DartAgain

Marketplace programmers with aspirations of becoming government employees. It's a thing.

My Malamute and Australian Shepherd are accusing you of species appropriation.

Freya Mokusei wrote: I'm just aware that it's early in the morning by SLT, might be a bit before you get a more informed response. To the rescue. It's because there were only 499 errors. The marketplace interface is supposed to have 500 errors to work properly. Which is why you never see Error 500.

DNS can point any subdomain to anywhere. A DNS lookup does show community.secondlife.com pointing to secondlife.lithium.com.

Rya Nitely wrote: Now it also takes about 2 days to sell at 249 so we can add this onto the payout time. Unless you choose to sell at 250, and then that's a further decrease in your cash out amount. We are paying more and gaining nothing. People have been asking for faster payouts for years, and this is what they give us It's like they took advantage of the constant requests for faster payouts to get more money out of us. And still not give us faster payouts. When people asked for faster payout nobody meant 3 days or even 2. We wanted 24 hours. Edit to say: Within 24 hours - then at least we can say we're getting something for the exorbitant fees. Instead of feeling ripped off ;( “It’s like we’re stealing the same money over and over. In Fact it’s not like stealing money at all, it’s like recycling" -- Mad Money

Agreed, this is LL generating cash flow for themselves and only that. Normally a reduction in tier would be cause for celebration after so many years of an overpriced product, although when a company is in decline, it may be a bad sign. If SL and Blocksworld are indeed in profit as LL claims then they don't need to tap into more cash flow to fund Sansar. When LL reduced the setup fees back in November it didn't make a dent in the bleeding of sims lost every week, so it did nothing to retain users and sims, and this move probably won't either. It may be telling as you say, that the offer ends around the time of Sansar entering the picture. There are a couple of scenarios here. It isn't a secret any longer what Sansar "is" after the information we've gotten about it. It is simply another game engine with LL providing the hosting, currency and marketplace. So the first scenario is that LL has found out that building a game engine is a large endeavor that can't be done with the small team they started out with. (Both Unity3d and Epic (Unreal Engine) have upwards of 100 employees dedicated to game engine development). This means much more cash than they anticipated in order to get Sansar out the door for public beta. It also means that they're willing to sacrifice not enough profit for less profit to get it out the door. The risk this puts on SL surviving is great, which leads us to the other scenario that the OP eludes to ... This scenario has LL milking the userbase for whatever cash it can (something I predicted a couple years ago) before its potential closing. Which puts LL in a good place, because they can then close SL, fire a couple hundred employees and cut an enormous amount of overhead and then build the company back up again from Blocksworld and Sansar. If there is some sane path here of keeping SL alive after a Sansar release I'm not seeing it, unless very few people actually "buy down" their sims at $600. But if very few people buy down, there's very little point to doing it in the first place. It makes about as much sense as any other LL decision which is to say none to little. It is a company with buggy management. About what I'd expect from a company more concerned about monetization tactics than building software worth the price tag. At your own risk applies to this particular offer. Of course if you end up saving a few hundred on the deal and the worst case is realized that SL gets shuttered then you're still ahead.

Approaching it from a game engine perspective because Sansar appears to want to be "that", only difference being that LL wants to host the games and provide the currency. I liked this little breakdown of 3D tools and what OS's they support, as you can see Mac is widely supported across the board: http://blog.digitaltutors.com/great-flame-wars-mac-vs-pc-3d-artists/ Game engines themselves all port to most major OS's, so support is not lacking in comparable products. Preferences aside the only real consideration is that when you need a lot of power for game dev, PC machines can be built out and customized more (of course you can probably say the same for Linux). For non heavy usage it really doesn't matter. Oddly, while LL is stating that PC only is the target OS so far, they have been trying to hire someone with Metal experience, which is for Apple product. How far down the road, or when if ever is anyones guess. When Sansar is more than a couple screenshots and dumb statements like "the Wordpress of VR" it might be easier to tell more about what progress they're actually making.

H8 wrote: If LL needs money for Sansar so desperately, why not just make another Patterns game and disband the project because "we are too busy working on other projects" and refuse any refunds? True story, ayyy. Did that thing ever make it out of beta? I remember they started charging for it while it was still beta. Depending on how Sansar goes, it could be another Patterns if they start charging as a beta. Not to insult anyone with simple math, but a straightforward breakdown of the fees would look like this with a $3 minimum, based on how much you're cashing out: Cashout $20 -- Why not? Even with a $3 minimum fee it still buys a pizza and I'm hungry -- 15%, ouch. Cashout $50 -- 6% Cashout $100 -- 3% No one is getting 1.5% until you hit the $200 mark. And most transactions are likely to be well under $200. This means hobbyists are taking the biggest hit. On the other hand, larger merchants paying a $15 maximum aren't exactly being coddled here. Percentage wise, going from $1 to $15 gives them a huge increase. This is optimized to get the highest percentage out of a volume of transactions. That doesn't spell covering transaction fees. That spells increased monetization.

Phil Deakins wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: OzwellWayfarer wrote: Think you read that wrong Phil. $3 is the minimum, and then 1.5% thereafter up to $15 (which is 1.5% of $1000 of course). Right. I do not care about a few dollars. But LL is already getting several hundred dollars a month from me for selling Lindens, and this fee will be on top of that and be WAY more than they need to cover the expense of cashing out. Why the sliding scale? it does not cost more to send $1000 to PayPal than it does $10. All it means is I will have to wait weeks to cash out, or pay an exorbitant fee. I think someone already suggested the reason earlier in the thread, and it's a reason that I am inclined to believe. Remember the marketplace? Why did they get into that? Because they realised that, overall, there were huge amounts of money being spent on things in SL and they wanted a cut of it. Now they think that they could also use a cut of the US$60 million a year that's being cashed out. It's just conjecture, of course, but it is typical of LL. Well, like I said earlier the 1.5% alone skims almost a million off that $60 million. By the time you factor in the minimums and increases it is likely to be closer to $5 million taken out of our $60 million. That's not covering transfer fees, that's taking up to a whopping 8% out of merchants pockets from the economy. Loved the blog post though, first that familiar tickle of smoke being blown ... well, you knew it was a joke and that the punchline was coming. I've got an old post around somewhere that predicted that they were going to start eating the user base like this if it declined too much rather than accept financial realities on their own dime. Here's a thought LL, before you shaft the merchants that are keeping the economy alive? Downsize. Instead they go with the worst possible move you can make in a declining user base. 207 private regions down this year and counting.

Some good points. They certainly won't be claiming that we're taking out $60 million next year. I think this is also penalizing us, or rather using us to float users now being able to cash out in Blocksworld, LL's other product, which is a new development. As usual, SL users foot the bill for every bright idea on all their products.

From the blog post: "The ability to redeem Linden dollars for real money on the LindeX is an incredible facet of Second Life. We believe that creators should be able to profit from their creativity, and we’re proud of the success that Second Life creators have achieved. Last year, users redeemed $60 million (USD) from the Second Life economy, and for many, the virtual world is a significant source of real income." But hey, while you're remodelling the main building in San Francisco and hiring more employees for Sansar, in which you'll take a much higher cut, why wait? In fact, why not take it off both ends of the transactions for those users that make a "significant source of real world income". By the time you skim the near million off the top in percentage, and factor in minimums you're up to 2-4 million out of the user economy. That not factoring in the profit made from purchased L$ that are never cashed out. I hear some companies would give the perk of better service and not charge users for it. You're only charging us about a million a day that we're gaining for the priviledge of faster cashouts, what a deal. That could come out of your margin LL, not ours. LL is nothing if not predictable.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: Your question leaves no room for a negative answer, Or an alternative answer. In game development we have the same argument. What is a game? Or is a free-form experience a game? The answer is exactly the same. Yes, no, maybe. The technology between a virtual world and a game is exactly the same. The tools and the implementation are the only difference. If you go to a game sim, it's a game. If you go to a historical sim, it's a simulation. Put them all together in mix and it's another yes, no, maybe. Sansar looks like it's going to try to pass this off as experiences. In reality it's still the same thing. What you do with it depends on what it is. I can build an "art sim" with a game engine or within Second Life or as an experience in Sansar. Likewise I can also build a game within Second Life or with a game engine to run on any platform. The lines have blurred to the point that it no longer matters on a meta level. It only matters in the specific implementation in a particular space.

Qie Niangao wrote: DartAgain wrote: Driven by the push for VR, I'm also expecting offerings coming from Facebook and Google for experiences development for tools, development, hosting. Yeah, Google is up to something very big in VR, Aha. Thank you for that. Interesting stuff.

I thought they were more insulting under Rod actually. While they acquired and dumped products and did a half baked job developing some of them, they didn't include SL users in any of it. Which might have been good because they did things like charge for a beta that went' nowhere. That was insulting. But they are dated with their strategy of keeping their progress secret with Sansar. Game dev (which is what Sansar actually is, but using the term "experiences" so as to portray more than games) these days puts it out there because people that are into building games/experiences aren't fooled by screenshots and vague statements. Recently released that's somewhat close to what Sansar is aiming for is Amazon Lumberyard. Yes, Amazon jumps into the fray. Lumberyard is still rough, but will be free. And how is Amazon handling this? The team put out Lumberyard in its rough state and is open about not having very clear plans. Their plan is to rely on early user feedback to grow Lumberyard into what it becomes. Which when you think about it, was how Second life was built. SL wasn't originally designed to be a virtual world. It was an experiment for hardware. Only because they shifted focus (some used to joke every week) based on early adopters do we have Second Life. Is Sansar SL 2.0? It can be. An "experience" in Sansar can be no different than a private region. Difference being land is bigger and whatever newer features Sansar is capable of. You've still got the same currency, user base, a marketplace, probably some form of destinations guide, etc. And the smart thing to do would be to make it "sort" of SL with no mainland. Rather than to try to compete with game engines that catching up to being able to build virtual worlds and that do games/experiences far better already than Sansar will do. And we're already porting to more platforms than Sansar is likely to support. Driven by the push for VR, I'm also expecting offerings coming from Facebook and Google for experiences development for tools, development, hosting. By the way, merchants, your future is looking bright for content creation over the next couple of years. LL still has gold with Sansar, I think even as a future SL, but as usual leading that horse to water is a painful exercise. Edited: Fool that I am, kept calling Lumberyard, Lumberjack. Fixed.

It also wouldn't be a complete list without mentioning the "Listing Fee Wars". Pink Linden proposed nixing free items on the newly acquired XStreet and implementing a L$10 listing fee for each product listed. That discussion spanned many threads, thousands of posts and remained a heated debate that lasted for many weeks. In the end obviously, no restrictions on free items or listing fees. Ironically, Sansar will most likely be taking 30% or more commission.

"3) Anshe Chung had once released good quality furniture for L$4, which had reprocussions across a broad range of industries... but I don't know how that ultimately got resolved." I believe XStreet was still SLX, owned by Apotheus. Anshe was a 40% partner at the time. Apotheus decided to let her advertise her "10 Linden" program, in which Anshe was going to produce a vast amount of content all priced below L$10, mostly done by workers in her office in China. Many sweatshop comments and cries of unfair competition to be had, we rebelled and Apotheus pulled the plug on advertising her program on SLX. Game over on that one.

That is an issue. It kind of points to Sansar having some wonky mesh requirements that other engines don't foist on you. What concerns me though were the two hairless breedables in the beginning of the video. One seemed to be considering self-immolation in the fireplace until the other one took him aside for suicide counseling for the remainder of the video.

polysail wrote: Both! SL is finally implementing features to raise user ( and designer ) awareness about mesh rendering complexity costs. I'm sure Sansar will have a similar type of indicator. ( Hopefully even better ones!! ) Sadly, due to the framerate expectations that Sansar has on it, it only really has one option: well designed (optimized) mesh assets. The type that every other game engine in the entire world relies upon and uses. So~~ SL people will have to learn a little bit more. Every other content designer won't even bat an eye. After all Second Life is the only game type platform without incredibly restrictive polycount rules for content submission. That's okay!~! Necessity will dictate improvement~ I have very few doubts that LL will get their builders to populate the new world; as unemployed 3D artists aren't exactly a rarity. I'm sure you'll manage to come up with some horrible gloom and doom scenario with this new-found knowledge but! I'm pretty confident that the average mesh designer on SL will adapt to these new circumstances by the time Sansar rolls around and actually becomes 'a thing'~ Anyhooo !! Glad everyone understands this stuff a little better!!~~ back to Bento testing for me!! Well, to play devils advocate, LL kind of made its own mess that they have to optimize for. And polygon counts aren't really much of a thing these days. Even minimal specs with a modest graphics card can handle some decent polygon counts. The evil is in other areas. But those game engines you mention do a much better job of handling resources that Land Impact makes look evil. Point being that if LL develops something sane, then mesh optimization doesn't have to be such an issue with a small dose of common sense. It's possible that Sansar will try to put too much limits on easier, more sane mesh practices. Especially if they're going to claim that it can work well on mobile too. Land Impact expects you to get pretty wonky with optmiizations. And of course if land really is cheap, it means resources are sparse, because we're not talking land, we're talking the computing and bandwidth resources LL is going to give for that price point. But just to add to Darrius point, consider this: At SL's peak, you could bog your sim down with as much as you wanted to and people would suffer through the lag. As a matter of fact, any in-world shopping (which was the majority activity at the time) was a test of patience in any popular shop or mall. Just saying that while a smooth running experience is important, it's not what got us here and people were willing to slog through it regardless of failed teleports, lag, mangled prims and mis-use of textures, "No Texture" bodies and faces and the occassional head in the butt. So there is more to this than the tech. I'm not sure if LL really knows yet what the secret sauce is.

polysail wrote: It isn't my analogy. No, just no. Today we're going for the Wordpress of virtual worlds. Just when you thought the "SL is going to be the 3D web" was finally over. That one lasted for a few years before people realized that SL wasn't an internet platform and wasn't going to be introducing widely adopted virtual worlds protocols.

Sassy Romano wrote: Customer: "Hi, i've just bought your [product name] in SL and i'd like to use it in Sansar, can I have a free delivery there too please?" Merchant: "Sansar and SL are different platforms...yes I know the currency is the same... I understand your frustration but you'll need to purchase it again." Customer: "Wait, i've just looked and you're charging 30% more in Sansar in SL, you're a money grubbing thieving merchant, i'm never buying from you again!" I can honestly say that i'm glad I won't be selling anything in Sansar Belated reply: Ugg, that's true. LL can monetize their pocket lint and I'm the bad guy? Fine, I'll wear an eye patch and put the reasoning in the product description.

Tough to say without knowing the monetization schemes in Sansar. Personally I'd be more interested in keeping my profit roughly the same in both places, without knowing more. If I paid little to nothing in land, and Sansar commission is 30%, my prices would be 25% higher in Sansar. If I was paying for a few sims and my "land"/hosting costs in Sansar is 1/3 of the price that I'm paying in SL, then I'd deduct 2/3s of my hosting cost from SL and add 25% commission difference. Basically though, the merchants from SL who don't have land and charge the same prices for their products in Sansar that they do in SL are going to be making a lot less money from Sansar that they do in SL. You can't really factor in whether Sansar will provide more buying power to make up for higher commissions because LL is horrible at attracting and keeping new users for the last years and because I think most people in Sansar will just be those who migrated there from SL, so there's a chance that buying power will be far less in Sansar. This is really the irksome part of Sansar higher commissions because what we need as merchants from LL in Sansar isn't a shopping cart and LL as a middleman UNLESS they can provide buying power. I don't care that they can act as a middleman unless they can bring the shoppers. If they can't bring more shoppers, all they're doing is taking more and forgetting what their role actually is. On the positive side, we might see many "Sansars" out there, since the development barrier to entry to build something like a Sansar is far easier than building something like SL. Assuming I've got it right and that Sansar "experiences" are just a browser based instance with VR capabilities. The only bits unique to LL will be their fake money and a truckload of free-play style monetization. Other alternatives may turn out to be less costly for the merchant.

polysail wrote: The vast majority of content on the marketplace is Mesh, Sculpt, Prim and Texture work that needs little to no support at all. It's valid content that people enjoy. There is no "theft" in revenue generation off of 'abandoned property', especially when that property is digital content. There is no "theft" when you use fake money and a ToS that doesn't resemble any contract known to man. In the real world it may not be classified as theft, but there are penalties for not paying someone for their property that you're selling as a middleman, which is what LL is. Doesn't matter whether it's digital goods or not, laws still apply. We've made some progress in getting government to recognize fake currency as something that needs regulation as real currency. More changes likely to come as content creators everywhere get shafted by devaluation and lack of legal compensation and recourse. Stay tuned.

Dakota Linden wrote: In the case of the thimble, the question would be "Is it a Breedable Fairy?" If the answer is no, then the Breedable Faries sub-category is not the correct one for the product. I do feel somewhat vindicated that the fae are still causing mischief in some small way, though.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Tari Landar wrote: Theresa Tennyson wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: Ummm .. a very massive and also very final (no way to argue with) bunch of language in the ToS and Guidelines for the Marketplace state that Linden Lab can choose to allow or remove your products at their will. I kinda think that qualifies as them reserving the right to pick which products they display on the Marketplace just as Amazon chooses what products to list on their site, and just like any Retailer chooses what products to carry in their store. It can be very reasonably argued that a lot of the value in the Marketplace comes from the fact that Linden Lab routinely lets lots of people show off their stuff with very few introductory requirements. They do take action against folks .. and they do refuse, take down and ban people as well. So .. where again is this truck-sized hole? Linden Lab only chooses who to remove, not who to add (unlike some other virtual marketplaces.) Tari's argument was that retailers shouldn't choose who to advertise among their sellers to treate everyone "equally." A retail store makes a decision who to "treat equally" before they have anything to advertise at all. In the Marketplace, just like any business of selling, you say that all stores are equal but some are certainly more equal than others. That wasn't my entire argument, but there is a lot more to retailers choosing which products to sell than you think, too. Still the MP/LL does choose who can sell on the MP, whether it's to the same degree as other retailers may differ, but I wouldn't cal that a truck sized hole. You're still missing the entire point that advertising isn't done by retailers on a whim. It is always an opt-in situation, where the opportunity is open to all not a select few only, regardless of the reputation or quality of the prduct(s). The choice to opt-in, is up to the manufacturer/distributor/merchant(where applicable, like places such as Amazon). The cost for such opportunities is determined by the retailer, based on whatever crtieria they so choose. It's far more complex than a retailer simply saying "I think we should advertise Boby Joe's products, but definitely not Jane Ann's". The latter causes a rift between manufacturer/distributor/merchant and the retailer..and potentially a rift between end-user(ie, retailer's customer) and the retailer. There is a very good reason why advertising is an opt-in thing...because it works! I think I've figured out the problem we're having understanding each other. In the real world I'm in the entertainment field. It's fundamentally unequal and everyone knows it. Actor A can get $20 million from a producer to make a movie; Actor B can give the producer $60 million and not be assured of getting distribution. Not only does everybody not get a chance to be in any given project, many projects are built around pre-selected people. I doubt most people in the entertainment field expect that they would be - they'd find the idea absurd. A new actor going into a producer and saying, "How can I get the opportunities and publicity you're giving [famous actor]" would probably get a very rude reply, because the presence of a big name can at least give the possibility of paying everyone's salary. But you don't hear people in the entertainment industry talking much about "competition." Rivals, yes; enemies maybe; but not so much "competition." The reason is that entertainment isn't usually a zero-sum field. Someone going to a famous movie doesn't mean that they won't go to the raggedyboned plays I help to put on - each one is independent and someone choose to go to one, the other or both. Second Life products are really a lot closer to "entertainment" than real-world merchandise. A "luxury item" in SL might cost $20. In RL I've bought one bed in fifteen years. In SL I've probably bought a dozen beds in five years between me and my extended family of alts. Not all SL retailers seem to worry much about "competition." Truth Hawks is half-owner of the Uber shopping event but there are other hair merchants featured there. One of the top car makers in SL rents to two other car makers - I've actually bought more from the "competitive" stores than the owner of the sim, but that doesn't mean that I won't buy from the sim owner if I see something Iike. Awesome industry to be in, and merchants varied backgrounds always amazes me. Although on this one you're moving the goal posts again. Arguments about free market, competition etc., in this context were related to advertising. In advertising it has pretty much been shown that in the real world it is more or less a level playing field out here. In RL you lose advertisers when you skew it too much, so generally it's understood or kept to a minimum. I don't think anyone has a problem with competition in general. Yes there is much unfairness to be had in the business world. I think one of the problems with SL though, is that because it claims to be "virtual" it isn't subject to a proper laws and restrictions. But whether a company should be subject to RL business law and isn't because of fake money and a ToS that came out of a Cracker Jacks box is a story for another day. At any rate, going to bow out for a few days or so. Helping a friend start a cleaning service which probably means I'll get to personally clean some toilets to train people among other things. +1 for entrepreneurs. But I'll be doing that in another industry that does have a level playing field with bidding and advertising. ETA: Re-worded slightly so as not to imply that LL is skirting law, but rather to make a point that RL business restrictions and law should apply to virtual goods and sales as equally as RL goods.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Here's the discrepancy Theresa: Neither I nor anyone else arguing against the email promotion that started all this wants "everyone equal". We want "equal opportunity". Those two concepts are VASTLY different. When you've mastered the difference, c'mon back and I'll settle your nerves too. Business opportunities abound. I'm thinking Middlemen for Dummies. Not that most companies need it and they should probably receive a free copy. Meanwhile, need to go downtown today to talk to a company that's been in business for over 50 years, has a fraction of the employees that LL has and makes at least 10 times the profit that LL makes. As founders of a trade organization in their field, they refuse to advertise beyond a basic listing as it'd send the wrong message to the other members. And of course, there's equal opportunity for advertising and listings. The disconnect between RL and here continues to be a chasm It would appear that horse sense is something that can't be taught.