Watching population growth

I agree , desmond - I was trying to think all cynical and consipiracist for a moment

Its very true that the continued sucess of the old timers is helped a lot by the newcomers.

There is also a definite value added to Second Life content and Lifestyle over time.

I think the decrease in stipends and loss of First Land (as well as the truncation of the lower end of the land market by bots) have to do with the lower growth as well. I'm sure that retention has been affected.

I was part of the Q4 2006 "boom", and it was First Land that hooked me. I could buy some right away with my first week of stipend, flip it and make L$3000, and there I was on the ownership ladder, feeling like I was doing well, without putting in another US$ cent.

What it costs now to buy your first 512m isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but I don't think I would do it if I were new now. After you pay to go premium, you then have to jump into this sharky, half-automated, underdocumented land market, knowing that you're a noob and likely to get ripped off, and pay some random person, not even LL, more L$ than you've ever seen in your life, just to get your foot in the door...I don't see why I'd want to stick around for that, let alone pay money.

The thing that bugs me about the land market now is that there's no upside: no chance at all of getting a bargain. The best thing that can happen is that you pay full retail for something average. But there's lots of downside -- you can mess up by confusing buying and renting, not understanding the difference between island and mainland, running into a bad-apple sim owner -- and there are lots of people working hard to lead you into all these mistakes. Not to mention SL land sale bugs and bots ready to take advantage of any momentary error.

Lots of risk, and no possibility that you're going to do well...I think new people can smell that it's a mug's game.

O god don't say that please!

Unsurprising, really.

I've seen the growth of a California county from the late 1960's to present.

It's been nothing but a continual string of unsustainable commercial enterprises.

From agriculture, to defence aerospace and new home development, to manufacturing, to telecom.

None of 'em sustainable as they were in their respective 'big booms'. Always some new facet dominating the landscape time and time again.

So as the market matures, I see cyberspace as the same kind of situation - but probably faster and worse, not better.

At the end of the day, there will still be a desire for 3d cyberspace with basic object creation and market functionality.

It just won't be 'trendy' any more, and more of a commodity like server space, which is all it really is anyway.

I don't know about that. I never get to the end of my need for new clothes or shoes. (Not that I buy that many, but I buy new ones every so often, as a regular thing.)

People even change their houses all the time.

Let's face it, it's a shopper's paradise, and you don't need to be new to play!

(Methinks the idea that it isn't may be a guy thing.)

coco

I couldn't agree more.

I always thought "priming the pump" was important. The only way the pump gets primed now is if you verify your payment information and get a joining bonus.

coco

Yes, that's when they let us Australians loose on the grid under the cover of darkness
Less than 2% Australians? Hmm possibly I guess.
Also I suspect the grid is suffering from being too big, back in Nov when I started there were people everywhere you went, now you can go to malls and not see anyone else in the sim for an hour.

Wasn't there a problem where people couldn't create new accounts for a week or so. This would have an impact.

I got in before the boom and open registrations, long enough to see how much things changed.

First land was the only reason why i got a subscription. I got my land, put a house on it and by the time i got finished placing it i was in love with building, then two people showed up and offered me money for my land which i promptly sold since i was a noob and wanted hair money. Took that money and got more land to play with

at that time there was no more than 6k people on at once

Now this place is full of people who read someplace that they can make money here, which is insane. If you make money in SL its because you like it here and have found a niche even then it just covers tier and fees so that you can buy stuff without having to use US$.

Its true, the first few weeks, this place is strange and you dont know what to do, my friend suggested that people should have some way to get adopted or something (but not like little kid adoption, yikes)

roomate island, something and the spinning ads, they do make this place look like a digital wasteland the only reason i dont invest more in sl is because anytime your sim can go off a cliff and island prices are out of the question for me.

ok, i need a cookie, im in here because when i log on i cant move
gonna try to relog

Yay I'm part of the boom generation.... (would you believe I read about SL in The Economist magazine around that time).


I've noticed the perceived levelling off of growth with some interest. There have been a number of great posts in this thread that I really enjoyed reading.

I buy (to an extent) the argument that spring sends people more outside instead of into SL. I would be the same if I wasn't stuck on assignment and living out of a hotel room.

I think though there is some other contributing factor. To me it's almost as if SL has reached a plateau and has paused for breath. My feeling is it's waiting for something, perhaps the clichéd "killer app" that is often talked about in tec circles.

What that might be I'm not sure. (The Linden's seem to be betting on voice but I'm not convinced that is it). I'm inclined to think more likely it will be several "killer applets" that will emerge: Improvement/expansion of the creative tools in SL (being able to create better games inside SL for example), the immersion factor (better graphics etc) and delivering stable grid quality of SL that will fuel the next run up in population.


Of course it goes without saying the above is my own wild speculation. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again.

I would think that at least 90% of current PC's in this world find it hard to run SL.
From the "there" site, you need only either:

or


compared to SL on a PC:

I have run There quite well with a minimal system. Had to get a new video card to run SL at more than 3 fps.

I think the difference is directx vs opengl. I realize opengl is more universal, and suits more types of computers (linux, mac etc), but folks with PC's only know it does not run well on their PC's.

I guess eventually the open source community will rework the client to work directly with directx, but this might take a while. Improving the operation of the cache might also improve the PC experience. That would encourage a lot more people to enter SL.

I allways think the required min specs for PC are well over exagerated. My graphics card is an Nvidia Geforce 5600 and i run my graphics on high levels for nearly all settings and use 256 draw distance comfortably. I have trouble running some PC games that are 3 or 4 years old now but SL graphics are dire compared to most about nowadays. I do have 2GB of RAM which im sure helps too.