This is a Really Really Bad Idea
by Alphaville Herald on 05/12/04 at 9:01 pm
Editorial
This is a short editorial, because it won’t take me long to make my point, which is very simple. The recent Linden trial balloon to provide up front financial support (in Linden Dollars or whatever) to big projects is just a bad idea. Quite apart from its unfairness to people like the Bedazzled group which has aready invested in 3 sims, and quite apart from the ability of smooth proposal writers to game the system by lining up big name scriptors to sign on to lend cred, the proposal is deeply philosophically flawed. This certainly runs counter to everything that Phillip has been preaching over the past year: we should encourage bottom-up, emergent group projects driven by in-game market forces rather than top down dictates from the corporation. Do we really want the Lindens in the position of predicting/picking winners? Will the winners really be found in familiar big name scriptors or will they come from newcomers to SL. We say, don’t try to pick winners, don’t privilege the familiar faces, and let the virtual market drive innovation. Pop this trial balloon now!!!!
blaze
Dec 5th, 2004
As long as they don’t change development schedules or given certain players extra rights, it’ll quitely pop itself.
Lets face it, 200 bux a month isn’t a lot of money. If that’s going to be the line between success and failure then SecondLife has a lot bigger problems..
Torley Torgeson
Dec 6th, 2004
I am both for and against the “trial balloon” at the same time. I’m part of the Tartarus Team under fearless leader Ryen Jade , but at the same time, I’m vociferous opposition to what would be the unfairness that you pointed our.
I have long embraced contradictions — this is just another one on the road of life… er, Second Life. And it is seriously something that makes the SL metaverse so appealing to me.
Of curious note… water that flows into one cup can flow into another…
“We have two new members, Bedazzle’s Foxy Xevious and Jimmy Thomson are now members of the Tartarus Project
”
as per the bottom of:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=29078&page=1&pp=40
What does this mean? No (describable-in-words) idea… yet.
urizenus
Dec 6th, 2004
Thanks for dropping by Torley. Here is my question: why does Ryen and the rest of you even *want* Linden support? This has never been make clear. I think the Simcast group has decided that if the Lindens go this route they aren’t going to apply.
urizenus
Dec 6th, 2004
Oh and just to see what a bad idea this is, revisit the list of projects that Phillip would like to see in SL — golf courses etc.
http://secondlife.blogs.com/philip/2004/10/evolutionary_fi.html
I mean the guys is a visionary yadda yadda yadda but NOT on this level. We do NOT want Phillip and his minions trying to decide what’s exciting or new or will get us to the next evolutionary peak (and I need to have a long talk with the guy about evolutionary theory, btw).
Jim Purbrick
Dec 21st, 2004
I think there are some interesting potential conflicts here. Linden want to make SL as shiny and attractive to newbies as possible, so want lots of cheap or free high quality content, which Neverland clearly is. The residents toiling to create content want to be able to charge money for it and so don’t want to be undercut by Linden giving lots of content away for free. In this case I think the Linden sponsored content should just grow the pie by attracting more residents who will eventually pay for resident created content. I think we’ll see more potential conflicts between the interests of Linden and the residents as SL grows though. It will be interesting to see how the relationship develops.