Svarga sim closing?

I'm saddened that Lauk is selling Svarga? It's one of the most amazing sims in SL. If you haven't already been, go have a look at it before it's gone and take some pictures.

I am also saddened.

If I could afford to take on something like that, I would.

Wonderful photo opportunities everywhere. Gonna miss it!!

Good luck on future endeavours, Lauk, I hope we still see new great things from you. lil' Svarga snowglobes! ;D

Sims, even ones supporting fabulous builds just aren't worth keeping unless they're generating enough income to support themselves are they. Land is that way all around really. Houses are cute and all; but worth forking over all that cash every month?

augh noo! that was a too cool project! Sell me a hut there
dammit the best sim ever

I wouldn't neccesarily agree with that. Depends on why you are here and how much you can afford.

I think the sim was supposed to be some natural environment project where things could interact with the visitor and stuff and not strictly commercial sim, and from what I see, donations are not covering the sim maintenance cost.

It's an absolutely amazing sim. I had heard Laukosargas was trying to sell it as well, but without the ecosystem (which is a shame; it's really quite amazing). I really hope she reconsiders, I know I'd donate to try to help keep it open.

Regards,

-Flip

Svarga is one of the kewlest sims I have ever seen period. I will be sad to see it go.

damn shame. anyone know how long we have until its gone?
will donations really help extend its life or has the owner 100% decided its fate?

SL really needs it's Svargas. Mebbe LL should consider commisionning a few of the better concept builders and teams to whip up a few sims that are permanently maintained just to show people what's really possible. LL already maintains a whole slew of mainland sims so why couldn't they also maintain showcase sims dotted around the mainland and islands? Surely some of that 11 million smackeroos they got a while back could be invested there. And it would be money well spent.

As it is Svarga will probably be recycled as yet another blingland casino sim or cookie-cutter housing project

Yes, although a sim like Svarga doesn't get "whipped up". These things are labours of love, you can't pay someone enough to spend the time doing it. They have to be doing it anyway.

Sims are, well sims are sims... they come, they go, and in some ways that's the beauty of SL. Svarga is wonderful indeed, but more alarming perhaps, is where is the Angel that build it?

You're right. I think we say goodbye and look to the next. The EWG looks really promissing.

Personally I think LL should take it and keep it opened.

After all it is listed in the "RL education places in SL" notecard. That`s where I found it. I thought it was a cool SIM, it would benefit SL to stay up.

I know, Seifert, I know. Actually this brings me to a possible replacement for the defunct Developer Incentive / Dwell scheme: A voting system for sims / projects (it should be open to all, not just sim-owners) of artistic and/or cultural merit. A variety of possible scenarios could be implemented:

1) Monthly winners would have a set amount of tier paid for: 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 months depending on their position in the voting tally.
2) A single monthly winner would have it's tier paid for indefinitely. Ok, mebbe monthly would produce too many permanently subsidised sims. A quarterly permanent tier subsidy award could be frequent enough.
3) Cash prizes / payouts for the winner(s) to use as they see fit.
4) An L$ credit prize / award that could only be used to pay for tier and / or further land expansion / facilities and not be cashed out or transferred to other players.
5) An upper limit on the number of 'award-winning' sims / projects that can belong to any one player and / or group in order to stop project developers from gaming such a voting system.
6) Paid-up accounts would have a fixed number of votes to dispense with each month. This would encourage travel around the grid.
7) Non-verified accounts could also vote on a separate tally which could refelect 'popularity' but not be counted towards the prize awards.


Voting could be restricted to paid-up accounts only so as to mitigate the potential for vote-gaming with alts. Also, the monthly voting tally would have to be published publicly, for instance on the SL website and posted on a noticeboard at every InfoCentre.

It's clear that the end of the DI / dwell era pulled the plug on alot of sims and projects that those schemes were designed to help. In the absence of any replacement scheme, it's been brute capitalism sink-or-swim. Hardly anything gets built any longer without thinking about how it's going to pay for itself. Art for art's sake seems to have gone on hold for the time being. Mebbe LL should change the SL tagline to: 'Your wallet, someone else's prefabs'

Those are really good ideas Alazarin! There needs to be more incentive for non-commercial projects in SL. The arts are funded in RL after all. Perhaps there could be lottery funding for good causes too! In the UK all national galleries and museums are now free to enter because of government sponsorship. They would have to charge without it.

I like those ideas to an extent, I mean tweaks for all could be in.

As for the dwell, I totally agree, now each club comes with a high price mall to survive.

I used to own a mall and the small amount of dwell made up for what I didn't charge for vendor rent. When dwell went away, it was the end of small owners like me. I was bought out by a huge land owner (thankfully the mall is still there so my hard work did pay off in a way, at least for someone), but owning a 4000m piece, just too much to pay to tier without any real benefits of coming back as far as business goes. I used to charge an average of 50L per week and right before I ended up selling, the average was up to 90L and it still wasn't making ends meet.

I'm certainly sorry to see the entire system scrapped. I've watched a lot of legitimate businesses go down and lots of malls go up.

Hell, even businesses in RL have benefits, breaks etc. for being there. Chamber of Commerce can pay some out to businesses and that's how I saw dwell. A lil incentive for people to stay open. So camping places took a certain advantage? So what? It put more money in to people to buy more from creators. Which in turn made them upload more.. I've watched several creators go down as well, just because people aren't buying like they used to.

Only the big, well-known places are winning out, and getting a start is incredibly tough for anyone now.

Dearly Darling,

The SLSL Group is working towards that end. You may IM me (Treasurer) Maneo Suntzu (Recording Secretary) or the founder Lord Sullivan for a notecard.

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

I don't think they can do that in this case, because:

a) Lauk wants to sell it for a profit, not just have it "taken" by someone;
b) the evolving ecosystem aspect is going to be lost, whatever happens, because Lauk doesn't want anyone else to get the scripts.

Really? The lack of dwell/DI seems to encourage "legitimate businesses" and penalize malls. Malls can no longer use traffic to offer cheaper rent, thus their service is slightly less valuable, but for legitimate businesses that make and sell things those things are still just as useful and valuable to customers.



The Chamber of Commerce, though, is paid for via tax. Any attempt at taxing people's L$ transactions or balances wouldn't work. And if LL print new L$ to pay the dwell with, then the L$ sale value goes down and the recipients still can't make tier.

If you want to incentivise people to stay open there's nothing to stop you tipping them

Actually, I've watched some hangout spots and clubs that didn't rely on malls go away from it. The pricing on some of the more popular club vendors can run upwards of 500L a week for very few prims. In those spots, I've only seen the biggest of the big of creators there, ones that already own quite a bit of land for a main store. While I don't discourage that, who that is new can afford 500L a week off few content of their own without buying L?

And most of the malls going up are not charging more, they are just putting in more spots, getting close to maxing prims, taking out all unneccesary prims, hell, one place even took off the roof and columns! Just creating more lag and longer load times.

Making and selling useful things doesn't matter if you can't pay the rent.



Oh, you mean like upload fees? Or 'tax' on buying and selling L? Plenty of sinks could be considered taxing. They aren't gonna print any more than they are taking out and frankly, the L went down because of the quick page on the site that allows selling. Half the people didn't even know there was an advanced option, I didn't til a few days ago.

If people all sold through advanced again, then it's back to square one.

When dwell and DI went away there was the promise of something to replace them and be even better and more representative.

I wonder what's happened to that, hm?

Idea is nice Alzarin, but I really do not see LindenLabs commissioning anything save for some few lindendollar giveouts at events. Their idea on SL is Resident Run sims, costs, projects, world they do not intent on touching things.

very

good

question.

I'm going to attempt a "Resident Answer" that makes sense here.

We should be very glad that the Company doesn't (commonly at least) save "nice sims".



Consider:

- Who chooses?
- And on what basis?
- Who even knows what is out there?
- How many sims are popular more on the basis of creator fame, than content?


Better we lose some wonderful sims to the sands of time, than create a system that institutionalised either real or imagined favouritism.

And that is the real answer.