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Why I've decided to stop creating content in SL


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Irene Muni wrote:


Yohan Roux wrote:

lol, get real, those that create and sell are here for the money, end off,

If you think
that,
you know not
fully
the reality of
SL.

Sadly I think a lot of people share that misguided belief, mostly thanks to LL spending years pushing the "Join SL and get rich!" myth.  It's not uncommon for people to assume that everyone elses motives for doing something are similar to their own, however it is a little narrow-minded IMO.

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I do not understand why some argue that Marketplace and Buy InWorld are a trade in which you have to choose one or the other party .

As a consumer I see the Marketplace as "Google". It's easy to find, compare, and make a list of possible similar products. It's eause buy many demos in a short time. And it is easy to see the store of a merchant so I get an idea of his style.

After that, do I buy in MP or inworld? It depends. There are items that I would never buy without seeing them in Madrid: houses and furniture and similar, animations, plants and landscaping, many scripted objects, and many other (and here comes the problem of how badly many merchants raised their shops inworld, others have commentd already).

But just an example, why buy clothes inworld? The photo of the clothes is the same in MP and the shop inworld (btw, how few merchants offer demos of his clothes). Why buy an skin inworld if I've tried the demo I bought in MP? .Why buy inworld an item of a creator that I have already bought other items and whose quality he has shown me?

I think that for a resident living in SL for some time the dilemma is not Marketplace or InWorld. The choice is quality (in MP or IW) or junk (in MP or IW). Marketplace and inworld shps do not fight, are complementary.

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Fluffy Sharkfin wrote:


Irene Muni wrote:


Yohan Roux wrote:

lol, get real, those that create and sell are here for the money, end off,

If you think
that,
you know not
fully
the reality of
SL.

Sadly I think a lot of people share that misguided belief, mostly thanks to LL spending years pushing the "Join SL and get rich!" myth.  It's not uncommon for people to assume that everyone elses motives for doing something are similar to their own, however it is a little narrow-minded IMO.

Strongly agree.

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It seems many of you didn't like my view of content creators that sell, ok why not give them away, all I have heard here is how people are being hit by the lindens going into competition with them, well the lindens went into competition with me, forced me to fight them, that is life here, one must swallow that and move on not cry about it, market place has killed the malls, I know how they can be revived but it is impossible to share because of the competition that exist between creators, this clearly shows that your view as to why creators are here is wrong, this thread shows all traders here are here for profit.

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Yohan Roux wrote:

It seems many of you didn't like my view of content creators that sell, ok why not give them away,
all I have heard here is how people are being hit by the lindens going into competition with them
, well the lindens went into competition with me, forced me to fight them, that is life here, one must swallow that and move on not cry about it, market place has killed the malls, I know how they can be revived but it is impossible to share because of the competition that exist between creators, this clearly shows that your view as to why creators are here is wrong, this thread shows all traders here are here for profit.

In which case you clearly haven't bothered to read every post?!

As for your complaints about the competition that exists between creators, I find them a tad ironic considering your post in the LSL scripting forum where you told someone asking for help with a combat system "as you are a competitor I should not help you"  (since the main function of that forum is as a place for residents to seek help with scripting problems, I can't help but wonder why you'd post there if all you were willing to offer was cryptic suggestions?)

Anyway, regarding the original topic, you may want to consider the difference between a "trader" and a "creator".  Pretty much all traders are creators, but that doesn't mean that all creators are traders, and to ignore the opinions of those that create without seeking to profit (or deny their existence entirely) simply because they don't agree with your point of view isn't going to strengthen your position or make your arguments seem more valid, it simply makes you appear rigid and uncompromising.

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Irene Muni wrote:

I do not understand
why some
argue that
Marketplace
and
Buy InWorld
are
a trade
in which
you have to choose
one or the
other party
.

As a consumer I see the Marketplace as "Google".
It's easy to
find
, compare,
and make a list
of possible
similar products. It's eause buy many demos in a short time. And i
t is
easy to see
the store
of a merchant
so I
get an idea
of his style.

After
that, do
I buy
in MP or
inworld
? It depends.
There are items
that I
would never buy
without seeing them
in
Madrid: houses and furniture and similar, animations, plants and landscaping, many scripted objects, and many other (
and here
comes the
problem
of how badly
many
merchants
raised
their shops inworld, others have commentd already).

But just an example, why buy
clothes
inworld
?
The photo
of the clothes
is the same
in MP and
the shop inworld (btw, how few merchants offer demos of his clothes). Why buy an skin inworld if I've tried the demo
I bought in MP?
.Why buy inworld
an item of a creator
that
I have already
bought
other
items
and whose quality
he
has shown me?

I think
that
for a resident
living in
SL
for some time
the dilemma
is not Marketplace or InWorld
.
The choice
is quality
(in MP or IW)
or
junk (in MP or IW). Marketplace and inworld shps
do not fight,
are complementary.


Yes, from a consumer standpoint, there are some categories where Marketplace is adequate -- but that's the whole problem. The Lab seriously underpriced the fees charged Marketplace merchants, especially compared to in-world tier. They should be charging 30% commission, and they have the monopoly power to get away with it (not unlike Apple).

For those whose SL is a matter of keeping score by L$s income (and even the very few for whom that L$ income has RL significance), it makes sense to have as little in-world presence as possible.  That hurts LL's bottom line -- but it's much worse than that: there's a snowball effect.  Fewer people selling and buying in-world means fewer people in-world, period.  And that means less reason for anybody to go in-world, or to buy anything to use during the brief, rare instances they are in-world.

By so heavily subsidizing Marketplace margins, the Lab is in fact reducing the value of everything sold there and in-world.

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I completely agree with this analysis. I can't believe that any employees at the company have not floated this opinion around the Lab, they must be aware of the impact this is having on the occupancy of commercial plots and regions in world. 

So what are they doing about it?

They are ignoring the problem and bringing in Direct Delivery to make the marketplace more efficient

Brilliant.

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@ everyone

Linden Lab should not compete with its residents. Linden Lab should not seek revenue by selling 'game items' to 'players'. SL is not a game. WoW is a game. WoW generates revenues by selling game items to players. SL is a virtual world.

I believe SLM has probably helped the inworld economy. Did half the population of California leave the state when online shopping arrived? Does every resident of Bermuda spend every waking moment running a store? I repeat, SL is not a game. Residents live in SL, they socialize, they dance and chat and go to the beach and make love. They don't spend every waking moment planning their next business move.

If someone buys a teapot on SLM, where is it going to end up? In her kitchen, in her house, on her land. If a person buys a dance animation on SLM, where is it going to end up? On his body in a club. If a person buys a new skirt on SLM, where's it going to end up? On the floor beside a bed in a skydeck.

Folks, get with the program. Second Life is a virtual world. It has an economy based on social interaction.

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leliel Mirihi wrote:

Yes there are several ways to track you even with all that. If you really want to drop off the radar you're going to have to get much more restrictive, to the point where many websites break. For starters I'd suggest looking into the FireFox addons NoScript and RequestPolicy. Search the web if you want to get hard core about it.

Yep I use NoScript with FireFox....it blocks out most things. It gives you an option to allow or block...can be tedious if you're jumping from one URL to another.

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Deltango Vale wrote:

I believe SLM has probably
helped
the inworld economy. Did half the population of California leave the state when online shopping arrived? Does every resident of Bermuda spend every waking moment running a store? I repeat, SL is not a game. Residents
live
in SL, they socialize, they dance and chat and go to the beach and make love. They don't spend every waking moment planning their next business move.

 

SLM has helped the economy, it has helped stop it from collapsing due to the faliure of in-world search. If LL hadn't of purchased SLX and SL Boutique, then things would be allot worse for them right now, 

It is my belief that if we had an effective search engine in world that allowed people a fair chance of exposure to their business then there would not be anywhere near as much business funneled through the MP and the amount of land retained for commercial purposes would be allot greater. We could return to the days when people actually made an effort to build creative stores and shopping experiences, putting thought into how to best present their products and engage their customers rather than just relying on a bog standard uninspiring 2d website that is prone to delivery failures and overly delayed delivery times.

Call me crazy, but I think selling 3D content in a 3D world is a thing to be embraced. Relying on a 2d website to sell 3D content, when there is a big old virtual world out there, cheapens the whole potential of SL. 

There is a place in SL for the MP, but it should be there to support in-world businesses IMO. It used to be that way and the only reason it is not now is because of the problems with in-world search that have persisted for years now. That is 100% LL's fault.

 

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That's correct, as a consumer you have choices..to either shop on Marketplace or In-World, for Linden Lab it's a matter of which model provides greater profitability to the company.

By promoting Marketplace instead of it being an add-on (or complimentary service) to the Merchant's in-world Stores, they've effectively de-stabilised the in-world economy by setting it into direct competition with In-world shopping.

The problem is two-fold, the heavy promotion of Marketplace in their Official LL Viewers....and the way the In-World Search function button is hidden away into obscurity within their current UI. It's unfair marketing...it's not equal treatment! Most new SL'ers will be introduced to Marketplace shopping before they accidentally discover that there are large swathes of Commerical areas on the main grid.

I don't care how successful a Merchant you are (with the exception of the Breedables selling food on MP).....you will never generate the same sort of Sales as a well marketed in-world Mainstore. You will not see any MP Merchants (apart from Breedables) clearing $5000+ USD worth of monthly Marketplace sales like we were able to do In-world....it's just not going to happen!

In Marketplace your 100's of products are lost in a cloud of 2 million plus other products....we have to rely on the MP search engine (god forbid if you sell Jeans and are listed with 65000 other returned listings)...or purchase Enhancements with questionable results.  By contrast with a good In-World Mainstore, we could control our own marketing and therefore our own destiny......from a mixed bag of tricks which include ...optimising your rankings for All Search, purchasing Classified Adverts, holding events, advertising via notices in large Consumer Groups, taking part in Hunts, setting up a home website displaying products & new releases,, attract 3rd party bloggers, holding a Store Sale,  purchase advertising space in popular SL Magazines, Radio Advertising commercials, MM Boards & Lucky chairs........the list is endless ...but we are in control! What we put into our Marketing, we'll reap the benefits from.

The result of this lop-sided Marketing created by Linden Lab (nothing new here, we've seen years of failed LL strategies)...means shopping traffic has been diverted from the Grid to Marketplace. Owning a Mainstore on the Grid comes at a cost......TIERS (or Rent) and all the other associated marketing expenses. It's no conicidence that large amounts of shops & malls are being closed....or land being downsized as overall sales (Sales from the Grid and MP) are not enough to justify keeping hold of SL land.

It's no coincidence that LL have lost 1500 sims in last 13 mths (4 Mill USD income)...has that been compensated by the extra 5% commissions generated from MP during that time?

Out of the remaining 30000 sims left on the Grid.....how much of that land are still dedicated to commericial activites? 10%?, 20%.? or 30% ? How much more lost of Land income can Linden Lab bare before alarm bells are sounded off? Historically Sim & Land tiers has been their largest income source.(70-80%)

IMO Linden Lab scored an own goal....and we'll see how this pans out for the rest of the year!

 

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By definition a troll seeks out chat in forums and in game chat looking to get under peoples skin for **bleep**s and giggles. Everyone else posted valid points and constructive criticism while the majority of your posts if not all of them were direct attacks on the posters themselves in an attempt to see how they would retaliate. Troll....

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

 

I feel ya there. I just sold Sweethearts jazz yesterday foR the same reasons and other reasons compounded my decission to move on,

Good Luck to everyone.
:)

 

Sorry to hear that, I didn't agree with all of your decisions but that's a very popular place and I know it will have taken a lot of effort to keep it going. best of luck to you.

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Irene Muni wrote:

I do not understand
why some
argue that
Marketplace
and
Buy InWorld
are
a trade
in which
you have to choose
one or the
other party
.

As a consumer I see the Marketplace as "Google".
It's easy to
find
, compare,
and make a list
of possible
similar products. It's eause buy many demos in a short time. And i
t is
easy to see
the store
of a merchant
so I
get an idea
of his style.

After
that, do
I buy
in MP or
inworld
? It depends.
There are items
that I
would never buy
without seeing them
in
Madrid: houses and furniture and similar, animations, plants and landscaping, many scripted objects, and many other (
and here
comes the
problem
of how badly
many
merchants
raised
their shops inworld, others have commentd already).

But just an example, why buy
clothes
inworld
?
The photo
of the clothes
is the same
in MP and
the shop inworld (btw, how few merchants offer demos of his clothes). Why buy an skin inworld if I've tried the demo
I bought in MP?
.Why buy inworld
an item of a creator
that
I have already
bought
other
items
and whose quality
he
has shown me?

I think
that
for a resident
living in
SL
for some time
the dilemma
is not Marketplace or InWorld
.
The choice
is quality
(in MP or IW)
or
junk (in MP or IW). Marketplace and inworld shps
do not fight,
are complementary.


There's a wider picture than this though, inworld shopping helps to subsidise other ventures, clubs, roleplaying, art galleries, people rented out spaces which goes towards social spaces. The more people slide to the marketplace, the more those social spaces struggle, it's too late now to do anything about it but some joined up thinking earlier in the process could have been helpful.

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Ciaran Laval wrote

There's a wider picture than this though, inworld shopping helps to subsidise other ventures, clubs, roleplaying, art galleries, people rented out spaces which goes towards social spaces. The more people slide to the marketplace, the more those social spaces struggle, it's too late now to do anything about it but some joined up thinking earlier in the process could have been helpful.

That is so well said.  Just think of the many places that are no longer around like Secret Reflections, Acropolis, etc, where folks hung out and socialized. Many of us have our places that we go to just 'hang out.' chat, meet people, listen to music, etc. 

And some content, to buy it just based on pictures, well what you see may not really be what you get. 

Want a maple tree for your front yard?  557 results on Market place.  Try choosing from just a picture there.  As for me, I want to touch the tree In World.  One of the most beautiful SIMS I know, Chakryn Forest, is supported at least in part if not whole by the sale of their trees.

There is a symbiotic relationship that we are ill advised to ignore.

 

p.s. eta to add, I think it is great that there is so much choice, just that I wouldn't want to buy one without touching it.

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Good points. And why did inworld search go to hell? Because of that damn 'adult' policy with its stupid V2 viewer.

The adult policy pre dates v2 by a year. It was actually introduced with the much beloved 1.23, which was hated at the time.

Perhaps you were thinking of the new new search v2 introduced?

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Deltango Vale wrote:

@ everyone

Linden Lab should
not
compete with its residents. Linden Lab should not seek revenue by selling 'game items' to 'players'. SL is not a game. WoW is a game. WoW generates revenues by selling game items to players. SL is a virtual world.

I believe SLM has probably
helped
the inworld economy. Did half the population of California leave the state when online shopping arrived? Does every resident of Bermuda spend every waking moment running a store? I repeat, SL is not a game. Residents
live
in SL, they socialize, they dance and chat and go to the beach and make love. They don't spend every waking moment planning their next business move.

If someone buys a teapot on SLM, where is it going to end up? In her kitchen, in her house, on her land. If a person buys a dance animation on SLM, where is it going to end up? On his body in a club. If a person buys a new skirt on SLM, where's it going to end up? On the floor beside a bed in a skydeck.

Folks, get with the program. Second Life is a virtual world. It has an economy based on
social interaction.

Had you not made these points five hours ago I'd be saying much the same. SLM may reduce the number of sellers inworld but of course it reduces the number of buyers inworld not at all, there being no place to use one's purchases other than inworld. What it probably has done is change the inworld behavior of the buyers—less time shopping, more time socializing/building/learning. There are probably opportunities for income because of that.

I'm not sure what  you meant about the skirt thing but I understood the rest of it okay.

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

Had you not made these points five hours ago I'd be saying much the same. SLM may reduce the number of sellers inworld but of course it reduces the number of buyers inworld not at all, there being no place to use one's purchases other than inworld. What it probably has done is change the inworld behavior of the buyers—less time shopping, more time socializing/building/learning. There are probably opportunities for income because of that.

Well, I disagree, strongly.  People simply are not spending the same amount of time in-world: Concurrency is flat or falling, even as logins increase.

Some of my most enjoyable experiences in SL were what might be called "social shopping."  Exchanging Marketplace links may be more efficient but it's not nearly as much fun.

Sure, we could still go on group shopping sprees.  But we don't need to.  We don't need to build in-world anymore either, and for Mesh, it's impossible to do it in-world.  (Arguably, if my.secondlife.com weren't such a dud, we wouldn't even need to be in-world to socialize.)

If the reasons to go in-world diminish enough, eventually there won't be anybody with whom to socialize, and no reason to buy anything at all.

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Sure, we
could
still go on group shopping sprees.  But we don't
need
to.  We don't need to
build
in-world anymore either, and for Mesh, it's impossible to do it in-world. 

The majority of building was already done out of world tho, that is if you consider textures, sculpties, animations and sounds building. Building inworld may be a draw for some, but personally I don't care where you build something, just as long as it's in sl so I can see it. For me sl is about sharing what you've created, not creating it.


If the reasons to go in-world diminish enough, eventually there won't be anybody with whom to socialize, and no reason to buy anything at all.

I agree with your logic but I don't think shopping and building are the only, or even biggest, things to do in sl. I see an order of magnitude more people socializing and role playing than I do building and shopping. People use the market place because they can get what they want faster so they have more time to do what they really want. That right there tells me that shopping isn't the big draw you make it out to be.

 

 

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Deltango Vale wrote:

@ everyone

Linden Lab should
not
compete with its residents. Linden Lab should not seek revenue by selling 'game items' to 'players'. SL is not a game. WoW is a game. WoW generates revenues by selling game items to players. SL is a virtual world.

I believe SLM has probably
helped
the inworld economy. Did half the population of California leave the state when online shopping arrived? Does every resident of Bermuda spend every waking moment running a store? I repeat, SL is not a game. Residents
live
in SL, they socialize, they dance and chat and go to the beach and make love. They don't spend every waking moment planning their next business move.

If someone buys a teapot on SLM, where is it going to end up? In her kitchen, in her house, on her land. If a person buys a dance animation on SLM, where is it going to end up? On his body in a club. If a person buys a new skirt on SLM, where's it going to end up? On the floor beside a bed in a skydeck.

Folks, get with the program. Second Life is a virtual world. It has an economy based on
social interaction.

Hi Deltango

The problem is simple...If LL continues to lose 500 sims per month like they did in January...for the remainder of the year, there won't be a Second Life for any of us to play on. 

I think there's an urgency for LL to create non-SL products to become additional revenue streams......as milking the SL cash cow might soon end up not being profitable!

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,Deltango Vale wrote:

Good points. And why did inworld search go to hell? Because of that damn 'adult' policy with its stupid V2 viewer.

Inworld search went to hell because LL purchased a search engine that was not able to effectively index parcels in SL. When they rolled out GSA it was immediately obvious there was a problem as we were presented with non logical search results. Rather than adapting the search engine to accomodate SL they started removing factors that would not fit with the new search engine. It seemed to me like they were trying shove a square peg into a round hole. It just never worked. The only reason we have had any relevant search results over the past few years is either by luck or because people have been forced to game their parcels back into the top few pages on their respective keywords. Things have improved recently with the new search engine, things are allot easier and for the first time in years I felt like I was "optimising" my parcels to get to page one rather than "gaming". However it may be too littke tate as poeple have lost confidence in inworld search. As Rene mentioned as well, the search button isn't exactly prominant in the viewer nowadays and LL are focused on pushing the MP over inworld search.

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Rivers Run Red have announced  that they're handing back 30 sims to LL....and just keeping the Avalon sim for posperity reasons. Here we have RL 3D Content Development company that could no longer justify spending $295 per month on sim tiers....their clients (RL businesses) had long exited out of SL. The company has taken its business into another VW platform ..Kitely (a browser based VW)

Charging $295 p/mth for a SIM was feasible, when Second Life was hip, and everyone was falling over themselves to buy Virtual Land or Sims and have a presence in SL......but from a business point of view, the pricing model is outdated and no longer viable in this econmic climate....nor is there the demand for SL sims...hence no growth in 3 years.

So if a funded company like RRR can't justify keeping SL sims, just imagine the burden on individuals to pay those inflated Tiers.

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