It's time we stand up against LL and tell them they need to make SL far for everyone

[Deltango Vale]

Interesting how Linden Lab stopped publishing quarterly economic data in January 2008 ("Second Life Virtual Economy Key Metrics beta Through January 2008"). Fortunately, I have all the spreadsheets. I sent copies to Tyche Shepherd at Gridsurvey on the off-chance she might have missed one or two, but she had them all. The numbers don't show land ownership or Premium membership by nationality. Needless to say, those Europeans who sold their land and downgraded to Basic membership are still counted as avatars.

[Perrie Juran]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Bless you Maddy. I think you are the first person ever in this forum to understand the concept of relative prices.

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No, it is not that we don't understand it, we just don't necessarily agree with your application of the concept as it relates to SL.

Consider food commodities.  We have over the years improved yields per acre.  All the technology is in place now.  But we don't see food prices going down.  Why is that?  A farmer gets more out of an acre than he did twenty years ago.

We can talk about relative prices all day long but you can not apply it across the board with out considering all the factors involved.

[Ceka Cianci]

they stopped blogging the quarterly report also just last year i think?

or maybe it was the year before?

after awhile time just seems to blend together around here with some things hehehe

 

they are definatly making it harder for people to adjust businesses here in sl..

[Deltango Vale]

Sure, some aspects of SL have improved, but nothing compared to the basket of infotainment goods and services in the world 2006-2013. The iPhone did not exist in 2006. Nor did the Kindle, nor iPads. A 2006 graphics card or processor is valueless today - scrap. Facebook was a niche product. Twitter was something you heard in trees from birds. A whole new universe of infotainment was created between 2006 and 2013 - and the prices of those infotainment goods and services have collapsed as the quality skyrocketed (well, except for Facebook, which is free anyway). By comparison, Second Life is a 10-inch black & white TV costing $1,000.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Sure, some aspects of SL have improved, but nothing compared to the basket of infotainment goods and services in the world 2006-2013. The iPhone did not exist in 2006. Nor did the Kindle, nor iPads. A 2006 graphics card or processor is valueless today - scrap. Facebook was a niche product. Twitter was something you heard in trees from birds. A whole new universe of infotainment was created between 2006 and 2013 - and the prices of those infotainment goods and services have collapsed as the quality skyrocketed (well, except for Facebook, which is free anyway). By comparison, Second Life is a 10-inch black & white TV costing $1,000.

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I remember when I first heard about SL in about 2007 - I spend a lot of time playing The Sims 2 then and when I saw screenshots SL looked ridiculously bad compared to it and The Sims 2 wasn't considered state-of-the-art by any means.

EA is still selling plenty for what's now the Sims 3 at prices that are higher than for the Sims 2 expansions, but not to me - well-built areas of SL are now better looking than the Sims 3 and for most of the last few years I've lived in a nice SL house with plenty of toys WITHOUT SPENDING A NICKEL OF RL MONEY FOR IT because I made enough Lindens in-world to support myself, and incidentally helped to support a few sim-owners too. I'm now paying directly for my land because I've grown tired of hustling so much but that's by choice.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Sure, some aspects of SL have improved, but nothing compared to the basket of infotainment goods and services in the world 2006-2013. The iPhone did not exist in 2006. Nor did the Kindle, nor iPads. A 2006 graphics card or processor is valueless today - scrap. Facebook was a niche product. Twitter was something you heard in trees from birds. A whole new universe of infotainment was created between 2006 and 2013 - and the prices of those infotainment goods and services have collapsed as the quality skyrocketed (well, except for Facebook, which is free anyway). By comparison, Second Life is a 10-inch black & white TV costing $1,000.

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I remember when I first heard about SL in about 2007 - I spend a lot of time playing The Sims 2 then and when I saw screenshots SL looked ridiculously bad compared to it and The Sims 2 wasn't considered state-of-the-art by any means.

EA is still selling plenty for what's now the Sims 3 at prices that are higher than for the Sims 2 expansions, but not to me - well-built areas of SL are now better looking than the Sims 3 and for most of the last few years I've lived in a nice SL house with plenty of toys WITHOUT SPENDING A NICKEL OF RL MONEY FOR IT because I made enough Lindens in-world to support myself, and incidentally helped to support a few sim-owners too. I'm now paying directly for my land because I've grown tired of hustling so much but that's by choice.

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here is the thing i didn't care for..

this world was really made for users to get in here and create things..LL was just going to hang out and watch the world grow on it's own..

make money on land and see their terrarium flurish..

but each time it would..they would step in and get involved in the market to weaken the market for users winning..or throw a hurricain/natural disaster in the mix..

look at how the market place alone screwed over in world experience..

rather than spending more time in world..we can get things at our fingertips in the catalog..

being online in a virtual world shopping online rather than going to the virtual brick and mortars..

 

heck they were going to start charging people putting up freebies on the market place..

this is the biggest example i can think of that really had an impact on a lot of in world stores going away just because of LL messing with the whole market..

you don't even need land anymore for the market..it's all inventory..

[Deltango Vale]

You will like this: EA Voted Worst Company in America, Again

[KarenMichelle Lane]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Sure, some aspects of SL have improved, but nothing compared to the basket of infotainment goods and services in the world 2006-2013. The iPhone did not exist in 2006. Nor did the Kindle, nor iPads. A 2006 graphics card or processor is valueless today - scrap. Facebook was a niche product. Twitter was something you heard in trees from birds. A whole new universe of infotainment was created between 2006 and 2013 - and the prices of those infotainment goods and services have collapsed as the quality skyrocketed (well, except for Facebook, which is free anyway). By comparison, Second Life is a 10-inch black & white TV costing $1,000.

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Deltango brings up a very interesting point in this discussion. Where does SL fall these days in the universe of entertainment, social media & infotainment offerings. It is a free service in some respects competing for valuable "eye time" against all those noisy phone and xPad & yTablet applications. It can also be a inexpensive and/or a high-priced place to create and showcase your Virtual Talent.

It is also one of a host of diminishing number of Virtual World Environments and arguably one of the only offering user created content.. [i'm bundling SL & OpenGRID technology into the same class of services as well ]  - I've also noticed that Linden Research is offering other Virtual Environments that seem suited to those with a penance for timkering and more game related play.

Having been in SL since after the 2007 price changes, the  overall price to play from my POV has remained flat. So all these improvements giving a more realistic visual experience are welcome to me and my tenants. As far as the competition goes, the BlueMars effort, another a high quality "Scalable" Virtual World, lost it's way and funding. CloudParty is an all web approach that holds promise but has a way to go.

My questions are:

1) if the goal is capturing a significant % of the "Need to Experience a Social Alternative to Real Life" crowd, what is that potential market worth? Clearly, capturing certain levels of that crowd [ specifically those with disposable income ] can translate into business income. 

2) Does the quality of the product grow the market share? Can it increase the size of the market to be captured? Are there only so many $s in the Market to begin with?

I'm resisting the temptation to compare SL with FB and the likes. It is a social environment to be sure but the creation aspect  as well as the "no in your face" advertising in-world places it on a shelf all by itself.

~ just my thoughts...

[Czari Zenovka]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

You will like this:

EA Voted Worst Company in America, Again

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That explains a lot, considering that's where Rod hails from.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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ETA: I have another explanation for the lack of price decline. I suspect that technology costs not the majority of of LL's expenses. They probably send most of their revenue off to salaries and wages. As technology improves and concurrency declines, ever less of their budget will go to infrastructure. They are more like a software and customer service company than an ISP.

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Electricity, rent, server maintenance, Security staff.. none of those things have come down in price. they have all gone up in cost.. and yet, they STILL have not raised the cost of tier..

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Since 2007, when I started hosting my business website and mail at Bluehost, they've lowered my annual fee from $100 to $50 and increased my disk space and monthly bandwidth from 20GB to unlimited (I have about 350GB up at the moment). If you want to model LL as an ISP, there's a benchmark. Every one of the costs you just mentioned is borne by Bluehost as well. A watt, a square foot of rented space, a maintenance tech and a security guard can all support 10x as much compute power and storage space as a decade ago. The amortized, full burden cost of the technology used to support SL has gone down dramatically in a decade. You are making no headway with me over infrastructure costs, Drake.

I imagine LL's operating expenses have fallen since 2008, primarly due to headcount reductions and to a lesser extent, from scaling back infrastructure. Advances in server performance and declines in sim count should have allowed LL to cut their server farm to less than half its peak size. I still see no way to make an economic argument for constant tier prices by comparing LL to anything like an ISP. Remember that our tier payments paid for the development of the 2D building games that LL developed for iOS and Android. If those never turn a profit they will have been SL residents gift to the mobile gaming community.

I believe it's a mistake to think of LL as an infrastructure provider, as I suspect infrastructure costs are only a small and declining part of their operating expenses. Tier prices are where they are because LL thinks they're the right prices. Whether they're spending every dime they make to pay employees, 30% of which are working on mobile games, or funneling 30% off the top for investors doesn't really make a difference, does it? Concurrency continues to decline. That can't go on forever.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Another factor is that SL isn't a closed system financially. People can and do get money OUT and there are people who even make a profit on it. LL's main intended customers for regions are those who are doing business and can have at least part of the tier subsidized by customers. Of course they'll say, "You want to send us $295 a month for your personal amusement? Be our effing guest!" if someone wants that, but that's not really their expectation.

 

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Right. There are clearly some profitable sim owners. The sim I live on hasn't enough renters to cover more than a small fraction of the tier, yet the owners stay. I'm glad they do, but wonder why.

[redxrob]

At the end of the day LL don't care about you or SL anymore as all there doing is driving it into the ground so they don't care if someone robed you as long as they make money one way or the other there happy.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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redxrob wrote:

At the end of the day LL don't care about you or SL anymore as all there doing is driving it into the ground so they don't care if someone robed you as long as they make money one way or the other there happy.

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That makes no sense what so ever. Why would they ruin their own cash cow intentionally?

[Ciaran Laval]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Consider food commodities.  We have over the years improved yields per acre.  All the technology is in place now.  But we don't see food prices going down.  Why is that?  A farmer gets more out of an acre than he did twenty years ago.

We can talk about relative prices all day long but you can not apply it across the board with out considering all the factors involved.

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Food prices have come down over the years in plenty of cases when adjustments are made for inflation and costs of living.