Walled Garden
by prokofy on 16/02/07 at 7:24 pm
Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and A Secret Virtual Garden That Fits in the Palm of Your Hand
I first heard the term “walled garden” to describe Second Life about two years ago from Tony Walsh at Clickable Culture. Of course it brought up strong memories of The Secret Garden which we read as children. You had to first learn of the magical place’s very existence; then know *just where* the key fit in the old dilapidated door.
The news that the Lindens now has “contingency measures” to manage the overload of growing concommitant log-ons was mainly greeted with cheering in the land. Prominent figures like FlipperPA Peregrine have long called for LL to take this kind of action to prevent overload. There is a sizeable lobby within Second Life calling for the end of free accounts, perceiving those who cannot or will not provide payment information and obtain a premium account as a drag on sims and CPU. Philip Linden has denied this claim, as it has been his goal to grow Second Life as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the lag, the slow-rezzing textures, the failure of teleports and stalling search calls have made everybody really grumpy and causes them to question why they pay money.
I’m disappointed in the Lindens over the suddeness of this measure, and the manner in which it is to be implemented.
While they claim it’s just a contingency measure, I have no doubt that we’ll see it invoked even this weekend as it’s routine now for 25,000 or more people to log-in at once. Calling it a “contingency” is double-speak to make it seem as if they are not really doing what they have long discussed — throttling the registrations. They should just be honest and end the free registrations, or convert them to 14-day-only trials, rather than make people play log-on roulette.
The Lindens will work it cleverly — as they see the world overloading, they will move to a mode where log-ins will be blocked, and a notice will go up saying, GRID STATUS: RESTRICTED, when “only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in.”
First to be dinged will be the legion of campers and money-tree feeders and sandwhich-sign bearers who roam around Second Life for free, trying to collect dollars and freebies in order to make a living in this gleaming and glitzy world, which seems from the get-go only to be for the wealthy, as you need a minimum of a high-end graphics card, a computer, and a broadband DSL-type line to even log on in the first place.
Commentators on the official Linden blog (from which this faithful correspondent is permabanned), were quick to fall into the Newspeak. “Note that this really *isn’t* population control. This is resource usage at peak time control,” said Prospero Frobozz.
“The message says nothing about stopping free accounts or the like,” explains Frobozz, echoing the sentiments of other posters. “It simply says that *IF* the load gets top high to handle and the recognize it in time, they will *temporarily* disable new accounts (to reduce the load of lots of people coming and editing their appearance!) and restrict logins to the “most serious” user (not even just the paying users!)”
The problem with this concept is that it turns Second Life even more into a crap shoot than it already is. You might want to sign up for an account merely to attend a lecture, jump into an L-Word event, hear live music, or try it out when somebody wants to show it to you at work — but now you’ll be arbitrarily barred because you haven’t paid a dollar. It makes the roulette wheel of Second Life a very frustrating thing, forcing people to try to change their access hours or not even bother.
It would be far more fair simply to create classes of accounts that *always* function the same way. That is, make a trial account that lasts for 14 days for free — and then taps out. Make premium accounts that come with more content, such as some have suggested, like an initial free house and free instruction in building or design, charge more than $9.95, like the $15.00 that World of Warcraft charges, and then save the $9.95 account for simply free tier and a stipend (drop the concept of first land completely — it’s now seriously broken and misleading). Another option is to make it possible to purchase game use cards for $3.45 US, or minutes on existing cell phone cards or something, even paying with Lindens earned inworld, that would enable you to cross the GRID RESTRICTED — but not forever. Such temporary game cards were available to use on the Sims Online.
By making all free accounts who all signed up in good faith thinking they’d always have access now have to take a number, the Lindens have reneged on an initial promise that the Metaverse was deeply democratic, always open, always encouraging creativity and access for all. If they’re going to do that, they should just do it, and not be duplicitous about it. I do hope that they instantly put up a disclaimer on the account page now that says that all free accounts are subjected to limited or no access during GRID RESTRICTED times. Gosh, our friend Pyrrha Dell better buy herself some Lindens pronto, or she could SOL when it comes to having to show up for her RL job at Dell island.
There’s no question the move will be popular with many — especially the 57,000 rapidly growing cohort of private island and mainland sim owners who are bedevilled by clueless gits flying around with “no payment on file” status, invading homes, and nesting in their sex pose balls or basking in their jacuzzis while they are AFK.
But ultimately, the Walled Garden problem of Second Life — emblematic of the entire Metaverse’s problem of the closed societies ushered in even under open-source rhetoric — will only sharpen the class warfare and the hatred of land barons and the monied classes by less well-off newbies, and visa versa, make the newbies and poor folk subject to GRID RESTRICTION to be a despised and suspect caste.
And what will happen if those people addicted to Second Life but floating around for free then are galvanized into buying accounts or paying for Lindens? Does LL promise scaling up to meet them scaling the Walled Garden? Of course it doesn’t.
It seems to me there are other ways to deal with the data base challenge that users can voluntarily assume, like ending the obsession with distributing freebies and clogging up space and inventories, and having LL even put a charge on inventories over X number of items. They may do that anyway!
Mostly, what people on the forums and on inworld discussions want is an end to campers — “camp cull” — as some put it. The Lindens could deprecate the camping script called “Lazy Lindens” if they wished, but they hate deprecating scripts, in the name of preserving freedom of scripting creativity. They could “ban” camping — but policing and prosecuting it would be a massive load on scarce Linden time.
When the log-ons *are* restricted and the camping problem *still* remains — which it will, as “the poor ye always have with you” — then there will be a drive to achieve the next “smart-mob” decision — end the popular places list and even the system of traffic. Then we will lose a very meaningful metric to our world (at least beyond the first 20 gamed spots), and both the economy and non-profit activity will fall back into a routine of real life, able to be viewed or exposed only if people spend money on advertising, as the “voting with the feet” factor we have with traffic will be abandoned.
In RL, jobs creation and government jobs are the normal planks of political parties. In Second Life, with its indifferent or busy Lindens and its smug burghers of island nations, nobody tries to think seriously about job creation. Some efforts have been made to create job pools for the entry-level jobs of DJ, events host, and sexscort, but these are demeaning to some and don’t pay out enough even with real dedication. It’s not fair to demand that every newbie come and be shackled to the steep learning curve to “create or die” by learning to script or build.
Ultimately, with this decision, the Lindens have taken another blow at the world in favour of creating the platform. The Horatio Alger who thought he could build his dream has just been denied entry; the bar for the attractive virtuality that is supposed to make a Better World has just been moved that much higher.
Curious Rousselot
Feb 16th, 2007
“…the class warfare and the hatred of land barons and the monied classes by less well-off newbies, and visa versa, make the newbies and poor folk subject to GRID RESTRICTION to be a despised and suspect caste.”
Speaking as one of those ‘no payment info on file’ denizens of Second life you I must say you have hit the problem square on the head. Turning us into second class citizens is going to hurt Linden Labs. Many of us, myself included, will simply leave and not come back if we find that we can’t connect when we want to.
“And what will happen if those people addicted to Second Life but floating around for free then are galvanized into buying accounts or paying for Lindens?”
I may be wrong here but I doubt the problem is going to be LL unable to keep up with the droves of new paying accounts. More likely you will find that the number of active citizens is drastically reduced.
Speaking only for myself, I named myself “Curious” because I was curious about what this Second Life thing was and decided to check it out when I heard that I could get a free account.
I found that it was fun an interesting so I stuck around. Is it worth $15.00 a month to me; not a chance. I don’t pay for WoW and I’m not about to pay $15.00 for SL either. Is it worth $9.95 a month? it might be some day but that day isn’t here yet and I’ve been on for about 2 months now.
So, getting rid of free accounts will almost certainly fix the problems but at what cost? The cost will be the new population. And that population entered SL because Linden Labs recognized that they needed significant growth in their user base in order to grow SL to the next level. If they take that away they also take away the reason why SL is growing.
Think about the business side of thing. SL is an online game. As such it must make money for the owners, LL. They must have recognized that they needed to find new sources of revenue or the game was going to decline like other older MMORPGs have.
How do they do that? They get corporate buy-in. They sell island to Dell and IBM and Toyota and all the others. If the population goes away guess what happens next? The corporations start to wonder why they are there. Then they leave. Then no more new revenue stream. Think about it.
IBM runs in SL conferences. Many of the people attending those conferences probably don’t have avatars before attending their first conference. Are they going to pay to attend an in-world IBM conference? Not bloody likely! Is IBM going to accept that their conference attendees can’t get in because unpaid accounts are being temporarily banned? Not bloodly likely either.
Curious Rousselot
I’m your worst nightmare…
I’m a free account holder and I’m the new reality like it or not.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 16th, 2007
>Are they going to pay to attend an in-world IBM conference? Not bloody likely! Is IBM going to accept that their conference attendees can’t get in because unpaid accounts are being temporarily banned? Not bloodly likely either.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought of that. Aside from Dell, there are all those other companies with no “payment on file”. What do you want to bet the Lindens just figure out a way to except them to “Grid Restriction” with flagging the accounts somehow.
Curious Rousselot
Feb 16th, 2007
No bet.
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 17th, 2007
Good article Prok. In truth, the reason Linden Lab is taking this step is to keep ME out. LOL
Seriously, talk about going back on a promise: When I joined Second Life, I paid the $9.95 “Lifetime membership” fee that was required back then after the 7-day trial. When I realized I could sell the L$ allowance for about the same as the monthly fee and have 512m of land to boot… I purchased a Premium membership. When L$ dropped through the floor and I got tired of land hassles and the absurd land policies on SL, I sold my land and dropped the Premium membership.
Did Linden Lab revert me to my prior BASIC account status? No, they dropped me into the FREE MEMBER bucket, along with anyone else who cancels their Premium membership. When I mentioned that to them they told me they’d fix that. Did they? Give ya one guess.
But along the line of “Will it float?”… I have one major question of Linden Lab: why do 25,000 simultaneous members make SL flop around like a thief on a taser? I mean really, forgive me for being blunt, but that’s just plain lousy system design and planning. Told them that 2 years ago, I hold to that today. I appreciate the difficulties in a system like SL, but hey, at the prices they’re charging for land, SL should operate flawlessly. They’re charging top-quality prices for a less-than-beta operation. And despite heavily increased costs… people are goofy enough to pay them for such a lousy platform.
I mean seriously… $5,235 in first year costs for VIRTUAL land, sharing a server box and a single hard drive with 3 other sims, on a platform that crashes on a regular basis? Geez folks, wake up and smell the poo. I’m amazed that no one else has taken advantage of this fiasco and bringing out a competitive system. From a programming standpoint, to be honest, SL isn’t all that ground breaking.
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 17th, 2007
OK now this is interesting. In the interest of fairness, I just checked my account and it is now at BASIC status– which is interesting considering the amount of time it was set to FREE. Hmmm… either someone finally, after lengthy, lengthy ages, got around to making that change, or someone was reading these blogs very closely and did some very fast hiney-covering…
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they already had it covered and I simply wasn’t made aware of that fact. I retract all the rotten, factual things I have ever said about LL. LOL
Cocoanut Koala
Feb 17th, 2007
Y’all, it isn’t all basic members or all free members.
It’s people who don’t have payment information on file.
If you have ever bought any money or been a premium or been a basic back when you signed up with a credit card, then you have payment information on file and you aren’t going to be stopped from logging on.
coco
Lewis Nerd
Feb 17th, 2007
I didn’t see Robin as very clear on the issue whether it was simply “verified v unverified” – or the subtle difference between whether you had payment information on file, and had used it.
I know a lot of people who went to the bother of verifying accounts who are going to be rather pissed off if they can’t get online.
I was one of the many who told Philip that unverified free access forever was going to damage the overall quality of the SL experience for everyone… and I guess he’s finally caught up with the reality 9 months after everyone else did.
I would guess that on a super-fast connection with a top spec PC just down the road from the datacentre they rarely even realise there are issues with the grid that those of us thousands of miles and 30 network hops away experience day in, day out.
Lewis
Mako Mabellon
Feb 17th, 2007
Thinking about it, it probably won’t affect the really determined campers that much (since they’re only preventing new logins, not kicking out users who are already logged in). Money tree pickers (and anyone who actually moves about on the grid) will probably get logged out eventually anyway, but as long as campers choose a stable sim they can probably stay logged in for some time.
The people it’ll really cause problems for are any casual/occasional users who wouldn’t be willing to pay for an account and only log on to the system for half an hour or so at the weekends.
Lasterly
Feb 17th, 2007
“I retract all the rotten, factual things I have ever said about LL. LOL”
But the rest of the world retracts none of the crap it says about you, Wayfinder. Because we all think you’re a whiny bitch.
Anonymous
Feb 17th, 2007
No matter what the issue, no matter what the improvement, count on Prok to show up and call everybody an asshole for it. Everybody but HERSELF, that is…
Life’s too short to read this crap. I’m boycotting Prok from this day forward.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 17th, 2007
>I’m boycotting Prok from this day forward.
Good! I find that my blog has so many readers and so many very avid posters, I’m forced to move to a contingency plan. Those who are not verified, i.e. who do not give their Second Life name, are unable to post at all. Others can queue up, and if the page will load up, are welcome to write whatever vitriol they have time, and a thesaurus to use. I’m working on creating a premium plan to ensure that my more intellectual posters can always find my page available for posting their better thoughts. Thanks for voluntarily removing yourself from this overloaded system, Anonymous, Godspeed!
Prokofy Neva
Feb 17th, 2007
Wayfinder, I’m trying to work up the math on this. I’m getting $3590 for the old-priced islands at $1250, and $195 tier afterwards. So are you saying more than one island?
I’m not sure that the Lindens still put 4 on a server. I know that they surely did last year, and I used to fly around and find this with Max Case’s thing (even five servers or six, imagine!). They mixed mainland and island sims often, vexing people who got the bad luck to draw a club in either direction. The Lindens disavowed that Max’s thing was finding reliable, up to date information. Now he has a thing that shows its timeliness. I have travelled around a bit and I’m only finding one sim on a server or two sims per server. I realize this is Russian roulette. I don’t understand the reasoning behind it but I guess it’s part of keeping the whole Cat-in-the-Hat fishbowl-cake plate thing spinning. That way they don’t all keep crashing, I guess. What’s odd is that the same neighbours are used in some instances, but others are randomly revolved. Why?
Seola Sassoon
Feb 17th, 2007
I always said they would have to eventually limit who logs on, simply because there was nothing ‘preferrential’ about giving LL money, which is what they run off of.
Without paying tiers, fees, or transaction fees, all an unverified does is move money around, without contributing later. The same verified could earn the same money and be buying or paying premium.
It honestly is just too ironic, that people *demand* SL be right and that it’s their *right* to play for free and unverified just as much as those who have the info used. Where do they think servers to play come from? Electricity to run it? Thin air? I mean come on… SL is a privilage, not a right.
Sure, I’m probably classist, elitest, whatever for saying so, but when people who pay hundreds of dollars for Second Life can’t move, can’t work, and are starting to leave in favor of hundreds of bots who aren’t contributing anything to anyone but themselves, there’s only one way to get those paying members to stay. If they aren’t staying logged on, they aren’t being creative and making money, and aren’t able to handle customer service. When the money starts to drop and they aren’t making near what they pay to enhance SL (yes, even Prok, who has to deal with customers, hell especially Prok, where maintaining rentals is mostly customer service in the end) and are losing people due to ‘bad’ customer service, they pack up too.
People have a problem with product? If they can’t get in touch with those who made it, they often think they are being rude, and start spreading the bad word.
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 17th, 2007
>But the rest of the world retracts none of the crap it says about you, Wayfinder. Because we all think you’re a whiny bitch.
Posted by: Lasterly | February 17, 2007 at 09:50 AM<
Ah, another troll shooting of his/her mouth. Come back when you actually have something to say. I don’t know who you actually are because of course, you didn’t have courage to actually identify yourself. So easy to use bogus names here, isn’t it?
Chee, chop off cowardly troll heads and yet there’s more cowardly trolls…
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 17th, 2007
>Wayfinder, I’m trying to work up the math on this. I’m getting $3590 for the old-priced islands at $1250, and $195 tier afterwards. So are you saying more than one island? … I’m not sure that the Lindens still put 4 on a server. I know that they surely did last year– Prok<
Hiya Prok. The $5,235 figure came from current sim pricing: $1,695 setup fee and $295 a month tier fees. Multiply that by four and you have a total of $20,940 first year costs for stacking 4 sims to a single server box. Not exactly “beta test” fees they’re charging there.
Yup, they’re stacking 4 sims on class 4 and 5 boxes. Agreed, those are quad-core systems, but the LL claim that these are “better and faster” than single-core systems is highly questionable– and highly debated. Are we really to believe that a quad-core system, running at the same processing speed as a single-core system, will out-perform the single-core? With four sims on the quad-core? Highly doubtful. LL finally admitted there is only one hard drive and one network card on each box. Hard drives are always bottleneck factors, no matter how they’re cached. We wonder why it is that sims can’t handle more than 20 or 30 avatars (40 will drag it to a standstill). Trying to run all that info from 4 sims through a single network card might be part of the issue (dunno for sure, as I don’t know how intensive dataflow is in SL. I’m figuring it’s pretty heavy).
When we purchased our sim, we were told that it would be hosted on a “dedicated server”. LL later claimed they meant “dedicated server software”. By that claim, they could stack 10 sims to a server box if they wanted. One sim per core has some validity, if they also had a dedicated hard drive and network card for each sim. But then we’d also have the question of busline and other asset sharing. For me to believe the claims, I’d have to see a single sim operating on a single-core (or even an inexpensive dual core machine, woot!) and compare that to an equal speed quad-core with 4 sims, and do some serious data crunching. I have a feeling the results would be far different than the corporate line would have us believe. And the sad thing is… with 250gig hard drives at under $100 and network cards start at $10, one has to wonder how much in “startup fees” would be required to warrant a dedicated hard drive and network card for each sim. Some might argue that’s cutting corners unnecessarily– to the point of failing to provide the customers what was promised.
Cocoanut Koala
Feb 17th, 2007
Correction: I meant “payment information used.”
coco
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 17th, 2007
Seola, as generally unpopular as your stance is among freebie users, I have to say it’s pretty logical and realistic. There’s always a huge cry from freebie users that they “contribute” to the system and that they have as much “right” to use SL as the paying members. I have to respond, “Where do you get that idea? When do freebie people anywhere have the full rights and privileges of those paying the bills?”
I have no argument that many free users do contribute to the grid. But one thing they DON’T do… help pay the bills. They rely on the paying members to provide their playground for them. So get real people. If SL dataload is stressed, it makes perfect sense for LL to give preferential treatment to those who actually pay for the platform.
MIND YOU… not that such is the best idea. The best idea of course, is to make sure the freaking system works in the first place.
(Can you imagine Google, or Yahoo, or Unreal or Quake programmers telling their stockholders, “OH NO! WE HAVE 25,000 USERS ONLINE AT THE SAME TIME! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” LOL, heads would roll…
(Well, I guess that message is both LL-supportive and LL-condemning at the same time. Can’t claim I’m unbalanced.
)
Artemis Fate
Feb 17th, 2007
I don’t know where this “sense of entitlement” comes from with people who have free accounts. “I don’t pay anything to LL, I should have the same rights and abilities as the people who pay money!” Seola is right, SL is a priviledge not a right, and if you don’t want to pay then you ARE a second class citizen, you are a person who is taking up SL resources and giving nothing back except for the right for Philip to brag about how many users are in the world.
That being said, I do think that restricted grid access is probably not the number one implementation to solve this problem, prokofy has a point in:
“You might want to sign up for an account merely to attend a lecture, jump into an L-Word event, hear live music, or try it out when somebody wants to show it to you at work — but now you’ll be arbitrarily barred because you haven’t paid a dollar.”
Which is why I support more of an abandoment of “free accounts” in favor of trial accounts or temporary accounts. I think the best idea would be to have temporary accounts of maybe 2 weeks for people who are simply logging into SL for some particular event or just want to try it out (these could be made again and again, which unfortunately would still have the griefer invincibility problem, but no more so than now), and then still have no-tier accounts but on the old “pay 10 dollars once” system. That way, atleast LL is getting SOME money per account.
On another note, I don’t think there is any way to stop camping chairs by banning them (it certainly didn’t work with Yard Sales) or stopping the script (I agree with LL that this should be done in only the most dire of exploits), the only way to really stop it is to get rid of traffic and popular places. I support that notion honestly, because what do traffic and popular places even DO now? There used to be developers incentives but they stopped that, there used to be little bits of linden dollars paid for traffic but I believe they stopped that too. Popular places used to show interesting and unique popular builds, but now it’s a haven for conformity and zombie camping spots or Casino newbie-scams (or both for that matter).
I say both traffic and popular places have outlived their usefulness and do nothing but support traffic gaming techniques like camping. If you remove traffic and popular places, then you’re essentially moving camping too. That alone would help the grid enormously.
Ordinal Malaprop
Feb 18th, 2007
Having just been reminded of this topic by the post on Clickable Culture…
(a) I don’t think this is a serious proposition as a general solution to SL’s woes, for the simple reason that LL has been trying hard to promote SL as an arena for promotion, education, conferencing, and general unstructured use to cement it as the Number One Virtual World, all of which require unverified accounts. I very much doubt this will ever be put into play – perhaps once or twice. Those seeking a return to the paywall will be disappointed.
(b) I can’t say this too frequently – free accounts _do_ add to the entirety of SL. Those bumbling new residents, wandering around in your living room and not replying to anyone, quickly either leave or start buying stuff – rentals, prim dongs, resold freebies, whatever, they become part of the economy. And less monetarily, they make jokes, they turn up at clubs, they upload their art, they start to learn to build things, they add to the social mileu. It shouldn’t need saying, but they are people.
Access to SL is clearly not a human right. Denying people access to SL because you don’t think they’re worthwhile is not a human right either. I see much more of a sense of entitlement amongst those who would like to restrict access than I do amongst unverified residents.
Artemis Fate
Feb 18th, 2007
“I can’t say this too frequently – free accounts _do_ add to the entirety of SL. Those bumbling new residents, wandering around in your living room and not replying to anyone, quickly either leave or start buying stuff – rentals, prim dongs, resold freebies, whatever, they become part of the economy. And less monetarily, they make jokes, they turn up at clubs, they upload their art, they start to learn to build things, they add to the social mileu. It shouldn’t need saying, but they are people.”
Well, there’s no doubt that free accounts probably add to the community (With over a million of them, one of them is bound to step off the camping chairs and free sex areas to add something), but interms of what they add to Linden Labs, it’s nothing but server stress and bragging rights. They’d get no money for them to make up for the amount of server lag they add to the system, and thus with each new unverified resident, it adds to the total net grid lag but adds nothing to Linden Labs earnings which could be recycled into server maintenance to make up for that grid lag. They could be the top content developer, the most socialiably liked person around, and friend of all, but nothing will change that besides changing from unverified to a full member.
Urizenus
Feb 18th, 2007
Am I the only one that finds this scarily similar to the debate about undocumented workers?
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 18th, 2007
>Ordinal– b) I can’t say this too frequently – free accounts _do_ add to the entirety of SL. Those bumbling new residents, wandering around in your living room and not replying to anyone, quickly either leave or start buying stuff – rentals, … resold freebies, whatever, they become part of the economy.<
I’ll be the first to admit that even free users do add somewhat to the content of SL. However as has been pointed out, what they don’t add to is paying for the system.
But another thing they don’t add to (and I don’t mean to be contradictory, but)… is the economy. Why? Because there is only one way I know of to add to the economy: buy L$. Now that comes either through having a Premium account… or through actual L$ purchase. And if they are FREE accounts, they aren’t able to purchase L$ (for the most part, anyway). Thus, they don’t buy anything using their own money.
Now, they might enter a contest and win L$, which they spend elsewhere. That doesn’t add to the economy; it just shuffles change from one pocket to another. If they build something and sell it, that doesn’t add to the economy. That takes away from the economy. It’s a non-paying user that– although working and earning his pay– at the same time is possibly taking sales away from a merchant who does pay to use the system. But since merchanting usually takes land, then usually Free users don’t create and sell either so…
No, I can’t say that Free users contribute in any way to the economy. Granted, I may be overlooking something, so if I am… I’m open to other thoughts.
A Free user can contribute in content (creating things), in contribution (maybe he/she is a performer), in organization (starting or managing a group), in donation (time and effort to worthy causes). But I can’t think of any way Free users contribute to the platform economically. Can anyone else?
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 18th, 2007
Oh, and yeah Uri, I also see similarities to undocumented workers. They earn money, don’t pay taxes. While they spend that money, making some folks richer, they get that money from someone else, making that person poorer. Hopefully, through their labor they bring benefit to the later, so ultimately that person earns profit. That might seem as they are benefiting society– unless they are taking jobs away from potential taxpayers. Kind of a viscious circle of reasoning and hard to see where it comes out.
Melissa Yeuxdoux
Feb 18th, 2007
I urge Prokofy and any like-minded people to pool their funds and themselves pay for the bandwidth and CPU cycles consumed by those with free accounts. I look forward to seeing pictures of the first servers with little plaques thanking Prokofy for the donation.
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 18th, 2007
Or on the other hand, people with computers and cable internet access can come up with the 80 bucks a year and purchase their own memberships.
WHAT AM I SAYING???
Spend your money on something else instead. Trust me, you’ll be better off and won’t feel like you’ve just blown $80 down a lag tube. XD
Curious Rousselot
Feb 19th, 2007
Wayfinder said, “Because there is only one way I know of to add to the economy: buy L$. Now that comes either through having a Premium account… or through actual L$ purchase.”
How exactly does “actual L$ purchase” contribute to the economy? By that I am guessing you mean using the LindeX to buy L$ for US$. Based on what I read about the LindeX that would actually take away from the economy of SL since LL takes a cut from the seller and charges the buyer a fixed price. So, the buyer has less L$ to spend in-game than the seller had.
Wayfinder also said, “No, I can’t say that Free users contribute in any way to the economy. Granted, I may be overlooking something, so if I am… I’m open to other thoughts.”
As for non-paying residents they are indirectly contributing to server up-keep. The bragging rights that LL has on the number of registered accounts is what gets the corporate advertising money (remember IBM, Dell, and Toyota).
All that being said, I as one of the non-paying residents don’t expect the same ‘rights’ in the game as a paying resident gets. And that has been spelled out pretty clearly, I can’t own land. I don’t get a weekly stipends and now I may not be able to log-in during peak hours (all weekend maybe). So be it. I accept that. If the new restriction becomes a problem for me, I will leave and not return.
I also have a few ideas that might help improve the ‘grid’ but they aren’t trivial to implement and if LL wants to hear them, they can contact me in whatever manner they wish but I’m not going to bother posting here (since I doubt LL reads the Herald).
Artemis Fate
Feb 19th, 2007
“As for non-paying residents they are indirectly contributing to server up-keep. The bragging rights that LL has on the number of registered accounts is what gets the corporate advertising money (remember IBM, Dell, and Toyota).”
Actually, if I remember right, quite a few corporations were already involved before the free account shift over of the apt date 6/6/06. IBM I believe was one of those that was around for a while (as Jessica Qin certainly was) albeit hidden, and there was American Apparel of course, and other such ones that really started their own flow for bringing corporations over.
Certainly then, if you want to argue that point that the bragging rights of having a ton of “users” (albeit most of them dead accounts) brought over corporations that paid for their stay, then I could say how now, because of all these users clogging the grid, they’re scaring away otherwise interested corporations who see all the lag, grid crashes, and service problems and decide to pass.
Prokofy Neva
Feb 19th, 2007
>I see much more of a sense of entitlement amongst those who would like to restrict access than I do amongst unverified residents.
Well said, Ordinal
>it just shuffles change from one pocket to another.
Free markets don’t make judgements like hothouse guild economies. They don’t decide that money given as a loss-leader by a casino to a newbie to buy hair is “shuffled” from one pocket to another, but money purchased off the Lindens from another resident cashing out from his hair creation, and then used to buy hair for that buyer, is now somehow sanitized and “not shuffled”. In a free market, all the transactions are good, and as the old saying goes, “money doesn’t stink”.
You could argue that people spending money to pay out in camp chairs are foolish, but why are they lesser human beings than those who create free hair for newbies and pat themselves on the back that they are a Friend 2 Newbz? They’re not. They’re just getting people hooked on their stores to buy the more expensive stuff, just like the casino owners want you to buy at the vendors at the casino or play the slots. The camp chairs are the starter fluid the economy still needs.
I don’t oppose unverified, free accounts because the reality is, I see them spend money all the time:
o they are alts, and the mains transfer money to them so they are merely extensions of a verified account that wants more anonymity
o they are Europeans and Latin Americans and others without easy PayPal solutions, trying to get adjusted, and they usually wind up in the economy somehow
o they are dependent people — people who are either having a boyfriend pay for them, or a university professor, or even a big corporation — so what of it?
If they are just mall rats, they bring traffic, they create opportunities for business, they often work in fact, and work hard for Lindens, not just as campers but at other jobs that other people look down on like sexscorts and DJs and bouncers.
I’m not interested in making the unverified campers pay for the CPU. I’m interesting in having the Lindens *charge the landowners with the camp chairs* for their draw on the CPU and their veto on the FPS for everyone else on the sim. Once they have to pay for swiping our FPS and CPU, we’ll see a quick end to this form of starter fluid.
o
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 19th, 2007
Curious Rousselot, you make a valid point about SL using their total numbers (including freebie users) to hype PR. However, does it really attract corporations?
Artemis answered that well. Two things: 1) Any corporation with a lick-o-sense can read demographics and realize that only 5-10% of the claimed “residency” is active and 2) As Artemis pointed out, if they are acquainted at all with SL, they know the Freebie users take up a lot of bandwidth and assets without contributing monetarily to the system.
Being businesses, they may also consider that someone who doesn’t pay for membership might not be willing to pay for real world goods either. Not much draw there. They’re not interested in those who don’t spend money; they’re interested in those who do.
Curious> How exactly does “actual L$ purchase” contribute to the economy? By that I am guessing you mean using the LindeX to buy L$ for US$. Based on what I read about the LindeX that would actually take away from the economy of SL since LL takes a cut from the seller and charges the buyer a fixed price. So, the buyer has less L$ to spend in-game than the seller had.<
I misspoke– other ways to contribute to the economy is by purchasing Premium memberships and by paying tier fees, of course. However, when someone buys L$, a handling fee goes to Linden Lab. That’s profit for them, which helps keep SL alive. Although the seller loses a little in the transaction, that’s just cost of doing business (the same is true in RL). The buyer uses those L$ to make the seller richer, and the seller in turn pays fees to LL (or to someone who pays tier to LL) as a cost of operation. Thus, purchasing L$ enriches both LL and its paying customers. If not for marketing, I think it is safe to say that LL wouldn’t be renting near as much land as it is now; merchants cover a large chunk of the grid. And if not for people who purchase L$ or gain them through Premium memberships… there would be no merchants.
Mind you, that’s not how I’d do business if I were LL. It’s somewhat self-defeating, as their operating in the red fo so long indicates. Just out of curiosity, I once worked out a business plan that indicated profitability within 90 days… but I’m not about to let them in on it. XD
Chav Paderborn
Feb 20th, 2007
It was probably inevitable. As the game slows down, people start complaining who have a lot of RL money invested in it. Even I, newb-friendly as I try to be, sometimes glare in irritation as another newbie drops into the world during a time of heavy lag. I can only imagine how much more annoying it must be when one is trying to frantically make money from an island.
One thing SL lacks to be a true economy is the bottom rung. The newbie has camping, money trees, and prostitution. And that’s pretty much it.
Hazel Dean
Feb 21st, 2007
I really like the idea of getting rid of the popular places.
I also would like to have a different way to sort things in search but the traffic.
Any kind of ranking leads to people trying to cheat to get a higher rank.
Just look at the link farms and Google.
Do we need it? There are quite a lot of bright people thinking about it, and I bet there are many ways to design a search that actually helps finding things without beeing depended on the traffic.
Wayfinder Wishbringer
Feb 25th, 2007
Hazel, I think you make very valid points. “Traffic” is a useless figure because it is inflated by false traffic figures caused by camping chairs.
“Popular Places” is equally useless. Just because a group of sex-mad zombies decided to stand “dancing” (translated: cybering) at a nightclub all day doesn’t make the place a landmark worth visiting.
Traffic and number of people visiting a sim means nothing. Each person will find their own value. Rather than relying on bogus “traffic” figures, word-of-mouth should draw people to various locations. That is the most accurate and most effective method.
Get rid of traffic– and the camping chairs will vanish overnight… as well as the people taking up system resources by sitting in them.
Hey, but y’know LL… ghead and keep traffic and camping chairs. You’ve kept them this long. Why do anything logical now? Just another nail in the ol’ coffin, far as I’m concerned. XD