, this is an insult, a slam or anyhting. I just think you forgot about us yuppies.

Neither one applies to me, but I wouldn't let that stop you from creating a stereotype.

It's right under the option that says "post a poll" below the forum window. I'll not do your research for you. In the future, I suggest you actually do research before claiming something as fact.

And how would anyone grow a popular club business in only 30 days?

Anyway, why do you even look at the leader boards? They're completely meaningless. The Net Worth board is topped by holding accounts for currency exchanges and players who have bought large amounts of L$ to conduct other business in SL.

As for the ratings-related boards, why are players with little to no building skill rated top and the best builders have almost no ratings? All it indicates is that the top-rated in any particular category has been very social in the past six months.

Dear Prokofy Neva,

As per your request in regards to said correction, we have consulted our statisticians. They ran the numbers through a "computer", and the results are as follows:

"There are all too many heedless, hedonistic, and hectoring 20-somethings with really iffy senses of morality, no common sense or common courtesy, and a really, really spotty exposure to Western Civ."

As for the specific age/gender relationship; we were about to compile the numbers but our "computer" was defaced by a hectoring 20-something.

Yours Truly,

Leon Linden

ROFL!!! Damn you panda!!!

***hands panda a tshirt for making me laugh yet again***

That means that to start in some business where you compete with the freebies that are available, you have to create something really unique and special. Something that is worth more than L$0 or L$1.

That's good for SL if you ask me.