Stipend Rate Drop should be reflected with price changes

Hey all,

I recently noticed the Stipend change to the flat 50L per week rate for basic members. I don't know why the change was inacted or when it was implimented, but this makes it extremely hard for new basic members to gain money to do anything in game without gaining money through other means.

I know the exchange rate is 1000L to $1, but this stipend does not represent anything near real world earnings for anyone. 50L is 5 cents US.

I believe a flexible exchange rate should be implimented in order to reflect changing Stipend policies and to help people vending services to better reflect pricing based on the exchange rate and Stipends.

For example, I have a friend who is trying to save up for a Tiger AV. It costs 1000L. As a new member, he has 250L and will gain 50L a week. He's also been finding places that give out raffle give-aways, but this isn't increasing his income in game that much. Perhaps he'll get double that per week if he's lucky. This means it will take him nearly 2 months just to get the AV. When I first got into SL, it took me a week to get enough money for an AV and a ton of other things thanks to the rating to stipend correlation.

With the rising cost of ratings, even re-implimenting this system would limit users severly. A rating costs 25L last I checked, and even if 1 additional point per week gave you 50L, it would still be hard to gain anything.

The only way to solve this issue is to have a flexible exchange rate for vendors to base prices off of. Now with this monthly payment, it seems to me that the rate is closer to a 100L to $1.

I may not be informed fully of the new changes to Stipends and such, but as I see it now, it seems very prohibitive. Comments and such would be greatly apreciated.

The rate right now is about 1000L to $4.00. And, 50L is about $.20.

I agree you've raised many troubling issues. If you do searches on this forums on this issue, you'll see loads of threads already on this subject. Like the thread called "What about the people with no talent?"

When it is this fierce a disincentive coming into the game, with a measly $50 and no readily apparent way of making money, I'd have to conclude they don't want you in the game. That would be my bet. Unless you are willing to apprentice to oldbies in a harsh guild system, become a sex escort, Tringo til you're blind, or spend days in frustrated, sleep-deprived picky work trying to master the crafts on your own.

If you thought skilling your sim in the Sims Online was dumb, try typing the same 3 intricate 6 decimal point numbers into blocks of wood about 60 times to make a big deck, messing up as you go.

My advice is this, odd as it may seen given what I just said: get the premium, not the basic. Get two, they're small. That's $500 in the box then, not $50. And you get 512 land privilege to buy at $512, so buy that, sell it for a big profit -- up to 10 times as much if you're lucky, and get yourself set up.

Then you will still have to face the issue of whether to be a sex escort of whether to fiddle with Photoshop til 4 a.m. but at least you will be doing that in kewl outfits with kickass vehicles

I agree with Prok. Upgrade. Yes, $50L is measly, but a one time $9.95 fee is pretty darn cheap as well.

Exactly.

LL is actually loosing money every day a 'basic' account logs in, after the first month. The same amount of bandwidth / server power / etc is used, but it's not being payed for.

In other words, you're already getting to play the game as close to free as earthly possible without actually being free. What more can you honestly expect?

As a vendor, i have not decreased prices for my items, but I have staved off planned increases.

Yeah, a $9.95 basic account is an infinite loss leader.

One way to look at it, over a year, 50*50=2500. That's 10$ right there in just l$ stipends.

Yeah! Its not fair that you pay $10 and then they only give you $2.50 worth of $L every year. ($L50 X 12 = $L600 @ 250 = $2.40) It takes four years to get all your money back.

They should give you WAY more money than you give them. All that money they spend on salaries, rent, servers, taxes, etc. -- what does that have to do with us?

Math error.
That 12 should be a 52.
=2600L = $10.40 USD

I thought it was 50 L$ / week?

The exchange rate is set by the seller and buyers, GOM for example is just a marketplace they don't set the rates.

So 1000L = 1$ is what people think the L$ is worth now, no way to easily change it. (unless you can massively hyptnotise large number of people remotely)

The $9.95 isn't a loss leader, its a credit card check to make an at least cursory attempt to confirm you are an adult.

The $9.95 lifers purpose is to make a ready market for content creators.

Before version 1.2 of SL, before December of 2003, everyone paid the monthly fee. Everyone received a stipend until they reached $L3000, at which point your stipend stopped and any additional money you had to make from other players. Almost everyone back then was a content creator of some kind, and people traded their $L back and forth buying each other items. Some people grew very $L wealthy, both by selling their content, but also by gaming the stipend system, transfering money to an off account so they would receive the full amount of stipend every week.

At this time land tier was paid as a weekly tax in $L on the amount of land you owned, in addition to a prim tax. For the most part the players best able to afford land were those that were cheating the system.

And so Linden Lab went to the current system, where anyone can afford land as long as they have Real Life money to spend. This prevents in game cheaters from holding all the land, and it allows Second Life to grow in the phenomanal manner that it has.

The only problem with the system is that there has to be an incentive for those creators to pay higher fees and continue to make the cool stuff that draws new players to the program.

That incentive is cash. You, my $9.95 lifer friend, are where that cash is supposed to come from. You are the ready market that is put in place to consume our creations. You see something cool we have made, like a tiger AV, get excited about it, buy our $L on GOM , then log in and pay them back to us. Then the cycle begins again.

You pay us $L, we sell those $L back to you, then you come back and buy more of our stuff.

We use the money to pay for the land tier, and in some lucky cases a few extra nights out a month.

If this system were not in place evetually the content creators would fade away, and with it our tier fees to Linden Lab, at which point Second Life would fade away.

So if you want that tiger AV go buy some $L on GOM, or become a content creator and make some in game money.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and the same goes for the lifer accounts.

Thank you for your post. Not only for the informational content but for its presentation. This is an insightful overview of sl past and present minus the arrogant, condescending, hostile and/or vulgar overtones which accompany too many posts.

I followed the link to your disclaimer only today. My loss for not having done so before.

Editorial, that was a lovely writeup! It made sense.

It sure is... but there's 52 weeks in a year, not 12.

One would hope that when stipends were decreased, the amount of currency in circulation would decline and each $L would be worth more. That dynamic may kick in... eventually. For now, we're stuck with old school prices and new school incomes... voodoo econ 101.

Linden Labs is likely to sit back and let things sort themselves out. In the meantime, your choices are 1) spend real money to buy virtual money to spend for virtual goods, 2) rely on freebies and discount merchandise, 3) jump into the "goods and services" fray, competing with the thousands of other providers of goods and services, 4) do everything yourself, 5) pony up $300+ and tier in the land auction, split it and flip it. Major bucks, almost no effort... if you've got the cash to buy in.

I've opted for 2 and 4, and if I get good at 4, I might dabble at 3 again (though my first outing was a complete bust). But if you've got so much disposible income that 1 or 5 doesn't make you flinch, go for it.

er, oops. I was thinking it is $50 a month, its $50 a week. Oh man, I'm gonna go sign up some more alts!

Well I think the Stipedn drop was a mistake. It is difficult to grasp the message that it sends to players.
Frankly LL doesn't lose money based on the ready availability of the linden, LL's profit comes from tier. More stipend money=more people buying land=more tier. Also for people selling content, if the stipend is doubled, they will likely make more money charging the same prices. In reality a decreased money supply does lower the value of the money, but there is also a drop in prices. Increasing the money causes inflation.

It seems to me that the only real reason to cut down the money supply was to contraol the nature of the gameplay. By lowering the money supply you "encourage" (read "force" players to either spend cash or make content. This has a limit, arguably beneficial, of limiting the game's audience to those who are wealthy enought to be dillettent's and play for linden (as I do) or those who wish to treat sl as a job.

But really SL is a game, and the people who play it should have the resources built into the game to enjoy it. I think the notion that pople should "buck up and get SL jobs" is ridiculous. Many casual gamers do not want to spend hours after working a real job, doing something in SL just so they can have money to buy a PREEN shirt. People with basic accounts or with simple premium accounts could be give $1000 linden a week and the economy would not flinch. Why? because the caual player does not hored money to become a land baron. They aren't saving for two years to have $104,000 to buy a mature 4048 in a mature continent. Perhaps more land would be sold, yes, and land prices would go down..they are doing that anyway as a function of land availability. If the basic account gets more money you could charge more rent.

PLayers could save moeny to buy land, and enjoy a nice little plot.

Maybe LL is worried that if you increase the stipend you outstrip the content makers ability to keep up with new content? I don't think so. SL is a rampant market for consumerism. as much as some people hate it, shopping sex and drama are what fuel the majorities SL expereinces. Simply put. If you make it, people will buy it and you will make money. Maybe even more money. Now those pople who ware relying on SL and the GOM to fuel thier RL lifestyle may hurt a bit (or they may not I dunno), but the question is who the games is for? Is it for the Anshe Chungs (sorry hun) or is it for joe player?

This is the core of the FIC debate: is the selcet group dictating the style of the game to a far greater extent than the basic players? It is also the basis of the techie wikki controversey too, of which "get a job loser" is one of the great battle crys. Like it or not the casual unwashed are the life blood of any game. It is their evolution, and not that of the content creators, that will define the future of SL.

Its funny to me to hear all these posts comparing SL to snowcrash and the million subscriber goal, and yet many of the same voices say "get a job, we don't remawrd the lazy with our hard work." I seems they miss the point... if you properly fund the lazy, they will make the industrious rich.

Not to mention us lazy people would have more fun on SL because ther ewould be more to do than tear down and rebuild our 512 houses and hang out at the clubs for the chance at 30-50 linden in prizes.

Which brings me to the final point of my diatribe. Peopl like the games within a game. SL is for most of us, entertainment, and we need something to do. Hence the popularity of slingo and tringo, etc. Building is tedious, texture mapping on templates bizzrely arcane, and scripting imposssible for anyone who has read a Jane Austen Novel. So what is left for the people who want to hang out and have fun with freinds: Sex, Clubs, Tringo and slingo. Like it or not we lazy people need to be entertained too.

I still fail to see your point Jake. You don't want a job within SL -- great! But the money for a member's entertainment has to come from somewhere. If it comes out of thin air in the form of stipends, you get massive inflation. Free money will ruin SL - it is as simple as that.

So again you have three choices:
1. get an inworld job (have to find it then do it)
2. make and sell stuff (have to make and market it)
3. buy some lindens on GOM or other currency exchange

Those who view SL purely as entertainment should congregate around #3.

People who enjoy reading magazines BUY a magazine. If you like movies, you BUY a ticket. If you want L$ to play with for avs or clothes or gadgets, go BUY some L$. They're really not that expensive.

That tiger av is worth $4. At least in my city, that's a few candy bars, or the price of a beer, half the price of a movie, a little more than a starbucks cup of joe, etc etc.

Second Life as entertainment is a luxury, not a necessity. Everything you can buy within Second Life is a luxury, not a necessity. If that luxury makes you happy, great! But you shouldn't expect it for free.

I hate to bring this up again, as its a pointless argument.

Second Life is not a game.

Second Life is a tool with which some subscribers create content for other subscribers. Linden Lab is not in the business of creating entertainment for you, it has instead created a place for us to display and exchange our creations. WE create the game. WE create the entertainment.

Think of Second Life as the flea market held in an empty lot. The owners might put up some signs and parking and might even sell admisions tickets, but thats not why people are there. Maybe they have come to see what other people have brought, maybe to just hang out and look around, or maybe they have brought their own goods to sell. In any case its not the lot owners responsiblity to make sure people have enough money to spend.

Linden Lab provides in Second Life a destination, its up to us to put up the folding tables.

My point is that in my opinion you are dead wrong about the inflation issue. Well I amend that, my point is that it you think doubling the stipend will lead to inflation you are dead wrong. Money in point of fact does come out of thin air in the form of stipends in SL, it is the root of the economy. My thought is that the currently level of stipend is too low to maintain the interest of the causal gamer. Now I don't advocate, by any means, unlimited money. But I think a reasonacle increase in the purchasing power at the bottom level will drive up the volume of sales. People will still have to purchase money, or earn it, for the mre significant items such as avi's skins, land and houses, Unless they want to do nothing but save (so I can by a $6000 L skin in three months and not Six months..either way I am earning by doing nothing, we are just talking about the rate).

Precisely because everything in SL is a luxury good, people will simply spend more if they have more. Frankly I don't see price as a huge limiting factor, people will decide on thier own the value of the goods or service. Prices have obviously not reacted to the lowering of the stipend, or this post would have not begun.

Look. It doesn't take a lot of money to enjoy SL on a social level, most people want clothes and bling and hair and skins and maybe a car. ther eis not all that much more to do. Doubling the stipend does not materially affect the economy, but will materially affect teh frustration level of the casual player. You will still sell the tiger AV for $4, it will still be worth that, you just might sell more of them....

You are Right Hare, it is pointless arguement you are ritereating over and over. Sl is in fact a game. It is designed and marketed in such a way as to compete for my entertainment dollars. That some pople have made good money off the game does not change the fact that the bulk of the 27, 000 residents do not rely on SL as a tool to garner thier primary income.

By itself, SL will entertain those who enjoy building or scritping or designing. they are happy in the sand box. And to an extent SL could stay that way with five or ten thousand subscribers feeding off of each other. But if SL wants to grow, then it has to recognize that it is goig to have to accomodate a larger crowd of casual players, so that the influx of techie-wikki types can continue to profit from their work.

My point was not that Linden Labs needs to entertain me. My point is that the need to make it easier for developers who want to tentertain me with slingo and tringo do do so. This is the crux of the anti-business rhetoric that Prok is offering. The econmy is going to be dependent on the casual gamer soon, and the techi-wikki types need to be asking how they are going to offer the entertainment, and LL needs to figure our how they can make their tool, as you say it, better.

Thats my point.

I would suggest looking for a cheaper tiger av.. I sell a white tiger for $400L and an orange tiger for $500L, a tiger in half the time hehehe

The $9.95 account is basically an extended trial account in reality. The lack of a significant stipend for the basic account is a prime motivator to get you to tier up and get some land or purchase Lindens on GOM or IGE. It is also a great motivator to create and sell items or provide services for others, its the engine that drives SL.

Joy. SL is well on the way to becoming a two-class system, moreso that it is already. I've introduced a few people to SL, and it doesn't seem to matter if they're premium or not, they still ask me after a few weeks after the novelty of living in a virtual world on LSD wears off, "How do I make money?"

They generally don't respond well to the options available. Most don't have an interest in adult entertainment, and don't find tedious labor with uncertain reward to be very interesting. They tend to balk at the idea of GOM; something about quanitizing L$ in US$ makes them uneasy. These people are interested in SL only as far as it allows them to exercise their imaginations in a surrogate reality away from their real lives. Usually they last up until they realize that their US$ would be better spent on entertainment produced by professionals rather than being subjected to the same financial humiliation that pervades their real lives.

I'm in a difficult position. Actually, that's not true. I'm just in a very unique and lateral situation... and that's the way I've always lived my Second Life. By way of choice AND circumstance and a number of other migrating and mitigating factors, I find myself in this virtual world, saying it is both a game and yet it isn't -- at the same time. The same issues come up and it's a RRL = Really Redundant Loop, and what cuts through all the verbiage is that apart from the opinions expressed, there has to be greater appreciation for the fluorishing diversity in light of adversity here.

Some of my best friends are top scripters who wouldn't go to a club. That's okeydokey, because some of my good chums happen to run clubs. I have friends who fight with each other (which makes me sad) but as long as they aren't habitual offenders of the CS and TOS and are generally friendly, shiny people, I'll make no bones about hanging out and learning about how they live their Second Lives.

I believe SL is marketed as an "entertainment product", so no squabbles over that or circular logic: fun is fun! I certainly don't want anyone to slave over SL in pursuit of a few Linden dollaz y0, but breaks or shaking up the routine do help, and so do trying new things instead of rehashing the same path if things are getting too repetitive and not working out. MID-SECOND LIFE CRISIS!!! BOOYEAH MY AVATIZZLES!

*reads up* Speaking of cheap, great animal avs, Ryntha Suavage has some killer ones for as low as L$250. I wouldn't know that if I hadn't looked around though, and that's why my curiosity compels me to ask a lot of questions... and I am really happy to see this thread is full of interesting opinions.

And speaking of "cheap, great", this'll bring me back to SL itself. Besides coming in here to praise the work of others, that's one of the fundamental reasons that really appealed to me. BEST DAMN TEN BUCKS I EVER SPENT. I'm a crazy thriftmonger, in search of deals and bargains. Even inworld, you may see me at a yard sale rummaging through goodies! Free stuff is great. Opportunities are abound. How many new residents don't know about YadNi's Junkyard, the Stillman Free Bazaar, the GNU Wave Architects store, New Citizens Inc. helping newbies, and more? That knowledge is power, because once you know what can be had for free or nearly, you'll be hooked. And that won't necessarily detract from purchasing pricey items, it just opens up the whole ballpark to new variations on a theme of YAYZERAMA! Look around, do research... too tedious? Then chill out at Tringo or sleep under a park bench and make some friends giggle.

And speaking of friends, what about referrals? Get another friend to sign up using your name, and that's L$1000 for a Basic or L$2000 Premium account upon verification, AND it boosts your stipend too so it works like, triplefold! I think this is a fact that's overlooked, so it's good to get the word out there that this is another way of not only sharing Second Life with your buddies, but making extra L$. Really.

I'm on a Basic account. And yeah I do wish my stipend was higher too, I've posted about that before. At the same time, I have no scientific explanation for the way I exist apart from noticing how I've never had a need to ask "How do I make money?" here -- although it truely is a relevant and appropriate question if forwarded politely (as opposed to WA begging). But at the same time, if the question becomes an obsessive point of predominance and everything else just blurs out, then that narrowminded perspective of what's available here is unhealthy. I can't analyze this at all that well so I'll leave this to the experts. HOWEVER . . .

I know it's not just me on a Basic account here having a blast and finding it pretty freeing. Maybe there'll be more account types in the future with greater granularity (gotta love that word) as time goes by and the number of active citizens swells in rank... who knows! But what I do know for certain *thumps her heart* is that today, right here, right now, I'm having a wonderful time (thanks to Willow Zander for the corresponding gesture and to Lucah Solvang for showing it off to me). I know there's TONS of creative brilliance out here, and I'm always charmed to find someone who doesn't take the straight path because they already know how, and have approached the game/not-a-game of Second Life with a creative mindset all their own. They make it work... er... play!

More bridges have to be built, more connections have to be linked as hills are climbed. Eh, I'm afraid I may not be able to build those bridges 'cuz I'm not a builder. I can't script, either. But ohhh do I like giving it a try, and I additionally like watching builders and scripters do their work (if they'll let me) and I have fun at Tringo. I visit churches and I go to strip clubs. I know that as bizarre as my ways are, that I have a simple mindset and enjoy pleasures like watermelons and beanbag chairs. It doesn't take a lot to please me, so I'm not very demanding that way. On the other hand, I have a lot of passion for sending in feature suggestions and looking at what's going on with the community and getting people in touch with each other and collaborating -- SPARKS FLY!!! (And I don't just mean love, but simply being loved loved loved is more than enough, yeah yeah...)



There's gonna be a lot of growth rolling out, and it all looks so small and easy in retrospect. One year later, mark this down, it'll be a new set of issues and problems. Which is okay, as long as we realize that we're all in the gridverse together and if we work hand-in-hand with the Linden family to be vocal yet respectful about our requests for improvements, it won't guarantee spurious wish fulfillment, but things will get done.Heck, things have gotten done time and time again -- I wasn't around for SL in Alpha or even Beta or even all the way up to 1.4, but the tales I hear from elder Residents I've come to befriend and respect, they speak with experience that should be shared around, a whole sort of waterfallogical knowledge of Generation Tech. And I lurve hearing from newcomers about their first experiences, hopefully they are memorable and happy ones!



I am overjoyed to see self-discovery take place here, when someone chips down their walls enough and tries something they earlier had resistance to and find it's not so bad after all. "Human nature" be damned, genetics have already had their way with you so make some informed choices for positive living! I also celebrate when someone is repressed from offline because of their sexual orientation, religion, taste in fruit or whatever and liberates themselves through this technology. And not only that, but gets to share that with others. That's empowering. In the midst of diminutive, generic glut of everyday drudgery we have inspiring tales of affirmation in here like Wilde Cunningham. (Cited again and again for good reason, and I want to be able to note more in the future!)

There are plenty of "mainstream" approaches out there already being done. SL is definitely something unto its own. I hesitate to use a word like "alternative" because given the timeline, things considered are so temporal and relativistic. But if I had to attach words that only applied today as I write them, sure, SL is but a sliver of what I hope it will yet become, and that sliver shines bright with so much promise. Because of the combination of what I mentioned, all leading up to community.

I want to believe that UUID stands for Universal Unity In Diversity.

Here's a *bighuggerz* and hope to see you inworld soon!



Oh yeah, I'm exploring Atoll right now. Looking at all the nice new houses, since I don't own land. There are some pretty nice designs, and the sun is going down. I can't wait for the next sunrise. Hanging out in Margaret's StarLight diner @ Cincta (11, 244) and eating pancakes as I type this. Mmmmmm.

Photo hosting courtesy of Snapzilla.com!

I don't think it's a good idea to rise the stipends from where they are right now, every 1% rise in stipends creates about 2% inflation (cheaper ls on gom, higher prices on goods/services/land) heading us one step back from where we are now over time.
The only way to get average avatars spending rate to rise without depressing overall economy is through jobs.