POP!!!
by prokofy on 02/02/07 at 12:24 am
By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate
The real virtual estate bubble which has prevailed in Second Life since island price hikes in November 2006 started to pop today as Linden Land whacked out some 40 new sims opening at $1000 bids, starting the list with one named “Badly Moor,” which seemed to set the tone for many suddenly saddened land dealers.
Within hours, waterfront priced $25/m came down to $20/m and below, and some people who had put ugly clubs and spinning junk on their land to “help you get the idea to buy” suddenly replaced the blight with a nice house and a lower price.
The unfortunate soul who bid $4000 on Cajeiri before the newly-minted land was placed on the auction may come to regret it by tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll be able to default without penalty.
The sims are off to the West of the brown-sugar-textured “down-under” sims. They look even MORE like lumpy brown sugar, though one has to admire the sculpted edges.
The printing of land, like the printing of Lindens, is what keeps Second Life “stable,” so the Lindens say, but in fact devalues and depresses land and wages, and sets up a cycle where people can never sell their land for what they paid for it.
Many will be happy to see land prices coming down — at a shocking double the old price of $8 or $10 this month to $15-20 or more per meter, they’ve been completely out of reach for many people. Island price hikes to $1695 from $1250 with tier going from $195 to $295 caused a tsumani of inflated sales on the mainland as everyone scrambled to get land you can “more really own”. In the last few weeks, with prices completely insane, with $14,000 512m2s, baby barons seem to be merely flipping parcels back and forth to each other as they adjust their portfolios.
In this atmosphere of scarcity, LandBotters have appeared to automate the process of searching for the cheapest land, angering those still scouring the land-for-sale list with laggy human eyes.
In an interview with Reuters at Davos last week, Linden Lab’s Mitch Kapor, Chairman of the Board, discussed plans to open-source the server code of Second Life and enable people to host their own islands, “”To be dependent on a land business, when anyone can put up land, doesn’t make any sense,” he commented about the prospects for property owners in SL to retain value in their purchases. Caveat emptor.
Yo Brewster
Feb 2nd, 2007
We purchased and sold some land a few weeks ago and must say were shocked that the prices were indeed that high so this is actually a good thing EXCEPT for us then as we purchased it at the high price! lol
Seola Sassoon
Feb 2nd, 2007
I do wish there was a bit more forewarning to the resi’s of SL that new land was coming, just for the instance of someone plopping down 4k only to find out there’s all these new sims. I’m all for the land bubble bursting, but opening 40 sims without allowing some who bids outrageous amounts on others, maybe a little bit harsh.
Martin Squeegee
Feb 2nd, 2007
As ever people know what they are doing and if you check the history on Cajeiri you will see that whilst someobody has probably put a high bid in initially there have been 63 bids so far – suggesting they are not on their own!
There will always be a market for land – probably just at lower prices than today. You can look at real life land price cycles and see that for every slump there is a recovery with higher peaks than the pre-slump prices… for me it will be a matter of time and people should hold their nerve – enjoy SL for what it is and worry less about whether land is on the up or down.
Don’t be such a doom monger!
Martin Squeegee can be found in his office in JULIA CREEK
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Martin,
You’re a land dealer who has made some of the highest bids ever on the auction, and many people wonder whether you are an alt of a previously-known land dealer, or just a hobbyist with deep pockets, or what you are. You seem to be issuing nostrums and feel-good statements designed to keep people playing this auction which is, at one level, sheer idiocy, given what Mitch Kapor has said (and what common sense would dictate).
A figure from RL like randolfe who wrote about the synthetic currency market hasn’t come in yet to examine the land market in any depth, but I imagine when they do, they will be pretty scathing.
The land market in SL is nothing like RL, and you know it. RL doesn’t have the accelerations, the unpredictability of features, crashes, and closures, and the very high peaks and low troubles of SL.
But it doesn’t have the grade-school-girls’ clique drama and back-biting either — erm, except in 6th grade. Only in SL could you have forums and blogs where some neo-socialists would attempt to peck to death somebody in the land business because they had a business making money helping people buy and sell their land. Only in SL could you have the government (Linden Lab) not even call land development a business, and fastidiously and ideologically keep the figures from this business *out* of their economic statistics page (!) under the lame excuse that this is “an investment”.
Only in SL could you have the government deliberately issue land, like currency out of thin air, to artificially depress the cost of land, methodically always break the backs of land barons, exemplify their distrust and hatred for the land-baron class again and again like neo-Bolsheviks, all the while basing their own livlihood on…land. Then tell you that they may go out of the land business soon, or in three years, for “any reason or no reason” and you’ll be SOL. Yeah…um…that’s just like real life hahahahaha…NOT.
I remember there was one oldbie land baron, Blue Burke, who would actually tell me 2 years ago that I and other newbies at that time should stay off the auction, as if we bid against him and his entrenched friends, we would be raising prices lol. We should let him and Anshe and the big people bid among themselves, because they were sensible, knew their margins, and had the knowledge and ability to deal with land, unlike compulsive newbies. Imagine! Nobody would be able to get THAT concept to stick today, even if they bullied someone on forums (that don’t exist anymore) or put up large billboards to intimidate them.
I used to actually run a game each week where people could bet on whether one of the top five land barons, one of the “comers” or an “unknown” would win the auctions. Today, you can often find unknowns as end users actually came in and got the $1000 sims that don’t go for much.
Yes, and in RL, you’d never have a club that could suddenly devalue an entire sim from their lousy 2560, prompting the need for land liquidators, and you could never have the Bush Guy, systematically extorting back the view from people or driving them to flee to islands.
No, there’s a basic contradiction inherent in our world, and it’s not only “buy land, they’re not making anymore”. It’s that our world’s welfare, and Linden Lab’s welfare, are often at cross purposes. They need to sell land to run their business and meet their bills and have revenue. They need to print more land and thus devalue our purchases. They need to open-source the engine because, well, that’s what tech companies do to compete and stay ahead. If that makes your “ownership” completely null and void, well, you’ve been warned now.
Anon
Feb 2nd, 2007
Is there anybody who… you know… actually trades virtual real estate that can offer opinion? I’m completely uninterested in what a non-trader has to say, no matter how logical the argument. They are seeing the thing from the outside looking in, and can’t really be counted on for true accuracy.
No ‘fence Prok. Love ya!
lilly Margetts
Feb 2nd, 2007
About on time,still,i dont think 40 is going to be enought,at least 100.
Panda
Feb 2nd, 2007
Prok, so if you had your way, LL would not be making any new land, ever. That makes so much more sense. And for the 100th time, LL is NOT A GOVERNMENT. They are a business. They sell L$ and land. Everyone knows this, so it’s utterly stupid to act all shocked when they try to catch up on releasing more mainland. There was no question of if, only WHEN new mainland would be made, and everyone who did any bit of research and rode the bubble should know the risks.
Oh, and I see you managed to squeeze “socialist” and “bolshevik” into the same post again. Kudos. You even got “neo-” in there, you owe me royalties!
Michael Seraph
Feb 2nd, 2007
Basing your SL land decisions on RL land economics makes as much sense as applying RL building codes in SL. RL land is not in any significant way comparable to SL land.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Anon, I love it when people who are too cowardly to use their SL names post with the name “anon” with a slam on someone else who is in fact asking ALL the right questions. Martin may or may not chose to answer them, but just because I don’t flip land, doesn’t mean I can’t have a very informed opinion about the land market. I have to watch it constantly, not only to understand the trends in customers for rentals, but also to occasionally sell or buy myself for my rentals. During this bubble, I didn’t sell much — only that which became unrentable due to ugly laggy malls or casinos or camp chairs — because if I *did* sell prime real estate, I’d have unfilled tier, paid for, and waiting to be filled…with what? Hugely overpriced land. And I didn’t buy anything but the most urgent parcels, i.e. to hedge off a club that had landed from getting bigger. Too bad that life on the mainland is always lurching from one extortion to another like that!
Panda, evidently you’re incapable of subtle analysis and critical thinking if you can write extremist pap like that, misattributing to me the desire for LL to “go out of business” and “not print land”.
So let me try to break it into smaller bite-size pieces. I couldn’t wish LL to go out of business; that would be stupid for them and me. But there are conflicting interests which aren’t going to go away, and must be managed.
1. LL has a vital interest in selling as many islands at a fixed price as it can possibly service, and also in selling as many mainland pieces as they can — preferably less for higher amounts. So they periodically develop “hardware shortages”. “Hardware shortages” could be understood “technically” as the Lindens pretend, or “politically” as I would submit has to be done. They make decisions to fill island orders first; they have to, those are people who have *already paid* and *whose money the Lindens hold for weeks — months*. !!! (You have to wonder if they invest the float!). Thus, they can’t be putting out $0 land for newbies in reply to forums screechers because they have $1695 of rich people’s money in hand and have to get them paying tier and moving.
2. It’s in the interests of new people, poor newbies and a bit more well-to-do midbies, let’s say, to have plenty of cheaper or reasonably-priced land, to enter and level up in the system. That’s been impossible as we saw prices double and become completely ridiculous; the reality is, most people are not going to pay $37 US for a first land plot like a cable bill, when they already pay $9.95 like a cheap Internet email service for the premium. They just won’t do it, as we’ve discovered. So they don’t buy the HUGE STOCK of overpriced, unloaded land (please look at the map) to be able to get hooked on the Linden tier system, so the Lindens can only meet their demand and secure more tier for themselves by printing more sims.
3. Next, there’s the middle class. Some of them bid for the lowerpriced sims as end-users. Some flip as baby barons. It’s part in their interest to have more, cheaper sims; it’s part in their interest to make sure the Lindens don’t print TOO much land (as they’ve just done) to REALLY make land crash (it won’t feel like crashing on the ride down from $25/m to $12/meter, but it is in fact a severe devaluation. Why a severe devaluation, that is a long-term problem? Because those people who buy at $12/meter can’t be assured they will sell at the 2008 dollar value they have now for even $12/meter. Most land purchases in SL involve selling for less than you bought, unless you get very lucky and hit a peak right before the trough. It’s not good when people can’t sell their land; they panic, they cut loose and run and they drive down the prices by their panic; it snowballs. A few timid baby barons panicking on 2-3 sims of their overpriced auction wins crashes prices further. Maybe they need crashing, but they should crash by people showing some spine and studiously ignoring the expensive offers, not by bankrupting baby barons. The bottom line is that the middle class is constantly squeezed; if they become end users and set up a business or club or rentals, they know they can’t get out easily; they’ll lose — the Lindens are always printing fresh, tasty, non-laggy land, and they are sitting with half a sim next to camp chairs. Lack of zoning is always the killer on the mainland.
For this squeezed middle class, those who got $1000 sims may feel temporarily lucky; when they can’t sell them even for $1000 later, they feel less lucky and get resentful that the Lindens keep printing more sims! And that’s why LL’s bottom line is always antithetical to the well-being of the very most stable and needed class of Second Life: inworld businesses, developmers, designers with stores, other kinds of landed customer service people who make up the fiber of SL.
4. Now you have the very wealthy. They flip land. Huge bids on the auction are pissing matches with Anshe; they are about market share; they are about testicularity. They are very psychological. SL always attracts young Trustifarians who cut their teeth with daddy’s money on the SL auction and act like they will become big burghers in SL by outbidding Anshe. Anshe only laughs; she or Jenna Fairplay will be buying these sims next month at liquidationg prices by that ballsy Trustifarian or his fellow baby baron. The very wealthy are addicted to the LL auctions even more than the other classes, who either need the Lindens to print more land to keep it cheap, or who hope for at least cheaper entry prices for mainland whole sims. The very wealthy have a problem trying to keep cashing their Lindens out fast enough from all their chopped-up sim sales into the dollars needed to buy the next auction or island purchase. They are the ones who make the LindEx or break it, but with Supply Linden breaking their backs, they are hobbled. They can only sell so much, and such-and-such a rate, and can’t stay ahead of the auction bidding game, really, unless they go for huge volume.
I think it’s a hugely unhappy state of affairs. I think everybody’s a lose in this artificial, ugly pyramid. Wealthy flippers can only risk crashing badly, or realizing there are limits to growth and pull out, seeking some other game. Middleclass can only feel unfulfilled and resentful, always sitting on land that is devalued and always worried about clubs sucking their FPS. Clubs even have to worry about sudden excesses of cheap land, because that means OTHER clubs will start springing up everywhere on flat green mature and threaten THEIR market share.
Newbies can only feel cheated because they can’t get first land or second land at 1024 m2; they can’t get what is promised on the website; they can’t set up even a little home or store without paying gouging prices of becoming dependent on island dealers who won’t let them refund and make them “purchase” land, too, that they can’t really control and resell quite at will as they’d like (this has gotten better with new tools but not every dealer enables those tools).
Does LL even win in this situation? From their perspective, you would hope at least they got something out of this. I’m not sure they do. They wouldn’t speak about open-sourcing and getting out of the land business if they did. It’s a tough way to make a living, tilling the soil like peasants. They wish to be New-Age knowledge workers with utterly portable and frictionless commodities that move and trade with the speed of light.
There are mysteries about all this, which I don’t get. How can a company like LL, which is very big and capitalized at this point, have a “server shortage”? What is a “server shortage”? I mean, people who run companies out there in TV land, could you tell me how hard it is to go to Servers ‘R Us and buy 40 servers? What’s the hold-up? How long could it possibly take to configure a generic server into an SL land-holding server? 45 minutes? 3 hours? What is really the shortage here? Actual hardware deliveries — but what, somebody can’t get 40 servers out the door to LL??? What’s up with this?
Ultimately, they have to see their inability to manage “server shortages” as shooting not only the world itself in the foot, but themselves. They turned away paying, premium accounts and lost them. They slowed down island orders and made people get made and vow not to get more. They made prices so high on the mainland for so little result, given lag, blight, and crime, that they made people seriously question the Second Life ethic.
As I say, there is no winner here.
Martin Squeegee
Feb 2nd, 2007
Prok,
Ouch… I don’t have the vocabulary to respond… but then I am a humble capatalist land baron with free market ideologies based on putting my money where my mouth is…
I will have a go at responding to some of your points…
As a land dealer I started small like everyone else who has played the game.. I bought my first sim for $1012 and sold it for a small profit. Strangely enough and he may or may not rememeber CP Costello told me his views on trading and I have applied them (complete with humour and irony) to this day.
Yes I have put some high bids in – I don’t hold the record but have made some expensive purchases… winning is important to me. I have made a profit although not always as much as I would like and not as much as the people who follow round behind me.
Let me clear one thing up really quickly – I am not an alt of a previous dealer what you see is what you get – I came here to SL for fun like everyone else – being in the UK and with an interesting USD/GBP exchange rate I could see there might be something in this land thing and I have approached it as a business and as a business it will live or die.
Did my statements make you feel good? Or am I concerned for my customer based of loyal SL citizens who have bought from me in the last few hours? For they have paid for land at the top of the market and whilst I will weather the storm for some this is not the investment they thought it was. I can take the highs and lows this land market offers but not everyone will – I haven’t asked for any sympathy and won’t but when the land barons own the next 40 sims… then what?
I am flattered however that you think people would listen to my humble voice as a poor land baron in a world of economics I really don’t understand nor want to. However I do object to you calling me an idiot. Is that really me or the people that have bought from me that you are calling an idiot? Remember I am the middle man but have been willing to commit and INVEST in SL for the greater good. Prok can you say the same?
I am a realist and I know that SL and RL land markets are different however if you have studied house prices etc. in RL you will spot similarities – the difference being that in SL they happen now… today rather than over months/years.
As for the drama – we all love the drama – you thrive on it and that is why we can talk, discuss, disagree about what is going on. This will it is land, next week it will be something else.
The only thing we seem to agree on is how land trade is treated by linden – you bang on it’s wrong but it has always been that way and as a business man you play the game with the rules you have presented. Now today linden has changed the rules so I will have to adapt and change what I do… anyone want to rent 300,000m?
Martin Squeegee can be found scratching his head in his office in JULIA CREEK.
Carl Metropolitan
Feb 2nd, 2007
Like Prokofy, I’ve been watching the various “OMG! Land Prices are COLLAPSING!” posts and articles for the past week with a sense of bemused amazement. This bubble and its collapse was entirely predictable—and predicted.
Linden Lab can put out a certain number of new servers each week (I think the limiting factor her is likely personnel rather than parts or money). In November, LL’s announcement that tier prices were going on islands purchased after a certain date sparked a huge upswing in island orders. LL shifted the majority of its capacity to filling those orders, and the mainland stopped growing. But SL’s population did not. To no one’s great surprise, land prices on the mainland shot up past “silly” levels into “stupid” levels.
But the shortage of new Mainland could not last. The rush on new islands had to end. And when it did, LL’s new server capacity would be moved to Mainland expansion. LL’s has long had a goal maintaining average Mainland prices at about 6-7 L$/m2. This is nothing new.
Here’s a prediction. The bubble has only started popping. As people who bought land at the peak of the bubble start having a second month’s worth of tier come due (and realize that they are not going to make a mint on their land holdings), they are going to drop their price further, as will their competition. Panic selling will ensue. I expect to see Mainland land prices decline even further over the next few weeks, possibly bottoming out with good land available as cheap as 3L$/m2.
If you want to tier up and try the baby baron business, forget about the auctions. Snap up cheap land in mid to late February.
Oh—here’s another prediction for anyone interested. The price of private islands on the resale market will collapse in mid-to-late Fall of 2007. The economics of this prediction are left as an exercise to the student.
Martin Squeegee
Feb 2nd, 2007
Just to add insult to injury then… let’s get it over and done with now… let’s just reset land prices to say… L$7 per metre. Any body coming for the ride with me?
Martin Squeegee is feeling bullish in his office at JULIA CREEK
isis eagle
Feb 2nd, 2007
I think this is great news. I’d like to see what Second Life would become, artistically and societally, if it was more than just another money making venue for greedy people. The server software being open source means that SL would become more like an open 3d internet, and less like a private expensive world.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Martin,
I have free-market ideologies, too, perhaps I just don’t spend as wildly with them : ) As someone who has spent a half or a quarter of what you’ve bid on auction sims, I can only say: it’s a kind of game, the prices are always artificial.
You say, ok, it’s a game. It’s like a casino. If the house wants to load up its odds in its favour, I’ll still play the slots or the Blackjack tables because I can still win big. That’s fine — but it’s even more of a game than real life, given the very real ability of Lindens to issue or withold, depending on whether they “feel its time” to break the landbaron backs.
It’s good that you’ve put a statement out for the record that you are not an old baron alt. It take it at face value. Most barons don’t tell you who they are; they are secretive; they use alts to shop and alts to buy. I think it’s good if someone tries to build up a reputation around land buying and selling that is stable and predictable so that people don’t fuel hatred toward the entier class.
I’m used to this kind of “I’m but a simple, humble man” rhetoric from Desmond and others. I look past that game RP stuff and look at the prices and practices. If the price is right, even a bit high, I would buy it for end use. If the practices are crappy, involving chopping up waterfront and water-behind into little 512s and creating endless havoc, I never encourage such dilettantes.
Yes, the bubble was predicted, and predictable. Still, you need to report on the substance of it, I feel, and see how it’s going. It isn’t ALL popped yet, and I agree with Martin that the old days of $5/m are probably long gone — that was an artificial LL construct.
Could we get some actual facts on WHAT the limiting factor is? Actual supply of hardware in the real world (are servers so scarce?) Or staff time? Seriously? Can that be? Is there anything more important to revenue than selling the highest income-producing product?
We saw this peak and trough before. When the bubble on the atoll northern continent burst, it left mainland at $3/meter, PG was even $2/m. There were lots of disgusted sell-outs then because the Bush Guy also further devalued loads of land all over on hundreds of sims. When the Anshe finally got her island orders and their sales going and she began to reduce the cornered prime waterfront market, then others began to lower their prices too.
But I don’t think we will see land go down to $3/m as a routine matter. There are too many people chasing it at this point.
It used to be that Linden-denominated auctions, especially at odd hours when Anshe was asleep, used to be a real gold-mine of finds. But now, she has staff to watch it 24/7, and people who own in those sims have become very hungry to get rid of the club menace and buy before clubs do. So it’s harder to get auction pieces now, and you’re absolutely right, the bargains are inworld with the liquidating but of course, the bots will suck up the best bargains now.
Could you elaborate more on your theory of the island collapse? I’m well aware that quite a few people bit off more than they can chew when they bought up those grandfatherable islands in November. But I’m seeing buyers of these offloaded grandfathers very much available and finding severe shortages, so I don’t know if you’re right — but I’m willing to be persuaded.
Martin, I don’t know who you are preaching to, but you don’t have to be say snarky things like “let’s just set land to $7/ meter”. You’re barking at the wrong address here. I would never advocate that, any more than I’d advocate a set Linden price. The market will set it. In fact, the market in fact valued quite a few 512 at $8900, you know? And left to its own devices, the market might have acted quite well to make better-looking neighbourhoods with more value. I find that the more a person has to pay for their 512, the better they keep it up; if they get a $512 subsidized sandbox, they crap on it and put up giant spinning penises. If they pay $30 US for their 512, they put a nice little house or shop and work at landscaping it. That’s just like RL.
See, Martin, you need to turn your fire and preaching about capitalism not on me, but on people like isis.
His concept of anyone making money, adding value, *buying servers from those capitalists the Lindens* as “evil, greedy, people.”
This kind of witless, vapid Communism is so widespread; you have to laugh, given that the real powerhouses of Communist like the old Soviet Union have fallen apart or like China, forced to allow more free enterprise.
This facile and exploitative attitude toward people in business — that’s it’s ok for them to make a profit while they are funding Lindens R&D on their path to revolutionary glory in making metaversal software — is one of the things I most loathe about Second Life. The Lindens get to be capitalists, constantly dressed in socialist sheep’s cloathing. Since these VCs are already all wealthy as individuals, they don’t care if they don’t cash out big, they just want to make a cool open source thing and have power and influence over the making of the biggest thing of the century.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Oh, and P.S. Martin…your plan for what to do with your trading tier and unsold holdings when they go open-source?
Just a thought
Feb 2nd, 2007
The three easy steps to survival in Second Life’s land market:
Step One: Cry yourself a river
Step Two: Build yourself a bridge
Step Three: Get over it.
for those that find it hard to understand the meaning of those three easy steps – I’m looking at you Prok – it boils down to the fact that Linden Lab will continue to expand the mainland each and every time Island Orders do not snap up all the incoming servers. They see all that empty space on the map and say to themselves: “Oh look! It’s still not full! Put more SIMs out there.” And so they do.
Until such a time as no more SIMs can be added at all, this will continue to happen.
Oh, and as for Open sourcing the servers? sorry, not going to happen. At the most Linden Lab may release the code that allows a server to connect up and be part of the grid …… but never the grid itself. That is a security risk – one they are not stupid enough to take.
marilyn murphy
Feb 2nd, 2007
prok:
i think at times u bring forth important and useful points. i would like you to post twice please. i would like u to blaze away and say all you have to say in as much depth as you need to make sure your point is clarified. then. post one for poor saps like me whose eyes glaze over after 3 paragraphs.
a readers digest, or cliffs notes version of your point would be nice.
i am sincere, and hope u don’t view this as some attack. i truly have a problem following such involved writing and …..help.
Arthur Fermi
Feb 2nd, 2007
actually the lindens said the only reason they didn’t add at a higher rate was all of the private sims to roll out. My partner buys and sells land, and we said as soon as prices got to about 15, that it wasn’t worth it. We figured it would be about february, actually we figured late february and prices would slowly come down. We were right
This allowed us to bank roll money, so when people saw the bubble pop and panicked we could buy. Now we are very small players, we never have move than about 8,000m, but its a nice income.
The flip side to all of this is that the real land barons had no one to blame but themselves. We watched a property sell next to our main are about 5 times, they were selling to each other.
I would like to say, that this is really good for everyones business, (outside of the loss taken on property) this will help stimulate the economy for buildings and furniture. Which should drive people in to content creation, and the cycle continues. I’m going to guess we are also going to see the value of the L go up a bit at some point.
I LOVE CAPITALISM
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Marilyn,
The posts here in this thread are no wider than your hand. If you can’t handle them, gosh, I dunno.
My staff of excellent outsourced Caspian captioners are working very hard to provide CAPTIONS FOR THE ATTENTION-DEFICITED now on my posts. You can see the new CAPTIONS FOR THE ATTENTION-DEFICITED in this important post on Philip’s Evil Ideas, for example:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/01/finding_the_law.html
I think MS Word 2003 has a thinger inside it that pulls out phrases or headlines or something, try that.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 2nd, 2007
Arthur, the value of the Linden cannot go up until Supply Linden gets his heavy thumb off the printing press.
They were down slightly for January:
Supply Linden Sales
198,449,261 December
159,141,440 January
Now…this is a hidden indicator of how open-sourcing caused some people to cash out.
Frans Charming
Feb 3rd, 2007
Or there was more demand in december, with lots of people having extra time to spend in SL and buying christmas presents.
Rumgoat Pugilist
Feb 3rd, 2007
Linden Labs are capitalists, and everything they do is to fatten their capitalistic bottom line. If this screws up the money-making plans of any land barons or crazy Russian translators, oh noes…because what are you doing for Linden Labs? Blah, blah, blah settler of this land and all this shit, you aren’t a settler of anything. Linden Labs runs a business and run it to make money. That’s capitalism.
Stupid prat Prok. Anshe’s a dumb bitch too. You’re all whores to the Linden Empire. Phillip giveth and He taketh away.
Anon
Feb 3rd, 2007
Prok: blah blah blah I’m so goddam smart and yet I cannot express myself concisely yadda yadda yadda… I can’t read a word you write because it’s obviously coming from an OUTSIDER.
Be as logical as you want, there is NO EXPERIENCE behind what you say. We went hundreds of years on this planet with our most brilliant thinkers saying that the world was flat, and they did so because it was the most logical conclusion they could draw based on ZERO EXPERIENCE. It was the people who actually went out and explored the world for themselves that were able to draw the correct conclusions.
RE: “Anon” – I owe neither explanation nor rationalization to anybody
Prokofy Neva
Feb 3rd, 2007
>Or there was more demand in december, with lots of people having extra time to spend in SL and buying christmas presents.
Frans, everyone in business in SL knows that sales decrease in December and January precisely because people have RL Christmas presents to get their RL people, and then in January, face their RL credit cards they just ran up in December and stop spending OR take whatever they have left over to run to the January White Sales of RL.
So while I realize you have every reason to try to discount ANY notion that the open-source announcement led to cashouts, I have to insist that it be looked at as a possible factor. Perhaps there was more demand as people had leisure time during the school and work holidays to become trymes. But perhaps some big land dealers or speculators saw that it was time to leave.
Of course, the policy of printing Lindens to satisfy the putative demand must be questioned. It’s predicated on the fake notion that there are “no Lindens available for new people”. But there are Lindens to be sold, of course. Speculators and large barons have them. They hoard them and cash them out to buy more Lindens at another time for less, or to buy an island or an auction denominated in Lindens. They have PLENTY of cash to satisfy the demand of incoming consumers. It’s just that they’d like more than $3.70/1000 for that privilege — in fact, experience shows us with the GOM, that $4.25/1000 would do nicely.
But the Lindens don’t want to have more expensive Lindens, even though they could be neutral to this matter if they still collect their percentage of the deal. They are socialists at heart, but they also want to have less friction for entry, I guess, you tell me. To a newbie coming on SL, the difference between $3.70 and $4.25 for his first 1000 Lindens are absolutely meaningless. To a strugglign content creator or land baron, they are the difference between make or break. However, to those with history, like Lindens, it reminds them psychologically of an era when they didn’t run the economy, and they want to make sure everyone always remembers who is boss, I guess.
This is something that puzzles me, really, since they control the reins whether there is a $3.50, a $2.50, or a $4.50 per 1000 Linden experience. One problem is that while they keep a $400 and $500 per week stipend, they are setting a norm of expectation for valuation of what $9.95 can get you. That’s something we’ve always been tied to. But why do they care?
I’m going to hypothesis that they need to keep a magic circle for wages. And they may be correct in doing this — but just not getting the balance right (I can’t think of a harder thing to do). What is a magic circle of wages? It is the ability of a Wal-mart clerk in Kenosha to come into SL and make dresses and charge $125 a dress and earn $1.50 US on day one selling 4 dresses and feel like a queen — because she was having a good time, learning a skill, and socializing with her friends. If at the end of the week, she only has $6.00 to either offset her subscription, or use for RL gas money to drive to her job at the mall, what of it? She’s ahead.
She and her friends will want the price of dresses to remain at $125, let’s say, because if they became $5000 people might not pay $18.50 US for a virtual artifact — and then only the most highly-skilled and well-marketed dress makers would win. Then the Wal-mart gal might not want to play. Why should she make $125 dresses no one will buy? She can’t charge more, due to the inevitable creator-fascism dynamic driving all content up the Darwinistic scale. There’s no room for amateurs.
I don’t doubt that as time goes on, if Second Life itself doesn’t become that kind of boutique place only for the most skilled, connected, feted, and screened, then host-your-owns will become that way. The role of Linden Lab might be to keep spaces more open and free at least at the starting gate — but I doubt they will really feel like doing that because they aren’t really social democrats but more like communists selling the rope. They’ve illustrated this in spades by ushering in all these large corporations then batting their eyelashes and pretending they didn’t do anything special to usher them in.
The world of the $125 dressmaker seems important to me to keep, to keep people feeling engaged and involved from all walks of life and ability. This isn’t just for the sake of any populist democracy. It also to me fits the theory of the class of 40 in Athens versus the cadre of 14 in Sparta, that you have more democratic access and freedom to encourage a wide variety of levels and enable excellence and refreshment of the class of creators and self-correction, versus the highly-disciplined and closed society of soldiers — which is ultimately too brittle to survive.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 3rd, 2007
Anon, I don’t understand your point. I have plenty of experience. Huh? Not only have I bought real estate in RL, what’s more to the point, I’ve bought plenty of it and sold plenty of it in two years in SL, mainly at a profit. Hello? I think you simply don’t have the facts here.
For those willing to ignore the noise here, there’s an interesting discussion here:
http://infomyth.com/sl/Guides/land_bubble.htm
He makes many of the same points I do about the bubble, and people are discussing it in part here, but with the usual noise, of course:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?p=1399012#post1399012
My beef with his generally correct analysis is that he assigns the evil in this scenario only to “greedy land barons”. The root of the evil here is in fact Linden Lab, and he cannot sanitize it. Elanthius is right, that they deliberately plot to control the market and break speculators’ backs CONSTANTLY. That’s what they do DELIBERATELY, and by some accounts, even take a kind of superior glee in doing so.
The fact is, their interests, and the world’s interests, run at cross purposes. Their interest is to sell larger and larger amounts of land and collect purchase price, but just as importantly, tier. The world’s interest is to have land hold its value so that not only can land sale be a middle-class and upper-class business fueling the world’s economy, but so that people can sell their land for what they bought it at, and feel comfortable that their land really does have value. Their interests are therefore not served by Lindens’ volatile and reckless land glutting.
Rumgoat Pugilist
Feb 3rd, 2007
Your whole rant misses, as always, the point. Linden Labs are not socialists, or communists, or whatever. They do everything as capitalists. You love capitalism Prok, don’t you? This whole second world they created, they created it to make money for Linden Labs.
I don’t know why you don’t get it. This is not a world to be settled. This is a computer program designed to make Linden Labs money. If your in-world rental business doesn’t make money, or the land barons don’t make money, or everyone wonders why the tekkie-wikis get to have the bot islands, just know this…Linden Labs is a business, they are here to make money, Second Life is not a world, it is a product, a product designed to make Linden Labs money, so they can pay their employees, so they can pay their bills.
And just because I’m an asshole troll, shut the fuck up Prok. Moldy bitch.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 4th, 2007
Rumboat, I’m afraid YOU are missing the subtleties. The Lindens may be the first people to successfully combine capitalism and socialism. It’s capitalism on the way in, so to speak, with them selling servers briskly, hopefully at a profit (it *is* a profit even when it was lower priced given that they could take it away from you at any time if they didn’t like what you wrote on the forums, or any reason, or no reason). Then, they provided — and still provide — various subsidies, but it’s all part of their Better World concept.
Study the Better World stuff more, please, before you conclude the Lindens aren’t socialists.
I don’t know why YOU don’t get it. It isn’t computer software. It’s a world. And the Lindens consciously declare it a world, make it a world, encourage people to treat it like a world, and benefit it from it being a world. If it were just a computer software sandbox for geeks, you wouldn’t find millions signing up for it. The Lindens consciously, deliberately, happily make it a world, call it a world, and want it to remain a world, despite what literalist nihilists like yourself keep bleating.
In fact, the world you’ve made for yourself is a world in which you keep chasing and harassing people who take SL seriously as a social relationship or a business, and live in it as a world. You have the most Puritanical distaste for these people — yes, that’s your world, and you live in it to the hilt, posting, thinking, writing, and plotting how to bother them.
I wonder how you uh…”settle” a computer program? Unless it’s a…world.
Anyway, normally rants from W-Hat aren’t worth answering but since this is a common fallacy — that W-Hat nihilists are “above the world” and “not involved in the game” and “see it for the silly thing it is” and “berate the Lindens for not deciding whether they are a game or a business” — I think it’s worth pointing out the obvious about exactly the WORLD you have made around you.
Rumgoat Pugilist
Feb 4th, 2007
A nihilist, moi? That’s really kind of cool. I’ve never been called a nihilist before. Makes me want to go blow up a police station. And I’m not a W-Hat or a griefer or anything more than a garden variety asshole.
A. The name is Rumgoat, not Rumboat.
2. Linden Labs is a business. In a capitalist country. I’m pretty sure part of their business model is making money. For Linden Labs, so they can do all that capitalist type stuff, like paying bills and cutting payroll checks for employees.
iii. Second Life is a computer program. It is a collection of ones and zeros. Yes, there is a social aspect to it. The whole internet has a social aspect to it. I have Yahoo Messenger friends, but Yahoo is not a world. Second Life is not a world. You can argue the game/not a game thing, but to say it’s not a computer program…
You sad little rabbit. I feel bad for you, went down the rabbithole and don’t know your way out.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 5th, 2007
Arguing with a character like Rumboat Nihilist is not worth it for its own sake, but only for the sake of all those tender, unformed young minds which may be induced to think.
LL’s main product is a world. Your argumentation is something like this: “Nissan makes cars. But even if people buy those cars, select the custom detail and interiors, and drive them and spend a lot of time using them, it doesn’t matter. What matters is merely Nissan, the company, and its bottom line, and not the experience of all those drivers.”
See how stupid that argumentation it is? There’s nothing wrong with worlds. The fastidious, church-lady approach to them exemplified by the W-Hat extremists isn’t the norm, isn’t desirable, and is just an artifact of their very outdated, last-century utopian pastoralism.
Everybody knows that Yahoo, which has no 3-D aspect and no moveable avatars, is just a messenging kit. SL is a world. I’m sorry immersiveness doesn’t work on you, and you are trapped not even in the last century, but the century before that.
Just a thought
Feb 5th, 2007
:Yawn: It’s a computer program – not a world. Linden Lab is a company, not a government. Please get your facts straight before running your fingers off next time.
Oh, your analogy to a car company doesn’t work either – sorry.
Matter of fact, nothing you can type will ever change the fact that second Life is just a computer program, and its servers rather easily erased by the next massive power spike (lightning strike) or whatever other disaster that may occur.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 5th, 2007
again, for all the tender young minds not as ruined yet as “Justas,” people have different, defensible positions on this issue of “platform” v. “world”. And the Lindens themselves make capital use of the image of Second Life as a “world”. So ranting from Mom’s Basement-dwellers aside, it will go on being a very valid and legitimate definition of Second Life used by many. The car analogy is spot on.
In fact, nothing that justa types will ever change the fact that most people come to Second Life not because it’s a computer program and software ready to be erased by the next blackout, but because those decidedly secondary factors about SL are what generates a compelling, believable, and viable interactive world with a real economy and society and multiplicity of communities.
Just a thought
Feb 5th, 2007
:Yawn: Drop the bullshit excuse for a crusade Prok – all that has to happen to prove Second Life is a program and not a world is for some disaster to wipe out the grid servers. That’s it, no more Second Life. Marketing doesn’t come into play – reality however does.
I live in reality, you do not. Each time you try to show that Second Life can exist by itself (IE being able to exist if the entire grid went down, permanently) and each time you say something as lack witted as people “living” in it …. well you just further prove you do not live in reality.
And no Prok, the car analogy is not ‘spot on’. It’s a poor excuse of an attempt to link Second Life to another industry: One which has nothing at all to do with Virtual Reality.
By the by, Second Life being a computer program – and people admitting this and accepting the fact that it can all go away at a moments notice – does not at all affect the way people use and enjoy it. Next time, kindly use the few neurons you have in that skull of yours before attempting to respond to me, ok? I’m really starting to get rather bored correcting your little lapses in thought.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 5th, 2007
I think it’s great that you’ve created your own little world, Justa, based on your deep immersion in trolling me and trying to prove that SL isn’t a world. I think it probably fills the great void in your real life : )
Just a thought
Feb 5th, 2007
and here we see the usual fall back tactic of Prokofy: Attempt to insult a person that does not agree when they have her over a barrel. Try again Prok – this time actually use that single neuron of yours.
And Yes, I do have you over a barrel – you cannot possibly respond in any way whatsoever that would not make you look like the fool you really are when someone comes right out and says “Second Life is a computer program and cannot stand on its own if the server grid were to go down permanently. However this fact does not affect how people use second Life, nor does it affect what they get out of it.”
That single neuron just cannot handle such a statement simply because there is nothing there for you to attack. Go back to your virtual rental business and you pitiful writings on the evil Linden Lab Shadow Government (Patent Pending) and leave the discussions of what second Life is to those not so immersed in an illusion that they lose their grasp on reality.
Just a thought
Feb 6th, 2007
Oh, and for the record: I hate – with a passion – people hell bent on promoting the blurring of reality and fantasy. It is a destructive process which never ends well at all. to believe that ANY computer program is more than just that – a program – allows a person to blur the line between what is real and what is not (this includes spiritual beliefs and other things that get thrown out the window when the line is blurred). Second Life has far too much potential to blur this line far too quickly and in a way never possible before (normal games don’t do that – at least not as badly for the simple reason that there is always something there to remind them it is just a game). Second Life is far too immersing and is NOT for those who are unstable, have difficulty separating reality from fantasy … that list goes on. I have little doubt that we WILL see a news report or two in the future about some little twit that committed suicide over something that happened in Second Life – followed soon after by a story of murder.
THAT is why it is important to NEVER think of Second Life as more than a computer program, no matter WHAT you do in it. Sure, run your business! Just don’t ever lose site of reality.
Rob Arten
Feb 6th, 2007
Um, I’m not sure if you have read your previous comments, Justa, but you yourself do seem to be taking this a little…too…far…
Second Life blurring the realms of reality and fantasy? Whatever’s next? People thinking that the uncountable legions of Warhammer miniatures are trying to take over the world?
People that commit murder/suicide over a computer game are troubled to begin with. It is not a normal human being that decides his/her life is not worth living because some virtual character is making fun of them. As for murders, identity -should- be classified, something LL is very urgent to point out. Ergo, in an admittedly blasé and coarse way, I’d say it was their fault for giving out their details.
For those that have difficulty separating fantasy from reality, I’d say SL is a tool of wonderment. It allows them to lead a life of their choosing, instead of being shunned in society for their problems. I know many people that have this sort of problem, and they are some of the best RPers I have ever met. Imagine where they’d be without it, in a dark room staring at pieces of paper with their equally troubled friends.
“And here we see the usual fall back tactic of Prokofy: Attempt to insult a person that does not agree when they have her over a barrel. Try again Prok – this time actually use that single neuron of yours.”
Now, here all I see is someone using a tactic they themselves have so condemned. It seems more of a stalemate than a victory for you, Justa, and thus you use the same thing that Prok does. Only difference is that you do have something to say afterwards. Agreed, SL is a computer program and should be treated as such. Thing is, take into consideration the people that hold it in higher regard and more importance than you.
Just a thought
Feb 6th, 2007
:sigh: rob, I do take them into consideration. I do not take Prok into consideration however …. I do not know how many of her posts you’ve read in the past, or if you’ve seen everything she’s somehow managed to link up to some evil shadow government (mind you this is how her writings come across) but frankly I’ll hold the comments of ANYONE except her in higher regard.
While I understand what you’ve saying, I’d like to also point out that I’ve seen examples that would go against your observations. It’s a double edged sword …. and one of the biggest tenets of Online Role Play has always been to keep the character and the player separate. There is a reason for that. Now granted, I myself will really get into a character – if the proper conditions are met. The difference to me is that when I am done and when I step away from the computer … I am myself. The sort of issues I am talking about are those where a person walks away …. and they actually think they are their character. Yes, in the most extreme forms this is only possible with someone that has issues to begin with … but it is still possible with others.
:sigh: Hell, I’ve had at least two friends that were perfectly fine, no problems, off themselves due to a combination of online antics from a few true jerks, and real life stress. The sad part of it all is that their case was a milder form … they blurred the line, but not as much.
Rob Arten
Feb 7th, 2007
Yes, I have indeed had a lengthy discussion with Prokofy before, albeit on a different web site:
http://eightbar.co.uk/2006/12/05/alliance-navy-operation-peartree-giving-back-to-the-community/
I do accept your argument and must say that I follow many of your opinions. I merely think that you have put across your point in a overly-hostile way, and it could have been done better with a little less insulting thrown in.
Also, if you know at least 2 people who have done themselves in over this kind of problem then it does help to explain your strong views on this topic.
hotlips Tornado
Feb 8th, 2007
So, getting back on topic, what do people think land prices are doing now? I’ve seen very little below 13.5 L/sqm, and what there is below that price always seems to have been bought in the previous two seconds by a fat man in a vest.
It seems to me that prices have slumped a bit from the silliness they were at a few weeks ago, but that the market remains healthy. Every land sale I’ve been to lately has been pretty busy.
It doesn’t seem like a Pop!, more like a bit of a wet fart.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 11th, 2007
It popped a bit but not all the sims are out yet — the Lindens are still popping it.
Furthermore, what’s operative is that resident-to-resident sales, as distinct from land-baron-to-public sales, now have way lower prices.
What would happen is that all the non-barons wishing to sell their land would put their parcles out at ridiculous sums of $30/m or $40/m thinking that now all these greedy land barons were out there willing to pay those prices. The only people they hurt were themselves, having to keep paying tier on land after 30 days, and their neighbours, who would have bought their land at $15/meter weeks ago.
So now those people are putting their prices down, though you still see patches of rampant greed, where people are trying to take advantage of being the last parcel on a sim or where they are imagining that they can still get gullible people to pay $29/m for their ugly waterfront with spinning junk all around it.
Another few weeks, and it will be down to a level of something like $10/meter for mature flat, and $18/m for waterfront and then the $22/meter and above will be for really spectacular double protected new class five waterfront. It will not likely go to $6 or $10 as it once was.