Seondlife - Living on borrowed time.
I haven’t been around in Secondlife as long as some people, but I’ve been around long enough to see that things have been on a steady decline for quite some time. Land values continue to plummet and it wouldn’t surprise me to find that more land is being abandoned across the entire grid at this time than at any other time in the history of Secondlife. The removal of in-world casinos was the first blow to what had been a thriving economy and the grid never recovered. Philip Linden’s stepping down as CEO of Linden Labs seems to have heralded an even more lack-luster enforcement of the rules regarding avatar conduct and protection issues for content creators. Add to all of this the removal of the First Land program and the weekly stipends, and it seems like Linden Labs has been systematically trying to destroy the in world economy!
For those of you who are unfamiliar or new to Secondlife, all premium members used to receive a weekly stipend, mine was 400L as I recall. These stipends were of great benefit to the online economy as it enabled people to purchase items for their avatars without having to purchase lindens or find an in-world job. This was a tremendous benefit to the thousands of merchants in secondlife, the very people that create everything you see on every sim. Killing the stipends has created a society of scavengers who don’t buy anything in the game. This is because there are so many sims now that merchants have resorted to camping and freebies to bring people to their land. The hope here is that by giving items away for free the traffic rating of their land will go up and attract paying customers. This is seldom effective. It is a desperate move by merchants to try and continue to do business. If this is obvious to me it should be obvious to those who created Secondlife. However, rather than reward or provide help for those who make all the cool stuff in Secondlife, Linden Labs has abandoned them, but why?
The answer is that linden labs makes it’s money primarily from land tier fees. So as long as they keep selling sims they keep making boatloads of cash.
The other part of the plan is to keep a steady stream of new people coming into the game. So as a merchant if you buy land and because of the adverse conditions in Secondlife you pack it in and sell your land to avoid the tier fees, there’s always another sucker around the corner! There’s no point in making Secondlife a viable place to do business because it doesn’t improve the bottom line. These are not the ideals on which Secondlife was founded and I believe that this is part of the reason that Philip Linden stepped down as CEO of Linden Labs.
The same major problems that plagued Secondlife when I first arrived in the game have never been addressed let alone solved. Vehicles still have the same difficulty crossing sim barriers, transactions fail, inventory disappears into the void never to return. Scripted items perform erratically not due to bad scripting, but because of server side glitches and grid instability. In the face of all this Linden Labs just rolls out a never ending litany of new features, to sell the idea of Secondlife to new people as those of us who lose all faith in SL, either go back to basic accounts or leave the game altogether.
If Linden Labs really cares about the in world experience of their customers they will have to dramatically change the way they do business. Real and enforced protection for content creators must be established and maintained. The stipends must be restored. Creation of new sims must be reduced in order to increase and then stabilize the value of land. Long time problems and stability issues must finally be addressed and dealt with.
In the face of real world economic problems people will be less and less eager to invest time and money in activities that don’t deliver. It is my opinion that Secondlife is in serious danger of falling by the wayside in the increasingly competitive marketplace for online virtual worlds. If Linden Labs wants to stay at the forefront they have to up the ante, but how can they do this?
Well, up to date technology would be a good start. Everything from the SL viewer, to the game engine to the models for the avatars is woefully outdated software that is only used because it can be obtained for free. Current games employ the Havok version 7 software while secondlife has only recently begun using the Havok 4 engine. Even the databases are slow and outdated versions of freeware server software. It’s ironic that it’s against the terms of service in SL to resell freebies because in a way that’s exactly what Linden Labs are doing!
This is all the opinion of one secondlife user, but I know that I am not alone in feeling like Linden Labs doesn’t care about me as a customer, a Secondlife merchant or a content creator. As things currently stand, the second some competitor comes up with a viable alternative to SL I will be very interested in moving my business to a new world with new possibilities. I am not the only one. The clock is ticking Linden Labs, ball is in your court it’s up to you to fix your world before the people who make it what it is simply leave you behind.
For those of you who are unfamiliar or new to Secondlife, all premium members used to receive a weekly stipend, mine was 400L as I recall. These stipends were of great benefit to the online economy as it enabled people to purchase items for their avatars without having to purchase lindens or find an in-world job. This was a tremendous benefit to the thousands of merchants in secondlife, the very people that create everything you see on every sim. Killing the stipends has created a society of scavengers who don’t buy anything in the game. This is because there are so many sims now that merchants have resorted to camping and freebies to bring people to their land. The hope here is that by giving items away for free the traffic rating of their land will go up and attract paying customers. This is seldom effective. It is a desperate move by merchants to try and continue to do business. If this is obvious to me it should be obvious to those who created Secondlife. However, rather than reward or provide help for those who make all the cool stuff in Secondlife, Linden Labs has abandoned them, but why?
The answer is that linden labs makes it’s money primarily from land tier fees. So as long as they keep selling sims they keep making boatloads of cash.
The other part of the plan is to keep a steady stream of new people coming into the game. So as a merchant if you buy land and because of the adverse conditions in Secondlife you pack it in and sell your land to avoid the tier fees, there’s always another sucker around the corner! There’s no point in making Secondlife a viable place to do business because it doesn’t improve the bottom line. These are not the ideals on which Secondlife was founded and I believe that this is part of the reason that Philip Linden stepped down as CEO of Linden Labs.
The same major problems that plagued Secondlife when I first arrived in the game have never been addressed let alone solved. Vehicles still have the same difficulty crossing sim barriers, transactions fail, inventory disappears into the void never to return. Scripted items perform erratically not due to bad scripting, but because of server side glitches and grid instability. In the face of all this Linden Labs just rolls out a never ending litany of new features, to sell the idea of Secondlife to new people as those of us who lose all faith in SL, either go back to basic accounts or leave the game altogether.
If Linden Labs really cares about the in world experience of their customers they will have to dramatically change the way they do business. Real and enforced protection for content creators must be established and maintained. The stipends must be restored. Creation of new sims must be reduced in order to increase and then stabilize the value of land. Long time problems and stability issues must finally be addressed and dealt with.
In the face of real world economic problems people will be less and less eager to invest time and money in activities that don’t deliver. It is my opinion that Secondlife is in serious danger of falling by the wayside in the increasingly competitive marketplace for online virtual worlds. If Linden Labs wants to stay at the forefront they have to up the ante, but how can they do this?
Well, up to date technology would be a good start. Everything from the SL viewer, to the game engine to the models for the avatars is woefully outdated software that is only used because it can be obtained for free. Current games employ the Havok version 7 software while secondlife has only recently begun using the Havok 4 engine. Even the databases are slow and outdated versions of freeware server software. It’s ironic that it’s against the terms of service in SL to resell freebies because in a way that’s exactly what Linden Labs are doing!
This is all the opinion of one secondlife user, but I know that I am not alone in feeling like Linden Labs doesn’t care about me as a customer, a Secondlife merchant or a content creator. As things currently stand, the second some competitor comes up with a viable alternative to SL I will be very interested in moving my business to a new world with new possibilities. I am not the only one. The clock is ticking Linden Labs, ball is in your court it’s up to you to fix your world before the people who make it what it is simply leave you behind.
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