The Alphaville Herald

Prok’s Candid Coversations With the Core: Lordfly Digeridoo, Part One

by Alphaville Herald on 18/02/05 at 10:40 am

The Feted Inner Core: what is it? If you have to ask, that doesn’t mean you’re not a member. But it certainly exists — at least according to SL resident Prokofy Neva, who coined the term way back in January, deep in this thread on the SL forums.

Since then, forum traffic indicates the term has caught on. But threads like The Feted Inner Core of Second Life, Feted Inner Core?, and Feted Inner Core – woot! give only a vague idea of just what the Core is and just how it works.

To further enlighten Herald readers, we sent self-appointed Core Monitor Prokofy Neva out into the grid to gather the thoughts of several prominent SL residents who may or may not be members of the Feted Inner Core, as well as those who may or may not belong to the even more exclusive clubs known as the Fetid Inner Core and the Feted Outer Core. [Ed. note: The Herald editorial board is not entirely certain of the membership of these groupings, but we assume that their members will figure it out for themselves once they read their names in our newspaper.]

Prok’s first victim interlocutor was Lordfly Digeridoo, who kindly agreed to a long and leisurely chat atop his clock tower in Grignano.

Part One of Two:

PK: I will ask you insulting questions and you can faux get mad if you like LOL. How much have you actually earned here?
LF: Around US$1,000 since January of 2004. Not a gigantic amount, but it did help me get the rest of my classes for my associates.

PK: It’s hard for me to think of someone more feted and inner than you, my friend. You epitomize for me the techie kid who is literally paying for college with his dollhouses here. I mean, sheesh, I used to sling hash to pay for college.
LF: I sling prims. You’d be surprised how little I’m connected to the various cliques in SL.

PK: How you have been so busy when you have only what, 6,000 square meters? I thought you were working on an entire city, to hear you tell it!
LF: Well, college and work cut into a lot of my time, as well as more social matters, so I don’t get much time to build anymore. And I just found someone special in SL.

PK: Do you have free 4,096 land with paid-up tier? In Grignano?
LF: Yes. I was one of the last ones to snag them up before they ran out. 100% of my land is tied up in Grignano, minus the monolith in Europa.

PK: That’s $25/month you save over everyone else, correct? You seem to have gotten a significant leg up over the rest of us with that 4,096.
LF: Eh, it’s not that significant of a leg, really.

PK: His this free 4,096 area has given you significant visibility in the game? Or is it more likely your architectural monuments like the SL Public Library?
LF: Nah, that’d be my buildings. My free tier land was never used for much prior to Grignano.

Did Lordfly’s free 4,096 give him a leg up in SL?

PK: How did you get started on your path to the inner core? Who gave you your first big break?
LF: Beryl Greenacre.

PK: She gave you a commission?
LF: She actually advanced me the money in order to finish her building. Lemme explain that. Prior to 1.2, if you rezzed a prim it cost you $L10. When I started out, I didn’t have much money, so when I made her building, I only got halfway done before I was literally broke.

PK: So your point is we are all living on prim socialism now.
LF: No, we’re living in a more sensible approach to server resources now.

PK: So that’s why you have this quaint method of still pricing your buildings per prim?
LF: Yup, I can’t find an honest price otherwise.

PK: We know that on Ravenglass the 2,048s sold with your house for $19,500. So that’s significant.
LF: Yeah, that’s huge. That’s about 10 times more than I make on any other house.

PK: I want to ask you about those early days, when Bob Bunderfeld was going to be your tutor. But it wound up with a big sign on land you had access to, saying BOBLAND. What was THAT all about?
LF: One of the high water marks of my drama-inducing sludge in the game. Back in the day, the Slate sim was one of the most beautiful Sims in-world. When I moved in in July 2003, the sim was pristine… tree houses, log cabins (that was Bob’s), wooden homes… and a railroad. Oh, and a gigantic castle with a flying pirate ship docked on it. I bought my first plot by the river, befriended my neighbors (who are still about the only folks I hang out with in-world to this day), and learned how to build. Fortunately, Olive was a sandbox sim back then, so it was a hop-skip-and-jump away to practice building (money permitting). One day as a newbie I decided I wanted to become a virtual architect, as my “profession” in SL. But, lacking any sort of street credentials, I asked the only fellow architect I knew… my neighbor, Bob Bunderfeld.

PK: How did you do that? You aren’t an architect in RL?
LF: I’m a college student in RL. I’ve been making 3-D stuff on computers since the early Quake days. Aaaaanyways, Bob gave me a test to see if I was worthy to join his building troupe. Fortunately, he rejected me. And upon retrospect it WAS a shitty building.

PK: Ah-HAH!
LF: Regardless, I got over it and moved on. Fast forward a few months. Since then me and my fellow Slater Ezhar Fairlight had made a small garden, a walk bridge across the Slate river, and a clock tower with working gears and chimes. The sim was looking wonderful. About that time (we’re in November, I think), Bob started getting grandiose plans to “control” Slate. He began buying up all vacant land and strongarmed various people out of the sim.

PK: Hmmm, control? Grandiose? Why would that be wrong? Was this a question of two feteds duking it out in a changing climate?
LF: Nah, it was a question of him taking control of the Slate Neighborhood Association. Which, sadly, I was a part of starting.

PK: So there were economic considerations here. Although whoever controls a sim merely gets to pay tier, LOL.
LF: There was no tier then. Fifteen bucks a month across the board, regardless of how much land you owned.

PK: wait.
PK: run that by me again.
PK: *THERE WAS NO TIER THEN?????*
PK: GASP
LF: There wasn’t a tier. Everyone in-world paid 15 bucks a month.

PK: It’s worse than I knew, then. You all had all this land and all this space and all these resources without the staggering costs we pay today. To get yourself established and feted by the Lindens
LF: No, SOME did. There were a few folks with 4-5 sims under their account. Everyone was soundly de-feted by the few.

PK: How did they get the sims? Was it an auction?
LF: No, all sims were released as public land. We had the traditional “land rush” for people to run in and snag the land in the sim.

PK: Are you saying that sims people acquired back then, that they didn’t pay tier on, remain in their possesssion now?
LF: No, everyone pays tier now. Except the few that bought lifetime accounts.

PK: It’s even more feted than I could have EVER dreamed. WOW.
LF: I… guess.

PK: OK so you put up your harassment BOBLAND sign…and then…moved on? and what propelled you?
LF: Well, Bob was strong-arming people, so the remaining folks left the Sim entirely. I didn’t approve of it, so prior to me jetting off I bought a piece of land in Teal and erected the sign. That didn’t sit well with Bob. He somehow tied it in to me being bitter over him not accepting me into his little building group. (By this time I had my own business going, quite well, for the record.)

PK: OK, so your business was swinging. You were sitting happy on your free 4,096, collecting your ratings welfare.
LF: Er, when? My 4,096 allotment was used in two places: 1) Tan, for Tan Tower, and 2) in Grignano. Tan was used to make a large apartment complex to make money and eventually sell it off.

PK (left) grills LD (right)

PK: How much did you make on that deal?
LF: $L25,000. A princely sum back in the day. Now I hear it’s small potatoes. Back then the linden dollar was barely at US$0.80/$L250. People were speculating if the Linden would ever hit $1/$L250. Then the land speculation bubble happened, summer of 2004.

PK: Tell me what you see as being the biggest obstacles in the game. I feel that the presence in the game of classes of hardcore geeks and feted designers and so on is a real obstacle to progress and expansion of the game. Some older player makes something, charges a fortune, then doesn’t want to do any customer service. There are many rackets like that, holding people hostage to their wares.
LF: Older folks are just as vulnurable to shitty business practices as newbies. The ones that make bad business decisions get hit hard on their reputation.

PK: I’d like to hear what your own main beefs are in the game. What do you find gets in your way, LF?
LF: Eh, drama becomes muted whispers, muted whispers become smear campaigns, smear campaigns become damaged reputations. What gets in my way are cliques, my annoyance with people, a lack of solid economic data. The commercialization of the game is fine by me, because if I don’t want to participate in it, I don’t have to.

PK: So what are your annoyances? You like the concept of people, yet people themselves annoy you, as you say on your slogan, but who the hell are YOU, Lordfly?
LF: I’m all me, baby. I’m just this guy, you know?

PK: What annoys you about people most? Do you hate malls? Clubs?
LF: It’s hard to poinpoint. People take this game WAY too seriously. Clubs are wastes of time. TOTAL wastes of time.

PK: Hmm, why would they threaten a nice architect like you with cool stores with bodily harm??? Over what, exceeding your prim count???
LF: Well, that’d be the other high mark of my drama involvement in SL. In case you hadn’t noticed in the forums, I hate bullies. I don’t like people that belittle others for no reason. There was a certain club owner that had a space in Federal for a long time. He had recently flared up on the forums, typing truly incoherent posts. Keep in mind he’s a native-born English speaker, from St. Louis. He went on to call about 2 dozen people “fags” in-world and on the forums, spouting general hate everywhere. So I got sick of it, and I went over to his club and erected a sign right in front of it: “Chairman Mao says NO to ugly club builds!”

PK: What annoys you then about the game itself? Or is it only the people?
LF: The game itself: Crashing. The people: unwillingness to change.

PK: IS there an inner core that is die-hard? Refusing to reform?
LF: No, it’s everyone in SL. Everyone gets used to their little routines, their entitlements, their proceeds, and then the lindens come in and go, “Okay, well, this shit’s broken, here’s some new rules,” and then everyone goes batshit loony.

PK: Well, can you blame them?
LF: Yes, yes I can. The entire point of SL is that it changes constantly. It’s a virtual economy of course, but it CHANGES. The entire game changes. Every day thousands of builds go up and down.

PK: Tell me, why do YOU want the Lindens, Lordfly? Do you know them? Have you partied with them? Do they love you to pieces?
LF: Some of the Lindens don’t like my attitude on the forums. Others tolerate me because I make good content. A few like me because I have good ideas sometimes. I really like the company, they’re a good set of people.

PK: Yes, you do have good ideas and your work speaks for itself.
LF: ack. I have to run, I’m late for a social engagement.

PK: Could they have created a monster, however, in this insular community that lives on its entitlements and fear of change?
LF: I’ll answer that question later, I really have to run.

PK: kk. Thanks so much.
LF: ciao.

Look for Part Two of Prok’s Candid Coversation with Lordfly Digeridoo shortly in the Herald.
[UPDATE: Read part two here.]