The Alphaville Herald

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

by Alphaville Herald on 22/02/05 at 12:28 am

For those of who you enjoyed SL resident Prokofy Neva’s “journalistic” debut last week, in which SL architect Lordfly Digeridoo kindly submitted himself to questions from the rhapsodist of Ravenglass (and even for those who did not), we are overjoyed to present Part Two, in which our interlocutors address questions of the grid’s economy. No Linden Town Hall meeting was ever as revealing.

Lordfly Digeridoo: so let’s get back to this candid conversation thing.

Prokofy Neva: Well, you have made a proposal to the Lindens that they buy up land that you designate as public, but…with all due respect…who the hell are you?Why should the Lindens buy from you?
Lordfly Digeridoo: i didn’t say I do it. I was having folks like you in mind, whole-sim buyers that develop an area, and then sell it off.

PN: but why would I sell commons to the Lindens?
LF: so you can preserve the feel of your neighborhood.

PN: well couldn’t I do that myself thank you very much?
couldn’t I get players to have a stake in it?
LF: no, not unless you wanted to pay tier. people move around in-world all the time.

PN: I cover the tier by renting it. or I get people to donate into it, then they get the prims but don’t build on it. Think up some scheme like that, don’t involve the Lindens. Who are the Lindens? Just some people with servers? Servers that don’t work well sometimes. I can’t get into proper worship mode on the Lindens LF, help me out on this.
LF: well, Linden-land remains there, FOREVER. residents don’t stay in one place forever.

PN: and they never auction it off? well…
LF: so in 6 months your precious little Ravenglass sim will look entirely different than what it does today.

PN: I know that. it’s all good. it’s all interesting.
LF: so why bother planning it at all?

PN: the idea is to see what happens in nature, not in some fake zoned thing.
LF: “what happens in nature” is 99% of SL. it’s supposed to be order from chaos.

PN: but who wants the administrative headache? everything you propose to the Lindens is a huge amount of work for them. they couldn’t police their zoned sims as it was.
LF: i developed my plan with the knowledge that the lindens cannot police anything. did you even READ my proposal?

PN: yes
PN: over and over
PN: to see if they want to buy it as public land forever and ever, they have to make a judgement.
LF: it’s either doing it by hand, or coding up a process for it, which shoudln’t be that hard, seeing as the auctions are mostly automatic now.

PN: that’s not the issue
LF: yes, it is the issue

PN: they would have to see a visual portfolio. they’d have to sit and make judgements. they’d have to have criteria.
LF: why?

PN: because they’d have to decide what they are willing to take a loss on forever!.
LF: i’m saying sell 100% of a sim and let the residents decide where the linden land goes.

PN: and I’m saying it would take them time to judge, to sift through hundreds of requests like that. they’d have to have rigid criteria, and all kinds of “special cases” will emerge.
LF: hundreds of requests? how many people buy up whole sims at a time?

PN: stop thinking of it as your little game with 19,999 other people. you’re forgetting that people acquire whole sims over time, sometimes in groups. it’s not just the fresh sims.
LF: yes, and they would be ineligible for this plan

PN: ohhhhh
PN: well but that’s not FAIR
LF: life isn’t fair

PN: what, I reclaim a mouldering slag heap sim and I don’t get a deal like that???
LF: no, you don’t. that would take linden time and effort, as you say. this is pre-emptive planned landscape design. Imagine a time when the lindens don’t sculpt the land anymore, because it’s coming. 50,000 residents from now, the lindens will scarcely have the time to design continents.

PN: they sure won’t. they will be busy fighting of lawsuits and the g-men for taxes and RICO and all manner of things.
LF: if you make a shitty landscaping idea, you won’t sell your land.

PN: but they will have to judge. Look at their idea of beauty, the market in Boardman, yuck.
LF: they want us to run our world. philip wants to lose control of the beast.

PN: But they don’t step out of the way! he MADE the beast no one can jump over now!
LF: ?

PN: The inner core, those with the ratings/land/paid tier/inventions with payoffs/riches/land etc. they are a significant obstacle to growth.
LF: uh, they drive growth, last time i checked. cool content = more players. more players = more people making cool content.

PN: they want to set things in world and go offline and just collect.
LF: so you’re faulting people for not being by their vendors 24/7? customer service is an IM away

PN: You have no idea. There are all kinds of situations. disputes between neighbors over builds and view, griefers and laggers, calling in Lindens, dealing with griefer viewblockers in the bay, fighting over prims. you could spend your life on it.
LF: seems like your system needs streamlining

PN: yes LF what it needs is not one sim, but four. 99 percent of the trouble tickets relate to the view corridors and lag spreading from other sims.
LF: so… what? you’re trying to define what others can put on their land, on other sims? how do you define what is griefing?

PN: If they lag a sim to 37, sure. They ought to be charged for that.
LF: no, they shouldn’t. scripters would riot.

PN: Let them, I will fight back.
LF: how would you charge for this? on a CPU cycle basis?

PN: You figure it out
LF: no, it’s your idea, YOU figure it out. you can’t just sling these random ideas without more ideas to back them up. the hundreds of scripters will rise together and say “fuck no”. you would drive people like cubey terra out of business.

PN: well these are the feted inners that block progress
LF: no, you’ll drive the newbies out of business too.

PN: yeah well why should MY $40 a month subsidize their fuck-you hedonism? while I sit in 27 FPS with a goddman slide show???? Fuck that shit.
LF: because you get the unconditional ability to build WHATEVER YOU WANT on YOUR LAND

PN: I pay real money for land, and some kid with a script jones is going to dick me out of FPS? somebody has to PAY, LF
PN: PAY
LF: yes, the land owners do. feted inner elite land owners like yourself.

PN: while some kid with a portable dick dances under a strobe light? On my thousands of acres? That kid can hold me and others in 3 sims hostage?
LF: then AR him? boot him from your land? orbit him?

PN: I look at their entire grid, I see that the Lindens just serve the green dots in clumps and they don’t care if the clumps even out. that’s what it looks like to me, and it sucks big time and their world will not grow as a result.
LF: but their world is growing.

PN: THIS is growth????
LF: 20% a month

PN: oh, they are getting TSO spillout like me and my friends
LF: i dunno, that’s explosive growth to me

PN: but that will taper off because they will disappoint people. they don’t have a means of fixing the lag issues. they are utterly helpless I’ve seen them. they can ban somebody for a few days. but they can’t address it at the root.
LF: what’s the root of the problem? unfettered freedom?

PN: you have to come and see the scene of your crime now LF. I will tp you lol.
LF: ok

Destination: Prokofy Neva’s Lighthouse Mall

PN: See, another mall. just what the world needs. I can spy on Anshe’s mall from here LOL.
LF: just like every other mall ever.

PN: I know you will greet each new enthusiastic newbie innocent initiative with the jaded feted attitude of the inner core LOL. It’s always “been done”. it’s always ‘already tired’, whether a mall or a bank or whatever. “It can’t be done,” you say. You’re like old-timers in a village. People have to move away from you to the big city. You’re a brake on progress, with your “can’t be dones”.
LF: i say “can’t be done” so hundreds of newbies don’t lose all their money on a shaky savings and loan.

PN: well don’t worlds need banks?
LF: not this one. you can’t do it without contract enforcement.

PN: Well from time immemorial immigrants have always made their own banks without the sort of nice contract systems that you may be thinking of. not all of it is pretty. crude but effective. it’s a necessary stage.
LF: effective if there’s a common bond of trust, but there isn’t

PN: well why don’t you trust anyone in SL? what have they done to you in two years to make you so jaded?
LF: people online turn into total morons, for the most part. the griefer shooting his neighbors and saying “FUCK YOU NAZI SLUT” at the welcoming area wouldn’t dare do that in the public square of his town

PN: to be sure. what’s your solution?
LF: none.

PN: you were telling me yesterday about your crusades
LF: my only stopgap solution is to find like-minded people that aren’t morons, and hang out with them

PN: and push out the edges from there?
LF: no, i’m not building an empire. people are stupid in real life, too, you just don’t notice it because it’s less likely a random person will come by and be retarded. less so in retail, unfortunately

PN: ROFL
PN: but do you think that you and a group of your like-minded inner feted friends can then band together and push out the boundaries against the fucktards?
LF: no, generally i just want to be left alone, anymore. it’s fun playing the forum game, but being the center of attention isn’t my thing.

PN: have you not found any of the kindred spirits you sought when you began this grand adventure?
LF: i’ve found a few, for sure.

PN: but you don’t really seem to believe in SL as a world, as a realm
LF: i’ve never developed any meaningful online relationships or friendships prior to SL

PN: you say it’s not even a game, not a virtual world but a “thingie”. that was your expression, it’s not a game, but a thingie
LF: right

PN: Could you elaborate on that?
LF: it’s 3D IRC with toys for me to create with. the concept is nice, sure, i’m a big supporter of it.

PN: So it’s just your sandbox. With your toys.
LF: pretty much… my toys, and my friends

PN: well but multiply that by one million, and you have a world, but a world based on “my toys and my friends”
LF: sure, i guess… same goes for RL too

PN: which is insular, and selfish, and unsocial, and even destructive
LF: well, do you see me as insular, selfish, antisocial, and destructive?

PN: Hmmm

PN: Let’s say “yes” to the first 3, but “no” to the last, because you have made landmarks in the world. you build good houses and buildings, you’re among the best architects. I’d like to think aesthetics does track with character, although of course it need not do that. but I’m troubled by your essentially cynical and insular view. there’s no vision, nothing higher, really, except perhaps science or knowledge.
LF: well, there is, but it’s not my call to do it. LF: i merely observe the economy

PN: what are your credentials for saying antying about the economy?
LF: by that token, what are my credentials for building a house? what are your credentials for being a land owner and community developer?

PN: Your credentials are just being able to work the levers of the game better than most.
LF: so perhaps my credentials at reading a virtual economy is i’ve participated in it the last 1.5 years

PN: Have you ever bid on the auctions?
LF: yup, twice

PN: really, until you have walked a mile in the land baron’s shoes, it is hard to see the issues. On the one hand, their land isn’t selling. It is devalued. On the other hand, it’s selling like hotcakes. it’s like chicken pox around the map. some sells, some doesn’t. but we don’t have INFORMATION. we are in an unfree country like a communist Romania or Russia. We don’t have the most basic fact, which is this: how much first-land is bought by newbs? how much is resold when? PN: when and for how much do they buy their first used land, etc., etc. They don’t release those figures, and it is no accident, comrade. They claim that they roll out new sims to adjust to the growing population but we don’t get the aggregate to make informed decisions. you can’t have free markets without information and feedback like this.
LF: so ask the lindens for information. they usually give it.

PN: I personally think the formula of new-land-rollout = new players to be flawed. it’s a racket.
LF: not really. most of the land is owned. the lindens will increase sim rollout until land is no longer mostly owned

PN: Like many young cynical techies, you are never cynical about the Lindens themselves. Most of the land is NOT owned. look at sims: no green dots, unsold land.
LF: uh
LF: most of the land IS owned, buddy

PN: I mean to measure how much land is marked for sale and not selling, versus how much land is sold and staying sold with the owner on it.
LF: you can’t define “staying sold” without a time graph

PN: you have to measure the market, the intentions
LF: you’re assuming intentions

PN: my point is there is a lot of open inventory
LF: yeah, because the world constantly changes. all a map of a lot of land for sale means is that people move a lot in-world

PN: people do move, because of lag and ugly builds. they are actually conservative by nature. they’d like to stay in their cosy cabins and cosy coves. but ugly people grief them and build ugly crap around them and they cry and leave
LF: and?

PN: lather, rinse, repeat
LF: …until the neighborhood settles down

PN: neighborhoods don’t always settle down
LF: and your solution is?

PN: player-based zoning
PN: mixed with Linden zoning

LF: the lindens don’t want to zone

PN: and charging for use of server resources
LF: they want us to define things

PN: ok well we’ll zone without them, I’m game
PN: just make them charge for server resources and we’ve got a deal
PN: OR
PN: let me be lord of the sim like that guy suggested
PN: was it blaze?
PN: let him decide where the public land goes and whether the griefing clubs get booted lol
PN: it will be even more like Russia than Russia
PN: I am more confident in American-style democracy, that groups of people can get together for the common good and can govern themselves, even without Ulrika Zugzwang. they don’t need a lot of trappings of socialist democracy toys, they can rely on their own consensus, draw like-minded to like. Indeed, this is what you are ALREADY doing by making something like Grignano, aren’t you?
LF: well, we’ll see if Grignano works. it’s a dictatorship right now, benign though it may be

PN: what makes it a dictatorship for you?
LF: the fact that i own 100% of southern grignano?

PN: hard to hvae a dictatorship on 6,000 sq. m.
LF: not really

PN: I’m going to try dictatorship on 8,192, I’ll get back to you LOL
LF: “i don’t like you, get out”

PN: I at least tell my tenants that it’s not hot to fly around with their “attachments” hanging out LOL.
LF: that’s assumed in grignano, it’s PG

PN: I’ll try to remember LOL
LF: anyways, i’m gonna have to wrap this up

PN: me too. have to go to Valentine’s party
LF: yeah, i gotta get ready for V-day myself

PN: chocolates, can’t go wrong there
LF: heh, something like that
anyways, ciao prok

PN: thanks, that was interesting, no?
LF: sure, hehe

PN: Happy Valentine’s