The Alphaville Herald

Internal Contradictions

by prokofy on 10/11/06 at 12:13 am

Zee Linden, Newbie LL CFO, at Concierge Town Hall Tonight.

By Prokofy Neva, Virtual Estate Desk

As every good Marxist knows, the dialectic contains internal contradictions. We serfs tilling the soil in the land business in SL know this phenomenon in Second Life as, “How come the Lindens said one thing today, but said something else the other day?”

At a laggy and grumpy Concierge Town Hall this afternoon packed with mainly disgruntled island-dwellers, Philip Linden made a live inworld appearance, back in his blingy-crotched jeans, and Zee Linden debued inworld, doing his part to lower frame-rate with some pretty smokin’ boy hoochie hair. Cyn Linden was as usual stunning in a divine sweeping ball gown; only FPS-paralysis deterred me from capturing the moment.

In an interview for the outworld to Reuters to explain island price hikes last week, Philip uttered one of his BetterWorldSpeak isms about why islanders should pay more.

“There is a benefit to the commons of having people stay in the same space — a cool place on the mainland is a public good for the overall society,” Rosedale added. “It’s fine to have an island … but from a rational perspective you should probably pay a little more, because the community loses a little bit when you do that.”

But talking to his own subjects inworld, King Philip put it differently.

“We need to take a look at those prices now with the goal of making them neutral to businesses. By that I mean SL businesses, not RL businesses. In particular, we don’t want cases where the same business costs differently to run on the mainland versus on an islands,” he told Concierge customers, who are residents with at least half a sim of land.

The transcript of the meeting yields some more internal contradictions.

Inworld, Philip — facing some people who in fact *were* on the insiders list and some who weren’t, and some who broke the story of the fact, had this to say as his explanation for why some people got the news and others didn’t:

“Next, I’d like to reinforce that we made a mistake by not giving enough notice. And I’m sorry for that. We have talked internally, and will commit to a 60 day notice on any change in your recurring fees. Again, sorry we announced too early. We were worried about the logistics of getting too many orders at the old prices. In retrospect we should have given more notice.”

This makes it sound like the only thing driving the judgement call not to tell more people the hot news about bargain sims while they last was a concern supplies might run out.

Yet…once the story was outed, LL opened the Land Store and has kept the store open, selling out the 150 sims they said they had on tap…and continuing to take many more orders beyond that.

And again, back in the Reuters interview, Philip had a different explanation entirely for the FIC tip-off:

“We probably made a mistake there, trying to get feedback. We should just tell everybody everything,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

“You learn more when you can have a brief conversation with a small number of people, but the lesson learned here is, don’t do that — just announce everything completely broadly,” he said.”

That implies that when he told only a select group of people, it was just to “solicit” their feedback and “kick around the idea” in a smaller “focus” group. Yet the announcement people got verbally or via email was not floating an idea; from all accounts it was unequivocal about the availability for a short time of sims at the old price before the sims went up in price.

Well, which is it, just soliciting feedback? Or having only a limited supply and wanting only those who “value-add” to get it?

A protest group called “Save Our Sims,” with 471 members already among island owners and residents has been gathering some serious steam to urge LL to freeze price hikes. Lindens originally said on the Official Blog that they planned to implement new prices of $1695 per island with $295 monthly tier for all new private estates purchased after November 15, including old sims transferred to other residents.

Zee Linden clarified at the meeting that persons who purchased islands before Nov. 15 will have their tier grandfathered throughout 2007; then it is likely to rise. Both he and Philip were unclear about how much mainland tier might rise.

Not since the famous prim tax revolt of 2003, and then the telehub mall owners revolt in demand for compensation in 2005, has an inworld protest movement made itself felt, in a very atomized world where it is hard to get two people to agree about anything. Oldbie island-buyers who might have fueld the protest will likely be mollified, however, by having an advantage over newbie island purchasers in 2007.