The Alphaville Herald

LINDEN ADMITS TO INSIDER SNOW SIM DEAL ON TEEN GRID

by Alphaville Herald on 09/12/05 at 12:29 pm

By Dow Jonas

In a fascinating glimpse into the life of teen-agers in Second Life and the internal pressures with which Lindens cope in their San Francisco office, a land scandal has emerged on the Teen Grid (TG) involving confirmed charges that Blue Linden gave a teen land buyer an unfair insiders’ heads-up about a valued snow sim he was releasing.

“I sure hope that I am wrong here,” was the title of a post on the teen forum with a poignant plea by a young girl who questioned a brewing land scandal early on December 7.

She noticed upon logging in that a large amount of snow land was released for sale and quickly purchased. Unlike the main grid, where adults have land scanners to seize abandoned land, land frequently abandoned by kids who can’t get their parents to pay the tier can sit for days at $1/meter with no takers.

At first the sharp-eyed teen chalked up the windfall to “the luck of the draw,” but then upon reflection began to wonder.

“I have reached the conclusion that at least one teen was given preferential treatment by LL in this land purchase process in the snow sims.” Snow sims are still a novelty on the TG.

“The extent of this preferential treatment includes prior knowledge of the exact timing of the land release and posting of it as public — and POSSIBLY allowing that person (and possibly even a cohort or two) to log on before normal log on time to get the land before anyone else could,” said the teen.

In an interesting mirroring of the trends on the adult forums, other fans rushed to the Lindens defense and even grew indignant with the poster. “I doubt that this happened, simply because it would ruin LL’s credibility on the TG, and would lose a lot of business if word got out,” said one response.

While the original poster speculated that her bold comments might be deleted, the discussion was allowed to continue, with most people trying to rationalize how the kiddie barons had managed to snag the coveted land so quickly ahead of the pack. Inworld, teens flew around buzzing about the incident and chatting on Yahoo, putting together clues.

Unexpectedly, at 10:25 p.m., Blue Linden appeared on SL’s teen forum with a surprising admission.

As you probably realize, the Teen Grid is not profitable…it would be nice if Linden Lab was a charity, but it’s a business. Because Second Life is free, the only way we make a profit is to sell land. As it happens, land sales on the teen grid are very low. So whenever there is a board meeting and the investors are in the building I get nervous and wonder what we could possibly do to encourage people to buy more land. This is not the fun part of the job, obviously.

It didn’t result in the sale of one entire sim, and people have been more upset than I’m willing to accept as ‘growing pains’. We won’t be doing that again. I’m sorry if it came across as favoritism and not a hard look at the numbers of the teen grid. I’m VERY sorry if anyone felt personally neglected in the way the choices were made. I’m MORE than happy to talk to anyone 1 on 1 about it or have a community meeting regarding the way we add regions to the teen grid. We’d like the grid to be something that every resident, parent, Lindens and investor agrees is worth every penny.

Some young residents wondered why the Lindens would likely net anything with such new land sales in terms of tier, since teen buyers kept on strict tier limits by parents worried about credit-cards sometimes end up releasing land to the public when they make new purchases. While no mini-version of Anshe Chung appears to have occupied the teen grid, there are several kids who reportedly have amassed as much as half a sim or more than 32,000 m2, for a monthly fee of $125 US.

In response to Blue’s statement, the original poster said she was “stunned” and said she had become “leery” of the game.

For some adults hearing of the story, which began to make the rounds of the SL forums yesterday, Blue’s startling but defensive admission speaks volumes; others yawned and dismissed the incident as minor.

“I’m not surprised this went on, and I’m proud of the teens who got wise to Linden favoritism,” one parent who asked not to be named told the Herald.

“It’s good that Blue was so quick with his explanation, but I worry about what this ‘pressure of investors’ is doing to the Lindens, and wonder if it accounts for the haste with which they are pushing through p2p,” said the parent.

The existence of a teen FIC has been discounted by some, but as Picabo Hedges, an adult resident since 2004 with a child on the TG, explains, “the TG FIC” received preferential treatment/favoured status for whatever reason “whether for their skills, their having been part of the TG Beta or simply because they chatted up X or Y Linden while violating the MG TOS and then ‘turning themselves in’ during Amnesty Week.”

A number of parents and children have complained that amnestied teens were able to keep their accounts to SLBoutique.com and continue downloading goods not available on the TG.

“First it was inventory and $L account transfers by former MG residents as they moved to the TG,” said one disgruntled teen. “Then it was found that certain TG’ers were maintaining accounts on both grids and transferring items, scripts and money here (and vice versa). Then it was SL Boutique access and sale of those MG items on the TG. Now it’s sweetheart land deals. Seems to be a pattern of preferential treatment for residents who did not start out their SL ‘careers’ on the TG like some of us have,” said the teen.

The Blue Linden scandal has provided an interesting glimpse into the preoccupation of both adults and teens about perceived or actual favoritism by the Lindens.

“As an employee of LL I believe you should remain neutral to every customer. No matter what their tier rate is. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to own land in the sim of their choosing. There should be no under the table deals going on,” said a youngster.

“Considering the extent of the FIC controversy my Dad has told me about during his time on the MG and the comments made here on the TG about it, the issue of ‘level-playing field’ continues to raise its head everytime I turn around,” said a teen.

“My trust level has been shaken,” concluded another.

“I view TSL as a way to step away from the social ranking system of the real world and play as who i want to be. This is a bit of a cruel wake up call because now it seems as if this is less of a community and more of a buisness or shop or something.I hope i can put out the Snow Sim Scandal out of my mind and I hope I can forget this,” lamented still another player.

A few teens queried the Lindens as to why an auction system wasn’t in place for the teen as well as the adult grid but there was no word from the Lindens on any consideration of such a proposal .