Josh Susanto Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Niether higher nor lower retention is necessarily the best or worst indicator either of long-term profitability or whether the user experience is improving or deteriorating in comparison to competing media (including RL). And I don't really see any known economic mechanism by which freebies would be lowering the quality of other work with which they compete. If anything, every new freebie that is not a total piece of crap drives both inferior freebies and inferior paid items off the market, and pushes designers to produce better work if they expect to get paid. Designers who cannot adjust to the escalating standard required to earn at least 1L per copy will naturally meet with frustration eventually as the utility of the best freebies continues to increment. And if I happened to be such a person, I suppose that I might actually give a damn about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I've never been really clear on what the OP wants, as he has never been willing to share his product line. Simply sharing that might make it more understandable, but have nothing to go on. but he will dang sure diss others' products and pricing whenever he gets a chance. ^^ THAT ^^ Agreed, disguised whispered voices from the shadows carry as much weight as a leprechaun's tune on a cold winter's night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 ralph Alderton wrote: Number 2 on the list of reason why 16000 people a day log off and never come back, is the fact that SL doesn't look engaging enough and it doesn't look engaging enough because of one thing - JUNK, junk, junk Human beings are visual creatures, it's our strongest perception of the world around us. Secondlife just does not look good enough and it is the junk that is driving them away Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When I first came to SL, I was overwhelmed with the whole experience...I had no idea how to play the game. In most games you start with nothing and must try to gain money, energy, strength, power, friends, and so on. But in SL I had no clue where to start and I could not get grip on it. I decided to see if I could find a place where I could work, to make some money. But nobody was hiring avatars that were less then 2 weeks old. You need other hair, a better skin, better clothes they told me and someone gave me a LM of The Free Dove. I think I bought everything that was available in that shop. Some of the things I found I liked very much and with others I had no click at all. And I discovered more freebie shops, not only for clothes, but for all kind of things, from houses to airplanes. And I was amazed that everything was made by residents in SL. In those days I had no eyes for quality at all. I liked my pink shoes, because they were pink, not because they were high quality. I liked them better then many shoes I saw on peoples feet. About half year later I could hardly understand I had ever liked those shoes. They were so poorly made and badly textured. It is not the quality of items that kept me in SL. I don't know if I would have stayed while I had no clue 'where to start in this game' and had nothing to do because I was to young to work. Hunting freebies and trying them on my avatar gave my an aim these first weeks. And when time passed I started to develop an eye for quality in SL. I think this goes not only for me, a lot of people are not trained to see the difference between low or high qualtiy when they first arrive in SL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 As you may have noticed Darrius, I'm not whispering in the shadows JUNK - 'If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and goes quack , it's a duck' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Don't listen to the capitalist running dogs in this thread, ralph. You know what's best for Second Life consumers, even if they don't. Isn't it time that workers like you seized control of the means of production and sent all those decadent users to re-education camps? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 ralph Alderton wrote: As you may have noticed Darrius, I'm not whispering in the shadows JUNK - 'If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and goes quack , it's a duck' What would you call using an ALT to post inflammatory condemnations? "If it posts like a troll, hides like a troll, smells like a troll...." So why not post from your Main Account and let's get a look at the quality of your merchandise? Seriously Ralph, until such time as you have the decency to speak from your own mouth and not from behind a barrier of anonymity, your opinions carry no weight and no value. If you truly want to effect change (and I think you do) then do it in a fashion that will work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deej Kasshiki Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Speaking not as a merchant but as a longtime resident (and as someone who came inworld when you needed a credit card and had to pay to play) I can see both sides of the argument. Free or very low priced items can be a huge help for the new resident who may be trying to decide whether SL is for them or not. At the same time people need to spend money in order to compensate creators for their efforts and keep the virtual economy moving. I see no reason why they two can't peacefully co-exist as they're both necessary to the growth of the world. Having said that, it annoys the hell out of me that when I try using marketplace search I'm bombarded by free or very low priced items. When I use marketplace it's because I've not been able to locate something I want to spend L$ on inworld or need it quickly or need to gift something. I don't need to waste time wading through page after page of free stuff. I haven't depended on free stuff since I was 3 (SL) days old. There's got to be a better balance than the current method (or lack thereof). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 I get the drift that people have fun being merchants. on any scale. it's one of the few actual participation-type draws that they have not totally thwarted with hurdles. (although they are doing a pretty good job in that direction) I think that perhaps you are trying to make one of the last participation-type draws that they have left even more difficult for the majority of people participating, and particularly more difficult for new people participating. Going beyond very very limited tools...and into territory where people's creations shall be judged and prices to be set (which is impossible, by the way, and that's not the way a market works) You are way off base calling people's stuff "junk." And it's annoying (or pathetic) that you don't have manliness enough to do it under a real business avatar name. If you don't have the guts to post as your business name....then you don't have the guts to compete fair and square. In my neck of the woods they call that a sissy boy. It almost sounds as if you are trying to clear some folks out....since you are not being clear on examples. I suspect that you offer higher end product, and might be getting squeezed out simply by volume. volume happens regardless of what price range you are in. I seriously doubt that many people left because they could not find the perfect leather jacket on marketplace, on a blog, from a hunt, from a friend's suggestion, or at a newcomer center...for free or at a price that was comfortable to them. I really, really doubt that LL can move freebies to another section at this very moment.....if they cannot supply even the simplest of tools for a merchant to manage with and keep those funcioning. I really don't want freebies moved...I like being mixed in with all price ranges. Sounds like a shot in the foot to me. Those tools that are absent and have been absent for what is it...a year now? that's your problem. those tools can correct the situations you are having difficulty with. Problem is not the people who want to have a store and create cute stuff and dabble. It's marketed as 2nd life...yes, people will dabble. it ain't their 1st life. they should not have to come in and check on it every day and meet your standards for product design. and they should be able to roleplay it even....if that is their choice. Make that difficult and no longer fun....and you lost some more people that are already here. I was willing to pay listing fees a while back. not now. no way. the tools aren't there, and the ones that are there don't work half the time. and I get a wee bit of indication that they do not even have the slightest clue as to what tools will make it work, which is not a great foundation for any of us to build a business on. If people walked away from their shops and they've got stale content....maybe they got bored and tired of waiting for the tools too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chelsea Malibu Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Your responce, however taxing it was for you to write, is not even worthy of a reply. Clearly, you are right, freebies will detroy SL :matte-motes-wink-tongue:. Check back with me in two years so we can laugh at your words. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 That the marketplace search functions are almost constantly borked is not the fault of the freebie providers. Moreover, people looking specifically for freebies (yes, I DO do that) also have to cope with being shown all kinds of stuff they already know they're not going to buy simply virtue of it not being part of a proper freebie search. At least people who are looking to spend a lot might also want the occasional freebie if they see it. So, really, the borked search part of the anti-freebie argument should be better applied not to freebies, but to the other stuff. N00bs wannt freebies and I don't blame them. A borked search does just as much to waste their time as it does the time of people looking to spend something. An important difference being that n00bs are probably a lot more likely to just leave if they get frustrated... and then not come back, but instead tell other potential users bad things about the service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 ralph Alderton wrote: Secondlife just does not look good enough and it is the junk that is driving them away Years ago, childrens television would change scene approximately 7 times a minute, currently it's approximately 25 scene changes per minute. We are changing from being able to concentrate and deal with lower stimulus to expecting high rates of scene change and the stimulus that goes with it. Look at toys, how many children play with the physical objects such as train sets, dolls and the like compared with computer consoles and equivalent hand held devices with doll/pet/train simulators? Taking the Facebook fans, this is exactly what you see, the constant need to update and feed off the responses, lots of short responses. Before Facebook, you might have had a website which had much more detailed information about family events that you'd share, then blogs then other social sites but now the emphasis is on short and snappy. The crucial change though is the accessibility of that stimulus, anyone with a smartphone can access their Facebook and continue with those short exchanges. Blue Mars, once touted to be the successor to Second Life and all it's richness of experience has all but failed, arguably because nobody used it in sufficient quantity but they have taken a step to change that with development ONLY for the mobile platform as they recognise that it has huge merit. Only developing for iPhone seems short sighted to me though as it excludes a huge market. In my view, the majority of people arrive and don't know what to do, they don't arrive with the sole aim of looking good but more likely to be social. Towards that end, SL desperately needs a mobile application. I know that there is Mobile Grid Client for Android, I use it and there's an equivalent app for iPhone but I don't mean a text based application, I mean something that lets subscribers continue their social activity both from a proper app, not a web site like the current profiles wall and a graphical client "lite" too. Either way, the customer of today is typically one with the Facebook attention span and not the oldbies of 2004/5 who came for a 3D vision. LL has to address that but in a way that does it properly and not just trying to bolt SL onto the side of Facebook, that's just annoying. So while I have my views about freebie content, marketplace clutter and other junk, I do not agree that people are leaving at the rate of 16,000 a day simply because Second Life doesn't look good. It's as good as you want to make it but it's not what everyone of those 16,000 want to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 As usual, the obvious is constantly overlooked. Ranking of products should be based on the total profit that LL makes from the sales of the product. I have no idea what algorythm LL is using, but it doesn't make a bit of sense to any smart business person. If LL does not make any money on something, it should be buried. If LL makes alot on something, it should be #1. Is this not obvious? Yet, look at the marketplace. Note, I'm not saying that the higher the price, the higher the rank. I'm saying that the price should make no difference at all, but the profit that LL makes on the total sales of that product, should be the most important factor. This ensures that the user gets the best products on the marketplace, irreguardless of the price. Please forgive me for constantly using myself as the example, but I have a few AOs that are higher priced, and sell like hotcakes every day. LL makes a decent amount on those, 1 especially. If LL ranked by the total profit they make, that product would, very easily, be in the top 5, if not higher. All those super cheap AOs would not have a chance in hell of ranking above that AO. It should be noted that this AO, gets no exposure, yet still sells like crazy. Despite all this, it is still ranked in the top 20 on the AO page, but AOs that they make nothing on sit there above it. It makes no sense at all. I guess i should check myself here, as "sells like crazy" is objective. What i mean is, that the product sells multiple times a day and high enough priced that those cheaper AOs have to sell 10 times however many I sell to come even close to being comparable. So, to me, if LL can't create an algorythm that properly ranks things in the interests of all parties, then they should not allow freebies, period. All the reasoning for freebies on the marketplace can't out way sustainability, which should "ALWAYS" override "CHARITY". If things are not sustainable, there can be no charity, as there will be no world or users to give the charity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 Deej Thank you for sharing your experience it was interesting :matte-motes-big-grin: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 So, to me, if LL can't create an algorythm that properly ranks things in the interests of all parties, then they should not allow freebies, period. All the reasoning for freebies on the marketplace can't out way sustainability, which should "ALWAYS" overrided "CHARITY". If things are not sustainable, there can be no charity, as there will be no world or users to give the charity. Nicely put Medhue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Eliminating freebies won't solve the search borking problem as a whole, but if the search problem were solved, the freebie issue on search would be solved as part of that. Eliminating freebies to mitigate everything else that's wrong with search would just be polishing a turd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 Josh I hear what you are saying and it's definitely giving me food for thought. I like to think I'm flexible in the way I think and I can accomodate lots of different ideas to formulate my own position There are some great freebies out there. The essence of my OP is that the balance has been lost in favour of freebies and (dare I say it) junk items Not all freebies are junk, but when there's too much of something, a SUPERABUNDANCE, it becomes spam and detrimental to everybody's experience of SL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 Darius, This is clearly a sensitive issue that needs to be discussed and I would call it wisdom to post as an alt Secondlife can be a savage and cruel working environment and I'm just being prudent I'm part of this community too and my ideas and voice might be different from the majority but it doesn't mean I should say nothing It would be cowardly and lazy of me not to share my concerns for the future of SL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Thanks Ralph. I like basic logical philosophy. It's usually the best way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 ralph Alderton wrote: Human beings are visual creatures, it's our strongest perception of the world around us. Secondlife just does not look good enough and it is the junk that is driving them away Take a game like Minecraft. Even the lowest quality item in SL looks better then the blocks of Minecraft. Still 12.000.000 people signed up for Minecraft and 3.000.000 bought the game. How do you declare that visual creatures in such big numbers prefer a worse looking 'sandbox game' then SL? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 "Freebie" is also not just one thing. Some people would say that full perms copymods are essentially freebies. I see some sense to that, but if it were 100% valid, people wouldn't keep buying them from me. Almost everything that I've sold has been full perms copymod. I have even started to stick the surface and sculpt data on the contents tab in case someone wants to play with it. So if these things are worth buying, and yet are proliferating in-world, why would anybody bother to buy them? Why wouldn't some builders group just buy them all and then distribute copies to all members? That may have happened, but if it has, there's no impact evident to my continuing sales. The fact is that people are still willing to pay something to get exactly the thing they want exactly when they want it. Another interesting thing is that when I pull a free item off the market, I get people asking how they can get it and how much it will cost. A freebie is only a freebie if you can find it for free. Just being able to find something can be worth a lot to people, even if the thing, itself, has no cost. I don't think many people are buying listing enhancements for freebies. I also think that when people "trade up" it will be from a freebie to something else a lot more often than it will be the other way. So what you're describing with SL being made ugly with freebies is mostly just that the crummier neighborhoods are full of freebies. I might ask what would actually be in those places if there were not freebies to fill them. If no one is going to cough up the cash for anything that looks better, those places might just remain empty, as too many places already do, even in the abundance of freebies. Do you prefer deserted sims to tasteless sims? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 Chelsea, nearly 2 years ago I suggested and supported the idea of listing fees to reduce the amount of clutter and junk building up at the Martplace And 2 years ago I said SL will not and cannot grow in these circumstances and I'm very sad to say it but I was right. The grid is smaller, concurrency is less, user hours less etc The SUPERABUNDANCE of junk IS a problem and IS damaging the growth and popularity of Secondlife Not a popular opinion, not even considered a problem, but it's true none the less. The SUPERABUNDANCE of junk is hurting Secondlife and I'm not happy about it:matte-motes-crying: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 The primary demographic for that game is for people who are not allowed in SL, and have no other comparably creative world/game to goto. So, this is not a fair comparison at all. If the user could have better looking items, do you not think they would want them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dartagan Shepherd Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I think that perhaps you are trying to make one of the last participation-type draws that they have left even more difficult for the majority of people participating, and particularly more difficult for new people participating. Going beyond very very limited tools...and into territory where people's creations shall be judged and prices to be set (which is impossible, by the way, and that's not the way a market works) Those tools that are absent and have been absent for what is it...a year now? that's your problem. those tools can correct the situations you are having difficulty with. I was willing to pay listing fees a while back. not now. no way. the tools aren't there, and the ones that are there don't work half the time. and I get a wee bit of indication that they do not even have the slightest clue as to what tools will make it work, which is not a great foundation for any of us to build a business on. If people walked away from their shops and they've got stale content....maybe they got bored and tired of waiting for the tools too. Snipped some of that to get to these points, hope you don't mind. Will dispel the fanboi myth, since they seem to prefer a different style of feedback. Also been stewing on that excitement thing and attention to detail point from another post. Agree that freebies aren't an issue. Also long changed stance on the listing fees, that window is long gone as are not putting freebies on the Marketplace in the first place. The problem is indeed the toolset and the speed of providing it. There's a venture that I can't use the Marketplace for unless and until it supports affiliate sales. So, will wait patiently past Direct Delivery, see if that happens, maybe in a year, maybe more. A few other ventures I can think of that I wouldn't touch without the kind of reporting I can dump into Quickbooks. But showing dedication to the toolsets and each sector of Second Life would be a major win. Merchants are here because they sell stuff for a price (who would have thought?), and they've got great tools at their disposal. In fact, it's actually fun to play around in the merchant control panel. And ... look here, there's another dedicated site/space for another sector of SL ... head on over to the Second Life Music Machine where you can upload and share audio clips, check out the dedicated calendar of events for the music scene in SL. And over here we have the Second Life Art Fest site. Upload, rate, share, vote, check showings, browse the artists profiles, check the listing of galleries, blah. Into philanthropy? Check out our dedicated spaces for non profits and education. Maybe? ... Check out the Second Life Thrift Store for great freebies and demos! Not sure on this one, but not possible unless we can get to that kind of momentum with the tools. Shave $5M off that $75M and it's a good possibility. Deadlines are also a requirement. Agree though, the end result eliminates the need for freebies to be an issue for even the highest end merchant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 I'm not for listing fees. This implies that the markplace should make money simply for being. Any time you disconnect the actual value from the act of actually doing, there will be much resentment when the act of doing does not happen. If the marketplace goes offline, LL should make no money at all, just as we don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralph Alderton Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 Madeliefste, Actually I think Minecraft is beautiful because everything is of a kind, it all belongs to that world, it has a consistency and a beauty to it, nothing clashes with anything else in style or execution etc Minecraft is beautiful because of it's visual unity and that's part of what makes it successful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now