LL Extends Deadline for Island Rush; Favoritism Fallout Continues
by prokofy on 01/11/06 at 9:00 pm
By Prokofy Neva, Virtual Estate Desk
In a move to quell a tidal wave of anger over the new island price hikes, only hours before opening the doors of the Land Store again, Linden Lab moved to extend the deadline for purchase of islands at the current fee of $1250 and monthly tier of $195. New rates of $1695 and $295 tier are now delayed until after November 15.
Dozens of Concierge-level customers who already own at least one island were scrambling to position themselves to refresh the page and elbow others aside, reminiscent of the sales at Filene’s basement on wedding gowns (or as our British friends explained, a sale on Oxford Street). Confusion still reigned over whether the class 4 or class 5 server would be available for pre-deadline purchases. While initially Lindens said they only had 150 servers available to sell, earlier today they appeared to be finding more in the broom closet. At press time, however, the Land Store was alternately closed, then open; tomorrow the whole web site will be closed.
Fallout continued over what many saw as unfair favouritism for a select group of customers who got an early tip-off to the price-hikes and may have taken unfair advantage, though proof could not be found. While disgruntled would-be buyers singled out Anshe Chung, claiming she placed an ad in the Classifieds for $80,000 offering $1500 for any used island, in fact the date of her ad backs up her claim that the Herald’s scoop prompted her to place it, following a drought of hardware supply from LL
Meanwhile, Philip Linden has been massively spinning the move; in an interview with Reuters, El Presidente claims that the 52 percent tier increase is due to his new-found love of mainland values. “It’s not a healthy economy if people can just arbitrage without adding value,” Philip told Reuters, implying that island dealers merely buy and flip land and don’t really work hard or create any value. “There is a benefit to the commons of having people stay in the same space — a cool place on the mainland is a public good for the overall society,” he added. “It’s fine to have an island … but from a rational perspective you should probably pay a little more, because the community loses a little bit when you do that.” Mainlanders began pouring off their old homesteads to newly-developed island paradises in droves this year, to the point that island production and sale now exceeds mainland sims auctioned. They were prompted by clubs moving in next-door and placing a veto over their frame-rate or by such sign blight and extortion such as the Bush Guy.
Islanders, of course, already pay more for their rentals ($20-25 per 4096 m2 and at least $50 US purchase cost for deed rights) than do mainlanders for rentals ($15-20/4096 m2), but they pay less than they would if they were to risk becoming mainland owners at $9.95/month subscription and $25 tier for 4608 m2.
The interpretation of the sudden move by the Lindens has been as wild and varied as the different political groupings in SL to express various interests. Platformers, among whom are the select group of developers, programmers, builders, and artists who were on the special insider list tend to justify the move as a rational business cost, and to say the servers had been undervalued since the old days of utopian Lindenor. In an interview with Reuters, metaverse consultant and top content creator Aimee Weber,described the move as hurting “land renters the most because they make their profit on large numbers of users renting lots of land at a small markup.” As with Philip Linden himself, it appears to be a common perception of content-creators that the land business merely involves profiting over the tier differentials, and isn’t a form of content-creation in itself.
Meanwhile, island developers who perceive their work as the ultimate value for SL in creating customer retention and higher rates of log-ons, see it differently. At a Dreamland town hall called by Anshe Chung last night in Central Park to quell concerns of her anxious customers, the Business Girl reassured her citizens (as they are titled), that she would grandfather old tier rates until at least Sunday night, and that afer price increases, they could be assured of increased value albeit with slower growth due to new costs.
Apparently to differentiate herself from land-flippers, Anshe speculated that LL may have become unhappy at the growth of tacky beach and shopping sims. “I think if all estate sims would have been used like Dreamland, building nice landscape, small continents, communities then this price hike would not have come,” she said, adding that perhaps LL should consider different price scales for community builders.
Currently, mainland land groups enjoy a 10 percent tier relief bonus on group-donated tier, an incentive that island developers have long resented and called upon LL to remove as they have removed other subsidies. Mainland dealers counter that as Governor Linden’s estate tenants, they are subjected to sign-griefing, blight, and land extortion and deserve the incentive for sticking it out.
In a whopping 529 responses to the belated announcement of the price increase, immersionists speaking out against the move seemed to see it as a violent disruption of their special culture by the greed of big corporations, and also see it undermining hard-working mom-and-pop businesses in land rentals or content creation and sales accepting micropayments.
“I am no land baron, but I own two sims, and have paid thousands of $$ to play this “game”,” writes Delicious Demar. “I have an increasing sense of worry that, since I am not really important to LL, my own investment (which is significant to me), is going to be pulled out from under me, as the Lindens change a “policy” or a “feature” without fully thinking through the effects of it.”
At least one well-known island dealer, Hiro Queso, told his customers yesterday that regrettably, he was leaving the business now and gave them 30 days’ notice to pick up their things. His chief competitors greeted them with open arms in the sometimes cut-throat, competitive world of Second Life, which essentially involves about 19,000 landowners, many of whom sublet their land, chasing an estimated 5,000-7,000 rentals customers. (Most of the “million subscribers” just fly around, go to clubs, and then log off, not to return.)
Other lesser-known businesses were more quietly folding their tents even as enthusiastic new land dealers emerged to hit the heated-up mainland market. At press time, no parcels were available on the mainland “for sale” list under $4/meter — a striking phenomenon that actually preceded the price-hike announcement as older and presumiably wealthier players have been coming into the game and have been willing to buy land and spend more. ACS hasn’t yet cornered the prime new waterfront parcels overnight as it did during past land shortages, but new “baby barons” were briskly selling mature prime for as much as $13/m to unsuspecting newbies. It’s now routine to find first-landers smartening up quickly out in first-land hells and pricing their subsidized 512s for re-sale at $3500 and above.
One resident contemplating the SL land rusn, John Horner, was moved to recall Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash and description of “The Street,” the crossroads of the metaverse, the source of the Lindens’ inspiration:
“In the real world–planet Earth, Reality–there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. At any given time, most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s. Perhaps a billion of them have enough money to own a computer; these people have more money than all the others put together. Of these billion potential computer owners, maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own computers, and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. Add in another sixty million or so who can’t really afford it but go there anyway, by using public machines, or machines owned by their school or their employer, and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City.”
“That’s why the damn place is so overdeveloped. Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives.”
Jesseaitui Petion
Nov 1st, 2006
I`m glad I found out about second life hearld- I appreciate your writings. They`re real eye-openers.
The quote you chose from Delicious Demar was something I read earlier on that hit me the hardest.
As for Hiro- Me, my gf, and our very good friend have been renting with him. I think his actions say a lot.
IMO- People have been growing their own business yes, but while doing so have been forming what is like a partnership with LL, if you will. LL has now destroyed it. Great sims that made SL a worthwhile place to be for some, will now be gone. LL is destroying the very substance which kept them running.
While I understand there are still SIM owners who can easily afford the 195, there is a good chunk of development that barely gets by with the 195 fee. They, Linden Labs, have shot themselves.
Urizenus
Nov 1st, 2006
I’m glad you brought up the Reuters story, Prok, which puzzled me in one respect: why did Adam Reuters refer to your earlier story as a ‘leak’ and not the scoop that it was? It’s not like this was a leak of Linden state secrets. Some developers, like the Electric Sheep, were told about the coming change in prices before it was announced. This wasn’t a leak to the Sheep etc. but a policy decision by LL to let some developers know first. The Herald broke the story that this had happened. Where was Reuters? And what has Reuters added to the story besides give us Philip Linden’s spin. Crimey, is Reuters going to be the Official Organ of Linden Lab now?
Prokofy Neva
Nov 1st, 2006
Yes, I worry about Reuters becoming the state organ and I asked Adam Reuters today if he had already decided to side with the Platformers/Augmentationists’ Party and dis the Worlders/Immersionists Party. He assured me he was going to look at all sides and within a month we’d see this balance. Stay tuned. However, I don’t think it will be the gritty “Always Fairly Unbalanced” coverage that you really need to handle this virtual world, Uri, as you know.
My story is not a “leak,” of course. What happened is that there were leaks out of the FIC camp and out of Kremlinden Lab itself from what essentially was their internal memo not meant to be seen by the public. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. They made a business-as-usual announcement to their inner core — something they then later tried to spin on the Blob as a “sounding board” kind of thing. I doubt sincerely that it was any kind of “kicking around ideas”. It was an insider’s announcement, meant to let people know new prices were in the works to give them a jump on what’s left. And because this same bunch may have crabbed a bit about the sudden notice of $1500 a year for what amounts to a domain name — something quite a few bitched about (getting your own company’s name as a last name inworld) — though if they read the much-maligned forums, they could have seen the names discussion in the feature suggestions thread going on for more than a year, probably longer even than “Is War in Jesse Upon Us?”
LL didn’t “leak” to the Sheep; they *told8 them. Yet among the inner core there were leakers. Zee Lindens’ initial response was to say the leaking was “unfortunate” — as if they should have kept better discipline and not broken ranks. That’s outrageous. There is no reason at all they couldn’t have announced this normally, or “kicked around the idea” with at the publicly-open Concierge Round Table on Friday, 27 October. They didn’t — though all those people had many concerns and all own at least one sim.
More to the point, they could have put the announcement on the Blog itself when they decided to make the increase.
Time and again, we’ve been through this horribly harsh cycle. First, the Lindens in their own camp, with their own inner advisors from the core, make some dramatic or harsh decision, sometimes because they are driven to it by economic or technical necessity, sometimes merely because they feel like it or wish to have an experiment. Remember, they are not called “Lab” for nothing.
Next, they then float it in town halls, community meetings, their own blogs, whatever — making it have the patina of democratic discussion, though it is a done deal. That’s only the massaging and adapting of everyone to the reality. Everybody freaks and screams; they pretend to ponder.
Remember that time in early 2005 when Ryan Linden sent out a letter to everyone asking what they thought of whole sims being auctions for $1000 opening bids?. The auction sunk like a stone for the next two days — nobody bid, and stuff went for a song to the only bidder, Anshe. Everyone felt it was going to have a dramatic impact (it did when it was then in fact implemented in June — it caused huge inflation and devaluation of the Linden — and that’s why Zee’s very partial memory of island or mainland sim price increases not causing shock is fake — it did.)
And then with these chanegs, they then wait to see how huge the outcry is. After 6/06/06 when they announced the unverifieds, people howled, and they quickly coded a solution — land-banning by payment status. And they said openly that they used this very method of forcing themselves and the community to prioritize through outraged agony like that. This is appalling. I don’t know where they get that concept — Stakhanov? We can’t keep serving as guinea pigs for that approach.
So they do it now — throw it up, see how they react, mitigate, look good for abating the misery, think up the next thing.
Is this how software is normally developed, even in games?
Szentasha Salome
Nov 1st, 2006
I think Reuters are doing the best they can, and will do better over time. Most mainstream news outfits don’t really “get it” yet about how virtual communities and economies function. If anything, Philip should at least know that if he does something incredibly stupid, people are going to hear about it because there is someone asking questions.
Cat Cotton
Nov 2nd, 2006
“There is a benefit to the commons of having people stay in the same space — a cool place on the mainland is a public good for the overall society,” he added. “It’s fine to have an island … but from a rational perspective you should probably pay a little more, because the community loses a little bit when you do that.”
WTF is that suppose to mean? Whats the difference when people can teleport anywhere they want freely. “Rational”, oh yes please do be rational Philip and realize we are not your little pawns to be moved around as you see fit. For what purpose? So we can better see the Coca Cola billboard as we pass from one sim to another?
How does the community lose anything when an island isn’t visable?
Just when I think I had heard it all, they come up with some more crap I can’t stomach.
Cat
Bujila
Nov 2nd, 2006
Any of the Lindens ever wondered *why* the islands are so popular with renters? Could it have something to do with the huge garbage bin the mainland has been for quite some time now with the terror spread by clubs, malls and casino’s on a 4096 parcel consuming 90% of sim resources? With griefers making life hell for people who only want a plot for their house and friends? With people moving on to a next, quieter, spot to escape from all this only to be confronted a couple of weeks later again by all of the above mentioned? And none has ever been done to tackle these problems?
You ever considered this, Lindens?? Perhaps you should for once, and create a mainland where people do not feel the need that they have to flee from all this, instead of trying to force them back by this kind of outrageous “policies”.
broadstuff
Nov 2nd, 2006
Second Life, First World Economics and the Third Degree
Dastardly Dealings in 2nd Life – our man Dark Harlequin reports:.
Back in May real life contract law started to impact 2nd Life (see Wired article for example) as sharp practitioners and sharp practices (allegedly) moved in.
However, seems like 2nd
Prokofy Neva
Nov 2nd, 2006
Bujila, I hear you — although I will say you’re exaggerating the situation by claiming that all the mainland is this way. It’s not. I can vouch for *my* mainland anyway; and so can a lot of my neighbours.
It’s true that the club hijacking of CPU is an outrage, and one that the Lindens are contemplating but not coming up with solutions for. I have a poll going in Ross on the infohub there with the question: “What can be done about laggy clubs?” And the answer most selected is “Move to powerful servers” and the one least selected is “Force people to move away from them” — yet it’s THAt solution that the Lindens default to. They may not have powerful servers that they can offer without a huge cost — clubs buy up cheap land and invade your sim precisely because they are often impoverished entities with no working capital and no ability to go on an island.
Of course, reducing camp chair usage would help a lot, as that artificially inflates traffic. You wish these poor clubs would stop throwing money at campers to get traffic, when the traffic doesn’t demonstrably lead to anything anymore (they imagine it does fill out vendor sales and that induces vendors to pay higher rents). Honestly, it’s such a toy world sometimes, and people are so stupid in it — you wind up paying out more to campers than you can take in, unless you are even more unscrupulous and force them to bet on slots in between camp payouts to suck out even more Lindens from them.
I constantly raise these issues with Lindens. And they constantly tell me that their value of “I can do what the fuck I want on my land” is uber alles, can never be mitigated in the slightest — even when it severely limits the right of another guy to do “what the fuck he wants on his land” because either he has no FPS, he has ugly signs devaluing his land and view, or he has extortionist grief towers clogging up his land access. This side of “my entitlements uber alles” is one the Lindens remain absolutely blind and deaf to — it’s incredible.
There are a few simple ways to address these things which I’ve endlessly blogged about and will have to blog again, but maybe it involves having Governor Linden covenant with Her people — not have vicious fucktards covenant out others with long, winding, excessive, vindictive rules, which is what always happens in Second Life, but have Governor Linden lay out 3-4 very very simple concepts like “don’t put spinning crap in the sky” or “don’t block the view behind you with a giant tower; be considerate” and then have people optionally, voluntarily sign on to those covenants either as they buy on the auction or later inworld, if 2/3 of the property owned on the sim has that box clicked off on it on the menu.
People endlessly reject such simple solutions already implemented without any scripts in SL because they always look at it in the literalist, tekkis, all-or-nothing fashion. “If we can’t get 100 percent compliance it can’t scale.”
Mr. F.
Nov 2nd, 2006
“Just when I think I had heard it all, they come up with some more crap I can’t stomach.
Cat”
And yet you’re still here.
You’re going to leave soon, right?
Cocoanut Koala
Nov 4th, 2006
Well, they do have the rule that you can’t block someone’s lot in on all four sides. Wonder why they stopped there? They made that rule so long ago, but never any other sensible rules.
I have, in recent months, started to think of and refer to the Lindens as the “‘Let Them Eat Cake’ Lindens.”
My husband and I were at the Louvre exhibit at the Atlanta High Museum night before last, which was all about the kings’ collections of art during the time of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI.
These works were from the kings’ own collections, to decorate the castles where they lived in splendor, surrounded by their courtiers and favorites, who vied for the right to put the king to bed at night and get him up in the morning, while the citizens starved in the streets.
I came across a display of large pictures of the three kings themselves, and the last one, it was noted in the accompanying text, did lose his head to the guillotine.
What did I think of? I stood there in the midst of these fabulous art treasures and thought of LL, lol.
The entire mindset of those kings was precisely like that of LL, as exemplified in Philip’s seemingly clueless remarks above, in the new CFO’s remark that prices are going up because “corporations can afford it,” and in most of the actions and words that have come from LL in the past year.
coco