Stratics comes to SecondLife
by matthiaszander on 16/03/06 at 10:12 pm
Yes, Stratics as finally "discovered" SecondLife. According to a forum posting by the resident known as Trenton Campbell (Teresk of the Stratics staff, apprently), they are in the final stages of developing a SecondLife portal, and apparently are in need of "news reporters, content editors, forum moderators, etc."
He then showed his naivety by comparing the volunteer Stratics staff to the Lindens – a group of people you want to join because of just how good they are. Right. I’m sure that the Stratics staff is just like the Lindens when it comes to what they can do in SecondLife.
The emergence of a Stratics SecondLife portal brings the classic debate back up – is SecondLife a game or a virtual community/world? Stratics typically covers games (Auto Assault, Dark Age of Camelot, Dark and Light, EVE, Lineage, Lord of the Rings, Project Entropia, Rising Force Online, Seed, Star Trek Online, and Vanguard are the current games with Portals), though many SecondLife residents, myself included, would argue that SecondLife is no more a game than it is a bugless product. I’m just waiting for someone to start that debate in the actual forum thread.
Cocoanut
Mar 16th, 2006
I’m glad.
coco
Elle Pollack
Mar 16th, 2006
As long as they don’t have an official affiliation with Linden Lab, I don’t suppose they can do much damage like they did in TSO.
Alphasim72
Mar 17th, 2006
You all do realize I hope that over the course of the last year TSO stratics changed dramaticly. Yes I understand several people had problems with Stratics in the past. But in it’s defence it really has changed. Yes there were some bad points in the past but hmm the Herald saw something once posted it and then someone dissapeared off the face of the earth and things changed hehe.
And like Coco I am glad!
Cocoanut
Mar 17th, 2006
What damage did Stratics do to TSO? I thought EA did all the damage.
coco
Urizenus
Mar 17th, 2006
Stratics only becomes dangerous when the game companies start reading the posts and taking them seriously. That’s when the nerfing begins.
Toy
Mar 17th, 2006
I used Stratics when I used to play UO…. visited TSO stratics but disliked it. I will stick with the SL forums. I see no reason for going to stratics any longer.
Marsellus Wallace
Mar 17th, 2006
Stratics is what launched all the press for me back in December 2002. They have always been cool (until they took over the message boards) and seemed to be player driven.
I don’t necessarily see this move as a bad one. Regardless if Second Life is a virtual community or not though, it is still a game.
http://sims.stratics.com/cities/alphaville/interviews/mafia001a.shtml
Marsellus Wallace
aka JC Soprano
Boss, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
Cocoanut
Mar 17th, 2006
Well, Uri, you know that it has been open season on the SL forums on me for a year now. I, for one, will welcome a different forums, where that isn’t allowed to happen to posters.
I have this one as well – but it’s not the same without you in charge – and now, the new http://www.secondcitizen.com forums, where people can have open season on me all they like, but the difference is I can talk back.
The more such venues we have, the better.
coco
Prokofy Neva
Mar 17th, 2006
I was hoping the forums gang would give them the cold shoulder, frankly, and help prove that SL isn’t a game, since they are just a games portal.
But you know, a place where you pour your money and it devalues like at a casino unless you beat incredibly fixed and rigged odds *is* a game. At least it’s that way for some. For others, it’s just Yahoo Messenger with poses — and frankly, Yahoo mutual drawing boards and communication tools just work better than SL. You wish Yahoo would somehow be folded into SL somehow (or probably it would work the opposite way).
Coco, please don’t forget what the basic problem was with Stratics: they elevated users to ResMods. It’s the same evil we have on the SL forums. I think the only difference is that because they have lots of games they aren’t as “embedded” or as embroiled. I remember that Stratics Mod used to come to Chres’ cafe, sit asleep and AFK in the corner, and the only thing he’d do is wake up and maybe click on his paintings for money or give Chres traffic points or whatever — he was never “involved” but he could say he was “in the community” lol. Remember lol?
But what they did was punish those who posted links to sites that had OTHER sites that they said violated their TOS or game TOS. And that was wrong, and really over-the-top suppression of freedom of expression even for a game company. While I still take a peek in there now and then, I don’t participate there for that very reason. I had to go through a ban there once merely for posting a link to MY OWN site which was not objectionable, but had Uri’s site linked on the front page. And Uri’s site wasn’t objectionable, but it was some ads for simoleons running along his ticker on the right that were links that Stratics and EA found objectionable. Honestly, that “unto the third generation” is just too punitive and stupid.
And if that culture takes root at SL, it will make the forums even worse — which it is likely to do given that Aimee, obsessing about those who “ferry posts,” and Jeska, and Hiro, and all the romper room gang — ALREADY believe in that idea and applaud it heavily.
RB
Mar 17th, 2006
HAHAHAHA. Poor SL.
Then again the garbage that was tso stratics, seemed pretty much constrained to it and not other games.
Maybe SL will also be different, and normal. different people = different results.
In a where are they now kinda moment, i wonder what the old wives club and the kids are doing now. hmmm….
- RB.
Elde Eponym
Mar 17th, 2006
OTOH – UO Stratics also has resmods, and on the whole they system works there. The Tamer forums are moderated by experienced tamers, the Lake Superior forum by someone who actually lives there, etc… (It was somewhat of a meritocracy – but then it should be.) The moderators are trained and supervised. (And constant sockpuppet threads and posts, I.E. the crap that fills General and Land, is nipped in the bud.)
I can’t speak to the TSO Stratics forums as I left after Beta. I don’t know if UO represents the norm, or TSO.
simon lameth
Mar 17th, 2006
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just hope Linden doesn’t do what EA did and outsource it’s boards there.
Marsellus Wallace
Mar 17th, 2006
I will say this in Stratics defense. If they want the support of the gaming industry they have to abide by the ToS of games. If they link to a bad site, it’s as if they have the bad site and it is promoting that site. So for certain sites they could not link to them becuase then they couldnt advertise their site in the game. Now this is just a theory based on my own personal experiences with link issues.
Now Linden Labs does not care about websites really. However, EA Games did.. A lot. Long before Uri was banned (he was warned several times before this) for linking to his site, I was suspended for linking to my site. I found ways around that of course, but the point is you can’t judge stratics based on your experience with 1 game and them. Plus, each game usually has different staff so the results would be different in theory for each one.
Now I agree with some of you to a point in what your saying, but let’s judge Stratics in SL if it turns out bad, not before. And it is not suppression of free speech. Suppression of free speech would be if you weren’t allowed to have your website. Websites have rules and games have rules. If you don’t like them, don’t go to them and don’t play. That us your choice. I would love to go piss on someone in real life if they made me mad. Hey free speech! No. There are laws and rules.
Prok, why you have such a hard time in my casino? Saw that you stopped by. Didn’t understand the games? They are simple TSO dice type games. Very easy to understand. Come by and I’ll personally show you how to play and will comp you $1000 worth of credits to play with. I’ll tell the casino manager to hook you up if he sees you as well with those credits.
Marsellus Wallace
Founder, The Sim Mafia
http://www.thesimmafia.com
Prokofy Neva
Mar 17th, 2006
Gosh, that’s intrusive, Marsellus, putting in visitor counters so you can capture my visit to you casino which merely happens to be next door to one of my rental parcels, then having some manager and/or alt nudge me inworld to come back there, then banging me on Uri’s blog (I will always call it Uri’s blog) to come back there. Um, it’s because when you go in there, there are no normal instructions. Like on a notecard. Like for dummies. I mean, you can either be tekkie, and literalist, and right all the time…or…you can have user-friendly instructions that can make it easier to separate a fool from his cash *shrugs*. I clicked on stuff, I looked around, it didn’t make sense, it seemed as if you had to wait for a host. Honestly, I’m not a casino-goer, so your nudging is wasted on me. Go have events and camp chairs or something.
As for your yammering about Stratics, go back and read what I posted. It’s not about posting a link to a site selling currency. That would be wrong in the TSO context. I hated when people bought and sold the currency there because it was cheating and undermined what the rest of the people were doing there. I didn’t even link only to Uri’s blog with in turn the third-party currency site. I linked to my OWN blog. And in discussions with the Stratics people, I learned my OWN site was not at issue, Uri’s wasn’t, but it was something 3 removed. Now that’s just sheer IDIOCY. Especially given that I didn’t support the ebay cash thing.
Yeah, you’re right, they may be softening everyone up to get them to pour off the SL forums somewhere else so somebody else can take care of the Poison Posse.
I can’t help thinking that secondcitizen.con is also some kind of shill for somebody with the same goal, although I post there.
There’s something just evangelical in feel to all this. The Lindens want to close that forum, they can’t stomach their own dogfood.
Matthias
Mar 17th, 2006
I do feel that upon looking at Marsellus’ profile, I discovered something: he’s apparently the Stratics Manager for SecondLife, something that he hasn’t deemed necessary to disclose in this discussion
I guess we know now why Marsellus is going so easy on Stratics in this discussion.
Cocoanut
Mar 18th, 2006
There’s something I hate worse than the suppression of free speech.
And that is the selective suppression of free speech by targeted individuals (while allowing others to go to town on said individual). And that, the SL forums do to a turn.
coco
Bob the Tomato
Mar 18th, 2006
SL forums moving to Stratics would be an improvement for the following reasons:
1) They actually train their moderators, and have a recognised standard.
2) They have a moderated calendar which WORKS.
3) The “PG” format would stop much of the inane babblings and attacks.
4) Using the moderator tools, alts are easy to detect and deal with. Ban one, ban all. Makes people behave themselves.
Gets my thumbs up anyway. Be interesting to see what happens here.
Bob
Prokofy Neva
Mar 18th, 2006
Well, Bob, the SL forums claim to do “training” too. I don’t know whether they just look at your profile to see if you joined the group called “Jeskewler” or not, or what it involves, but they claim it.
The PG format would frankly be welcome because there are so many foul mouths like Siggy Romulus who keep getting away with being foul in the worst way and the mods give them a pass. A more firm PG rating would help to organize collective shame for something like that.
The alt thing also sounds promising, since one of the chief annoyances of the SL forums is people coming back as alts with impunity and behaving hugely badly. Those who come back with barely-disguised alts like mine in order to fight the evil of othoers given a pass are then are pounded to make it look like they care about their policy — they don’t.
I don’t like the idea of banning links to sites though. That is overreach. And if they have an AR button system, they will have that same poison flaw that SL has with the pudgy fingers of the fanboyz weighted permanently on the AR button in chronic indignation and hatred.
What did you mean by “moderated calendar”?
Bob the Tomato
Mar 18th, 2006
The thing with the “Blog > Herald > Website selling ยง” thing wouldn’t happen, because LL encourage selling things for real life cash. Remember that the rule about real money is a Maxis addendum, not a regular Stratics rule.
I’ve never found the Stratics mods to be “over moderating” – but remember that they actually volunteered for the position and are trained, unlike on the SL forums where they are commandeered. The ‘staff badges’ also help clarify who actually has authority, and who’s just being a ‘tard’, as I believe the expression goes.
Bob
Bob the Tomato
Mar 18th, 2006
Sorry missed the calendar comment.
All calendar events have to be approved by a moderator after submission before they get put on the calendar.
So you won’t see repeat calendar spamming, if the rules are set and enforced properly. It might actually mean that real events and not fake sales-that-arent and *ingo every 30 minutes will clog it up.
Bob
Marsellus Wallace
Mar 18th, 2006
Matthias,
I actually wasn’t involved with Stratics when I made that post. The position of Portal Manager was granted to me later in the day. I was just giving my 2 cents then. =)
Prok,
I wasn’t trying to insult you or anything. Was just saying I can help ya out. The counter is not invasive. It helps me monitor traffic to the casino and is a greeter for when you enter the casino. Nothing more. It’s memory is cleared out overtime and nothing is logged or kept. It can be very helpful though for auditting purposes, give-aways, etc. As for the games being confusing. They require a dealer to be present in order to gamble. Unfortunantly, when you visited we pretty much just opened the doors and only had 1 dealer which wasn’t online.
If you played TSO, these games should look very familiar and would be real easy to understand, however the fact they require a dealer is what can be confusing. You’re then trying to figure out how to pay the dice, etc which you cannot do. So I understand what your saying, but the house rules and dealer board clearly explain that. Perhaps you overlooked it or I need to reword some things. As for the casino manager, he does that with all people. Obviously they came to the casino and were interested and no dealer was online, so the manager takes the time to see if they are still interested in playing. We have some improvements we are making to help eliminate the need to do that.
Seriously though, the games are fun as hell and unique. Prok, come by and we’ll hook you up with the VIP treatment and the $1000 comp like I said. =)
Marsellus Wallace
SL Stratics Portal Manager & Boss, The Sim Mafia
http://www.stratics.com / http://www.thesimmafia.com
P.S. For those curious, casino’s name is Oasis Casino. We still have 1 dealer listed, but will have more up by end of today.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 18th, 2006
I’m one of those people who embraces the freedom of the events calendar. Ingos do not blister my eye. Yard sales are to be to be encouraged as newbie entry-level jobs. My tenants thrive on sales, and products, and yardsales, and parties and contests and I want them to thrive, because when they thrive, they pay their rent on time, and we’re all happy : )
The encouragement of free and untrammelled raw feed for events should be the goal of every bulletin board. Indeed, it’s the concept behind huge events listings on the Internet in general like the events listing service that recently grabbed the SL events into a feed and decided not to filter them, and God bless them! the Lindens and their squeamish Jeska and Jesse and their blistering eyes should take a lesson from that RL example.
Raw feed, yes, indeed. Then, there should be FILTERS for those who suffer from chronic eyebleeds and those with delicate constitutions.
Indeed, we have filters. These are called “Discussion” or “Commercial” etc. Of course, we rely on events posters to click off their categories to get filtered, and they don’t, but those that do are rewarded.
I personally only look at the entire raw feed of the events list a few times a week if I have spare time. Normally, when I log on, I merely filter first for “Discussion” and “Art and Culture” and look under those. I’d advise you to do that too, and save on blood pressure medication.
That’s what I recommend all the forums net nannies to do if you find these listings too hard to handle.
The scrubbing of yard sales that the hate-any-business-but-my-business state communists and creator-fascists on the forums encourage and even put Lindens up to is an abomination.
Yes, this is a game that criminalizes yard sales, but makes porn movies and pose ball “events” ok to keep on as long as they are related to a Linden alt or something. Geez.
I created Ravenglass Rentals Events today for anyone to join and put freely any and all events they wish. Events are the lifeblood of the society and the economy. The Linden- and FIC-and SIC-induced grab of the events stream is a naked bid to grab the economy and stratify the society. It’s wrong.
On my local bulletin board in the hallway of my RL apartment complex, or at my RL supermarket, there is no bossy church lady telling me I can’t post my tag sale or my trumpet lessons or my babysitting or xeroxing offers or my new Amway products. Sheesh. Why the hell should I tolerate such church ladies in what is supposed to be the non-church of Second Life. In fact, I don’t even get church ladies like Second Life has church ladies in my RL church, where I can put stuff up on the bulletin board like a kitten to give away or a Girl Scout cookie sales drive without fear or favour. To be sure, I don’t advertise sex orgies at these RL venues, but the point is, I can advertise any or all product, sale, service, tag or garagage sale I wish. Nobody is tapping their foot and checking their watch to see if my garage sale had a host, and went on from the hours of 1-3 on Sunday or not.
The grabbing of the events list, like the grabbing of the newbies’ stream, is just a naked bid for power by people who take it illegitimately. Try to suspend your own sense of nausea at naked av and Ingos and yardies for a bit to see that’s what’s underlying it.
Once we let mods go after resident content, we’re doomed. The user-created world will die. And we are teetering on the edge of it now.
As for Stratics, if they want a sanitized events list, like the one Flipper provides, well, who could stop them? It might work for some. I know we’re all looking for a cure to the toxicity of the SL forums. I take a very weather eye to Stratics being that cure. I don’t drink the Kool-Aid, Bob. And I don’t know what kind of message they’re sending here with a mafia kingpin being the portal dude — perhaps they are saying that nothing short of a mafia don is required to get the Poison Posse up against the wall.
Bob the Tomato
Mar 19th, 2006
I haven’t a clue how the whole Stratics thing is going to pan out, but it’ll certainly be a different environment than the cesspit that is the Linden managed forums – if “managed” can be used in such a loose context.
I don’t understand your aversion to some kind of ‘control’ over anything – the rules are pretty loose as it is, it would only be enforcing the rules in game that would clear things up, rather than ignoring them. There’s actually very little you can’t do even if the rules were enforced.
I think that Marsellus’ history as a mafia boss may be irrelevant – if he says it was only a roleplay, and he’s actually quite a pleasant guy in real life, then I’m prepared to give him that chance to prove exactly that. One thing I do know, though, is that the Stratics management will keep a close eye on him and if he does anything untoward, they will jump on him and if necessary replace him. You can never tell how anyone is going to work out once they get a position of power, regardless of their actual history. If SL:Stratics turns out to be just as bad as the ‘official’ forums, then people will probably migrate back to the ‘official’ forums – but if, as I suspect, the Stratics portal turns out to be a richer, more productive, more informative experience… then it may well be that LL decide to adopt Stratics as the official forums and dump their own. Because it’s quite clear to me and many others that the way the ‘official’ forums are run does not work.
Bob
Prokofy Neva
Mar 19th, 2006
[ELIDED BY REQUEST], it’s their selective enforcement of their rules, or non-enforcement of their rules about things they don’t like, that is what enrages me, and anyone else with a sense of rules and decency.
First, they tell you it’s “your world and your imagination”. Second, they tout their game/platform/thingie in the media saying “Making a Living in Second Life.”
Then they stand back as hordes of people come in, and they slam 95 percent of them over the head and tell them they can’t have their world and their imagination and make a living in second life if it involves making t-shirts or poses and selling them in a yard sale.
They say, “If you are among the lucky 5 percent who either figures out how to game the auctions and be a land baron or who climbs the horribly steep curve of the tool set learning and the fierce prim-diva guild/appentice system of the creator economy AND you are our friend AND we and a select clique value the type of content you make THEN you can have free rein to your imagination AND make a living.”
See how it works? If you don’t know, you will.
To fight that kind of elitism, which is death even for the elite, by the way, the Lindens should just have “bulletin boards” that don’t require everyone to contort themselves into an event — especially the cliquish elite feted kind of event they love. There are classifieds that cost as much as $25,000 to really be seen on page one; there are FIND ads for $30 a piece that rely on the creaky and cranky FIND search engine of SL to find something under a search word IF it can fall into that “top 100″ arbitrarily displayed. But that’s just not good enough when you have so many new people without knowledge of these arcane ad systems, and who also don’t want to spend money at least initially just to enter the economy.
Entering the economy should not be made an elite activity. Currently it is, and many people enter, learn a tiny bit, make a little, get frustrated, buy a lot and spend more than they’re comfortable doing in what is at least “entertainment” and “play” even if they are bludgeoned into admitting “is not a game” and…they leave!
Over and over, I see this happen with tenants — sometimes I’m able to prevent this by sitting with them hours helping them through game difficulties but who has the time? In many cases, RL is just more compelling (as it should be!) than the RL-life struggle of trying to survive in a brutally stratified economy.
Or tiny example: My son was fiercely dedicated to SL, creating teams of people for doing interesting content creation and events-organizing as well as rentals with an ever growing dedicated group of friends. But griefing of increasingly sophisticated kinds, camp chairs, and other ills on the grid made them pause and reassess. They also saw how the Lindens kept undermining them — Blue STILL sets aside land for the Teen FIC; and the Lindens keep creating events and activities and feted non-profits to drive traffic not only their select feted friends, but themselves (something they do with far more abandon in TSL than on the adult grid –at least one Linden keeps IMing everyone online to tell them to come to her cool party in their cool Government Linden land built by an adult from the adult grid).
So what do they do? I know they won’t give up on their TSL activities but more and more, they either go outside (good thing!) or…play WOW. WOW seems like a stupid game to them by contrast with SL now — stupidly slaying monsters, skilling up, getting loot. At least the simpler game rules don’t have the built-in unfairness and elitism of SL, however.
I know you subscribe to the “game” theory of SL, that it is “just a game” and people should “have fun”. Well, I don’t think they “should” do anything. that’s why your repeated, taunting comment to Anshe, “When was the last time you logged in to have fun?” is hectoring and inappropriate. Real fun she has with her RL daughter in RL, as I do. On SL, it’s an elaborate job you’ve selected because of its fun aspects but you don’t expect it to be “fun” on some kind of consistent, entertainment basis.
If some people want to have fun within SL, they can create that world-within-a-world where they subsidize their lots with their own money, or they create break-even casual types of operations — no one is required to be in the rat race. Indeed, I lean toward that kind of involvement in SL myself, and want space for that kind of play/break-in/loss formula always to succeed in SL or it will die.
The problem is that even those with the concept to subsidize their fun, or break-even their fun, still need to be part of the economy — and they are blocked, and regardless of whether your goal is to just goof around and sell a little content to partly pay for tier, or just make a $40 subscription pay for itself, you need not to have the obstacles and friction that exist to doing that.
The rules state clearly that you need a host, that you need hours for events. I feel that’s wrong. Why? Who the hell cares? The forums are accessed by only 5 percent of the people; the infohub ad spaces are a joke and impossible to use; where’s the normal bulletin board for this community???
That’s exactly why we were advocating a category within the events calendar for notices of things that would be 24/7 duration. Those trying to control the events process so that they’d face no competition in their business, like Flipper, wrestled everyone else and the Lindens to keep that out. Some wanted to make sure that the 24/7 category only contained Hamlet Linden’s 7 day contests, let’s say, or some other high-end activity. Of course, they’d have “Arts and Culture” for that, and they could also get off their ass, come inworld, and host an event, eh? In the end, fearing 24/7 Ingos, they chopped out this category. They should have left it in, as one more filter.
What’s annoying me most, however, and others following this topic, is that EVEN if someone follows the rules and puts in a host, a duration, and objects (not vendors also in a store), they are still vilified on the forums and removed by the Lindens. But that’s breaking their own rules. The rules say you can have events, have hosts, have duration, and sell stuff — there is a category of COMMERCIAL in the filters and that is allowed.
Indeed, I was among a group that fought vigorously to get rid of their previous net-nanny stuff which basically prohibited you from having a building contest or home display because it barred “here’s my cool build” events. It also prevented real estate tours or announcements and showings of new communities by saying “no sell my land stuff”. Why? Who cares? Sell your damn land and have your damn contests, geez, WTF??? Who is this FOR anyway? You have to realize that many people have “buy my rentals” or “come to my contest” not to gouge the population out of the dollars but merely to make their sim break even or not cost a huge amount. Let them!!!
The dirty little secret of the events issue, [ELIDED BY REQUEST], is that as soon as you apply all the filters you want to apply in advance and hold people’s hands and make more rules you’ll find…there’s nothing on there. Much.
If you want better events, this is what I tell all the FIC on the forums who bitch: make them. If you build them, they will come. If they don’t come, build them better. Don’t shoot the messenger, which is the events board as it is now.
SL is a “platform” that has to serve many people, [ELIDED BY REQUEST]. If you want it to be an extention of TSO, I quite sympathize. I want it to be an extention of the better parts of TSO, too. But it can’t be ONLY TSO and be subsidized or break-even for everyone, with land purchasable like shelf paper at a standard-price and rigid rules that prevent a market economy from developing. If you want shelf-priced paper land, it’s there — go and study the auctions, study the list, and buy a $5/meter piece of land. There’s plenty of it. In fact, the Lindens artificially keep it at that price, as anyone studying it over time realizes.
If there’s no market economy in a game with user-made content and development teams working on improving the platform itself, the entire platform will never improve and become viable. I agree that the Lindens and the FIC/SIC put way, way too much emphasis on their own development and skew it their own way with their priorities. But that doesn’t mean the answer is to create a static, entirely rule-bound world like a game with Trumanville type walls around it everywhere. What it should do is be flexible enough to create a Trumanville within it and establish those rules, but not bind every server by them.
Cocoanut
Mar 19th, 2006
This -
They say, “If you are among the lucky 5 percent who either figures out how to game the auctions and be a land baron or who climbs the horribly steep curve of the tool set learning and the fierce prim-diva guild/appentice system of the creator economy AND you are our friend AND we and a select clique value the type of content you make THEN you can have free rein to your imagination AND make a living.”
- is an exquisite and accurate summation. It is awfully hard.
And don’t forget – there’s no way to make any money, either, when you first join! Entering the economy is an elite activity. For me, I just considered all THAT the game, cause I like a ridiculous challenge, and I especially love beating a game at its own game. In TSO, that was getting a size 8 lot WITHOUT any roomies, mainly because they were trying to social engineer me to be social that way, lol.
But many people do not like that sort of impossible challenge, especially in something they do in their recreational time.
And don’t forget you have the forums, where a bunch of crows sit on a telephone wire cawing and clawing at anyone who criticizes the system! It’s incredible the lengths they will go to! They actually sit there and claim that people criticize it because they can’t DO anything; because they are incompetant. Even if you’ve proved yourself a hundred times over, they still sit there and claim you just can’t or won’t DO anything. Boggles my mind. I guess they are just, basically, stupid.
That stuff about the teen grid is depressing.
It is death for the elite, and for SL, and that’s why I’m just enjoying the ride while it lasts.
Uri, I dreamed about you last night. I’m very worried about myself.
coco
Jeanschuman
Jul 2nd, 2006
The SLvisions site in your links should be removed. It has no content. Just a few advertising links.
Akanah's Used Tampon
Aug 24th, 2008
LOL.. stratics…. it sucks. Totally. get ready to have NO freedom what so ever. I know, I used to be the Admin for the UO side of the house.