How Ambitious is Too Ambitious?

I have a couple of ideas of things I want to try as ventures in SL, but I wonder if I'm being too ambitious. Also, I wonder if perhaps the "big boys" (corporations) might come in and blow me out of the water.

Has anyone tried something ambitious or unusual and it worked or didn't work? Anyone interested in helping me see if I can get something off the ground (sim?). : )

You would need to be a lot more specific for people to help you, I think, heh.

Don't worry about the big corps, they are here for advertising, not to compete with residents for $Lindens.

Yup. More detail is needed.

Too ambitious is a plan to take over the grid and oust LL.

That's really a many layered question.

First is the technical side. You'll have to start learning about what the platform can and can't do, and of that it can do - what it does well and what it doesn't. You can probably pick up enough of this sort of information to start making decisions in under a week if you really pour yourself into it. Reading all the "content creation" forums and roaming about the sandboxes is recommended.

Then there's the risk side. This is subjective, amounting to you deciding what you're willing to lose if the project fails.

Then of course there's time, money, resources... the usual.

Good luck with your ideas - SL needs more folks being ambitious!

Hi, folks!
Thanks for your encouragement.
I have 2 ideas, one is kind of ambitious, and one is REALLY ambitious (and would run the risk of competition from corporate types, although, as Io reminded me[thanks, Io] the corporations are in it more for the advertising). Of course, I'd also have to do a little "market research" to make sure what competition is already on the grid (speaking of the grid - Johan, loved your comment !).

The first is to open a comedy improv club (since I have a background in theater and performing arts) and if video capabilities improve, to edit segments and make them available through FreeView. That's kind of ambitious.

The REALLY ambitious idea is to operate a cruiseline, (Segundo Vida?), starting out with 1 ship. I'd be concerned, though, that Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Cannard, Celebrity, etc. would look to do that. The ship would sail in the open water areas of the grid and make some scheduled stops/excursions.

What do you think?

=Ewan

I remember this kid, who lost his account, posting about his cruise line going under (because he couldn't log in). He seemed to be quite successful with it while he had it, though.

Don't worry about what doesn't exist, I don't see any rl Cruise Lines in SL at this point, heh. And there may never be. Do your own thing.

If you start a successful cruise line, the worst thing RL cruise companies might do is buy you out IMHO. I can't imagine them putting together a staff to do such a thing themselves.

OTOH, watch out for service marks etc.

Remember though, I'm speaking without any knowlege of the subject matter whatsoever.

I like that one -- improv lends itself well to small groups. If I had to have a club in my home sim, this is the one I'd want.



Are you aware that nearly all of the "water" on the map doesn't really exist? I.e. there are not huge quantities of deepsea void sims, the dark blue areas aren't space and can't be occupied. There are only a few substantial "seas" that really exist. Maybe a sort of floating-club ship could make sense, but long voyages are not a possibility.

He could buy sims, though, too. And cruise around them. Obviously that is talking about an investment of real money.

Remember that, if you have a 'regular' sim you can buy a set of four "void sims" that you can use as water; two sets gives you a set all around one regular sim (a 3x3 grid) which, although still not cheap ($1675x3 setup plus $295 x 3 monthly tier = $5910 in the first month and $885 a month thereafter) does at least provide you with a big area to do what you need.... if you can justify the expense.

Unfortunately, many a great project in Second Life never materialises or lasts very long because of the huge costs involved in owning land.

Perhaps the easiest solution is to find an area where there is a lot of coastline or void sims already - and buy a big enough plot of land to build a dock and put your cruise ship on before setting sail.

To be honest, it sounds like a fascinating enterprise, and good luck if you can find a way to make it work.

Broccoli

How about a Starship Titanic kinda thing where you have a flying cruiseliner? It's just like a normal cruise line, only instead of moving through water it, y'know, flies.

Although, there are technical issues with both how many people can ride at a time, and how to move them with the ship. Maybe these are smaller ships and vacationers have to sit or lie in bed between ports of call?

No, Foo, I didn't know that about the water. I wasn't even thinking of that as a concern. I was thinking one of the bigger problems would be how to get an avatar to TP to a moving object. Thanks for pointing that part out to me. Although, I guess, could you have a ship that flies instead of one that floats/sails on water? BTW, I love your work in SL.

I was thinking cruises because I have a friend who works for Cannard who could help me with ideas.

The comedy improv club is a fairly versatile idea ... and, hey, they could even perform ship-board if I can get that idea to work.

The trouble with a moving ship is vehicals are very limited in the number of prims they can have. The ways around this are crude.
Stationary ones work as does teleporting of course.
Check out the titanic for an awsome in world ship.

Well, I think I "missed the boat" with the idea for the cruise ship (ha ha). I'll go check out the Titanic, though. I've been wanting to see it.

I will, however, post auditions for the comedy improv group and will probably take out an ad in M2. We have a tavern at Mill Pond where my friend (and landlady), Micala Lumiere, performs. It would be good for tryouts and possibly for our debut. BTW, no Andrew Dice Clay material. This will be strictly PG, even if we play in a mature sim.

I'm also helping a couple of SL church groups get going, so I'll be plenty busy.

=Ewan

Thank you. As you probably saw Foo is just an alt of Bathsheba Dorn; I use this ID on the forums because the Bathsheba account is permabanned (without a warning, for a single short post criticizing LL's business acumen).

On the ship idea, I agree with the folks that say you'd probably need to own some sims to make it work. Even if you solve the big-vehicle problem, and you make it an airship, there's one big problem remaining: a huge object with a lot of scripty stuff and avatars on it would be a lag monster. If I ever saw it near my land I'd hasten to ban whoever was driving it, and I bet I wouldn't be the only one.


This idea is good enough that in your shoes I'd search hard to see if it's already been done. (When search comes back up, that is. :-} ) Not that that would mean you shouldn't do it, but if there is one it might be educational to check it out.

My idea...

Take over Second Life, and oust Linden Lab in a military coup...

or is that too ambitious?

Another issue to consider, not that I'm opposed to the cruise line idea:

If you're listening to Radio Free SL when you leave the dock, you won't be listening to Radio Free SL when you cross into someone else's waterspace. Nor will you still be watching Whose IM Is It Anyway? after you cross that boundary. This would be a problem whether your ship was sailing on the water, or flying through the air.

To the OP...... nothing is too ambitious however keep these things in mind:

what is the time you're willing to invest
once you start delving into stuff it's hard to pull yourself out
are you in it for the money
is it practical that you can do most of it yourself
don't sell yourself short by getting into more than one project halfassed

Usually when people begin SL, the ideas come flooding in... so many vast options to choose from....

From my own experience, I was taking on big ideas, but I started to find that I didn't want to feel stuck or obligated to secondlife. After a bit of time I started to find I was scheduling appointments and meetings and tasks in SL... and I just really really didn't want that. In the long run, I found it was better for me to become involved with a group of people already trying to do what I want to do, rather than being "the originator" head honcho of the project.


..... by the way, there have been improv comedy clubs.. they have come and gone....
I've even performed routines at em... and I'd love to do so again....
however, they have closed their doors mainly because the owner started with the great idea and the drive... but slowly lost the commitment.

I so agree -- when I got in world, by reflex I pretty much started doing what I do in RL: made an avatar that looks like me, started doing the same kind of art, thinking about how to get it shown, packaging it for sale...then I remembered what that leads to. It's my RL job, and the whole reason I want to play a game is that I hate my job. Let somebody who's always wanted to have a business do that in SL. Now my avatar is a Pokemon, I've spent the last few weeks making a useless vehicle like a flying squid, only a few random visitors will ever see it, and I'm thrilled. I stripped out the fun part of what I wanted to do and left the baggage behind.


If one can put up with students, improv workshops might be a good idea? I've only ever done one in RL, but it seemed like a lot of what was done would transfer, minus the sound effects and physical stuff...you could do a lot of other stuff, though, especially with a stock of wacky avatars. How would, say, Hamlet play out if every character was a piece of fruit?


I know this will be a controversial opinion, but I feel like the obvious idea space in SL is pretty much built out. I had a lot of ideas in the first few weeks in world, but on searching I found that all of them were completely covered by people doing them at a professional level. Unless there are major improvements to how the world works, I think there won't be much new under the SL sun except increasing levels of surrealism and absurdity. Which isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that unless you feel very committed and competitive in a particular area, there's no strong reason to do anything RL-like unless every minute of it is fun: there's not much hope of gaining recognition or bragging rights or (ha ha) money at a sane level of effort.

WRT the trappings of success, I think the world is old enough to have become much like RL: the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and if you think you see a glaring opportunity, it just means there's something you don't know. The difference is that the nonrational, nonrealistic possibilities are much larger and freer, and that's where the growth potential of SL lies. So I personally think there'll be better luck in much crazier ideas.