Total L$ Supply (L$) 692,578,714

Here is all the data on the LindeX; https://secondlife.com/currency/market.php, read it and report back to me and quit quoting posts about other peoples opinions. Use facts to support you arguments not opinions, you are presenting yourself as an educated individual act like one. Just so you know my RL daughter is a graduate of the W.P. Carey School of Business. I'll have her contact you ingame sometime, I'm sure the both of you should have a lot to talk about.

i believe the point is that people are losing money and want the problem solved.


April 2006 Stipends Printed - L$49,935,550
May 2006 Stipends Printed - L$65,185,600

Because I paid in advance for it. Are you going to compensate everyone who paid for lifetime accounts?

I still haven't seen a good reason why I should drop what I have already paid for to make you richer. Why don't we wait it out WITH stipends and see 'if' it crashes? Theres no guarantee it will or won't crash either way. At some point, people will stop undercutting and people will buy en masse. Then, and only then, will the value of the linden be found.

is she single?

I believe the point is premium players have paid for their stipends and don't want to cut them just because the market is undercutting itself.

Yes but she is also 33 next week.

Colleges and universities are all closed for the summer, so business and finance univrsity students, not yet having the time or capital to start their own businesses and bitch about this in the real world, are getting REALLY bored. Just my guess.

Age is only in the mind, they might just hit it off.

Someone is getting their terms mixed up here.

'mudflation' is, like mentioned Raph Koster points out, a "database bloat" and refers primarily to continual increase of _attributes_ on newly introduced game content. As MMOs are mainly gear-driven, new expansions added to them over time basically make everything "bigger, faster, better" ... effectively rendering older items obsolete _but_ at the same time keeping players in the same relative spot on the power curve.

Example:

the 'best' sword of ownage costs 100 gold from NPC vendors. A regular monster drops 1 gold. Gold on ebay or similar sites costs 1 cent per gold unit. Effectively, sword is worth $1.

game expansion comes. A new, higher level brand of monsters is introduced and drops 2 gold units per monster. Players are able to generate gold twice as fast. At the same time though, a new 'best' sword is put in game, that's 2x as powerful and costs 200 gold. Keeping the effective price of the best item on the same level. While players can now have more gold, thus driving price of gold on external sites down, at the same time their expenses increase as well, in turn increasing the demand... keeping things more or less steady overall.

Effectively you have a devaluation of game currency, but without people actually becoming more or less rich.

Difference with SL? While currency devaluation occurs in similar manner (L$ loses value, merchants increase item prices in reaction to this) there is no "new NPCs" generating money at increased rate. On global economy level this is currently mitigated by new players joining and introducing their weekly stipends in the overall supply of money ... but note this does not affect amount of money available _per capita_, which actually decreases over time, as L$ loses its value. Except for these who either purchase their L$ with RL currency, or are in position to increase their in-game income by raising the prices of their goods/service to match the devaluation.

They did it once already...



Yeah, I gree, at this point it's probably best to see what effect the bsic stippend cuts will have. But PLEASE stop saying that people concerned about the loss of $L are looking to get richer. That is a big and a rather hurtfull lie. People concerned with the loss of $L ae worried that they won't be able to break even, not "get richer." And people breaking even means they can provide others with content and entertainment, which makes YOU richer. Yes, yes, they shouldn't've invested in SL since businesses fail and all that. Guess they owe you a big apology for TRYING to make this place better for everyone to enjoy. Well, by that logic, LL shouldn't've invested in SecondLife. And if they start loosing money due to people who actually pay A LOT for land (as opposed to small monthly payments), then they'll have to adjust, and YOU'LL have to be sorry for investing YOUR $72 in something. This isn't an "us or them" thing. This isn't a "rich want to get richer" thing. This is an all of us collectively getting screwed thing. Yes, even people who have invested their $72 into a game that can close down and leave them with nothing tomorrow.

The problem for me with this whole debate is that the terminologies being used seemed to be very mixed up. If anything the cocnepts being discussed here is not so much inflation or money supply, but in reality the depreciating of the L$ against the US$, which is a different kettle of fish.

I've yet to see the massive price hikes that would suggest hyperinflation within Second Life. And whilst money supply is increasing, we don't have enough data to really make any major decision on what that means to Second Life. We don't know how many L$ are in old accounts or being stashed away people, how much of that currency is liquid for example and sloshing about on Lindex.

It seems from comments elsewhere LL welcomes the depreciation of the L$ against the US$ as an economic tool. Much like how recent comments of the US Federal Reserve suggest they much prefer a weaker US$ on the currency markets.

In real life, depreciation of currency on world markets tends to be mitigated by companies who hedge their currency. Perhaps we need a mechanism in SL. I suspect also that SL will mimic RL in the sense of people taking advantage of the exchange rate to go on shopping sprees in SL. Much as people I know in the UK who are going on holidays to the US$ to buy as much consumer goods as they can as the exchange rate makes them very cheap.

Anyway a few more thoughts to add to the debate

Many people on SLExchange are clamoring for a feature to do a broad based price adjustment on all their listed products. Linden prices are already going up. The devaluation of the Linden effectively lowered all their prices, so everyone needs to compensate for their products to remain the same cost.

I, for one, am letting my older products ride the devaluation. Newer products are going to be priced about 50-100% higher though, to maintain about the same price points my other products debuted at ($3-6 USD for major games). GinT, my Tetris clone, is selling for 1999L, for example. Skeet Shoot came out at 999L when the Linden was about 270.

5 stipend days in May, 4 stipend days in April. Don't they teach math in college?

They also lost customers. Imagine losing far more by cutting it all (unless the compensate or charge less).

My products will remain the same price- they have the same value. The only value to be considered by me is the linden dollars - the exchange rate means nothing from my perspective.

Theres are 2 main groups.

Group A sees an increase of 20 L on a 100L item to be keeping the item at the same price, USD value.

Group B doesn't care about USD value.

Group A sees 'same price.' Group B sees 'price hike.'

You can't make everyone think like either group.

Group A creates content, provides land, and scripts/builds fun games for people to play. Group B runs around buying luxuries and screaming bloody murder if their stippends are threatened.

If I had to choose which group I would rather loose...
But then again, that's my opinion.

I'm in Group B. I create content. I provide land. I make things for people to play for fun.

Your definitions are flawed.

No they are not. I wouldn't care if you left SL

Too bad you just told half of group A to leave eh?

Only the half that gripes about people wanting changes to problems that affect everyone (including you). If the half of you that thinks exchange rates don't matter and don't affect anyone (and if they do, tough luck) left, and the half of you that actually cared about the SL community as a whole and provided it with content and land stayed, I'd be just fine.

Frankly, though, if both you and I left, NO ONE out there would give a you know what (other than friends... maybe... possibly...), so, um, eh *shrug*

Yep...just a younger brother/alt. You guys hit that one on the head. Sooo...how's life RBD?

Group B here. Only thing lindens are is a way to rent land to build stuff on and a shop to try to support same. Sure it's kinda nice to ocassionally make a bit extra to buy stuff I ain't making yet, however it'd be far too easy to say screw it, pack all my stuff up and just make it ofline in other software. Simple fact...most customers in SL are new folks. Removing thier stipend removed thier buying power and killed sales. Linden screwed the pooch and basically killed content creation. Got a couple new and very nice bikes I made a week ago that are NOT getting packaged and put into circulation due to this simple fact.

People just never seem to remember (or aren't even aware of) where that $L rental fee goes to or where it ends up.

Problem: your 'change' hurts me worse than the current trends. I care about the community as a whole- and that means keeping the stipends and not subsidizing failing businesses.

That depends on what this "trend" is.
Your belief is that $L does not matter, people not selling $L won't be affected, only business owners will, and after they leave, only people will be left are those who are donating their $USD to play the game for pure fun (buying a sim, giving it away sort of a deal). In the end, things will be just fine. If there is a change, basic accounts will leave, premium accounds will drop off, LL will loose revenue, and this place will die off.

My belief is that the majority of SL content is supported by the $L to $US exchange, with most people expecting to, if not pay off, at least being able to subsidise the time they spend on content creation, and the $USD they pay in tier, with their $L (either through sales or rentals), that if things crash they will one by one quit, and SL will become much smaller with fewer islands/places to live, and much less fun with less content and games, leaving only poor friebies trading with what will at that point be the equivalent of worthless monopoly money, and mega businesses like ACS that don't rely on $L (pretend the car market crashing and all you have is ford, or the software market crashing and everything is made by Microsoft. After all, it's small businesses/content creators/land owners that rely on the $L. If you hate big business and preffer the creativity of smaller ones or individuals, you should support $L even more). And if there is a change, people will gripe, some will leave, but the incentives for developers to stay will increase, which will make this place expand faster, make it more entertaining, and still be able to compensate LL for the losses through the combination of new players and more exxhanges on the market.

Fact is, neither you nor I are right, since this is speculation on the future. This hasn't happened yet. As such, there's pretty much n way to resolve this matter. Best we can do is come to an understanding of each other's concerns...
but it just REALLY peeves me when people say something like "screw those who put their own time and money into making my world more fun. It was their risk." Or "I don't care if someone else is suffering, even if the reason could have a slight chance with something affecting me directly. As long as I get mine." Just makes people sound like extremely selfish heartless bastards, you know?

P.S. I believe what I said above onl if the market does continue to decline. I don't think that will happen, since LL won't be stupid enough to allow that to happen (the market decline I mean), but it's still hurting a lot of people right now, at this minute.

I can understand your point that the exchange hurts merchants. But, at the same time, unless premium fees are reduced, or another compensation made, taking away the premium stipend is a foolish decision. One can't rip out half of a product and sell it at full price and expect everyone to go for it.

If stipends are to be removed, do it at renewal time - and cut premium charges in half. Or offer other compensation such as more teir, etc.

I realize that LL is a business and not a charity, but alot of people don't see how premiums have paid for their stipend. They only see 'free money.'

On a side note: there will always be a group "a" and a group "b." Its the balance between them that must be found.