Banking and In-world currency exchange

Would it be possible to get some guidance on where this stands from LL?

personaly i would rather by my lindens right from LL.

Cat

Thoughts? This is a great idea....bring it on NOW!!!

Well, I think its a great idea it would save me alot of trouble.Id rather buy in world than to keep have to go to IGE.com

Has Linden Labs ever considered the idea of providing some sort of ingame activity for casual players to engage in to earn their Linden dollars? Games like Everquest have this in the form of loot the player can acquire through various adventures. It's one of the main things that makes those types of games so addictive and rewarding (and successful).

No, I'm not suggesting you set giant bats and skeletal warriors loose in SL for residents to kill, but you could do basically the same thing with some other type of delivery method more fitting to the game. In The Sims Online they had various workbench-like objects you could interact with to earn a small amount of money. The ones with bigger payoffs required team cooperation to operate. I'm sure creative minds could come up with dozens of different ways to deliver a payoff the the player.

In addition to to fulfilling your stated goal of providing pocket money for casual players something like this would also provide a time-filling default activity for players to engage in so they don't have that "I don't know what to do" feeling. It's also a much more rewarding experience for a player to "earn" their game income rather than just buying their game money with real dollars.

(Yes, I know, I'll probably get flamed just for saying the word "Everquest" )

Well the very nitty gritty of it is that the SL economy 'works' while the everquest one doesn't (its basically perpetually inflating) precisely because in SL there is no way for the players to 'create' money from nothing. All of the money being entered into the system is entered through three mechanisms under LL's direct control, so they can keep the economy basically stable, unlike MMORPG's where basically every couple of months, the 'value' of game money and goods in terms of us dollars is halved. (since it takes a correspondingly higher level player of those games half or less the RL time to earn the same goods that a low level player would

To say whether I agree it works or not I'd have to know what the goal of the SL economy is intended to be. It doesn't seem to work very well in providing rewards to encourage casual players though. Keep in mind most people don't know how to make their own clothes and things so they have to buy everything. When the starter cash runs out I would think it's probably game over for most potential customers. I'm pretty confident the majority of gamers don't find the idea of buying their ingame rewards with real life money very appealing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of what they've created here, but I think they're missing out on on a much bigger picture of people like me who are more casual players. A built-in way to earn money ingame would go a long way towards changing that.

As for the inflation problems you describe I haven't seen anything close to inflation of that magnitude in the MMORPGs I play. In any event the idea would be to keep the amount you can earn small enough that it wouldn't cause runaway inflation. If a player could earn 100 Linden dollars an hour doing some fun activity for instance I don't think it would mess things up too much. It would however make SL a lot easier to get into for players like me. Money sinks can be used to pull money back out of a game economy if too much currency is being generated.

actually thats one of the main incentives for gettin a premium account, 10x as many lindens a week. Also bonuses can easily match that if you go out an get rated alot though thats sometimes frowned upon by the more builder centric



actually its happened on basically every mmorpg ever made that didn't have a fixed conversion ratio. Look back at how much gold you could by per dollar on ebay when UO first started... compared to today, same with EQ or any other game where players can 'make' money from nothing... a gold in UO is worth somethin like 1/1000th what it was, a month after it launched, a gold in EQ is worth 1/100th what it was. WOW has already devalued about 2x so far in the last month and will continue to do so indefinately.

its like if people could walk out side and pick dollar bills off of trees.. sure you could buy alot that night... but the next day those dollar bills wouldn't be worth nearly as much as they used to be, since anyone can jus go out an pick them off trees, they wouldn't be worth much more than leaves are now.

LL has the right idea, and its shown, well over a year into SL the in game economy hasn fluctuated more'n about 25% and its pretty much back where it started. no other mmo can claim that unless it has a fixed (aka company run) conversion ratio

If you play an average of two hours a day, that's L$1400 a week, nearly three times the stipend for premium members. That instantly devalues the currency to a quarter of its current value. Add in the fact that macroers would proliferate and the value of the Linden would take a nosedive. It has happened and continues to happen in every MMORPG from Ultima Online on down (with the exception of City of Heroes, which is running scared from any sort of economic system).

I'm as impatient as anybody to buy a different skin for every day of the week and a closet full of shoes, but if there's four times as much money in circulation, things will cost four times as much. Net gain for the consumer is nothing at all.

The weekly stipend could be tied to some empty and ultimately meaningless activity that somebody would figure out how to macro within hours of release. Personally, I'd rather just collect the check and the dwell bonus and go do stuff I enjoy, rather than grinding for dollars.

So who would set the value of the Linden?

I tried to find the conversion for using Linden dollars to pay land fees, and I can't find it anymore, but I seem to remember that the value the Linden's give you for turning in points was way, way below the actual value of the Linden dollar.

I certainly don't want use a hundred dollars worth of Linden's to pay a $5.00 land fee.

Maybe the Lindens should just help GOM become more immediate in game, rather than setting up a rival service.

i have to agree with eltee here but snowglobe is correct in that LL is dealing with changing user behavior... never easy. Other games operate in a very different way.

Many people go to a pub after work (or put their feet up on their couch) and don't think twice about spending $2-5 on a beer. Not easy for everyone's pocketbook, but people justify it because relaxing is important to keep us all sane. In some ways, SL requires people to view it in a similar light. Instead of that beer, you might spend $0.10 to $1.00 (or currency of choice) on that dress/animation/avatar etc that enriches your SL relaxing and socializing time. This is why making currency exchange easier is so important.

As I read it, that's the whole point of the proposal. It's still the 3rd-party broker making the trades, but the trading system is better integrated into the game.

Then again, I haven't yet waded through all eight pages of responses. Maybe I'm missing something.

Er, well I don't know. I don't follow the real money exchange rates for the games I play because selling items for real money is against the rules in them. A few people do it anyway of course but most don't. I was talking about ingame inflation which is usually kept more or less in check by money sinks.

Having a built-in way to earn game credits is a system that provides very compelling game play and functions well enough to please the millions of people who play games that use such systems. It could be made to work here too but would of course change things a bit.

This is getting off topic though. To answer the original question I probably would be more likely to buy game money if I could have it billed to my game account directly if I was going to do that, but I would find it much more satisfying to have a way to earn spending money ingame.

If I understand the lindons idea. They don't want to sell currency. They want to take the place of paypal. right now it works like this: sl -> gom -> paypal -> gom ->sl. But ll is suggesting this: sl -> gom -> ll Billing -> gom ->sl. Heck gom could set it up so you could use ether paypal or sl billing.

ll billing:
#pros:
**Having all my expenses related to sl on one bill, convenient.
**Not having to register with 3 sites, conveyance.
**Less set up for new user to use gom, conveyance.
#cons:
***ll currantly lack the info-structure, while paypal already has a proven and well developed interface / system.

pay Pal:
#pros:
**already has infrastructure
**can be used for other activities (ebay)
**ebay user probable already have a paypal account

#cons:
**Paypal can be inconvenient.
**requires linking to a checking account for full activation
**full activation requires bank statement. Can take months
**registering complicated anuff deter impulse buying for new users.


I think this would benefit LL and GOM. I also like the idea of being to be able to access gom in more detail through sl. But that sound like it could be part of the plug-in system ll mentioned is in the works.

The problem is that there is an economic imbalance already in the game. Two groups of people have access to lots of money: (a) people who have played for a long time and (b) people who joined more recently but know about IGE/GOM and are willing and financially able to use them. The third group - recent joiners on a budget - are left outside of the candy store looking in through the window, their breath forming frosty clouds on the glass around their mittened handprints. But I digress.

What LL proposes to do is level the playing field by making it easier for Joe SL'er to conjure a little extra toon cash. On the surface this appears egalitarian and noble. But in practice it will lead to rampant SL inflation, not to mention a windfall for the third party services.

With inflation will come a relative cheapening of land prices, unless they index them to the inflation rate, which would in turn compel newcomers to buy more L$, thus feeding the cycle. Meanwhile the cheaper land causes a land rush and everything is tied up game-wide, trading at inflated market rates or rotting under absentee owners.

The more draconian solution would be to outlaw 3rd party credit sales altogether, leaving no source of L$ for the economy other than the weekly 'lowance and some bonuses that LL'ers can hand out at Events, thus encouraging game participation.

A luxury tax could also be added for all object sales over a certain amount, say L$5000. This would have the cumulative effect of draining money out of the high end economy, eventually driving prices lower.

I can definitely appreciate the value of NOT allowing options for residents to create $L 'from nothing'. Has their been any discussion on allowing residents to make money with what they already have? For example - real banks typically offer interest-bearing account options when a customer's balance remains above a certain level. Any thoughts of establishing an in-game bank system that would provide this type of feature? Granted, this isn't really a mechanism for buying Lindens, but...

Having lived through some of the economic insanity that was called the There-ian real estate market (I watched houses that used to "sell" for 20 - 40 grand jump in really about a week to OVER 100,000, and w/in weeks some where hitting the million mark) that as an "open" economy was also "game-able". What you ended up with was 10 or 20 exceedingly wealthy folks owning a ton of property, macro-masters snagging properties out from under folks and the rest of the population scratching their heads.

Now, if the name of the game is econ and real estate, that's a sucessful, aggressive and volatile environment, very engaging. However, if the "game" is supposed to be social enteraction (as it is in There), you have Edwardian England. Bleech.

SL runs on a rather closed, managed economy and it makes for a very different society. It is not "pressured" or stressed. Folks are considerably more laid back. This is conducive to the creative environment that pervades SL. When the opening note mentions easier, more direct ways to interact with the GOM, etc. I"m a wee bit puzzled...I can hop over to Shinda and "talk" to the GOM terminal anytime. If I cannot directly tp to more than one of my properties, out of an engineered desire by LL to make us all take the leisurely (interactive?) route to and fro, how is more direct access to money-changing methods not an antithetical alteration of the societal construct?

It's plenty easy to make money in this game, at least compared to There. Show up, talk to folks, go to parties, go to events, rate others, participate (that's the key word, participate) in what interests you, and the funds do come. You like shoot'em ups? Hang w/those that feel the same way, rate each other, your stipend grows. Enter competition events, host events, you'll get paid! Design stuff, sell stuff, you'll get paid. Beg well, be a professional date, you'll get paid. Don't show up for weeks on end and come in game, eh, VOILA! You got paid and you weren't even here. The only thing you can't do easily in game is become instantly rich. Unless you find a suga daddi or suga momma or hit the IGE/GOM w/some real dough. And it's not instant. OMG how awful! You might have to wait a few days.

SL is a lovely place, it evolves, and yet some things remain the same. A closed, managed economy allows for that seperation that makes SL a 2nd life. You know that ad, the beat up VW Beetle? In my 1st life...my car doesn't run. In my 2nd life...my car flies! How is that possible unless there IS a disconnect between the two. My car runs, but it's 12 years old and well...prettier than the VW, lol. But my SL, is damn fabulous thank you and that's what makes it RECREATION and not Re-Creation.

BTW, I LOVE that this is even up for debate and discussion.

...stepping off the soapbox, hoping the grid is up again so I can go ... do something useful.

I'm still not seeing how the original proposal increases the net amount of money in circulation (which, agreed, would be a Bad Thing). All I see here is a method for facilitating transfers between players, which strikes me as increasing the liquidity of our assets by some modest measure (a Good Thing).

I will say one thing - if I'm getting account credit of cold hard cash in exchange for L$ instead , it's going to have to be at a good rate to pique my interest. You still can't sell L$ for $ through this system.

The money supply will not be increased.

This is the point that LL has tried to make on this thread, but constantly confused the message with "we will not sell currency".

Like a bank, which obviously can not increase the money supply, they will buy and sell currency between players (or "institutions" i guess, where IGE/GOM are "institutions".

Probably like GOM they will charge some nominal fee for this service.

However, unlike the government, which can increase the money supply, LL will not increase the l$ supply when people buy currency.

The effect of all this

It depends. If they create artificial barriers which only favor GOM from joining than life will be really unfair, but justly so I guess, as GOM did a lot of R&D for the SL community and should theoretically be rewarded.

If they let anyone join, then the margin will go to zero immediately for GOM and everyone who becomes a supplier. Why not? It's free money and one person's l$ is no better than another's.

The only player in that scenario who will profit will be LL who charges the fee on everything and the odd lucky speculator.

The end result, they will basically take over the position of GOM, except I guess there will be another layer of currency speculation added to all this.

They could only trade in low currency buys, but lets face it - that just exposes GOM and what not to fraud. Low currency buys are generally low fraud, as far as I understand. I know that certainly works in my business. I also think that is where the majority of the business is.

What they could also do is charge a high rate spread at the low end of the market, encouraging people to make more high currency buys directly off of GOM or whoever (and not go through the cut-rate competition)

But this would just discourage people from using the service and defeat the purpose of all that work? The point of this is more liquidity for all, isn't it?

Another theory is that they are just threatening to do this in order to discourage other people from making play in this area. They don't want the headache of dealing with a 100 little GOMs.

If that's the case, please spread it around, because they are undermining their own trustworthiness by having hidden agendas like that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is not the case.

Also, another thought is that SL Exchange is coming along quite nicely and they are pretty good guys if a bit greedy and I have a feeling SL doesn't mind working with them. They may factor into all this as well if they start offering the ability to buy currency straight from their website.

I'm not sure where you get the statement and months bit. They need to link to your bank account, yes, but they don't need a statement. They just deposit 2 amounts that are under a dollar to your account and have you tell them the amounts to confirm it. It took about two days for me. Also, if you want GOM but don't want to deal with PayPal you can send GOM a money order.

They don't need a statement but for activation of your Pay Pal account you do need to look at your statement to see how much they deposited (usually two or three cents) to your account and when they did it.

This is a very sensible and game improving concept. Support it fully so long as the exchange rate is competitive and layers of discounting/fees don't eat up the trade values.

One of the reasons I got interested in 2ndL is the open currency exchange among VR's, and the whole notion of virtual property. It is a radical idea, and points out that money, all money, is simply information. Why are diamonds and gold valuable? Why is the US$ valuable? Are not all currencies somehow tied into time and energy?

I find the whole notion revolutionary, not so much as the fact, but as the awareness of the fiction of money.

I think that this is a fabulous idea and it's about time........if we use our credit card for SL why cant we buy lindens with it.....GREAT idea~!!!! Am all for it......keep up the great ideas for improvements.......and thanks...from TxBornVaNow Pennyfeather