Step 1: Eliminate the Basic Membership lindens giveaway effective now!

We are lucky ANYONE gets aweekly pay! LLabs has gotten so cheap with everyone..But you think they give some back aftergetting 11million in funds......GEsh take take take.....Its who ass you kiss is is how you move up inthis game. Otehr then that your used!

Do you think that money was just given to them like "Hey dude! I got an extra 11 mill, here ya go buddy, spend it anyway you like!" I don't think so, that was investors who expect to make a profit. SL is a business like it or not, thats here to make money, not to be a wealfare program. In order to stay in business they must make money to operate, it could buy new improved servers that would cut the lag in half, it could help cover programmer fee's to move the program into the next generation that blows anything else away.
Oh, and I don't think kissing ass is really what gets you ahead in this game.....it's who has the most money to risk, or who has the best skills.

Gesh you live in a simple world. I never said that you assumed it. My point is LLabs does have the capital now to expand and bringup the quility of the game. But there is alot of ass kissing inthe game, alot! but then again like any other busines its whos you kiss the most get you to the higher levels.
Do you know ther are stil class "B" server stil be used inthe game? these are not even ment to hold 20 in a sim!

Actually I don't. Do you know how much planning has to go into every decision they make? They can't just run out and blow the money without aprovals from the investors. They need to show what they need, why they need it. How it will bring a return on the investment. This process all takes time, even when they know what they need.

Well your simplifing this to the point its tight. Investers are needed in any business. But You don`t build business onthe backs of people that make the system work. Using ASSESTS as we avies are in the game is waht LLabs is doing to us. Give back to use once in awhile instead of taking taking and bleeding us dry.Have you been in some of the club(s) offering money these days? Is so sad! crying bitching they are not getting enought (FREE MONEY)its just plain outright business to people playing on freebie accounts. Everyone wants to cash out to real money. There is almost no more fun on sl. Money is the issue here not fun anymore. Stop in a club once in awhile to see what the hell is going on in our great game. You need to fix some of the factors at are broken before making a statement on Planning and other business issues.
I don`t know how much play timt you get in the game, butyour issues on the business points in a pervert system work. But that is not even close in our case here on sl.

http://news.com.com/Second+Life+sco...ml?tag=nefd.top

THis is the linkwhere they talk about the 11 million, I'll just cut and paste a few lines out of it.



Ok, this says not only did they just get a loan for 11 Million, they also got a loan back in October of 04 for 8 million...





Hopefully thats what they're doing....but with the board, and the board of investors, expect some red tape and the process being long and slow

Now while I agree they should make some changes to the current operations of SL to make it more enjoyable, they are still at a loss, even after an 8 million dollar loan a few years ago. I'm sure the investors are starting to lean on LL's board of directors insisting changes be made to get the company into profit faster. Unfortunatly, this means cut backs here and there, and pushes in other area's. In the end they are looking at the bottom line and what it's going to take to get where they want to be. Don't be suprised if there is more cut backs. After all, 11 million buys alot of sway on how SL is operated and the investor is more interested in getting a return. All we can do is ride along and hope that they make changes for the better, or jump ship and go to someplace we feel is more fun

There so much wave we can ride until we get beached. If the current ecom system and indicators are conditions on sl is anything signs to come we are going to hit land hard. And there is nothing going to save us from impact. Have you seen the number of "FREE" helper LLabs as added these days mentor 671! OMG it was only 5 weeks ago we were at 535 and they added more why? because LLabs rather ask its paying player to give back to the game free then hire real worker to do the same jobs. My point is LLabs is asking us the paying clients of the game to not only pay more money but to also give out understanding of the game to those that new to the game I for one have been doing this since after my first month on sl.

Okay, tell you what. You can eliminate the stipend if you also eliminate the upload fee.

$19 MILLION!? O.O

Second Life cost 19 MILLION to produce!? O.O

Oh, man. Ohhhhhh, man.

Hahahahaha!

Oh, wow. Forget about it. XD I mean it's not even using DirectX 9! Hahaha... Where did all that money go? Bandwidth? Promotional billboards on Mars?

Hey, maybe after SL is a huge success, Linden Labs can make a sequal for The Phantom! It could be bundled on a disc along with Duke Nukem Forever and webcomics that accept micropayments! Hahahaha...

19 billion... on a free product... Oh, man... only in California. Hah!

If scaled carefully the impact on lost revenue to LL.

Prop: 1200 -- Let PREMIUM accounts waive their stipend for more land allocation.

and the relevant corrections/follow-up thread:

/130/91/97059/1.html

(which suggests using a sliding scale, instead of a fixed volume of land for waiving the stipend, so that premium accounts still have to tier up for the same land allocation, but waiving their stipend would get them some fraction of the land they'd get at the next tier.)

Frankly, LL has had the same land tier fee schedule since the grid was closer to 50 sims. Now it's closer to 1000 sims. A shop just doesn't grow like that without realizing some 'economy of scale' like cost reductions, and a review of the tier fees seems overdue.

If reducing the overall influx of L$ is even remotely a priority, having the option to wave the stipend for something like more land would would certainly help and at slight cost.

I stand behind the 'slight cost' because with tier allocations doubling at each level... it makes little sense to pay for 100% more land just because you want to buy 5% more than your current tier will support.

By being able to sacrifice stipend payments instead of tiering up immediately... players can inch into the next tier... and when they max out the waived-stipend limit, they can tier up and re-enable their stipend payements. It allows players a smoother upward (and downward) transition by allowing them to make smaller leaps in allocation, and helps reduce some of the L$'s minted each week.

Which is it.. Billion or Million? =)

1100 servers and the relevant infrastructure equip, probably 3-4 mil.

The remaining 15-16 million *might* get you 15 fulltime employees for 3 years.

That doesn't include buildings, internet bandwidth, or electricity.

Wait, what? Seriously?

But I thought the whole POINT of charing for premium memberships was to pay for the hosting?

I had no idea the entry barriers were so steep. Online games like Kingdom of Loathing and Furcadia are eeking by on a fraction of that budget. For that matter, so do many of the larger websites.

I'd assumed it was a pump-and-dump for sure, upon reading those numbers. I guess I was seriously underestimating the cost of maintaining the service.

But sheesh, if just the web servers cost that much, how are they EVER going to make a profit with only a handfull of premium members paying a couple hundred bucks a month each? Isn't that just throwing $11 million after the $8 million they've already spent? What are they gonna buy with that $11 million? More servers? More cutting edge technology that will be woth half as much in six months?

I hope it's not development of a new engine? I've got news for you, guys, there are dozens of free DirectX9 wrappers floating around out there, depending on whether you want speed, ease of implementation, cross-compatability, or absolutely all the features the cards support. You don't need to develop a proprietary graphics engine to ahve a pretty product. In fact, in some cases, you might end up with a BETTER looking product if you can just swap out the new version of some open-source graphics engine when it comes out every few months. To say nothing of the cost of liscencing HAVOK. Takomak is an open-source physics engine that did everything HAVOK did, and I don't know if there's a Takomak II or not, but frankly I'm surprised you people are spending so much money on proprietary components, only to have the game end up looking like it does. Cut back a little on spending, guys. Your coders could be implementing an open-source engine and adding features as they go, rather than re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reinventing the wheel for every project like most companies end up doing.

I suppose there must be some intenral reason for it. I sure can't think of a good one, myself. But then, I'm sitting here at a home PC, not in a boardroom with investors on one arm and programmers on the other. My perspective is bound to be limited.

Somewhere people forgot this was a game.......

I would assume that many of those are supported by die-hard labor-of-love volunteers, which is great but has it's own issues of managing creative direction, financial liability, etc.



I know absolutely nothing about LL's financial situation, I'm merely guestimating:

Possibly $2mil for land tier fees a year, if there are 1000 sims. ($195 a month * 1000sims * 12months, rounded down for partial sim ownership, fudged for variable $ to sqm rates)

100k to 150k 'known' players in the database, I'm guessing 10% might be premium. at roughly $72 to $120 a year depending on payment plan, that'd be another $10million a year ($100 * 10k) (that seems way high, maybe chop it in half for player turn-over)

Lindex Fees, based on current volumes work out to about one full time employee.

Granted, this hasn't been three years of 100k people and 1000 sims worth of land... those are today's numbers. If it continues to grow... LL needs to be prepared, which means deploying and staffing up accordingly and hoping the revenue follows.



Sounds like you have a fine perspective.. just different.

As to directX and such I can't say much ... I presume they're doing what they're doing so that they can keep SL working on PC, Mac and linux. They're also supporting 3 years worth of invested effort from their customers... and it's "non-trivial" to just gut and replace internals without breaking 90% of the legacy your players have adopted.

Similar numbers have been guestimated by others and combined with some vague hints by Lindens, this seems to be not too far of the mark.

Just one small but significant correction 10,000 residents on premium paying between 72$ and 120$ a year does amount to 1 Million USD a year (not 10).

There are significantly more than 1,000 sims on the grid. Earnings from tier payments and private sims will more in the ballbark of 3 Million USD.

So the relationship might well be
1 Million USD in 'subscriptions' (premium account fees)
3 Million USD in tier and rent payments

All this (4 Million USD in earnings) from a company with a little more than 50 fulltime employees. Not bad but not glorious. But let's not forget a growth rate of currently more than 10% per month. If Linden Lab is able to scale their business model so, that this growth happens with significantly smaller growth on the cost side it should not be too long till this will be profitable.

We must remember, LL is a buisness. There are many issues that they must tend to: they've got to cover the long run as well as the day-to-day issues. They've also got other things to worry about and their cost structure will definitely be higher than if one of us decide to put up a server and develop some apps for the general public. There are quite surely many many costs, taxes, insurances, maintenancec contracts, etc they must probably have to pay that we might not even imagine.
Just look at one simple calc... consider 50 emplyees earning 75K a year (which, depending on where they live, might or might not be a decent salary based on their work) sums up to 3.75MM a year.... not including any additional benefit plans we would all look for when being hired by a company.

Oh thats right

Do you not know what paragraphs are??

Take a break from the game man, it's really bothering you THAT much for what YOU call a game.....

For some people it isn't a game, they come in here to actually make money doing something fun....

No, I am not one of those people YET!!

I haven't learned how to do anything but gamble....which if you go to the right places....you can make some halfway decent linden I may add.....

That's not really a fair statement, considering that alot of us Basic users joined when there was a one-time fee of $9.95. I kind of wish I had waited, and just bought $10 worth of currency.

Simply put, the L$ will continue to slide in value as more and more L$ are added by way of stipends/startup bonuses and players buying currency. The last part will cause a spiral effect as the exchange rate goes down, more and more L$ will be bought and introduced to the economy and as more and more L$ are introduced, the exchange rate will fall even further.

I do not really have an answer for this nor do I feel the stipends or free money to new accounts are wrong but that is the reason for the slide.

Clearly what is needed is higher tier fees to take money out of the economy. I'm sure everyone will be willing to take on this for the sake of increasing the value of the linden.

Maybe You should have second thoughts about being here if you feel this way.
Just a thought
Its Game never the less......Money is only part of the game. Gesh

ehy why not having avatar illnesses too and charging a fee for healt care?

its a game, people come here because they dont have to deal with a lot of the troubles (read money) of RL, spend some time in an almost real world, real enough to give you some satisfactions, the freebies, allowance included, give you a taste of what you could do ("the first is free" is an effective selling line) if people likes it so much they will upgrade and pay what they have to, spend more etc. With no newbies there will be less and less members, and who wants to pay for a sleepovers when there are other great parties (games and sims) out there? then where all your millions will go?
Beside you people are actually able to quantify how much of your gains is made with newbies spending the 50s?
Create a decent community in here to have a better exchange rate later on instead of worrying about your wallet.
You want to be rich do that in the world out there, oh yes maybe this is the new south asia where producing something doesnt cost a lot but the profits have to be huge...