Oooo a New Shiny. Event Regions - What do you think of this?

[Love Zhaoying]

It almost sounds like..Plus Regions! ("Ploos!")

[Nika Talaj]

Cam regions, shmam regions.  If I were marketing this new product, my eventual target would NOT be organizers of currently inworld events.  I would eventually aim to sell event regions as virtual adjuncts to RL events - concerts, product introductions, conferences etc..  SL has taken more than one run at the RL events market, and I think this is nicely put together to allow them to make a play again.  You might say that the timing is bad, that this is something that should have been in place early in the pandemic.  But actually, this is not bad, I think.  As RL events are picking up, I think organizers are discovering that there's a pretty big audience segment that would prefer to remain virtual.  BUT - we all know that hybrid events with, say, one or two Zoom cameras at the RL space and a pile of zoom callers, are UNBELIEVABLY bad.  SL has that partially beat - at least the virtual portion of the audience will ALSO be at a group event!  Which can look just as amazing as the RL portion of the event.  And now, with Tilia, SL has a Fintech engine capable of handling cash transactions of RL amounts at the event.

There have been many failures to penetrate this space, including Sansar and HighFidelity.  So what?  It is a difficult problem, and previous failures may just mean that LL is farther along the learning curve than VW parvenus.  I used to think that LL was learning impaired.  But, since Patch's team has actually been promoting community (yes, it took almost 20 years to learn that, but better late than never), I'm hopeful.  Sort of.

Virtual adjuncts to RL events is a HUGE market, and the important thing is to grab part of it before Horizon Worlds etc. get their act together.  One good thing about the maturity of the games market and the current traffic jam of metaverse offerings, the potential user base will be more VW literate than ever before.

If an Event Region is being marketed to RL event throwers, the price is not an issue.  In fact, this should cost a lot more - but then, Patch has not shared if LL will eventually be selling setup and event management services.  I sure would.  If you're going to do it, do it right.

-----------------------------

Oh, and another more-or-less unrelated thing.  LL is hiring several people right now - many on the Tilia side, but also some key hires to scale up marketing and engineering.  

Edited May 2, 2022 by Nika Talaj

[Sammy Huntsman]

14 minutes ago, Grumpity Linden said:

Event Regions as a product are certainly not limited to actually running events. They can be used to host Roleplaying Regions or any other purpose our residents desire! 

A lot of roleplay community sims could benefit from the this new region. Especially with the lag. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

12 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

Cam regions, shmam regions.  If I were marketing this new product, my eventual target would NOT be organizers of currently inworld events.  I would eventually aim to sell event regions as virtual adjuncts to RL events - concerts, product introductions, conferences etc..  SL has taken more than one run at the RL events market, and I think this is nicely put together to allow them to make a play again.  You might say that the timing is bad, that this is something that should have been in place early in the pandemic.  But actually, this is not bad, I think.  As RL events are picking up, I think organizers are discovering that there's a pretty big audience segment that would prefer to remain virtual.  BUT - we all know that hybrid events with, say, one or two Zoom cameras at the RL space and a pile of zoom callers, are UNBELIEVABLY bad.  SL has that partially beat - at least the virtual portion of the audience will ALSO be at a group event!  Which can look just as amazing as the RL portion of the event.  And now, with Tilia, SL has a Fintech engine capable of handling cash transactions of RL amounts at the event.

There have been many failures to penetrate this space, including Sansar and HighFidelity.  So what?  It is a difficult problem, and previous failures may just mean that LL is farther along the learning curve than VW parvenus.  I used to think that LL was learning impaired.  But, since Patch's team has actually been promoting community (yes, it took almost 20 years to learn that, but better late than never), I'm hopeful.  Sort of.

Virtual adjuncts to RL events is a HUGE market, and the important thing is to grab part of it before Horizon Worlds etc. get their act together.  One good thing about the maturity of the games market and the current traffic jam of metaverse offerings, the potential user base will be more VW literate than ever before.

If an Event Region is being marketed to RL event throwers, the price is not an issue.  In fact, this should cost a lot more - but then, Patch has not shared if LL will eventually be selling setup and event management services.  I sure would.  If you're going to do it, do it right.

-----------------------------

Oh, and another more-or-less unrelated thing.  LL is hiring several people right now - many on the Tilia side, but also some key hires to scale up marketing and engineering.  

Imagine having a UMF SL OR a tomorrowland SL brought you by the people who made these rl events.

[Rowan Amore]

39 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

It was good.  One of the sample events we tested had hit capacity.  Most were in draw distance, no "cam" regions.  My personal experience had me walking around in the region freely, feeling no incumbrances, and with a subjectively reasonable FPS..  Metrics and feedback show better results than similarly loaded events taking place at a third of that capacity (and frustrating to experience).

Was that with 200 fully meshed up avatars?  

 

[Orwar]

   I don't suppose we could also have 'micro regions' for us misanthropes who'd rather have a maximum of like, 5 visitors - with pricing going the other direction to match? 

[Nika Talaj]

5 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I don't suppose we could also have 'micro regions' for us misanthropes who'd rather have a maximum of like, 5 visitors - with pricing going the other direction to match? 

 

 

[Toothless Draegonne]

"Extended chat ranges", in events? That's about the most useless place to put that.

"30k Li", well whup de doo.

"Rollbacks as a service!" - once set up properly, exactly how many events ever need a rollback?

"Instancing as a service!" - for $1800/month you get a copy button.

"White Glove concierge service" - because normal peasants only spending $229/month ex tax don't deserve a 24/7 support dept.

"20% script improvement!" - scripts aren't the problem these days, unless someone dials that number back down to make the rip-off seem like a bargain. I want to see how these regions work with 175 billion-vertex, gigabytes-of-VRAM fashionistas physics-jiggling their way around the shopping stalls.

And all for the low, low price of literally more than three linked 30k "normal" full regions. Exactly how much digital stimulant was being railed off an animesh backside when this idea got thought up?

 

Oh well, I'm sure enough people will buy them. $40 name changes, after all.

[C0ui]

Just curious if anyone from this group or anyone you know in SL actually took a part in 200 avatar server stress-testing, or was it just bunch basic avatar created by LL interns?

Also if this is for daily rentals and someone decides to invest and then sublet this sim for daily or weekly renting contracts, would they actually have enough renters?

Would someone persay actually want to rent such region for a big wedding or other celebration and pay week's rent of lets say 300USD so they have enough time to decorate and then to trash the place when they are done?

Also, did anyone actually ask for this?

Asking for a friend:)

[Inara Pey]

At times I wish LL would be more definitive in their blurb. 

"IaaS: Instancing as a Service - Request to have your region duplicated to another region."

What, precisely does this mean? What are the limitations?

• Do you genuinely mean simultaneous instancing, on an on-demand basis (e.g. I can simply request another instance of my event to be spun-up based on the demand I'm seeing  -  and request it is taken down when demand drops below the level where it is no longer required)?. 
• Am I limited to just the one instance (as the wording perhaps implies), or can I have more than one?
• Is instancing covered by the "original" region's tier, or is a surcharge applicable? If so, how much?
• If none of the above, then clarification, please!

 

 

 

[Inara Pey]

1 minute ago, C0ui said:

Just curious if anyone from this group or anyone you know in SL actually took a part in 200 avatar server stress-testing, or was it just bunch basic avatar created by LL interns?

I gather from what's been said elsewhere and what I've heard from those who attend some of the larger shopping events, this new region product was tested "in the wild" across a number of actual events. 

[Klairity]

7 minutes ago, Inara Pey said:

I gather from what's been said elsewhere and what I've heard from those who attend some of the larger shopping events, this new region product was tested "in the wild" across a number of actual events. 

If this has been tested in the wild I've seen no real differences shopping, I'm usually at every event the first couple days. Very modern system so none of this "well you must be on a potato" excuse. Not worth the price tag when 30k sims exist and you're saying 20% more performance for 300% the price, yea no thanks. 
Also events are usually burnt out the first week and you can get in normally after that and the event is a ghost town (not all) but there's no reason to mill through people faster for 300% the price either. 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Klairity

[So Whimsy]

45 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I don't suppose we could also have 'micro regions' for us misanthropes who'd rather have a maximum of like, 5 visitors - with pricing going the other direction to match? 

[Freddie Venus]

Ah so this is what this is all about ? http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Rhodium/200/67/24 ?

Seems like a pretty cool idea.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

well @Grumpity Linden I've got a test I can run if ya'll are game,  did it years ago with the crashme sims  and I brought those down pretty easily,  let me know if ya'll got an empty flat one some where I can go do a test at.

[Codex Alpha]

3 hours ago, So Whimsy said:

$899 per month seems incredibly steep. Not sure how many event organisers want to pay almost $600 more just to have more shoppers at the same time. Seems like quite the cut into the profit margins.

For a corporate customer, this is a drop in the bucket - It's not for the average of us here.

[Kathlen Onyx]

SMH, what a total waste of money for nothing tangible in return.  I'd like someone to wager a guess as to how many event's would purchase something like this.  This is DOUBLE my RL monthly rent! 

[Jennifer Boyle]

I'm not sure about the details, like pricing and specific characteristics. However, I think that this is an example of exactly how LL needs to be thinking---how they can give users the option to pay more and get a better product.

[Chic Aeon]

For ME, this seems a good plan looking towards the future. The timing however is not the best. Not LL's fault although many of us (at least the RL folks I hang around with foresaw the recession and the inflation more than two years ago. And here it is.   AND we are going into summer and I suspect -- noting the indexes that "I" watch it will be a particularly slow one.   

In the last month my blog readership has halved over some top numbers throughout the previous six to nine months.  Earnings seem to be down a bit although since I don't cash out any longer that isn't important to me personally -- still indicative perhaps.  Moreover the folks clambering at the gates of newly opened events has dropped noticeable and now I can get into "top" popular events the first day rather than waiting a week  (the norm a year to two ago).  

The current DRAW IMO would be the ambience of "togetherness" for folks that like crowds LOL.  That isn't me since I almost always have "show friends only" on LOL.  

Overall the move is a thumbs up for me. Better to be to early than too late and hopefully in a year or so the world economy will begin to stabilize and there will be more of a need.  The other use for this would of course be large meetings for educators for example OR even very popular role play areas. People could be in more compact areas and clustered rather than needed more sims just to get enough citizens into the storyline.   

 

So far as "instancing", there have always been a few events that took advantage of "mirror sims" where creators only had to set up once but visitors could go to either  place --- at least that is what I perceived as happening.  This also happened in Sansar BUT the issue with that is that if it was a performance region, the people performing were only in one of the regions :D.  So if you didn't get in the main area then it was pretty much like watching the event with others on TV LOL.   Still at the present time getting 200 people in one place would likely solve most entrance needs.  

 

 

[Maximillon Lefavre]

9 hours ago, Nika Talaj said:

 

 

You have to own a Full Region first before you can buy an Openspace Region as you cannot have just an Openspace Region on it's own.

[Maximillon Lefavre]

10 hours ago, Orwar said:

   I don't suppose we could also have 'micro regions' for us misanthropes who'd rather have a maximum of like, 5 visitors - with pricing going the other direction to match? 

With virtual servers and AWS cloud based pricing this should be very doable for LL. However, the profit margins would be much smaller so the real question you have to ask is, why should they do this?

[Bree Giffen]

I wonder if LL will host their own shopping events, like their SL birthday and Halloween, in these new regions. It'd be nice to see how well it runs and everyone who experiences it will be able to spread the word.

[Love Zhaoying]

How long before someone buys one of these regions, and rents out parcels to people who want to try it?

Taking bets now!

[Orwar]

3 hours ago, Maximillon Lefavre said:

With virtual servers and AWS cloud based pricing this should be very doable for LL. However, the profit margins would be much smaller so the real question you have to ask is, why should they do this?

   LL don't only profit off of the regions themselves, but on the potential commerce it generates. If people could have a region of their own to play with, they'd probably be willing to buy more L$ to spend on stuff to put in those regions. I think that a lot of people who would like to own their own land are dissuaded by the cost - in fact it's a pretty common point to be brought up when people are talking about land in general; a 1/16th SL region worth of tier (4096 sqm) is a monthly fee of $22 - that's about as much as you'd pay for a subscription to both Spotify and Netflix. 

   Besides, not all things a company does must be a direct cash grab to be profitable. Did LL earn any lump sums because they introduced features like BOM or Bento? I don't think so, not directly, anyway - but both those features has spun massive amounts of L$ through the market. And then there's the whole customer retention thing, and, I'm sure if some people who left SL because they felt financially crippled from doing what they enjoyed doing (i.e. building) heard that they could get their very own sandbox with certain limitations (like, fewer people and maybe less script capacity) for cheap(ish), they'd might well return.

[Tary Allen]

I don't see this as something an event would do.

Mostly, as has already been said, it is the first week that is more crowded, I usually only go in the last week and they are pretty much deserted.Also, creators pay a fee to be there, that fee would certainly increase much, not sure the sales would also. 

Now, if a company wanted to host something in the metaverse, but with avatars with legs, it would be a good option, lets see how this will be marketed. It can be good publicity for SL.

For the average user I don't see the point. Yes, there will be folks that will go for it, maybe even renting, still  a very niche market, 

 

Now, I hope that Plus will not have these kind of increase on price