Rarity, antiquity, and decreased supply.

I see your point.

Even in the real world, markets are manipulated, though; and not just by unscrupulous business men, but by governments, too. Grain and like goods are kept from the market to "help" the economy at the detriment of the consumer and ultimately the world market. So the "spawn rate" of RL corn isn't as free flowing as one would imagine. Then there's price fixing, cartels, monopolies, oligopolies, etc. Real world markets aren't as fluid as one would think.

Also, since I'm comparing RL to virtual economies, the industry regulators can be seen as real world "developers" of the economy, much the same way video games have developers. Is the divide that wide? I don't think so.

Not total; try to buy a Council of Wyrms large Dragon avatar. 10 of each type, released only on solstice and equinox... keeps them rare, makes the demand huge, and means [um.. I'll play it safe and not name her] can guarantee shifting all USD$800 worth of limited edition avatars in a few days. It's well done, and is really good for both the seller and the people who do get one of the avatars.

If you think there would be a big demand for a limited edition item... make one! It can and does work, and no technical controls from LL are needed. (and any such control would be trivial to cheat, since I could copy what I build *before* making it limited edition.)

As a side-note have things I won't sell, because they are *me*... like my shape. I won't let someone else wear my face. I put a lot of time and effort into making an attractive, unique appearance and I won't let that get cheapened. I'll sell my skin, and hair, and my prim attachments, and if I made the clothes I'd sell them... but not the shape.

So, a question I'm wondering, since I don't play any MMOGs; is the any notable change in the prices of things at times when there's no changes made to the game by the devs?

I'm providing gallery space on the first floor of my office building in Arena (182, 17) for an artist who is selling only one of each of her works of pop art that are available only in SL and nowhere else, including IRL. I've purchased several of her pieces myself.

I also purchased a limited edition ring at a certain jewelery store for my partner for valentine's day. There is stuff out there. Just have to look for it or, in my case, stumble upon it by accident.

I like the idea of making limited versions... and that at all kinds of thinsg we all make in SL..

I ”play” righ now with word... for ”fun”.-.. There are an exclusive handbag at my main store.. and a ladder in gold.. (the later at right side of the store).. In my head - when 10 are sold I trash them from inv... I will do that but who can be sure I do it?

BUT I would love to have it as an option in edit.. and make it serious..

/EXAKT Tina.-...

I did the same thing, an original photography (made by me).
I sell a unique "original", not released IRL or on the web, 2000L$.
I never sold it

The rare item are custom made (on command) and very very hard to buy.
I ordered some custom a few times ago, and i'm still waiting for it.
The problem is that talented ppl are busy ingame, have an irl work and don't always want to "work ingame". (try to get a difficult custom script, even for good money,...).

If you really want something unique, you'll have to think in US$ not in L$.

PS: i know i'm off-topic, but i wanted to say it anyway

I've made items as gifts that I have no intention of giving or selling to anyone else. (That would rather spoil them, I feel.)

I do think that the limited edition thing is underused in SL - not from a moneymaking point of view, but just because it makes things special. The things in my inventory that I really would not want to lose are (a) my own creations that I've not actually put out for sale or free, which is, er, quite a lot, I have folders and folders of stuff I've just got bored with and (b) unique items, like Desmond's tulips. Anything that I know I can just go out and find or buy again if I really have to is not that valuable.

The thing is, of course, that sellers are interested in building up a back catalogue of products, and if one removes items from the catalogue, that is one fewer item that someone might possibly buy in the future. Perhaps just limited versions of items (by time or number) with extra decoration or some different functions, and after that only the plain unadorned version is available.

maybe we need a game functionality for "unique" item.

IRL, a hand-made item (e.g : a painting) is trully unique.
Even a hand-made "false copy" of "la joconde" is still unique and a wonderfull piece of art, an insane time of work (to do the copy), ...

In our digital world it's too easy to copy an item, or to build "exactly the same item".
i can craft an item, make a copy, and sell the copy as "original". the "original" is still a copy and not unique.

I think alot of it depends on the game. In UO, not so much. In WoW, sort of. WoW's auction houses left player manipulation wide open. In SWG, very much so. The system provided so many variables that a certain resource could become rare within a matter of days. I have to say, I think SWG had one of the best systems. Certain objects would require certain materials to create, and all of the material had certain values assigned to density, elasticity, heat resistance etc. In order to create the best given item, you'd have to find the perfect resource, which may or may not have even spawned yet. If you used inferior materials you ended up with an inferior product. Thus, materials with close to perfect stats would be hoarded. People would put out contracts for the materials. After the material despawned, all those that hoarded the material would slowly drive up the price. Sometimes you wouldn't see a similar material for months. It was a great system. RIP SWG.

There are quite a few products that are no longer available, either because the creator has left Second Life or because they've withdrawn the product. The problem is that the rights system doesn't give you a way to trade these unless they were originally sold transferrable, and for things like vehicles they're almost always no-transfer.

As for your suggestion... there's no reason a designer can't make a limited edition release, and if they act in bad faith there's no way Linden Labs can prevent them from re-uploading the textures and re-making the content again as a new version.

So there's no reason to wait for Linden labs to do this. Make or commission your own limited edition goods and see what happens.

Checking a "limit copies" box in the attachments won't change that.

Having a way to sign objects might. You'd take your 10 copies, get those copies signed with a digital certificate, and the buyer could contact the certificate issuer to determine how many copies you'd had signed.

But that wouldn't be something Linden Labs would need to be involved in. The signature could be a no-mod no-copy script containing the serial number and a cryptographic hash that you could drop into the root prim that popped up the webpage on a touch. For clothes, the signature could be baked into the texture, on the hem, with each copy of the dress a separate upload with a different signed texture... enter the serial number into a web page and it'd pop up a picture of the dress...

I wonder if somehow Zarf Vantongerloo's inworld notary service could be used to certify limited-edition copies?

I don't think it's for technical reasons that limited items aren't popular. I think it's just that the fact you can sell unlimited copies of things is the one of the main things that make commerce easier in SL.

As has already been mentioned, only a "big name" can sell items at premium prices, limited-edition or otherwise. And having a scarce limited-edition item doesn't gain much in terms of social prestige, because any creator can make themselves a 1-of-a-kind exclusive anytime they want.

If you want a game with a pretend economy where you pretend to create stuff, then go play a game like Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies.

The fact that you don't have to pretend to make stuff to make stuff is why Second Life is Second Life and not just another pseudo-role-playing game.

You're used to fake economies. Real ones are much messier.

Neither can the real-world economy, where so much time and energy is tied up in schemes to try and recreate artificial scarcity where no such thing exists, with the result that individuals are bankrupted because someone misread an IP address and sued them for hundreds of thousands of dollars for copyright violations.

SL is really a simulation of a post-scarcity near-singularity environment, so its no wonder the economy is so hard to understand by merely-human intelligences.

Yeah, it makes you feel like you;re better than everyone else. Like we need MORE elitism in SL....

You mean to tell me that I could have transferred all this stuff to the particle generator in my living room?

Last I checked, I'm still pretending to make stuff even in SL. Stuff that has no practical use outside of SL. Crafting in VR is crafting in VR, no matter what the venue. The only difference is that you may have a little more control over your creation.



I'm sorry, I should have used the word "theories" instead of "tools." I thought the context would have made that obvious.



Singularity seems like a darwinian invention. What do you think about chaos theory?

I think what Argent was refering to was that in SWG (I presume) you simply combine two or more inventory items and they become a new item, whereas in SL you actually have creative input into what you are making.

Which brings up a point: Assuming that more powerful items are rarer in SWG, like in most games I've played, then they really have no value beyond their rarity. Items in SL, however, have value instilled by their creator which is beyond that .

I'm not quite sure if I understand. It seems like you're saying that the value is attributed to its rarity and has no utility outside of its rarity or value. Which cannot be further from the truth, particularly with weapons, armor, vehicles, spacecraft... well just about everything. In SL, I suppose you could make that comparison to clothes and attachments...

If you meant that artist uniqueness is instilled in the object, I'd be inclined to believe you except for the ease at which the object is replicated. Which brings us back to the main topic of this thread..... BTW I agree with the OP.

When I said value I meant monitary value, obviously the majority of objects in SWG are going to have some use.

With regards to the OP, I think (s)he forgets the essential fact that there are many, many times more items in SL than SWG and not evrybody is interested in the same set of items like in SWG. This makes rare items less obvious, you could walk past an item of limited availability that people would pay millions of L$ for and not pay it the slightest bit of attention if you didn't know what it was - much like in RL.

I feel it might also be worth noting that an item could be copyable, yet still rare. If only a few people own it and aren't willing to give away or sell it then someone may be inclined to offer a great deal of money for a copy based on that rarity. That person would, most likely, be disinclined to give away or sell copies simply because they had paid so much for it.

It's called a "3d printer", and yes. There's people who do build physical versions of objects built in SL.
That's your problem. I'm really making stuff in SL, stuff that's every bit as real as the stuff I make for my living in RL. If I make a website for someone I'm making something that's got no practical use outside the Internet. If I write a videogame it's something that's got no practical use outside the platform I built it for. Software is software, no matter what the venue, the only difference between a build in SL and a website in the Internet is that I've got better presentation in SL and a better scripting language in the Internet.

What they call "crafting" in Everquest is rote repetition, like playing Tetris on the easy level forever. There's zero input.

Creating stuff in SL, well, you can create anything. You don't just have "a little more control", you have control... period. There's absolutely no creative input to "crafting" in a pseudo-role-playing game, period.
I'm sorry, I don't understand the point of this "clarification". There are no economic theories for managing an information economy. Everyone from the Federal Reserve and the Patent Office down to you and I are flying blind by the seat of our pants through a rain of money.
Chaos theory was already old and boring last millennium.

Cool sounding soundbite.


...
Can I call something on a forum a soundbite??

Well, Having been a eBay supplier of MMORPG goods (before they started cracking down on IP infringement) across multiple shards in several games, I can say that isn't true either. In fact, pre-WoW, SWG was my biggest monetary source.



I agree to an extent. Partially, I think it's the marketing of the rare goods that's lacking. Also, besides visual stimulation, creations are lacking certain utility that would make them more desirable than an inferior product- Marginal analysis or the concept of opportunity cost reminds us that every time we make a choice, something else must be given up, especially in SL where making L$ is easier said than done.



This works in theory... I'm afraid that in practice the outcome may be a lot different. Would you do it if you needed to pay tier and you knew nobody would find out? Maybe not on a mass scale, but one or two couldn't possibly hurt, right? Well, then the next owner may have the same "innocent" response. It only takes one bad apple. I think that is why the majority has an inherent distrust for people.

Wanna go check what I originally said? It wasn't that they have no monetary value, I was claiming that their monetary value is derrived almost exclusivly from their rarity.

If you ask me, the marking for most (all?) products in SL is lacking. ...oh damn. I just realised what I should have done my final on rather than what I have.

Nothing wrong with things just being there to look pretty, adding any functionality to some things would actually be superfluous. I'd like more things that actually do stuff in SL though, everything seems a bit static.

Oh, I totally agree, that example is unlikely to work in practice (though it could, or it would be a pretty rubbish example). Just felt like adding it as a commentary on the request for a hard coded "limited versions" feature.

Well then, what's to stop me from using a "3d printer" to make stuff out of SWG? I've also seen people make physical versions of the stuff in SWG ;p



Right. Part of the appeal is making the world "believable." The same way you think you are making real objects in SL, I'm sure there are poor saps in other MMOGs that think the same thing. I don't know how you can say that SL is the only platform in a loosely based MMOG category that has had success in this area.



I'm sorry, what is the difference between other "pseudo-role-playing" games and this pseudo-role-playing game? I think you've pigeon-holed-yourself.



You've managed to insert a new term into the context of the argument-- Information economy. Good on you. I won't waste any more of my time on circular debate.





Sorry, I'm a retro geek, not a new age geek ;p