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.
Showing posts with label Second Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second Life. Show all posts
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Alarm bells at Linden Labs could they Herald the death of Second Life?
I am for some reason alarmed by the latest entry here, in particular one element that alarms me is the following excerpt.
The reason I am alarmed is that it tells me that whom ever produced this report is not in touch with the reality of the way Second Life is running. I get the feeling it has been written by some one who has no active working interest in Second Life and from some one who rarely gets to interact with real people on the grid. Zee may have posted the report and I know that Zee has a reasonable working knowledge of second life.
The sales above, we are told is where land in Nautilus Region is changing hands at a whopping 60L$ per square meter, and the inference is that tenants really want to live there so they are snapping the land up at really high prices. That from what I have seen is wrong. I have seen land barons buying the land at auction and then selling the plots with crazy prices of upto 120,000 L$ per plot. These are not residents moving in, but players trying to sell land at grossly inflated prices. (I am not calling them realtors as realtors that I have met are not as misguided).
These figures we are led to beleive are from a quarter when the Lindens announced a hold on new sims as there was a decrease in the demand for sims. So what is happening? I do not want to write something negative here as I know posts get pulled pretty quick these days if the Lindens disagree with the content. (Thus skewing opinion and creating an untrue bias in perception)
My questions are:
1) What percentage of land sold on Nautilus, has been resold or is up for sale? If residents were buying it to move in and stay, I would expect a low figure. If it being bought and sold, churned, I would expect a high figure.
2) What percentage of land has been reclaimed by Gov Linden in the same 1/4? How are land returns matching up to the new land being introduced, In other words, how much land made available is new, and how much has been owned before.
3) What are the current figures for:-
a) Number of avatars per region as I regularly see clutches of sims with not more than one or two avatars on?
b) Percentage of avatars who pay Tier to other players or Linden labs?
c) Number of daily logins divided between Premium members ( able to hold land) and non premium members (capable of being a bot)
The reason I ask these figures is that I get the distinct impression from your figures that the hundreds of bots we see are actually contributing to the land purchasing, user to user transactions and active daily registrations. Nothing could be further from the truth as at least one sim near my own has upwards of 40 users at a atime on it and they are all camping, many are still ruths. They are bots, not active players, and your figures dont seem to differentiate between them and regular users. That means your figures are being presented wrong, and that Zee, to be perfectly honest worried the heck out of me. If you are prepared as a Company to present figures that are not being shown correctly, what else is being hidden?
warmest but worried regards:
River Ely
I then made a second post to Zee Linden of Linden Labs:
quote
I think the user was asking for a graph showing Openspaces sales over a daily basis. The graph would show an incremental increase culminating in thousands of Openspaces.
This would no doubt be an embarresment to you as it would clearly demionstrate that something was wrong way before you as a Company elected to suddenly change the prices by 66%. Zee, can we have that graph the user asked for so that we can see the numbers of sims being sold over the 1/4 concerned. I appreatiate your candour but 20 - 30 per day doesnt stack up...
See if you sold 20 a day over 90 days you would have 2240 openspace sims, if you sold 30 a day over 90 days, you would have 2700 open space sims, I got the impression from Mark Lindens figures that we were talking 5 thousand openspace sims, thats more like 60 - 65 sims per day for 90 days.
best idea is to just show the information Zee then we can see for ourselves that Linden Labs are not adjusting the figures to make best sense.
I feel confident you will agree with me Zee
-.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.-
Zee responded with a throw away line, not what I expect from a CEO:
he said... Yes, we sold many many more than 20 to 30 per day when they were first introduced.
Thats it, in response to my simple questions above?
it prompted me to chance my arm and make a statement.
Zee, you dissapoint me, I asked, over two posts, some very simple, adroit, honest questions. I invited you to not give a throw-away comment about the open space sales, but to deliver real figures.
I tried to do it in a way that could be understood by all players with an interest, as well as some one with ten years internet experiance and a CFO to boot. If you do not have those figures, then admit it.
If you do have them ( and I hope to heck that if you are a professional CFO that you would have them plus a raft of other figures) then show them.
The questions are realy quite simple.
Treating us as idiots with yet another throw away line (above) really does not do any favours for you, it demonstrates that you really might not care as much as you want us to beleive.
Zee, please stop hiding behind quips, and deliver the numbers and the stats we asked for.
Put up, or, admit you cannot.
-------------------------
comment
It seems to me that Zee Linden, CFO of Linden Labs, may not have the business acumen he claims to have, or is dancing around the points of concern in the hopes that no one actually works out that Linden Labs is in deep water and starting to flounder. I for one am extremely cautious of investing in Linden Labs if the CFO cannot tell the simple truth when so asked by one of their investors.
Originally Posted by Katt Linden
Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for the 3rd quarter of 2008.
Over 357 auctions have closed in the new Nautilus region where property is selling at L$60 per meter or 12x the average cost of mainland property, indicating that some users have a high demand for a more structured experience.
-- Zee Linden
The reason I am alarmed is that it tells me that whom ever produced this report is not in touch with the reality of the way Second Life is running. I get the feeling it has been written by some one who has no active working interest in Second Life and from some one who rarely gets to interact with real people on the grid. Zee may have posted the report and I know that Zee has a reasonable working knowledge of second life.
The sales above, we are told is where land in Nautilus Region is changing hands at a whopping 60L$ per square meter, and the inference is that tenants really want to live there so they are snapping the land up at really high prices. That from what I have seen is wrong. I have seen land barons buying the land at auction and then selling the plots with crazy prices of upto 120,000 L$ per plot. These are not residents moving in, but players trying to sell land at grossly inflated prices. (I am not calling them realtors as realtors that I have met are not as misguided).
These figures we are led to beleive are from a quarter when the Lindens announced a hold on new sims as there was a decrease in the demand for sims. So what is happening? I do not want to write something negative here as I know posts get pulled pretty quick these days if the Lindens disagree with the content. (Thus skewing opinion and creating an untrue bias in perception)
My questions are:
1) What percentage of land sold on Nautilus, has been resold or is up for sale? If residents were buying it to move in and stay, I would expect a low figure. If it being bought and sold, churned, I would expect a high figure.
2) What percentage of land has been reclaimed by Gov Linden in the same 1/4? How are land returns matching up to the new land being introduced, In other words, how much land made available is new, and how much has been owned before.
3) What are the current figures for:-
a) Number of avatars per region as I regularly see clutches of sims with not more than one or two avatars on?
b) Percentage of avatars who pay Tier to other players or Linden labs?
c) Number of daily logins divided between Premium members ( able to hold land) and non premium members (capable of being a bot)
The reason I ask these figures is that I get the distinct impression from your figures that the hundreds of bots we see are actually contributing to the land purchasing, user to user transactions and active daily registrations. Nothing could be further from the truth as at least one sim near my own has upwards of 40 users at a atime on it and they are all camping, many are still ruths. They are bots, not active players, and your figures dont seem to differentiate between them and regular users. That means your figures are being presented wrong, and that Zee, to be perfectly honest worried the heck out of me. If you are prepared as a Company to present figures that are not being shown correctly, what else is being hidden?
warmest but worried regards:
River Ely
I then made a second post to Zee Linden of Linden Labs:
quote
Originally Posted by Zee Linden
I'm not sure if I completely understand your question - but we were selling about 20 to 30 open spaces per day before that time. Is that your question?
I think the user was asking for a graph showing Openspaces sales over a daily basis. The graph would show an incremental increase culminating in thousands of Openspaces.
This would no doubt be an embarresment to you as it would clearly demionstrate that something was wrong way before you as a Company elected to suddenly change the prices by 66%. Zee, can we have that graph the user asked for so that we can see the numbers of sims being sold over the 1/4 concerned. I appreatiate your candour but 20 - 30 per day doesnt stack up...
See if you sold 20 a day over 90 days you would have 2240 openspace sims, if you sold 30 a day over 90 days, you would have 2700 open space sims, I got the impression from Mark Lindens figures that we were talking 5 thousand openspace sims, thats more like 60 - 65 sims per day for 90 days.
best idea is to just show the information Zee then we can see for ourselves that Linden Labs are not adjusting the figures to make best sense.
I feel confident you will agree with me Zee
-.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.-
Zee responded with a throw away line, not what I expect from a CEO:
he said... Yes, we sold many many more than 20 to 30 per day when they were first introduced.
Thats it, in response to my simple questions above?
it prompted me to chance my arm and make a statement.
Zee, you dissapoint me, I asked, over two posts, some very simple, adroit, honest questions. I invited you to not give a throw-away comment about the open space sales, but to deliver real figures.
I tried to do it in a way that could be understood by all players with an interest, as well as some one with ten years internet experiance and a CFO to boot. If you do not have those figures, then admit it.
If you do have them ( and I hope to heck that if you are a professional CFO that you would have them plus a raft of other figures) then show them.
The questions are realy quite simple.
Treating us as idiots with yet another throw away line (above) really does not do any favours for you, it demonstrates that you really might not care as much as you want us to beleive.
Zee, please stop hiding behind quips, and deliver the numbers and the stats we asked for.
Put up, or, admit you cannot.
-------------------------
comment
It seems to me that Zee Linden, CFO of Linden Labs, may not have the business acumen he claims to have, or is dancing around the points of concern in the hopes that no one actually works out that Linden Labs is in deep water and starting to flounder. I for one am extremely cautious of investing in Linden Labs if the CFO cannot tell the simple truth when so asked by one of their investors.
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