Banking and In-world currency exchange

I think that if we bring in a buy money system that those who don't will be poor, and inflation will rise so that those who don't buy money cannot buy any ingame things. I know it would affect me as I don't have much RL money myself, and cannot afford to buy L$ with RL cash. I think that buying money has always been a bad idea in any online games.

Sorry. Nothing to do with the thread... I would just like to say... what a great name!

I'm feeling all nostalgic now

It's nice that everyone is joining in and playing devil's advocate by bringing forth all of the "what if's." This is true democracy at it's finest. Makes me proud to be an American. But, in the end, to me the average nooby player, this is all that matters...



All I can say is, please hurry with this already!

If Philip had actually read through our proposal and decided to work with us, it would probably already be live.

Hi Ricky, ok I'm new and all I know is the little that I've read about this but I have a question. If you can't answer it, I understand but I'm just so curious by nature so I'll ask anyway

Could the failure of an agreement have been due to you and Jamie asking for too much?

I mean, I understand they made an offer, and to my understanding it was basically the options offer they have for all of their developers. Is this right? If so, why would they go beyond that offer when they could easily implement the sytem themselves and save themselves the additional employee expense?

It seems to me that they offered a partnership, not because of a lack of skill on LL's part to implement a similar system as GOM, but as a gratitude and consideration for the hardships and hard work that you two had gone through to pioneer a currency exchange to this point.

Surely, from a business standpoint, any offer should have been evaluated, taken into consideration, and ultimately accepted by GOM (within reason of course) and written off as simply a "foot in the door" type agreement and endeavor, with potential to become so much more.

In a nutshell, did you not believe that LL had the skill and talent to implement a similar currency exchange without your input or cooperation?

Am I way off base?

Heh heh, for a new user you are rather completely dead on.

Interestingly, it goes further:

Why did they think the stock options were not worth a lot and their business was?

GOM wouldn't succeed if SL didn't. So, if they were so confident in GOM, then they should have been confident in SL .. and therefore the stock options.



Still, you have to remember, Jamie and Tom are just two workaday guys working out of their garage.

Philip should have recognized this and used his uber ceo skills to bring them around. That is, after all, why we look up to him as our leader.

Me thinks Governor Linden felt a little discipline was in order in this case.

We're not here to be disciplined. We are professionals, and would like to have been treated as such.

I don't mean that literally Ricky.

The fact that you respond to that statement but not my prior post is telling though.

this is where you lost me too. i think the overall idea is sound enough but what good is account credit to me? its almost useless to me.

prior to GOM announcing they were closing their doors, to be honest, i didn't care too much and figured that everything would either bounce back or simply settle where users were buying more L because of the lower prices, therefore spending more. so i was pretty much cool with the idea that this whole panic fest would pass and all would be well.

so bottom line i suppose, is do it up phillip.

and please, if your goal is to simplify the system. i do hope the account credit can still be paid into a paypal account.

i absolutely love second life. if the bottom completely fell out, i'd probably stand around poor as hell and still yap it up w/ katja (heck, thats pretty much all i did in there.com) but i doubt i would continue to create content on the level i am if all i can get in return is "account credit."

You could have a banking system similar to www.projectentropia.com
BUT that would be no more stipend once a week, and instead do what www.there.com
does selling out to people to suscribe once a month and have adventure packs and crap like that....

For all of our interaction in a virtual world, constantly dabbling in concepts of what's "real" or not, it's interesting that few people have said anything about how Linden is, basically, the in-world equivalent of the Treasury and Stock Market and everything else rolled into one ... but working behind the scenes.

We trust that a third-party exchange is dealing fairly with supply-and-demand pricing, but it's crazy to assume the same system is running within the company's own product. Linden IS the Mint! Linden could artificially create zillions of L$ at any moment and declare they're worth X amount of US$, and who's to say otherwise? HUGE amount of trust here, folks. Huge.

So in that sense, the original question is moot. It's merely a matter of which facade Linden picks to placate its consumers.

Hah. Who's to say otherwise? Maybe I'm going out on a limb here but - the consumer? The person actually paying the money? linden's arn't worth what LL wants them to be worth they are worth what someone out there somewhere will pay for them, never more. Sure, the Lindens could "print" as much money as they like (and they most likely do) but there is nothing forcing anyone out there to stick with them. If enough people choose not to buy an inflated, worthless currency then the value they try so hard to maintain would be lost. That's more than a facade.

I would say if your paying a company for rent on virtual land and items that can easily disappear without recourse then you must have a huge amount of trust here. Huge.

You might be missing the point, Dek. Sure, at any moment the consumer might be willing to spend, say, US$10 for L$1000. But in a truly open market, as more players put up more L$ for sale, the US$ value is gonna drop. Natch; we all know that. Basic supply and demand.

The issue of trust comes into play when Linden -- a private company which provides only as much number-crunching transparency as deemed useful, mind you -- keeps advertising our example US$10-for-L$1000 exchange rate even when its database is flooded with much, much more. After all, the market has proven it will support 10-for-1000, so why let it drop?

It's an interesting illusion. Effective and fun, but still an illusion.

When you start off a (long) argument with this statement, not many are going to bother to read to the bottom of the page.

Me too.

*** Heresy Alert! ****

I would like to see Lindens remain as play money or tokens (which is what it is), and be purchaseable from LL only at a fixed rate of exchange.

Minor fluctuations of the US buck that cause folks to lose the fractions of US dollars they have invested in Lindens are just par for the course and "tough luck" for that person IMO.

The moral of that story is: don't invest real money in "play money"

This position would allow small businesses (the backbone of any economy) to flourish with the confidence that the Linden will always remain the same, yet with one stroke remove all the capitalist "fat cats" from the game.

The average player who just wants to have fun will see no deleterious effects.
The average shoper will see no ill effects.
The average player who owns the average store also never gets any "real money" (US bucks) out of the game anyway, and will also see no bad effects.

The only people that would have a bad time with this change are those using the game to make RL money in largish amounts. Since the number of people who suck major amounts of RL US bucks out of the game is incredibly small by all estimates, why screw up the whole thing just for them?

At first I had no idea what you were talking about, but then I went back to the October 2004 post that you quoted and re-read everything I've written on this awesome thread! I guess if you don't want to read the entire statement thats totally up to you. Some people choose to live in ignorance while others do not. Luckily in a forum, I don't have to waste any more energy speaking to one as I do to a hundred. As for my claim... I guess we will see, won't we? Finally we have gotten to the point a year later that some of the rhetoric from this discussion can be proven out one way or another. My opinions are nothing more than forward looking conjecture and I would gladly see them proven false.

Bugaboo - I understand the concept but just because the Linden's run an exchange doesn't mean they are the only exchange. I have been a customer for IGE for a couple years now and I don't particularly plan on changing anything just because some newcomer (LL) has decided they know whats best for me. If their prices significantly beat the other markets then I will definitally take a look but my business is in no way guaranteed.

Indeed. And since Americans are such a small portion of the population of this planet, why don't we all do the rest of humanity a favor and just blow our brains out? Blam! Blam! Blam!

And I mean, like, nobody is merely "sucking major amounts of RL US bucks out of the game," girl. Rather, some very talented/canny people are being paid by residents for the excellent products or services they provide ...

And? SL is NOT a game!

*sigh*

I so hate disagreeing with Dianne.

In order to disagree with something, would not that thing have to retain some degree of internal consistency?

As an exercise for the reader, attempt to disagree with the following:Ouch! I think a section of my brain seceded while writing that.

Maybe not to you, but to some they will never treat it beyond a game. I for one couldnt care less what anyone thinks, the beauty of this is what freedom of coices were allowed to make around to world, and in game.

I have and will always never take SL beyond its game vboarders, cause thats all i ever plan to use it as, shooting, drinking, sex, crime and just having fun! I dont care much for grief, people's woes, or events that i cant cuss in. I got a real life to do things in, thats where its not a game....But to each his own.

It is not a game. It is entertainment.

And while there are not a lot of people making lots of money in the game, there a quite a few who count on breaking even. IF I can't pay my land fees, I'll go to a basic account and Linden Labs looses the pittance that I pay them every month. But so far, so good.

It is entertainment, your right, but to me it does not go beyond being a game, i never ment to say, "Listen up everyone your playing a game!!" Merely for me i dont give it credit beyond that I feel its all a game to me. I dont even care what kind of services come into play, cause half the time i dont even use them. That is my choice, not anyone else's hehe ^^ I been basic forever so no-one's making cash from me as long as i can play forever free, i'll always be here, who knows what the future brings tho.

Well this part gave me a nice warm fuzzy feeling.

... but I think you misread me, or I mispresented myself or something.

I always use inflammatory anti-captialist language like "sucking the money out" and "fat cats," but it doesn't mean as much as others might think. That language mostly just comes from a lifetime of bitterness, in that I have had to exist for many years in a world that is antithetical to my principles ("immoral" from my point of view). It drives you down and makes you mean.

It's kinda like if Mother Theresa was stranded on the Klingon homeworld. The Klingons have their own moral framework of course, but from her point of view, she would be living in a constant nightmare world of people with no moral compass at all.

The Klingons would see themselves as moral people acting with honor.
Mother Theresa would likely see herself as being surrounded by demons in Hell.

As to the content of my post, I agree that SL is essentially not a game or not intended to be one as such. I was arguing that SL should be just a game, and with "play money" that has no intrinsic value and can't be removed from the game. That (in my view) would stop folks trying to "game the game" and turn SL into just another dreary captialist enterprise complete with ads, bills, money exchange etc.

It's those folks (the ones that are treating it as a RL business) that are trying to make SL more like RL in my view.

Edit: I realise that my dual use of "game" and the different meanings I ascribe to it is confusing here, but I dont have time to fix it. The Mother Theresa part I feel is still a good analogy though

i ttotally agree w/ u dianne,, in nrl im disabled physically and i cant buy L. i could with payypal but many of us disabled people and regular people dont really have thee money to buy L$.

I think it's a *great* analogy, actually, Dianne. QaQ vum! (as the Klingons say)

But I still disagree with the rest of what you said; I even --- or, especially --- disagree with what you morphed your original point into.



I, personally, am FOR Second Life being an extension of RL in as many ways --- even those that you see as negative --- as is possible. I think, too, that that's Phillip's major goal (or, as I like to say, "rezzin' d'etre", as evidenced by his championing of Neal Stephenson's vision as The Way To Go. SL is not supposed to remain some quarantined place of entertainment, some virtual gated community; it's supposed to expand and become part of the greater Internet (which itself will increasingly overlap --- or, at least, overLAY --- and certainly follow the same type of flows as --- Real Life) that spills like so much tasty broth into our screens' vertical bowls ...

And, gosh darnit, Di ... I don't see RL itself, for that matter, as "just another dreary captialist enterprise complete with ads, bills, money exchange etc." Of course, there are times when rampant commercialization is enough to make one want to proj-vom on every passing ad exec or corporate honcho, yes ... but this, too, is true:

"This is the best of all possible worlds!" is both the joyful hallelujah of the optimist and the agonized cry of the pessimist.

(And in my case, it might just be the joyful hallelujah of the pessimist.)

(So what my point is, is ... Ermmm ...)

Did somebody say RHUBARB pie?