Possible Economy Fix?

I've been reading the threads on eliminating the L$50 for Basic members, and it seems like that will help the economy.

but.... these members spend lindens on renting a space, or blowing it all on casinos, or doing other things, and there have been excellent points made about how they need to get going and understand the game.

What I propose is this:

Cut off the stipend after a month, charge them U$1 after that if they wish to continue getting the stipend, it gives a month to get used to the game, and find a way to make money besides the stipend.

I think this would work well to fix the "problem."

Raising prices would work too

I don't agree with you, as I consider that providing free user accounts is vital and the L$50 stipend is pretty vital to keeping them playing - unless we want them all on camping chairs all the time - but I do have to say that you have a fantastic name.

I agree, it's just that perhaps knowing that the stipend will go away after 4 weeks could encourage them to aggressively learn in-game stuff and become creative, adding more content etc.

Although farmers won't like this one bit...

EDIT: Thanks for the props, I used to watch lots of cartoons...

I have a great solution too.

(A) It is a known fact that many players have so much money in game they don't actually know what to do with it.

(B) It is also a fact that, conversly, I do not have enough money in game to do all I want to do.

I would therefore propose that all those who fall into group (A) pass on 25% of their L$ to all those in group (B) - ie me.

All donations are tax deductable.

Lewis

So stop playing games and login to SL instead.

The thing is, I think that anyone who would be "encouraged" like that would probably do it anyway. And four weeks is not long enough to learn how things work, and start building and selling stuff that makes you money, in any case. Maybe something like three months or more, but even then, a lot of people would just camp, and a lot of the rest would just leave.

People with free accounts who aren't building and so on do still contribute by making a more fun and lively atmosphere, and generating more buzz and more reason for other people to join SL. (Well, in theory, and as long as they're not sitting on chairs all the time.) I always use the example of Livejournal - that site would never have got to the size it is and level of success it has now without providing a perfectly functional basic system for free.

Only feasible way residents in this situation could pay for the one US dollar would be with L$ as it's too small an amount to deal with transaction fees using "real" currency.

Perhaps free account users could be given the option of earning their 50L$ each week by doing things that aren't fun at all but already exist on the 2D net and pay a tiny sum of cash where it takes two years of jumping through hoops to reach the minimum cash out amount, a 20USD paycheck. Like answering surveys or being part of an inworld, company sponsored focus group. Saves the companies money as no checks have to be mailed out. They just pay LL the value of 50L$ times how many residents they wish to have involved.

Second Life is a game, regardless of whether some people miss that fact and turn it into a business.

I would log into SL if a) my work PC was up to it, and b) the grid wasn't down for the 1.9 update. Instead, I'll have to wait about 4 more hours to do it at home.

Lewis

If that is true please inform Philip and company.

To you perhaps, but not to others. I would guess that Linden Labs calls it a business, as would many others who earn a living from it.

They won't listen to me, I don't own 100 sims.

Lewis

Exactly they do, they decide how we can use them, not you.

Second Life is what you make it.

People who are used to "playing games" bye "accumulating points" would stop playing if they had no way to accumulate points.

Those who see SL as a 3D chat room have no incentive to learn anything beyond how to buy clothes and attachments.

You can't really force people to used the platform differently than they do; if they can't do what they want, they will go elsewhere.
And that is all fine.

I love this quote!!!

Lewis you made my day. And no, not being sarcastic at all.

I'd use it for a signature line, if mine wasn't chock-full already. Your quote sums me up perfectly.

*happy dance*

It would be great if SL had:
All the fun of a game.
The ease of development of a platform.
The accountability of a business.

Unfortunately it seems to be getting:
All the fun of a platform.
The ease of development of a business.
The accountability of a game.

While SL is inherently a "create anything you want" game, it's unrealistic to expect every player to be able to create products of the quality to be able to sell them and make money. This makes it necessary that basic account players who CAN'T do this, either for lack of talent or knowledge or software (photoshop or programs of similar quality are almost a must if you want to do textures/skins/etc, and that's EXPENSIVE for a lot of people... and you can't exactly make textures in MS paint), get some kind of L$ stippend. All that money goes right into the economy anyway, and while yes it's "only L$50", with the amount of players that DO get that stippend and then immediatly spend it on something, that's a LOT of income that woud be lost. Money for free does have the potential of messing with the Dollar-to-Linden ratio, but if there's a REAL risk of that then do what someone else suggested and charge $1 a month or something past a certain point, although where do you put that deadline in? The last thing I want to do is scare new players away, and putting a "you must find a way to sustain yourself in X amount of time or you will be broke" will certainly put off some people.

The economy of creators and builders can't be sustained by itself, and it needs buyers - the majority of which are buying because they can't built it themselves - to sustain it.

That depends - it means working out what they're staying in SL for. You don't need L$ just to keep your av going in SL, so is it for casino games? For shopping?

As a newbie I also felt I had to "find a way to sustain myself", but it often doesn't take that long before you're happy with things and don't need too much to buy things any more (unless your main motivation for being in SL is to shop for stuff, of course!)

I suspect that the falling L$ is far more to do with this decreasing utility of L$ that it is with stipends. Earning your first L$1000 is really useful and spectacular, but there's not that much difference between earning L$30000 and L$50000 except for the cash-out value. (Even if that's paying your tier you still have to cash out to do it.) That's the essential problem: the L$ have no value to the sellers except for cash-out (thus they're always prepared to sell lower), and the buyers only want to pay real money for small amounts of L$; that is, the small amounts that make a big difference - beyond those amounts, the utility of the extra L$ is too low to be worth the money. The only exception is land purchases.