Dartagan Shepherd Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: That's another aspect to consider whilst Commerce is being driven away from the Grid. Fear not, Rod is on the job, mentioning that you can run a business in SL in this interview (ignore the addiction waffling). http://www.metaversejournal.com/audio/kylejackieo17012012.mp3 The usual disclaimers that I'm fine with the adult aspects of SL, and have never harmed a poseball that didn't deserve it. But way to reverse a stigma that says that's all that SL is to the outside world though. Thinking though that inventing breedable pole dancers that smell of upchuck and baby oil, or breedable ex EA employees that get put out to pasture in SL might be one way to follow along in this new corporate strategy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 thanks for the link! :matte-motes-tongue: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 I know what ticks me off...and that's usually when someone tries to put me down with a cheap shot remark....it all kicks off then! It's like a red rag to a bull! (Mickey are you reading?) Not really...just skimming your dribble between tweets and google tweaking. Google is King. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin Hird Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 There is another aspect to this debate too, and why it is important to dampen the impact of free items on the SL economy also in the short term: LL has initiated and wants a transition to mesh based content, which technological is a sound direction as everything at the end of the day are meshes. (Sculpts are special, particularly inefficient instances of a mesh based object.) However, the process of creating mesh items is much more complicated, requires highly developed skills and often involves workflows in software applications that can run in the thousands of dollars to purchase. Also, there is a substantial market for mesh based items outside SecondLife, and items that are produced for SecondLife can equally well be sold at hundreds of other locations. Sold at much higher prices than one can expect to get for the same item in SecondLife. This represents a problem in that good creators may entirely dismiss making creations and products for SecondLife if they see little to no return on their efforts. So they never bother to enter the SecondLife market with the creations Linden Lab wants to improve their overall product (SecondLife.) It also swings the other way as SecondLife creators who start developing mesh content, may fast find they can make substanially more income by offering their creations elsewhere. For Linden Lab to be successful with a transtition to mesh, the value of work done in SecondLife and for the creation of SecondLife content must be set higher. This means that creators must be able to expect real life payments on their work to a much higher degree than what is now possible. This is also another reason why there is a need for a (paid for) developer type account and organization for SecondLife, and that only registered developers should be able to trade on the marketplace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann Otoole Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 If SL is not running on ipads and iphones within 1 to 2 years SL will fade out along with most other PC desktop based software. The decline of SL began the day Steve Jobs released the iphone in January 2007. At first gradual then as more iphone uptake happened the less people began to remain interested in boat anchor computing. The next ipad should increase the abandonment rate of desktop systems and software. Nothing LL can do will stop this short of working with content creators to improve the builds in SL and to get an SL client on the ipad. Everything else is already moot. LL decided to "branch out" away from SL which seems like a smart move since SL is anchored to boat anchor computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin Hird Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 I am in total agreement with you there, and it was something people booed at me over 2 years ago when I first started advocating it. But even more important is the transition to mesh, as the inefficiency of the scultp and heavily texture dependant prim based content will bog down any tablet that is on a mobile network to the point where it becomes unacceptable (both from a performance and overall bandwith perspective.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dartagan Shepherd Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Good point about mesh and value. I'm kind of in that boat. I've had some mesh content outside of SL for quite a while, and there's no temptation to bring it into SL. Some of that content outside SL is worth hundreds or dollars per item. Now, granted, most of it is higher res and makes use of normal, specular, occlusion etc. maps, so couldn't be made to work with SL without some tweaking. But to devalue professional content worth hundreds and thousands outside of SL to sell here for 50 cents? Thanks but no thanks. I don't think many professionals in the 3D/film/game industries would be willing to devalue their content to that extent. Even a volume of sales isn't going to approach the out-of-SL value, nor is it going to make the income possible to justify the time and expertise. It's nice for LL to devalue content and work and skilled labor, great for the consumer in SL, but not good for the creator of that content from a professional standpoint. It smacks of greed on the part of LL (their own employeess wouldn't work for those rates) to devalue expertise and labor this way. So no, I can't see the draw for outside talent to go jumping into SL, or going with this whole micro-payment scheme, especially when values can be below one cent. LL is unable to deliver the buying power these days to even approach realistic incomes for professional 3D content. [Edit, small typo] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Good posts from all 3 of you....i learnt something new about Mesh and the computing future of SL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitte Arado Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I agree in some way, but some things I give away for free, as an advertising. BUT! The thing that disturbes me more is that people can´t count! How little does not things in SL cost you if you relate to how much hours people spend to create all lovely things? Getting qestions about for exampel why do you not have it full perm? or why not copy? and the item cost below 100 linden!!! And I as many creators spend many hours to create the textures and then make it look great on the items that we create! That for me can be much negative also, since they many times have no problems to get a cup of coffe atleast ones a week at a public place that would cost them about 1000-2000 linden... if they only could count and thingk a bit longer is my wish! Actually to make a so to say "living" in Second Life is a big laugh! Creators in SL earns less money then the childrens in Asia or where ever they keep childrens as slaves! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 Agree kitte - a good many consumers. especially the new arrivals....don't understand the amount of RL manhours it takes to create some of these Second Life products. Original adult skins in Photoshop can take hundreds of manhours before a whole series of options become available to SL public to purchase....and they wonder why they are priced accordingly. Ok one generates mass sales from the original artwork....but in this market, where cheap skins,. stolen skins and free skins are prevalant.....one has to weigh up if it's really worthwhile in the first instance. A few years ago it was certainly worthwhile.....nowadays if you're not a SL Brand name...I'm not so sure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: Josh Susanto wrote: >"So as to make Marketplace Merchants more accountable...when loading copyright infringing material or re-selling full perm content in breach of original Creator's EULA.....or loading copybotted products onto Marketplace." OR to create a select group of people who will be automatically favored in any such dispute. Such is not exactly historically unprecedented in other contexts. Nope...if you want to list on Marketplace one should have to register at a minimum providing real name and address. If you can't make that little step.....then continue with your anonymity selling your products In-world. LL already has my name and address.. I am adult verified. I have no problem with sending in my full info to be a merchant, just like if i had a RL business. which i do. Am i the only one that noticed the huge drop in the value of a $L? back on Xstreet i was getting them $300L for a USD, now its 230. anyone think that has something to do with lower sales? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Gavin Hird wrote: The net effect is not the same, because it keeps concurrency low and therefore new signups (16k per day) largely find a ghost town, where there before were campers (and such.) – So they leave, never to return. – Over 5 million per year turn their backs within the first hour. I agree that getting rid of camping was a big mistake. /me slams on the brakes...... Camping is ok but freebies are evil?!?!?! umm, you might want to check your statements for consistency and logic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin Hird Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Nobody is camping at the marketplace. They don't even have to log on to do their things there. Camping provided for presence in-world. Which is good. So the logic is sound and intact. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: The net effect is not the same, because it keeps concurrency low and therefore new signups (16k per day) largely find a ghost town, where there before were campers (and such.) – So they leave, never to return. – Over 5 million per year turn their backs within the first hour. I agree that getting rid of camping was a big mistake. /me slams on the brakes...... Camping is ok but freebies are evil?!?!?! umm, you might want to check your statements for consistency and logic. It recycles "money supply" which is good for the economy and provides it fluidity (turning over money supply)....Shop A pays Individual B to camp....who in turns spends his earnt camping money in Shop C. That money is moving around and circulating...otherwise you'd be soley reliant on fresh money being brought into SL (BUY Lindens)...offset by the amounts taken out of the economy i.e cashing out (SELL Lindens and Tfr USD). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: The net effect is not the same, because it keeps concurrency low and therefore new signups (16k per day) largely find a ghost town, where there before were campers (and such.) – So they leave, never to return. – Over 5 million per year turn their backs within the first hour. I agree that getting rid of camping was a big mistake. /me slams on the brakes...... Camping is ok but freebies are evil?!?!?! umm, you might want to check your statements for consistency and logic. It recycles "money supply" which is good for the economy and provides it fluidity (turning over money supply)....Shop A pays Individual B to camp....who in turns spends his earnt camping money in Shop C. That money is moving around and circulating...otherwise you'd be soley reliant on fresh money being brought into SL (BUY Lindens)...offset by the amounts taken out of the economy i.e cashing out (SELL Lindens and Tfr USD). Most of the camping i have seen is for items.. how is that different from freebies? Also, didnt someone (possibly you, there are too many posts to check) say that most campers were bots back in the day? and they just camped to cash out? how does that help the SL economy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Most of the camping i have seen is for items.. how is that different from freebies? Also, didnt someone (possibly you, there are too many posts to check) say that most campers were bots back in the day? and they just camped to cash out? how does that help the SL economy? No, i was talking about the original form of camping for money prior to the Camping bans. Noobs are more reliant on Freebies nowadays, whereas before they could earn money to buy half decent products In-world. Actually not only noobs, but plenty of seasoned SL'ers also derived spending money from camping. It wasn't me.....however it was proper Avatar camping to begin with until late 2007. Like all profitable events, it was gamed by individuals loggin in teams of camping Bots (a bit like Chinese Gold farming in WoW).....followed by Merchants replacing actual Avatar campers (saving themselves a lot of money in the process) with their own army of Bots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Most of the camping i have seen is for items.. how is that different from freebies? Also, didnt someone (possibly you, there are too many posts to check) say that most campers were bots back in the day? and they just camped to cash out? how does that help the SL economy? No, i was talking about the original form of camping for money prior to the Camping bans. Noobs are more reliant on Freebies nowadays, whereas before they could earn money to buy half decent products In-world. Actually not only noobs, but plenty of seasoned SL'ers also derived spending money from camping. It wasn't me.....however it was proper Avatar camping to begin with until late 2007. Like all profitable events, it was gamed by individuals loggin in teams of camping Bots (a bit like Chinese Gold farming in WoW).....followed by Merchants replacing actual Avatar campers (saving themselves a lot of money in the process) with their own army of Bots. I'm sure you don't mean to, but they way you respond you sound very condesending.. Speaking as if you are talking to a noob. I have been around SL as long as you have. I seem to remember many many freebies on SLEX and Xstreet. And if it was gamed by bots, how is that a good thing? Why would anyone want that back? I would rather have noobs meet the few actual people inworld than non responsive bots. Noobs have always been reliant on freebies. the freebie warehouse has been around since forever and most merchants back in the day gave a few select freebies to avs less than 30 days old. Quality stuff too. Nowadays they just get the first freebie they find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Actually Drake, the reason that the concept of CAMPING inworld would be a viable practice to return is because the initial reasons for camping and why it was so terribly gamed in the good ol days has poofed away. Camping and armies of Avi Alt Bots on a commercial sim was done to increase the traffic counts which hugely impacted where the sim showed up on SL's inworld search. My understanding is that traffic on a sim is now not a factor for search results order. As such if my understanding is true, there would be no reason for a mall or club owner to have a farm of Alt Bots at 2000M in a box to create high traffic counts for this reason. Camping to attract real noobs could return and it did have a value inworld for both the commercial owner and the noob. I know back in 2008 in my first 30 - 60 days on SL, camping was a critical source of income for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: I'm sure you don't mean to, but they way you respond you sound very condesending.. Speaking as if you are talking to a noob. I have been around SL as long as you have. I seem to remember many many freebies on SLEX and Xstreet. And if it was gamed by bots, how is that a good thing? Why would anyone want that back? I would rather have noobs meet the few actual people inworld than non responsive bots. Noobs have always been reliant on freebies. the freebie warehouse has been around since forever and most merchants back in the day gave a few select freebies to avs less than 30 days old. Quality stuff too. Nowadays they just get the first freebie they find. Sorry if it sounds condescending...but i did state seasoned SL'ers as well as Noobs benefitted from camping. There were 2 types of camping.....good camping (real avatars earning some Lindens to spend in-world) and bad camping (army of Traffic bots hogging SIm resources and grossly inflating traffic figures) . Generally people objected to Traffic bots and not the real avatar camping. Jack Linden decided to ban both in one swoop which was a mistake....should have just banned Traffic bots. I don't remember SLEX being loaded by the same percentage of Freebies as were the cases to both XStreet and Marketplace. Like i said in an earlier post ....the fuss on SLEX forums were that Ahnse Chung threatened to hire a 100 or so content creators and sell all her ACS products for 10 Lindens regardless. There wasn't any noise about Freebies as it wasn't prevelant like nowadays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Toysoldier Thor wrote: My understanding is that traffic on a sim is now not a factor for search results order. As such if my understanding is true, there would be no reason for a mall or club owner to have a farm of Alt Bots at 2000M in a box to create high traffic counts for this reason. Camping to attract real noobs could return and it did have a value inworld for both the commercial owner and the noob. I know back in 2008 in my first 30 - 60 days on SL, camping was a critical source of income for me. Camping and particular the BOT camping benefitted from "Places Search" tab which was ranked by Traffic units....Traffic never really had any meaningful impact on GSA "ALL Search" engine though . Nowadays the "Places search isn't a factor (scrapped) in V2 & V3 viewers...and though "Traffic" has a bit more impact in this new "All Search" engine....it still isn't significant .(it helps, but not that much!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I seem to remember a certain creator of asian style things constantly complaining about the "freebie" and "low cost" items creators not being "serious creators" and "they should be banned from creating." Xstreet and SLEX had the same abundance of freebies. they just werent as front page as they are now. I remember the camping problem (i did say i have been around as long as you) i just never camped for things or money. Why would anyone want to have campers back if they do nothing for the owner? I am going to pay someone to sit on my land for .... what? Freebies are the new camping. Back in the day every club / store/ mall had campers. now they give away freebies and or MM boards. Big whoop. if camping didnt kill SL why would freebies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin Hird Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Drake1 Nightfire wrote: if camping didnt kill SL why would freebies? This discussion is not about freebies in-world where they might be beneficial simply because they cause presence in the sims, just like the old camping did. The discussion is about the large number of free and very cheap items choking the marketplace and searches there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Well, if you can't figure out why dumping millions of Freebie content onto the Main Grid over a period of 3-4 years isn't' eventually going to catch up with the SL economy...then you'll never know. There's 2 types of merchant cultures clashing over the middle ground....it's unsustainable. It eventually forces Merchants into rounds of price dumping in order to survive......there comes a point when selling 10 L items in-world isn't going to pay the Land Tier bills. It's a nonsense! This doesn't effect all sectors.....but it certainly harms a lot of the most popular market sectors. (like Female fashion, skins, furniture etc) Look at all the LL data and stats.....and where Second Life is heading to. Shops and commercials are rapidly closing or downsizing.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 OK.. I opened the MP and just hit search.. No keywords, just search.. And it came up with 37 freebies out of 96 on the first page. You can blame the merchants all you want, personally I would cast blame on LL. My ideas on "fixing " this. 1. Freebies and Demos have their own category that will not show up under search. You have to search that category. 2. Discard the whole Direct Delivery idea. Without the need to pay rent for a magic box there will be zero reason to have a store or even a home. 3. Give incentive to police keywords. There are so many lazy merchants that have the same keywords for all of their items it sickens me. You may sell swords but your dresses shouldn't have sword as a keyword. 4. Register every merchant with RL info. We had to give it to verify as adult, apply it to the MP as well. 5. Let people flag items as Copyright infringement again. Why is it OK for someone that breaks the TOS to profit from it? If you wont do it yourselves let us do it. ETA.. spelling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 There are 183,000 items priced between 0 -10 L.....out of 2 million products. That's about 9% of the entire Marketplace that is priced next to nothing! I agree with your points 1 to 5 though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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