Second Life was a good time, we learned a lot, we made some real good freinds, and we thought we had made friends with some people who turned out not to be freinds.
Then we found World of Warcraft. . .
And then we found Eve-Online, I started another blog, after all, Nothing else to go in here that seems to be of any value.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Linden Labs Second Life accounts terminated
Headline: Linden Labs Second Life accounts terminated
Dated: 6th December 2008
Source: River Ely
Rivers-Islands.com
I started in Second life in September 2006 by creating an account and downloading the viewer. A large software package that was frail, it easily crashed and caused my internet bandwidth to rise from kilobytes per month, through mega bytes and into the giga bytes. Addiction was quick.
Over the next few months we learned what could be done in Second Life, and we learned of the possibilities, they seemed endless, there was something un-limiting about the entire immersive experience. It may have been digital, but it seemed to be so real. It took moments to realise the onscreen characters were, like my own, manipulated by real people, real world views, concepts, choices, idioms, everything! All coming together in a common location in the ethereal three dimension electronic reality transmitted from unknown servers on another planet, or so it seemed.
Today I closed several accounts. I did not abandon them, I transferred the Linden Dollars to my sub account and then selected each in turn for closure. The inventory is mostly no transfer, so nothing gets to be kept these days, and without another ‘Second Life’ to use them in, they are so much wasted funds. I have closed just nine accounts, some seven hundred US Dollars and a total of six quarterly closed accounts saving me on renewal fees. The dollar value lost today to me is about a thousand dollars in inventory losses.
Each account had a character that was unique and had a life of their own. The names are:-
Adia Bury, portrayed in the end as a black skinned gay male, he was used to demonstrate to bigots that homophobia hurts everyone.
Lief Ella, A darling of a girl who loved to have fun.
Caela Shepherd, so close to my own natural identity and created to allow a close friend to explore her own needs in SL.
Arel Allen, I devised to fly around my sims and locate ban lines as an estate owner, I never saw the ban lines, and I did not want my residents to have their second life experience degraded so Arel Allen became the ‘crash dummy’.
Kaela Kingsford, she was my gift to my partner, she played the part of the submissive, and it did not last long.
Lucy Newall, created to explore the sex industry on SL.
River Riggles, A demonic girl and angry at the world and the idiots that run it. She showed them their weaknesses in spades, she made enemies where other people were willing to turn a blind eye and walk away.
Kizzy Kerr, created in the United States, my home and my part of Floridian America. And finally,
Susan Seaton, Author, Creator, Pain in the rear end.
One of the above is the real me. All of them have traits that combine to make me. Each account meant something, they were not bots, and they were active paid for accounts that allowed me to have several different but essential versions of my own real life in the virtual world of Second Life.
Transcript Ends: Accounts Closed Permanently.
Dated: 6th December 2008
Source: River Ely
Rivers-Islands.com
I started in Second life in September 2006 by creating an account and downloading the viewer. A large software package that was frail, it easily crashed and caused my internet bandwidth to rise from kilobytes per month, through mega bytes and into the giga bytes. Addiction was quick.
Over the next few months we learned what could be done in Second Life, and we learned of the possibilities, they seemed endless, there was something un-limiting about the entire immersive experience. It may have been digital, but it seemed to be so real. It took moments to realise the onscreen characters were, like my own, manipulated by real people, real world views, concepts, choices, idioms, everything! All coming together in a common location in the ethereal three dimension electronic reality transmitted from unknown servers on another planet, or so it seemed.
Today I closed several accounts. I did not abandon them, I transferred the Linden Dollars to my sub account and then selected each in turn for closure. The inventory is mostly no transfer, so nothing gets to be kept these days, and without another ‘Second Life’ to use them in, they are so much wasted funds. I have closed just nine accounts, some seven hundred US Dollars and a total of six quarterly closed accounts saving me on renewal fees. The dollar value lost today to me is about a thousand dollars in inventory losses.
Each account had a character that was unique and had a life of their own. The names are:-
Adia Bury, portrayed in the end as a black skinned gay male, he was used to demonstrate to bigots that homophobia hurts everyone.
Lief Ella, A darling of a girl who loved to have fun.
Caela Shepherd, so close to my own natural identity and created to allow a close friend to explore her own needs in SL.
Arel Allen, I devised to fly around my sims and locate ban lines as an estate owner, I never saw the ban lines, and I did not want my residents to have their second life experience degraded so Arel Allen became the ‘crash dummy’.
Kaela Kingsford, she was my gift to my partner, she played the part of the submissive, and it did not last long.
Lucy Newall, created to explore the sex industry on SL.
River Riggles, A demonic girl and angry at the world and the idiots that run it. She showed them their weaknesses in spades, she made enemies where other people were willing to turn a blind eye and walk away.
Kizzy Kerr, created in the United States, my home and my part of Floridian America. And finally,
Susan Seaton, Author, Creator, Pain in the rear end.
One of the above is the real me. All of them have traits that combine to make me. Each account meant something, they were not bots, and they were active paid for accounts that allowed me to have several different but essential versions of my own real life in the virtual world of Second Life.
Transcript Ends: Accounts Closed Permanently.
Linden Labs, Second life loses another key investor by River Ely.
Linden Labs Second Life loses another key investor.
Today started with a thunderstruck announcement on the blogs, announcing Sarah Nerd is pulling out of her investment in Second Life by Linden Labs. I read her SNE Announcement in a flash. The words went into my head as concepts and came out as tears. If Sarah is going, then who...
I know Sarah, only casually, but as a role model and as a truly good person. I picked up my blogging tool...
Hi Sarah.
Congratulations for holding on so long, it has been a leap of faith trusting in Second Life, by Linden Labs to turn things around. You and I started about the same time in SL, though my partner and I are coming up to retirement and put a lot of our initial start up cost on credit card. Between us (Rivers Islands and NEF Holdings) we had a fair number of islands with over 600 residents, in seemingly no time at all. We saw you and others (Barts for example) doing well and that rallied us. Our business models may have been a little different, but in essence, we all invested in the expensive start up costs to recover that cost over time from the tiers the other players paid to us because they could not afford to buy a whole sim, or a whole void, or a whole parcel on the auctions.
I have already pulled out, my partner is all but pulled out and I doubt we will have an active presence in SL in the New Year. It is sad to see you go under, it re enforces our view that SL has been cheating on us, undercutting our ability to maintain our investments in them, destroying faith in a stable working platform, denying us the basic ability to forecast costs and gauge returns factors. If we cannot work out if we will lose money over time, we will not invest, that would be foolish; we do not give money away for the fun of it.
I fear the statistics for registrations, land use, dollar transactions et al, as exalted by Second Life ‘bean-counters’ like Zee Linden adhere too, are make believe. They are unreal in the extreme. The only person being fooled is the fool himself.
Sorry to see you go Sarah, you have been a formidable representation is Second Life, and your absence is a damning representation to all others confirming Linden Labs Second Life is no longer a place for those seriously interested in creating Virtual Worlds for Profit. The model, has been broken.
Condolences
River Ely
Other blogs by this author can be found at:- http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/
Sarah Nerds Post, and reply:- http://your2ndplace.com/node/1380#comment-12859
Today started with a thunderstruck announcement on the blogs, announcing Sarah Nerd is pulling out of her investment in Second Life by Linden Labs. I read her SNE Announcement in a flash. The words went into my head as concepts and came out as tears. If Sarah is going, then who...
I know Sarah, only casually, but as a role model and as a truly good person. I picked up my blogging tool...
Hi Sarah.
Congratulations for holding on so long, it has been a leap of faith trusting in Second Life, by Linden Labs to turn things around. You and I started about the same time in SL, though my partner and I are coming up to retirement and put a lot of our initial start up cost on credit card. Between us (Rivers Islands and NEF Holdings) we had a fair number of islands with over 600 residents, in seemingly no time at all. We saw you and others (Barts for example) doing well and that rallied us. Our business models may have been a little different, but in essence, we all invested in the expensive start up costs to recover that cost over time from the tiers the other players paid to us because they could not afford to buy a whole sim, or a whole void, or a whole parcel on the auctions.
I have already pulled out, my partner is all but pulled out and I doubt we will have an active presence in SL in the New Year. It is sad to see you go under, it re enforces our view that SL has been cheating on us, undercutting our ability to maintain our investments in them, destroying faith in a stable working platform, denying us the basic ability to forecast costs and gauge returns factors. If we cannot work out if we will lose money over time, we will not invest, that would be foolish; we do not give money away for the fun of it.
I fear the statistics for registrations, land use, dollar transactions et al, as exalted by Second Life ‘bean-counters’ like Zee Linden adhere too, are make believe. They are unreal in the extreme. The only person being fooled is the fool himself.
Sorry to see you go Sarah, you have been a formidable representation is Second Life, and your absence is a damning representation to all others confirming Linden Labs Second Life is no longer a place for those seriously interested in creating Virtual Worlds for Profit. The model, has been broken.
Condolences
River Ely
Other blogs by this author can be found at:- http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/
Sarah Nerds Post, and reply:- http://your2ndplace.com/node/1380#comment-12859
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Goodnight Linden Labs, Second Life has finished and we are leaving now.
Another open space has to be switched off. Truth is, I have no idea if mine is the 500th, 1000th, or 15,000th. The figures from Linden Labs are hopelessly inconsistent. Zee Linden, the Financial Officer suggested to me there were 15000 open spaces sold over the last 6 – 9 months.
If other land owners are facing the same loss of traffic and support, I imagine SL is pretty much coming up empty. Here is my ‘Ticket’ to Linden labs Concierge:-
Ticket Description
Summary: Close Region
Ticket Type: Land and Region Issues
Are there multiple monitors?: 1
Region Request: Region is down
Region Name: River Mouth
Preferred Language: English
Details: Please take down 'River Mouth' region as it is no longer needed. River Mouth is now an empty Region. Please switch it off.
Reference Ticket number: [Not Shown]
Attachment:
Solution Solved: (11/11/08 6:43 AM PDT) Hello River!
Thanks for letting us know. I have disabled the region, to prevent further cost. The final deletion will occur in 7 days from now.
Best regards, (An un-named) Linden, Concierge
Action: Close Ticket
Comment:
Sad huh
Linden Labs were quite happy to sell me all those islands, and charge me a set up fee disguised as if I was actually purchasing something. Now they are sold, or as in this case, switched off, nothing, no remorse, no care, and no emotion. (employee name), I don’t know you, but I tell you this, your employer, does not give a damn, and that’s why I am leaving SL after all this is over and done with. The spark of care and the concern is gone from Second Life.
------------------------ ticket closed ---------------------------
Its heartbreaking returning things to owners, you are returning just prims, three dimensional co-ordinates with texture images wrapped about them, but they were made by people, each has their own reason and method, each has their own unique fingerprint and reality, each prim is a reminder that some one loved what they were doing and the reason for doing it. Real people who trusted Linden Labs to look after their real dollar investment in real thoughts and real feelings. The players leave, move on, do other things, leaving you with not just an empty nest, but empty streets, places, communities, islands, hearts, dreams and missing rainbows.
Linden Labs so mismanaged Second Life, they undersold the open space sims, waited until they had sold tens of thousands, and then elected to create a price hike of 66%. Each sim they sold paid for the server they were on, the monthly tier was pure profit, a never ending income stream. Then to scare people silly, so much so, they run away abandoning their things is pure arcane stupidity. It is pure greed delivering financial Suicide. Congrats Linden Labs, you did what Reginald Perrin failed to do, you are destroying the company you have by chasing away customers who have happily invested in your product for years. Reggie admitted selling Grot, useless rubbish and the people flocked in. Yes that was a tv program, but funny as anything. You are doing it for real, it’s not funny, it is scary and sad.
You do not acknowledge your 15,000,000 residents for the most part do not log in. Of the 40 – 60 thousand log-ins per day, 50% are bots that are taking up space to ‘game’ the numbers to make some islands look busy. You don’t have land sales totalling thousands on the mainland, you have a bunch of wanna-be realtors, buying and selling to each other avatar inflating prices. The biggest number of your logins are people on a free ride, and they will not support you.
I, and my colleagues, as Island Owners, bought your product, paid your over priced tier for years on end, without complaining and now you have robbed us of our customers, increased our costs, devalued our investments and now, as we leave, we switch off empty Sims.
Linden Labs and Second Life has been fun, but it’s over and we are leaving.
If other land owners are facing the same loss of traffic and support, I imagine SL is pretty much coming up empty. Here is my ‘Ticket’ to Linden labs Concierge:-
Ticket Description
Summary: Close Region
Ticket Type: Land and Region Issues
Are there multiple monitors?: 1
Region Request: Region is down
Region Name: River Mouth
Preferred Language: English
Details: Please take down 'River Mouth' region as it is no longer needed. River Mouth is now an empty Region. Please switch it off.
Reference Ticket number: [Not Shown]
Attachment:
Solution Solved: (11/11/08 6:43 AM PDT) Hello River!
Thanks for letting us know. I have disabled the region, to prevent further cost. The final deletion will occur in 7 days from now.
Best regards, (An un-named) Linden, Concierge
Action: Close Ticket
Comment:
Sad huh
Linden Labs were quite happy to sell me all those islands, and charge me a set up fee disguised as if I was actually purchasing something. Now they are sold, or as in this case, switched off, nothing, no remorse, no care, and no emotion. (employee name), I don’t know you, but I tell you this, your employer, does not give a damn, and that’s why I am leaving SL after all this is over and done with. The spark of care and the concern is gone from Second Life.
------------------------ ticket closed ---------------------------
Its heartbreaking returning things to owners, you are returning just prims, three dimensional co-ordinates with texture images wrapped about them, but they were made by people, each has their own reason and method, each has their own unique fingerprint and reality, each prim is a reminder that some one loved what they were doing and the reason for doing it. Real people who trusted Linden Labs to look after their real dollar investment in real thoughts and real feelings. The players leave, move on, do other things, leaving you with not just an empty nest, but empty streets, places, communities, islands, hearts, dreams and missing rainbows.
Linden Labs so mismanaged Second Life, they undersold the open space sims, waited until they had sold tens of thousands, and then elected to create a price hike of 66%. Each sim they sold paid for the server they were on, the monthly tier was pure profit, a never ending income stream. Then to scare people silly, so much so, they run away abandoning their things is pure arcane stupidity. It is pure greed delivering financial Suicide. Congrats Linden Labs, you did what Reginald Perrin failed to do, you are destroying the company you have by chasing away customers who have happily invested in your product for years. Reggie admitted selling Grot, useless rubbish and the people flocked in. Yes that was a tv program, but funny as anything. You are doing it for real, it’s not funny, it is scary and sad.
You do not acknowledge your 15,000,000 residents for the most part do not log in. Of the 40 – 60 thousand log-ins per day, 50% are bots that are taking up space to ‘game’ the numbers to make some islands look busy. You don’t have land sales totalling thousands on the mainland, you have a bunch of wanna-be realtors, buying and selling to each other avatar inflating prices. The biggest number of your logins are people on a free ride, and they will not support you.
I, and my colleagues, as Island Owners, bought your product, paid your over priced tier for years on end, without complaining and now you have robbed us of our customers, increased our costs, devalued our investments and now, as we leave, we switch off empty Sims.
Linden Labs and Second Life has been fun, but it’s over and we are leaving.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Linden Labs use techo babble and spin to cheat second life users.
Second Life, Linden Labs, User Base Retention.
[QUOTE=Katt Linden]As we have mentioned previously, tailoring the Second Life platform to make it easier for new Residents to begin experiencing the virtual world is one of our primary objectives moving forward. With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce that Linden Lab has engaged award-winning interactive design agency Big Spaceship as a partner in transforming the Second Life experience.
....
[/QUOTE]
WOAH THERE.....
Yes, please, Katt, I have been, for my sins, one of those people, employed by larger companies and organisations, to teach their employees three simple things.
1) A retained customer is worth three new customers.
It is simple logic, the existing customer already knows the system, the costs, the benefits, the methods, the people, the product. They have a good experience working with you and will prefer that, to having to gain all that experience again with another company. Further, the existing customer spends little time balancing your company against the opposition, its often ‘easier’ to stick with what you have, the customer normally does not court imbalance, frustration or the need to see great change. In your jargon, it is a win-win situation.
2) Existing customers will generate new customers.
Call it buzz, hype, anything, but the existing customer base, and the easy way you work with them, is seen right away by new customers trying to find a better customer experience. In other words, they will see how much your existing customers are happy with their relationship with you; they will want to be a part of it. You cannot lose. Treat your customers fairly, happily, promptly and courteously, and the new customers will do all they can to be a part of that experience. Keep your product priced at a level that keeps existing customers, and new customers will want to fall into step very quickly to take advantage of what they perceive the existing customer are enjoying.
3) Simpler and easier communications, wins customers.
It is easy, like you were taught in University, or by the boss of your early Company where you shined, or when you told your own employees, Keep It Simple! When communication is hard, multi faceted, meaningful jargon and complicated ways of saying things, you’re telling people you do not value them. Yes. By being complicated clever, you are setting yourself up to be apart from the people you need most, the customers. If they, for example, want a red doo-hicky, or a green one, let them have one, please, if you try to tell the customer he actually wants a blue thingy-ma-bob, you lose them. Simple. Keep it Simple.
The news media, refer to the over complicated language below, as spin... Its actually quite meaningless and does nothing for you when you apply it to a customer. It means, You have little to say, but like to use clever words. In the old days, it was called smoke and mirrors...
[Quote]... Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research, design, prototype and test web sites and user interfaces that dramatically lower the learning curve for experiencing Second Life.
Big Spaceship will employ a user-centered design methodology to develop innovative solutions for streamlining the complexity of Second Life without limiting the freedom and expressiveness that makes Second Life so powerful for so many people... [/Quote]
Lets re-write that horrible paragraph.. Together...
A company called ‘Big Spaceship’ will be working with us to improve things for new players.
The second sentence above doesn’t actually say anything of value.
It does show one thing that all your customers will see and recognise instantly Katt, you have no idea what to do or say so you fill the space with techno babble. You could have said the entire post in three sentances.
Example,” We feel if we make the start-up time for new players better, we can retain more customers.” We have employed a company called ‘Big Spaceship’ to work for us to help us get it better for new players. We think it will improve things for Second Life, part of Linden Labs.
That’s all you needed to say, dressing it up in spin shows you have lost the ability to keep it simple.
http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com responding to http://forums.secondlife.com
[QUOTE=Katt Linden]As we have mentioned previously, tailoring the Second Life platform to make it easier for new Residents to begin experiencing the virtual world is one of our primary objectives moving forward. With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce that Linden Lab has engaged award-winning interactive design agency Big Spaceship as a partner in transforming the Second Life experience.
....
[/QUOTE]
WOAH THERE.....
Yes, please, Katt, I have been, for my sins, one of those people, employed by larger companies and organisations, to teach their employees three simple things.
1) A retained customer is worth three new customers.
It is simple logic, the existing customer already knows the system, the costs, the benefits, the methods, the people, the product. They have a good experience working with you and will prefer that, to having to gain all that experience again with another company. Further, the existing customer spends little time balancing your company against the opposition, its often ‘easier’ to stick with what you have, the customer normally does not court imbalance, frustration or the need to see great change. In your jargon, it is a win-win situation.
2) Existing customers will generate new customers.
Call it buzz, hype, anything, but the existing customer base, and the easy way you work with them, is seen right away by new customers trying to find a better customer experience. In other words, they will see how much your existing customers are happy with their relationship with you; they will want to be a part of it. You cannot lose. Treat your customers fairly, happily, promptly and courteously, and the new customers will do all they can to be a part of that experience. Keep your product priced at a level that keeps existing customers, and new customers will want to fall into step very quickly to take advantage of what they perceive the existing customer are enjoying.
3) Simpler and easier communications, wins customers.
It is easy, like you were taught in University, or by the boss of your early Company where you shined, or when you told your own employees, Keep It Simple! When communication is hard, multi faceted, meaningful jargon and complicated ways of saying things, you’re telling people you do not value them. Yes. By being complicated clever, you are setting yourself up to be apart from the people you need most, the customers. If they, for example, want a red doo-hicky, or a green one, let them have one, please, if you try to tell the customer he actually wants a blue thingy-ma-bob, you lose them. Simple. Keep it Simple.
The news media, refer to the over complicated language below, as spin... Its actually quite meaningless and does nothing for you when you apply it to a customer. It means, You have little to say, but like to use clever words. In the old days, it was called smoke and mirrors...
[Quote]... Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research, design, prototype and test web sites and user interfaces that dramatically lower the learning curve for experiencing Second Life.
Big Spaceship will employ a user-centered design methodology to develop innovative solutions for streamlining the complexity of Second Life without limiting the freedom and expressiveness that makes Second Life so powerful for so many people... [/Quote]
Lets re-write that horrible paragraph.. Together...
A company called ‘Big Spaceship’ will be working with us to improve things for new players.
The second sentence above doesn’t actually say anything of value.
It does show one thing that all your customers will see and recognise instantly Katt, you have no idea what to do or say so you fill the space with techno babble. You could have said the entire post in three sentances.
Example,” We feel if we make the start-up time for new players better, we can retain more customers.” We have employed a company called ‘Big Spaceship’ to work for us to help us get it better for new players. We think it will improve things for Second Life, part of Linden Labs.
That’s all you needed to say, dressing it up in spin shows you have lost the ability to keep it simple.
http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com responding to http://forums.secondlife.com
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Mismanaged to destruction by Linden Labs, Second life dies.
Blog by: River Ely
Date: Nov 24th, 2008.
River Rock was sold tonight for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers. Two years ago we started Rivers Rock as a we had moderately good land sales on the mainland and my partner had about six sims of her own. In those days, as we bought a sim, we would divide it into lots, sell them in a couple days or so and from the proceeds, fund the next sim. We literally had people falling out of the sky snapping up the lots as quickly as we could mark them out and price them.
Some days we would all join forces just to deal with the influx of visitors all hungry to buy the land at whatever price we set it for. At about this time, the Lindens broke the land search gizmo and we noticed other sellers dropping out of the sky onto our property too, staying for a few moments, and then leaving. They wanted to know our secret. We found that customers were drying up, so we set up arrival mats that greeted the customer in their own language and underneath the mats; we set the land for sale for a dollar a plot to raise it up the land listings on the land search.
The mats worked. It found us customers and ensured that we had our islands filled as quickly as we could without needing four of five of us babysitting the land for sale. In those days we snatched it back right away, else some of the people that bought out land set out for sale again so that they would get the profit without owning it. Heady days!
Towards the end of last summer, we found that selling land as a ¼ sim bought our land higher up the search ladder and that many Second Life users were keen to own safe land with a high prim count. The margins were ok as well. Life for a while was good. Even with the onset of last winter, sales were slow, but were working if you babysat the land for long enough. Then the Lindens changed the rules on the voids. Voids were low prim islands, and you needed to buy them in fours, and at least one, had to abut your main sim. The change was to enable the sims to be sold individually and without the need to butt up to a primary sim. They upped the prim count to 3750 and dropped the tier to 75USD month.
We watched helplessly and inexorably as tenants that had been with us for so long slowly migrated to the new open sims. The fact they were laggy, and sharing servers seemed to be offset by the ability to have loads of space, a good prim count and a very low tier.
Our sims began to show more and more open places, with sales not being taken up by customers. The land sales gizmo was page after page of open space sims, as fifteen thousand open space sims flooded into the market like some kind of candy confectionary currency. The lindens must have made a fortune selling them.
Finally, the Lindens, realised they had missed a massive market potential and giving away open sims was brought to a halt. Additionally they hiked the tier by 66% causing an instant massive swing away from open sims. Sadly, this was one more failure on the part of Linden Labs and instead of users returning to the normal sims, they elected to leave SL. The economy is ripe for giving up luxuries and as the USD, EURO and GBP fall in free fall on the worlds markets, food and light is more important. We paid the tiers on the islands, and the lack of income from missing tenants came from our surplus in the hopes of hanging onto the islands until the residents realised they needed real land again. The erosive nature of paying for others to play has now eroded my bank account surplus to zero and there is no more honey in the pot to sweeten the experience for those few who stayed loyal.
So tonight, I approached a lovely lady and close friend and invited her to buy the sim from me for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers, she accepted. I enterd the word 'SOLD' into the status box on my spreadsheet, and logged out, for the last time, as a sim owner in Second Life, a company mismanged to destruction by Linden Labs.
Date: Nov 24th, 2008.
River Rock was sold tonight for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers. Two years ago we started Rivers Rock as a we had moderately good land sales on the mainland and my partner had about six sims of her own. In those days, as we bought a sim, we would divide it into lots, sell them in a couple days or so and from the proceeds, fund the next sim. We literally had people falling out of the sky snapping up the lots as quickly as we could mark them out and price them.
Some days we would all join forces just to deal with the influx of visitors all hungry to buy the land at whatever price we set it for. At about this time, the Lindens broke the land search gizmo and we noticed other sellers dropping out of the sky onto our property too, staying for a few moments, and then leaving. They wanted to know our secret. We found that customers were drying up, so we set up arrival mats that greeted the customer in their own language and underneath the mats; we set the land for sale for a dollar a plot to raise it up the land listings on the land search.
The mats worked. It found us customers and ensured that we had our islands filled as quickly as we could without needing four of five of us babysitting the land for sale. In those days we snatched it back right away, else some of the people that bought out land set out for sale again so that they would get the profit without owning it. Heady days!
Towards the end of last summer, we found that selling land as a ¼ sim bought our land higher up the search ladder and that many Second Life users were keen to own safe land with a high prim count. The margins were ok as well. Life for a while was good. Even with the onset of last winter, sales were slow, but were working if you babysat the land for long enough. Then the Lindens changed the rules on the voids. Voids were low prim islands, and you needed to buy them in fours, and at least one, had to abut your main sim. The change was to enable the sims to be sold individually and without the need to butt up to a primary sim. They upped the prim count to 3750 and dropped the tier to 75USD month.
We watched helplessly and inexorably as tenants that had been with us for so long slowly migrated to the new open sims. The fact they were laggy, and sharing servers seemed to be offset by the ability to have loads of space, a good prim count and a very low tier.
Our sims began to show more and more open places, with sales not being taken up by customers. The land sales gizmo was page after page of open space sims, as fifteen thousand open space sims flooded into the market like some kind of candy confectionary currency. The lindens must have made a fortune selling them.
Finally, the Lindens, realised they had missed a massive market potential and giving away open sims was brought to a halt. Additionally they hiked the tier by 66% causing an instant massive swing away from open sims. Sadly, this was one more failure on the part of Linden Labs and instead of users returning to the normal sims, they elected to leave SL. The economy is ripe for giving up luxuries and as the USD, EURO and GBP fall in free fall on the worlds markets, food and light is more important. We paid the tiers on the islands, and the lack of income from missing tenants came from our surplus in the hopes of hanging onto the islands until the residents realised they needed real land again. The erosive nature of paying for others to play has now eroded my bank account surplus to zero and there is no more honey in the pot to sweeten the experience for those few who stayed loyal.
So tonight, I approached a lovely lady and close friend and invited her to buy the sim from me for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers, she accepted. I enterd the word 'SOLD' into the status box on my spreadsheet, and logged out, for the last time, as a sim owner in Second Life, a company mismanged to destruction by Linden Labs.
Green Dot Terracotta Armies
Written by River Ely: Nov 23rd, 2008-11-23
(Written in response to http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/11/how-many-bots-i.html )
(based upon a posting on Second Life Forums at http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=2230625&postcount=374
I pointed out in February the financial stability of owning small islands in Second Life with the intention of renting out space was declining. I was poo-poo'd It is madness in anyone’s eyes, to continually generate more and more land while the user base has been visibly shrinking, its as though they are printing money to satisfy the cost of hiring employees.
They (Linden Labs) are aware of the issues, but have (in my opinion) no way of altering the decline as the original motivators have either left the company, retired with fat cat pensions or have been fired. The bot population was evident at the beginning of the year and I found an island near one of my own, with a platform at 700 meters, crammed with 40 avatars, all in neat lines, all facing the same way and all in newbie player clothing and dress style. We called them 'Ruths', and could not understand at the time, the logic of so many people standing still for no reason. had they been dancing it might have been a party, but like Chinese terracotta armies, they stood in silent rows facing a nonexistent orator.
With the introduction of a relaxed rule set governing Voids or Open Space Sims, the final decline was initiated. A greedy move to generate more income was exploited and made available open space sims to about anyone at low cost. We had regular renters abandoning sound high prim low cost lots on conventional sims, in favour of the open spaces Sims that were starting to flood the market. For a while, it seemed the only way to retain these customers, was to convert main sims to open spaces and to buy in more and more open spaces. Still, the Europeans like myself, were fighting a losing battle in the early summer, as profit margins dropped, USA players could settle on a ten percent profit line. Sadly, with a European Player being hit with an additional VAT cost, 17.5% to 25%, we become early victims in the price cut wars. We watched our islands empty as the users followed the trail of cheap rentals and lots of space.
The Linden Income Generation factory has now changed the rules with a huge price hike on the cheap plentiful oversold Open Space population. The global economic downturn is not evident it seems in Linden Labs as they raised the cost of an Open Space sim by 66%. With some 15,000 open space sims to be affected, the price hike, if accepted by the users, would generate a massive income boost for the company.
The shifting USD-GBP ratio means that now I pay considerably more for my open Sim than I did in February, so my margins compared with the USD holder are more than depleted, they are trashed. If you are not a United States Player, I feel it is no longer an option to own islands in Second Life, that is if your aim is to generate income to cover your own player costs, plus a small profit. The frequency with which I have been giving islands away, asking Linden Labs Concierge Service to switch off open space sims and letting them expire in order to stem the flow of Money Out compared to Money In is alarming. I am but one player in SL, I had 12 Full Islands and number of open space sims, I am down to one island, with a single open space due to close in a few days time as tier rolls around again.
The summer surplus that has in the past kept me afloat until the autumnal players return like snowbirds flocking in for the perceived winter sunshine has been eroded over the last winter, hammered in the summer and is now all but dried up completely and I can no longer afford to sit on empty sims in the hopes that renters will any moment, flood in and restart the income generation.
The business model I had was sound, as was that of countless hundreds of other sim owners. The failing was the assumption by Linden Labs that everything in the garden was rosy and they failed on three counts.
One, they skewed the traffic stats and believed their results were the truth, regardless of the shouts from people like ourselves, Island owners with more empty sand than was comfortable
Two, generated more and more land for the nonexistent players thus deforming land prices beyond the point of stability.
And three, rather than introducing a package that encouraged land owners to retain and promote their land, they increased the cost of ownership to a point the market no longer would bear. They seem to have been blind to the loss of money spending account holders, and seem to have been treating bots, campers and alts as if they are real players all needing to own their ‘space’, a ludicrous and unsustainable situation to find themselves in. I bet the original creators, having sold second life to the current board, are laughing all the way to the bank.
We have been predicting the failure of Second Life for some time, it is a shame the Linden Labs Board Members could not have done the same.
(Written in response to http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/11/how-many-bots-i.html )
(based upon a posting on Second Life Forums at http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=2230625&postcount=374
I pointed out in February the financial stability of owning small islands in Second Life with the intention of renting out space was declining. I was poo-poo'd It is madness in anyone’s eyes, to continually generate more and more land while the user base has been visibly shrinking, its as though they are printing money to satisfy the cost of hiring employees.
They (Linden Labs) are aware of the issues, but have (in my opinion) no way of altering the decline as the original motivators have either left the company, retired with fat cat pensions or have been fired. The bot population was evident at the beginning of the year and I found an island near one of my own, with a platform at 700 meters, crammed with 40 avatars, all in neat lines, all facing the same way and all in newbie player clothing and dress style. We called them 'Ruths', and could not understand at the time, the logic of so many people standing still for no reason. had they been dancing it might have been a party, but like Chinese terracotta armies, they stood in silent rows facing a nonexistent orator.
With the introduction of a relaxed rule set governing Voids or Open Space Sims, the final decline was initiated. A greedy move to generate more income was exploited and made available open space sims to about anyone at low cost. We had regular renters abandoning sound high prim low cost lots on conventional sims, in favour of the open spaces Sims that were starting to flood the market. For a while, it seemed the only way to retain these customers, was to convert main sims to open spaces and to buy in more and more open spaces. Still, the Europeans like myself, were fighting a losing battle in the early summer, as profit margins dropped, USA players could settle on a ten percent profit line. Sadly, with a European Player being hit with an additional VAT cost, 17.5% to 25%, we become early victims in the price cut wars. We watched our islands empty as the users followed the trail of cheap rentals and lots of space.
The Linden Income Generation factory has now changed the rules with a huge price hike on the cheap plentiful oversold Open Space population. The global economic downturn is not evident it seems in Linden Labs as they raised the cost of an Open Space sim by 66%. With some 15,000 open space sims to be affected, the price hike, if accepted by the users, would generate a massive income boost for the company.
The shifting USD-GBP ratio means that now I pay considerably more for my open Sim than I did in February, so my margins compared with the USD holder are more than depleted, they are trashed. If you are not a United States Player, I feel it is no longer an option to own islands in Second Life, that is if your aim is to generate income to cover your own player costs, plus a small profit. The frequency with which I have been giving islands away, asking Linden Labs Concierge Service to switch off open space sims and letting them expire in order to stem the flow of Money Out compared to Money In is alarming. I am but one player in SL, I had 12 Full Islands and number of open space sims, I am down to one island, with a single open space due to close in a few days time as tier rolls around again.
The summer surplus that has in the past kept me afloat until the autumnal players return like snowbirds flocking in for the perceived winter sunshine has been eroded over the last winter, hammered in the summer and is now all but dried up completely and I can no longer afford to sit on empty sims in the hopes that renters will any moment, flood in and restart the income generation.
The business model I had was sound, as was that of countless hundreds of other sim owners. The failing was the assumption by Linden Labs that everything in the garden was rosy and they failed on three counts.
One, they skewed the traffic stats and believed their results were the truth, regardless of the shouts from people like ourselves, Island owners with more empty sand than was comfortable
Two, generated more and more land for the nonexistent players thus deforming land prices beyond the point of stability.
And three, rather than introducing a package that encouraged land owners to retain and promote their land, they increased the cost of ownership to a point the market no longer would bear. They seem to have been blind to the loss of money spending account holders, and seem to have been treating bots, campers and alts as if they are real players all needing to own their ‘space’, a ludicrous and unsustainable situation to find themselves in. I bet the original creators, having sold second life to the current board, are laughing all the way to the bank.
We have been predicting the failure of Second Life for some time, it is a shame the Linden Labs Board Members could not have done the same.
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