Why would you boycott corporate islands?

i'm not sure i understand the logic behind boycotting corporate islands. it's like boycotting the WWW.

corporations seem to be catching on to what we already knew about secondlife. it is a much more interesting that 2d chatrooms, that it's more immersive and a more compelling way to present and represent information and ideas. so now, like they did with every other medium prior to SL, they are following the early adopters to see what the fuss is about and how they can engage it.

corporations provide deep pockets to experiment with the sl platform. their interest in sl will insure a longevity for this game, as is already demonstrated by such an explosive growth in the population due to media hype. corporations make sl relevant not just to us fringe enthusiasts but to mainstream internet users. that is a good thing for LL, SL, and all of us. it will bring about more innovations, more funding, more richness in the cultural sphere of sl.

why the anti "corporation" sentiment? would people rather that corporations not take interest in sl, the platform stagnate, the VCs pull the plug, and our hobby spiral into obsolete obscurity?

think about it.

j-wu

I think it's obvious why. I don't (yet) know of another game metaphor with product placements in it (though of course, SL has it's own pocket corporations like xcite and Anshe Chung), and I think there's a high proportion of escapers here, who don't like the intensive branding of just about every part of life, especially in the US.

Gummi stated some of it, but I personally don't think we should be forced to compete with people who can throw an endless amount of money at the game... Oh, never mind.

It's not really the corporations that people are having problems with. It's a corporation that people are having problems with and that's Linden Labs. Some of us do feel (and justifiably) that Linden Labs has long decided that the individuals that pay for the service are being discarded in the dreams of chasing the corporation money. It is hoped that by ignoring the existence of these places, they will send a signal to the corporations that Second Life is not the great place that it's been hyped. They hope the corporations will either withdraw (unlikely) or lean on LL to provide better service (even less likely).

Sadly, this is a pipe dream. Corporations do NOT care what the little people think, not really. They just want another cheap outlet for getting their ideas/products/names out there. SL is cheap, very cheap and popular! Look at the numbers on the main page! They're HUGE. Never mind the reality of the game, that's all the corporations are going to look at, unless they are really smart.. and I haven't met too many of those beasties.

*mutters* Wow, I must have a lot of pent up frustration today.

There are no games that DON'T contain product placement. I for one enjoy eating macdonalds, for example, so the existence of a macdonalds island (if one existed) would not detract from my experience any more than tthe existence of RL macdonalds does my RL life (which is not at all). Boycotting is just a fancy word for saying you choose not to go their, hich is fine. People who don't want to go there don't have to, people do can.

Everybody's happy.

I think the sentiment is much like the idea behind people in small American towns wanting to boycott Wal-Mart. People feel the Corporate interests will force out the people who made SL what it is today.

Wal-Mart is a HUGE chain, which sells everything from groceries to auto parts to toys to clothes, to... Well you get the idea. They come into a small town, set up a huge store, spend huge amounts for advertising, can leverage their huge scale to sell at prices that the average mom and pop store can't hope to compete with... What a lot of people see, and fear, is that the arrival of such huge mega-corps in their 'small pond' is about as welcome as introducing a batch of hungry pike (a large, predatory fish, in case you don't know) to your favorite trout fishing pond. It drives all the smaller merchants out of business. The small merchants don't have the buying power, or the international import licenses, or the advertising budgets, that they would need to compete. Arrival of huge corporate chains tends to drive up prices in nearby retail areas, further increasing the cost of doing business. It's a hit the big corps can take without flinching, but the small businesses fold and die.

I look at the retail developments on the edge of my town in RL, and I cringe. Mile after mile of huge corporate chains, outlet stores, and national chain restaurants. Big glossy stores surrounded by acres of parking lots. And hardly any small, local businesses. It's all the same. A Wal-Mart in Texas sells exactly what a Wal Mart in New York or a Wal Mart in California sells. In many cases, the darned floor layouts are even so similar that I can walk into one of these mega chain stores in a town I have never been to, and I already know where to find things in that store!

Now imagine that in SL. Imagine all the cool designer clothes and funky, unique products that SL's content creators have developed being pushed aside by the same t-shirt designs and clothes that you find at Target, or Wal Mart, or Nissan. Those huge corps can spend a hundred times as many hours and dollars to design a product for sale in SL, and can then give it away for free, because as far as they are concerned, it's just advertising for their real world products, which is where they will make their REAL money.

Would you really like to see all the aircraft in SL being made and marketed by Cessna, Boeing, and Lockheed-Martin? All the cars made by Nissan and Honda and GM? All the clothes made by corporate mega-chains?

Even if they don't drive out small designers completely, the Corporations will cause our prices to go up. They already have. New sims will now cost $1625 USD to start instead of $1250, and will cost $295 USD per month to operate instead of $195 USD. Why? BECAUSE BIG CORPS CAN PAY THAT KIND OF MONEY. That is precisely the justification Zee Linden gave for raising that particular area of pricing.

I've already had 4 sim-design and construction projects put on hold, quite possibly cancelled, because the sim owners that I would have been working for are having to re-think whether their idea is viable under the new pricing structure. Two of those sim design contracts had already started work, and were halted. I have had to abandon at least 4 other sim concepts that I was going to present to my clients as sure-win, financially self-sufficient designs, because under the new pricing, they are no longer financially viable. So I can already state without a shadow of a doubt that LL courting the big Corporations has hurt my business, and has caused me financial harm. And I am a pretty small fish, compared to many of the clothing designers and sim designers and builders in SL.

Personally, while I won't call for a boycott of Corporations in SL, I certainly do not welcome their intrusion to our world. I have absolutely NO interest in visiting a sim run by Nissan, or any other huge Corp that is only here to make money off SL's Players. They would have to do something truly stellar, like buy 4 or 8 "public use sims" for every cash cow sim that they build, and offer those sims to groups that want to make non-profit sim designs. And I seriously doubt we would see that, without those sims being polluted with garish advertising every direction you look.

Why boycott the corporate islands indeed. It's not like the people are actually ever here anyway. They buy some land, throw up a building, and offer the sl version of their rl products for extremely cheap or even free, but they themselves aren't ever here. They say they want to be here to have a presence, but they don't. They want to be here so that they can say that they are here. Period.

They don't log in and explore the land, find new and interesting things. They don't know about the botanicals, or the ecosystem, or the rain forests, or the nice romantic spots under the light of the moon on a small island. They won't be going to many performances done by live musicians. They won't be giving back to the SL community in any way shape or form. No, the presence of their building here is more than enough. We should be ever grateful that they bought some land and threw up a structure! Yay! Time to throw a party now! Woo hoooo!!!!

Oh, I won't go into the amount of business that they may take away from the creators here in SL. It's not like the SL versions of their rl products are of any real quality anyway. It's just mostly pieces that are thrown together and then mass produced. No time, effort or creativity put into it. Just a three dimensional model of what they offer in the real world.

No. My own personal dislike of their presence is due to their non-presence. Anyone can own land and throw up a building, as long as you have the money for it.

Yet, I will still visit the corporate islands. I'll still look for someone, anyone, that represents the corporation and is actually there. I'll ask questions, tons of questions, and seek honest answers, and hopefully have a wonderfully enlightening conversation. And then, at the end of the day, I'll head back to the rainforest, or the small cottage, or maybe even a friend's boutique.

Maybe one day they'll log in and come say hello to the rest of the world. Explore. Discover. Dream. Create. Bring those dreams to life. Maybe. But I doubt it.

Sure, let them pump all the money into Secondlife that they want. Sure, buy an island! Their CEO makes a year's tier on an island while having a relaxing SCHVITZ!

Doesn't mean I have to have anything to do with their activities, though.

But the problem is, how is this going to be stopped from eventually happening anyway?

What happens when a SL builder starts giving away expertly designed houses for free becuase they act as an advertisment for their sim building service? And they can spent hundreds of times more than others to design them, because they're "SL pro" and don't need a day job? Do we need to limit the amount of time people from ACS and Electric Sheep spend logged into SL, or the extent to which they can work together? Electric Sheep just dropped SLBoutique.com's commission to zero - should we stop them doing that because it seriously harms anyone else's ability to develop a web-based commerce system? And if we should, how can we!?

What if Zee didn't just mean that the big corps could afford $295 a month? What if he/she was actually talking about the SL businesses that could make the $195 tier for an island in 2-3 days? External corporations have more money, but it's not as if they wrote to LL and asked them to raise their prices. If the availability of money is all that drove the prices up, then why shouldn't resident businesses have had just the same effect?

There are already markets in which newcomers to SL can't participate, because they have no hope of being noticed. Is that OK just as long as the competitor stopping them isn't an RL corporation? Why does that make any difference?

The big problem is that corporations coming to SL only see it as cheap advertising, which is the same thing as putting up a billboard - they only show their name and product, but contribute nothing else.

I would be surprised if any of the 'big names' that are here actually spend any time logged into SL, or have a clue what SL actually offers. They're just bringing first life into second life, without actually taking advantage of anything special or offering anything.

When corporations actually join the community, rather than are 'just here' then perhaps they will begin to be more accepted.

Lewis

We should just do away with money in SL and all live in a commune and make products/scripts/etc for the betterment of society. Then maybe SL could become like the world of Star Trek's Federation and we'd all be striving to better Avatamity as a whole. We'd only need "cash" to interact with outside sources, which we'd ban and block anyways because they're evil and we can make our own versions of their crap anyways.

SL Hippies we shall be!

EDIT: SL Hippies in warp-capable star ships and nifty uniforms!

I thought the boycott movement was because of the island price changes.
Normal people will be less able to afford it. I know I won't be able to cough up the kind of commitment, not during the Year Of Ultimate Fuckups.

There's one of those newfangled 'performing a job' animation camping balls under the bridge on my land if you want. You can wait there until somebody actually makes an argument that sounds anything like what you are implying.

Simple

I'll boycott not only the Corporations that raise my monthly rate by 100.00 per month, I'll boycott SL as well and find something else to do with my money.

They can all pound sand as far as I care.

My view:

Corporations and outside companies in SL = good.

People with SL-only products and services being charged the same as corporations using SL only for the buzz for their REAL product, which isn't even in SL = bad.

Reason for boycotting the corporation islands: Make the corporations unhappy = making LL realize they need to charge real-world businesses hawking real-world products higher rates.

Corporations don't want to create ill will and garner bad press. Get them on our side by bringing the situation to their attention. Bring it to their attention by a mass boycott campaign, with attendant press.

As it is, we're subsidizing Harvard and other educational/charitable entities, plus all the free accounts. Now they want to make us pay the same as Nissan, which doesn't care about selling products within SL, to other SL avatars, at all.

It makes sense to charge outside companies here to advertise their real-world products a higher price than residents serving only other residents with virtual products. That way, you can keep them both.

If LL doesn't recognize there is a difference between real-world entities like Nissan and us and charge accordingly for the different land purposes, there will eventually be very few SL businesses left.

coco

You can't really compare SL to any other MMO. Firstly, other free games have adverts and Anarchy, even though it's paid, runs billboards in game. Other games like EverQuest, etc. have monthly income from EVERYONE who plays therefore the resources are coming in for active people.

SL has MANY well known and great designers. When a company who uses SL like a tool to advertise their products, undercutting awesome designers who even operate at cost, then it becomes an issue. Residents MAKE this game, literally. For companies to come in and basically spit on the little guy, taking huge losses and writing it off as advertising it becomes not profitable for the 'little guy'. Thus they pack up and leave. It's a quite possible scenario that over time, there's ONLY RL corps. out there.

Another issue is that LL's wonderful new CFO, and a few selected Lindens have said specifically, that they know the big companies CAN and WILL pay the new prices. NOTHING about the little guy whatsoever and what the effects are on them.

The anti-stance comes from people who have loved SL, put their heart into their creations, and done things for the greater good of the people and will soon be squashed.

Anarchy Online has product placement...

lol, In before the buzzer!!! *points up to her post* I'm just teasing with you.

I took it to an extreme, which is part of sarcasm. No need to get snooty.

MM

do you really think land/tier prices went up because of corporations? i don't. i think the hype around corporations entering sl and the price hike just happened to be around the same time.

corporations probably represent less than 1% of all land in sl. clearly not a large enough sector for LL to really profit from.

corporations rely entirely on the presence of a user base to make sl worth investing in. so LL could not possibly be thinking of ruining the enjoyment of the user base. it's very much like the internet. before being adopted by everyday users, most corporations had no interest in it besides email.

the land price probably went up because people are addicted to sl and LL holds a monopoly on land. very much like opec raising prices - what are you going to sell your car?!

as for differentiating prices between rl companies and sl companies, how do we distinguish? who's going to keep track of this? isn't any single content creator cashing out their L$ effectively a private business?

So does The Sims Online, and this topic is discussed a lot in industry periodicals. The consensus is that more of it is on the way.

Exxon FTW!

Ok, I'll put in a few serious words. I think the price hike is crazy, but I guess it had to come at some point. Here is what I think will happen:

1) Raise private island prices
2) Attract more companies as they recognize this as the Web 3.0
3) BAM - allow individuals to run their own sims on their own hardware. You pay a simple connection fee to be linked in, and that's it - the rest of the cost is on your own skin
4) Eventually, hosted-sims become like godaddy/etc who run/host your domains for you, but you have to pay. Individual sims are free to run on the "grid", but you have to pay to host them with your own resources.

Ok, that sounds like a bunch of crap because I did not organize my thoughts well. But think of it as this: LL offers individual-run sims and then corps/people who still need a hosted one can just pay. I could see this as the next step in their world-wide-web domination plans.

As far as separate pricing for Corps vs normal SL residents vs SL corps? J-wu brings up a great point - how do we differentiate properly? I don't think we can.

My message: it sucks now and costs a lot - but wait and you may be able to run your own sim in the future (given normal dev cycles, I'd give it a year or two).

MM

umm, except that when yo ulook at suppliers of materilas and goods to large corporates out on the rest of the planet, the opposite is true: buying muscle and market cabalisation lead to big corporates paying LESS not MORE.

I see a lot of people here firing off their favourite "la la la I can't hear you" gun, and showing little or no inclination to actually evaluate what is happening, or what the history of economics might have to show you about it.

I am against boycotting private islands and also against boycotting RL companies moving into SL.

A) RL companies are paying big bucks to SL users and SL companies to help them with their endeavors. Look at the SL companies: Aimee Webber, Electric Sheep Company, and many more. They are getting RL clients and real money to help these corporations set up in Secondlife. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I applaud all of the SL companies that are getting major work and major contracts because of this.

B) RL companies looking to advertise in SL are not bombarding us, not spamming us. they are paying good money to bring themselves into SL effectively.... but it's not like we're getting a banner ad on the top of our secondlife windows. They are announcing their presence.. and then it is our choice to come and visit. American Apparel, Nissan, etc.... they have bought their islands, and if we want to go check it out, we can. Sure, there is a fear that they are running our businesses (our mom and pop SL companies) out.... but that is not the case. they are bringing in their own products... and us as SL consumers are choosing whatever we would like to buy.
Also, who is to say which companies shouldn't be allowed in, and which companies should? It's all a personal preference. CNET just came into SL... Reuters is in SL.... should they be boycotted too?

I'm probably going to get flamed for saying this, but I don't think corporate involvement is really a bad thing. I don't like that the island prices went up, but we will deal with it. The large companies have the money to make SL better than it is. Without the added money, LL can only do so much and will need to keep increasing fees to support itself and give users the added features they are asking for. There is a limit to what they can do without the big financial backing that corportations can provide. With more financial backing the problems we see now could actually reverse and things could get cheaper. LL has stated many times that SL is more than a game. Right now, it is just starting to be clear what the possibilties are. If we ever want to truly see it as a platform (and not a game), it will take the big companies to finance it.

Jauani- No offense ... but this thread (like your recent 'gender identification' and 'Consentual adults' threads) seems out of place in "Resident Answers".

Resident Answers is a simple, friendly place to ask your fellow Residents of Second Life for help. This forum came about after many suggestions dating back a long time, so in recognition of how many knowledgeable Residents we have who want to help others, ... -- About this forum

I'm not sure where you should take these "public opinion" questions now... but I don't want us to lose "Resident Answers" because it devolved into another "General Forum"

I miss the general forum too... but that ship has sailed.