To Free Or Not To Free

55 Responses to “To Free Or Not To Free”

1. Argent Bury, on January 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm Said:

   I think this is another symptom of conflicting attitudes towards the “purpose” of SL. Some people are here fully expecting to make a living wage, or at least to get paid the same amount for work as they would in FL. For others the payoff is in showing off their skill or adding to the community. Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes.

   For me, half the fun of SL is it’s ok to *be* an amateur, and you might even get paid for it! With effort my skills will improve in time, but I’ll never be as skilled with, say, texturing, as a person who does it 8 hours a day in RL. But *I* don’t come here to do what my human does.

   Also, if we are going to start charging RL rates for everything, how much would it cost to buy a prefab house? $250,000US? I know that’s an extreme example, but the closer we get to RL rates for things, the harder it’s going to be to enjoy ourselves here.

   As for economic solutions, the only ones I can think of are too radical and would kill SL. If amateur artists are able to give out freebies because they can always buy more L$ to pay rent, make it so you can’t buy L$ anymore, close the economy so the *pros* can get all the cash. If land barons are wrecking things, make it so all land in SL is held by LL and don’t allow subletting. Or maybe the pro artists can form guilds in the medieval fashion, suppressing anyone who tries to undersell them. All of these would work, but none sound particularly nice.

   Maybe the economy really does need to be closed off from RL, no longer tied to US$, and with no way to take your money back out of the system. Tie it to server cycles or something. But someone has to pay for the hardware the whole thing runs on. How do we do that?

   Anyway, I guess I’m saying I don’t have the solution either, but this whole issue is tied into a lot of bigger questions about the “purpose” of SL (as if there is one), and it’s future.

   Best,
   Argent

2. dandellion, on January 11th, 2008 at 9:00 pm Said:

   Thanks for making things more complicated :) (I really mean that)
   I was fighting with this one for days, so I’ll let comments pile up and opinions show up without me for a while….
   Just one correction… if we count FL rates, prefab house will not be 200.000US$ but more like 10-100US$ (first impressions based on exchange3d.com)…

3. Argent Bury, on January 11th, 2008 at 9:21 pm Said:

   I was fighting with this one for days

   Yeah, you’ve pretty much wrecked my day now. I hope you feel good about it. :P

   I can’t stop turning this problem over and over in my head now, and I am *not* an economist.

   After further thought I think it boils down to this – Every choice we make about virtual economies is really the answer to one question: Why are we here? To make money, to have fun, to learn, to enjoy, or some mix of the above?

   We can make an economy that answers that question in any way we want. Now we have to see which answers are mutually exclusive and which aren’t, make that clear to ourselves and others, and proceed from there.

4. Zippora Zabelin, on January 12th, 2008 at 12:44 pm Said:

   I’m not an economist either – don’t know a thing about economic processes actually – but I have some thoughts about this subject anyway…

   First, I think it’s an illusiion to get rich in SL (somehow always the first thing people in RL ask when they hear you are in SL) Of course, *some* people make a lot of money in SL, but that isn’t different for the conventional internet: a lot of people are making their living of it but the vast majority are “just” consumers. If importance of SL or any related form of 3Dnet will increase in future, it won’t be different.

   Second, one of the big attractions of SL is that it is cheap (or even free if you’re not very demanding). Charging RL rates would be the end of SL. TMHO even the hard US$ tiers are still very reasonable: paying a few dollars a month for tiers and premium account is not that much for a “real” life, isn’t it?

   At last I wonder if free items really have that big impact on our shopping behaviour. As for me, most of my human skins (and I own a lot ;-) )are freebies. I only have that many, because they *were* free, otherwise I would have stayed with one or maybe two skins, like I do with my fantasy/neko’s now. And it is the same for clothing.

   Oh and another thing coming up my mind… *quotes*:”There is more and more people coming to second life. That makes more and more content creators, many of them trying to find their place on the market.” More people are coming indeed, and many of them content creators, but most of them will be consumers as well. Even if you have the skills to make your own stuff, you will still buy other things, or not? Demand is growing too, not only the supply. (This discussion has also been on the Dutch SL-forum a while ago, I have to look it up again…)

   *Wonders* Is SL now even making me interested in economics, first time in my life? ;-)

5. Peter Stindberg, on January 12th, 2008 at 8:33 pm Said:

   That is the reason why my in-world translation/copywriting agency does not accept pure RL jobs. The business model only works in-world. Would I do RL jobs for SL fees, I’d erode RL pricing dramatically (and oh I *DO* get requests for RL jobs). If I’d charge RL prices, I’d be out of business in a week. So in-world jobs for in-world fees.

6. dandellion, on January 12th, 2008 at 8:52 pm Said:

   Argent, the part of the SL’s charm is that it is not decided if it is a game or not.
   Zipp, Yes… more residents mean growing demand too… that also drops prices. And yes, building some things doesn’t make you not buying other people’s stuff. On contrary.
   Peter, what is the difference between translating a chunk of text in and out of the SL? This might be the trail…..

7. Peter Stindberg, on January 12th, 2008 at 9:06 pm Said:

   Glad that you ask. When the work is concerned, there is NO difference at all, if you apply the same quality measures (which I and my staff do). So for a typical notecard, the RL fee would be e.g. 30 US$, whereas the SL fee would be 500 L$. This sounds extremely lopsidedook at it from the RL perspective.

   You DO need to look at it from the SL perspective though. What is 500 L$ woth? New good quality hair. A great new dress or two. An above average skin. A weeks rent for you 512sqm parcel. So in fact me and my translators do the same work as we do in RL. For – what it seems – a 3rd world wage. But me and my staff are willing to do so because we think in in-world terms. And in in-world terms, our work gets acceptably compensated.

8. London Spengler, on January 12th, 2008 at 9:17 pm Said:

   You know, I just remembered a discussion about open source a little ago, and how giving away your own time could damage other people’s work and lives :-p.

   Anyway, I don´t think the problem are the awfully low wages and free content… to me SL is mainly a barter based economy; yes, some people tries to make their RL income here, but most of usI whould be more than happy with our work giving us enough expenses money. Scripting your way in virtual life is a thousand times better that hacking critters for experience and gold.

   The problem is the price of land. I mean, they use a server to hold four sims, they probably make for it’s cost with only one sim, and then there is the huge monthly fee! Simply, land prices doesn’t match the rest of SL economy.

   If I hadn’t to pay 10.000 L$ weekly for a parcel I whould be happy asking for 100 or 200L$ for the hud, knowing that it whould be crappy money, but also, that I whould pay crappy money for a lot of wonderfull things.

   (btw, hud sales are stalling… january recesion or the existence of a freebie limited version? :-p)

9. dandellion, on January 12th, 2008 at 9:39 pm Said:

   I wouldn’t go that far to say that OS software is damaging other ppl’s wok and lives. On contrary, it is winshit that does most of the damage.
   And in the case od SL, it is not free part of the market but the market itself. As you said, it is the price of the land.

   One thing that I resisted to put in the post trying not to complicate it even more is when couple of months ago Anshe released a pile of items priced 10L$. What was that but underselling a lot of creators. And I still don’t know why the hell she did that. Those items were not her main products so we can assume she was killing any competition. She was killing the creators who are renting her land. She was killing her customers.

10. Argent Bury, on January 12th, 2008 at 9:42 pm Said:

    Argent, the part of the SL’s charm is that it is not decided if it is a game or not.

    I don’t disagree. I guess my point is that the structure (or lack thereof) of the virtual economy makes some activities easy, and some hard, and thus shapes whether we are here to make RL money, or play at business, or just play. And people are always going to try to answer that question one way or another. Maybe we have to fight to keep it unanswered? I don’t know.

    Peter, as someone who’s considered Japanese translation work in SL, I think your “RL rates for RL work, SL rates for SL work” is just excellent. I will use this if I ever get into that line of work.

    And that idea, along with London’s point about land prices got me thinking. Maybe the work we do here, the money we make here, and the things we buy in-world are part of the “game” (or activity, or hobby, or play, whatever), and land tier is really more like a First Life “premium membership fee” we are paying to Linden Labs in return for a wider and richer experience from the service. Want more ways to make social connections, or to start a business, or build your dream? Then pay the “premium fee” of land tier and you can get that. Maybe the Lindens need to restrcture the system so that fact is more transparent and fair.

    OK, I’m rambling now, and it’s not even my blog :P

11. London Spengler, on January 12th, 2008 at 10:06 pm Said:

    I whouldn’t, and never said, that OS sofware “is” damaging other ppl’s work and lives. Still, I cannot understand why saying that it “sometimes” do it is such a shame.

    Negating that Open Source, good as it is, and I think it is, can also be damaging is blinding yourself; paraphrasing a most favorite blogger of mine…

    “Generally, that should be a good thing. Prices drop, quality raises. Residents should be glad. Bullshit!”

12. Eidur, on January 13th, 2008 at 1:54 pm Said:

    That’s the paradox and the main problem in SL. In “first” world economy, a growing demand means necessarily a rise of the prices. In SL it’s happening the contrary. Also, the “currency issue” is not to be underestimated. In RL economies there is no unlimted amount of currency. So more “residents” in SL should translate in a raising of the price of Linden currency. Of course this would mean the end of SL (it would be not so cheap anymore). But now try to imagine this. A small RL country could invest a large amount of RL currency to buy Linden dollars and “speculate” on it. No. It won’t work. The price will stay fixed between 265 and 270 L$ x U$. That means that no serious investment can be done if not on land (where the bound between real and virtual currency is more tight). And even there, the Lindens can release new land at any time (while in real world we simply can’t) causing a massive drop of land market and biz (it already happened more than once).
    That’s why according to me, every biz model in SL have to beas main purpose “fun”. Yes right, FUN. Finding a way to repay the whole monthly tier is difficult for a sim owner but not impossible. Once you achieve that, just let your mind run free and maybe something will follow providing that it is possible to relize a “productive leak” of SL events in RL (hoping that someone would get interested). I still hope of more opportunities to come in the long run. Atm, I am sorry to say that every single project I am willing to realize or work on it, has to cope with the repayment of monthly tier.

13. Peter Stindberg, on January 13th, 2008 at 3:06 pm Said:

    Very good comment, Eidur, and I agree 100%. My SL company is “fun” for me. It allows me to have a certain SL lifestyle without the injection of RL money. It allows me to play/experiment with being an entrepreneur, which I am not in RL. It allows me to meet all sorts of interesting people (staff, clients) in a sort of “business roleplay”. Mind you – this does not affect the value or quality of my services. Running a virtual company in a virtual world for virtual money does not mean it’s crap. But for me it’s all fun. If I feel I’d rather hang out with friends or build or script or go exploring – I do this instead of trying to find new clients. Me and my staff work for third world wages because we have FUN doing so, and because in a SL perspective it is right and acceptable.

14. Rheta Shan, on January 13th, 2008 at 5:12 pm Said:

    Hiya all,

    reading both the original post and the comments, it strikes me that the analogy between SL’s economy and the RL economy of nations might be pushed further to understand the problem of wage structures vs. land investment Dandellion started with.

    Take SL wages for SL work : Peter Stindberg has rightly pointed out that weighing SL wages against their SL value gives an entirely different result from comparing them to their value IRL : after all, in world prices of anything but land are on a scale to the wages paid. That is the viewpoint of the domestic economy : prices and wages on a scale that balance inside the boundaries of the economy.

    The translation into RL bucks of SL prices however seems more akin to foreign trade and investment to me : basically, you apply the scales of an entirely different domestic economy to yours. Remember it plays both ways : income from L$ might be Third World level when compared to your RL needs, but your buying power is that of a First World inhabitant in the Third World too, even if you have but a very modest RL income.

    Structurally, LL has put the land market firmly outside the boundary of the domestic SL economy by making it happen in RL bucks, not in L$. In a way, it’s a bit like importing oil IRL, which is always traded in US-$ on its own price scale : you might have a quite nice and stable domestic economy, with people earning enough to have a pretty high standard of living, once you have to buy foreign oil — or any other commodity for that matter —, your domestic market balance does not matter the least, and you might be very disagreeably surprised by the way one translates into the other.

    The land barons are thus active in a different part of the economy than the in-world content creators (foreign trade, not domestic) ; but I am not sure you can say that means they are the only one to do « real biz ». Sure, their income translates into a lot of economic power in domestic terms (e.g. L$), but so does mine, which I earn in a way entirely unrelated to SL. They also have to translate their domestic income back onto the foreign market to cover their US-$ expenses, while keeping in-world prices adequate to the domestic economy (or the market would collapse). I very much doubt the US-$ income of anyone but the billionaires of SL (e.g. Anshe) would impress me IRL.

    I think the comments have also pointed out where the major irritant for SL content creators is : the time you invest to create it straddles the boundary between the economies. Ultimately, this is but a matter of perception, as Peter Strindberg also rightly points out : your atomic butt on that chair is no more / less IRL when you Photoshop textures than when you are logged on. It all ultimately is SL time ; if you can earn better using that time IRL, do so. You can’t get rich in-world otherwise than in in-world terms. It’s a low power domestic economy, period. Better enjoy your time.

    As a footnote, I’d like to add I can’t see that free products endanger the domestic economy : IRL, the presence of free software has not put software companies out of business per se either. Many kept competitive by offering advantages over the free product (the ominous Window’s one over Linux still being usability for the noob user), or by focussing on other aspects of the market. Free products have been around SL before, the thing that makes people anxious about Eloh Eliot releasing not only the full perm textures, but even the PSDs of her skins is the sheer quality of what she releases. As far as I’m concerned, the competition has just been seriously upped, which I fail to see as bad thing, because I prefer that to a regulated economy of the medieval type. Make better skins than Eloh’s, offer customization, find interesting ways to add to their value and stop complaining, please.

15. It pisses me off « Pandora’s box, on January 13th, 2008 at 9:47 pm Said:

    [...] know I am repeating myself, but I believe people is basically good. Even when I readed at dandellion’s place about this ugly, mean and foul mouthed land baron, I still think he probably isn’t evil, [...]

16. ArminasX, on January 15th, 2008 at 2:30 am Said:

    I think that SL has what might be called a micro-economy. Costs are low, as are wages, similar to that of a third-world country. Fortunately, “imports” and “exports” from and to our third-world virtual reality are difficult to accomplish and therefore the economy is more or less standalone. This is a good thing, because it means that goods and services are based on consistent, predictable in-world activities. Some objects cost more in SL because it took longer to make them – it is not very feasible to say, import a complete complex object from outside. Instant importation of outside stuff would probably cause the economy to collapse. Thus SL construction labor has consistent value for everyone and I think is the basis for prices of many objects and services. Yes, there are those who give things away, and there are those who charge outrageously too – but I believe that the majority of items are priced based on the cost of their creation.

17. dandellion, on January 15th, 2008 at 6:50 am Said:

    That is karma, nothing else. I started with a confusing situation hoping that comments will bring some light. But, more we go less I know.

    First things, first….
    From comments, other blogs and from some conversations in-world I got the picture that I sounded much anti-freebies here. Which is… well, not true. Intention of the post was to raise the question about SL economy not to blame freebies. But I am far from staying silent about some questions just because they might touch sacred zones of freebies, open source or something else. Which brings us to….

    Open source…
    London, I am OK with the possibility that OS might be damaging but I really don’t see how it can be inside healthy system. Rheta, windows being user- and beginner-friendlier than linux distros dedicated to common users is an illusion. It might be considered as such for people who spent last five or ten years in windows but then we are not talking about user-friendliness but about habits. But this is offtopic…

    Back to topic, that is economy….
    Eidur, there is no unlimited amount of lindens in world. Otherwise, we would see inflation in a matter of weeks. Similarly, LindeX should break if somebody tries to break it buy buying or selling huge amounts of money. Personally, I find stable L$ as one of better achievements of LL. Yes, they made a mess a couple of times with land but it seems they have learned the lesson when they made land go on auctions.

    As Rheta said, land barons and content creators are active in different parts of economy, but they, as we saw, must meet. And yes, it is expected that land prices should follow the market, but land owners are not those that dictate the price of the land. Behind them is Linden Lab. It is them that makes land prices. If we keep thinking about that…. by land price Lindens can control the ratio of amateur/pro creators, that is… the quality of the in-world content. And that is the question I’d like to raise here!

18. Eidur, on January 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am Said:

    Dand, I am sorry but I have to disagree.
    LL$ price is kept stable in an “artificial” way by the Lindens. That means (speaking in economical terminology…) that they “inject” new currency everytime that the demand rises (e.g. every single time we need to buy LL$ from them).
    And this leads us to… here: actually the amount of Linden Currency *is* unlimited. And that’s the only way they have to control it. As far as the majority of people are not making a *real* life from SL, almost no ones “cashes out” (i.e. sells LL$ for U$) but every one of us re-invest its wages in clothes, skins, etc… Basically we have only buying on the LL$ side and no reselling for real dollars.
    Again, if the amount of currency would be “limited” as in a real-life economy, the prices would rush high, let’s say… hmmm… like
    I am waiting for evidence to be contradicted :P

19. Eidur, on January 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am Said:

    Dand, I am sorry but I have to disagree.
    LL$ price is kept stable in an “artificial” way by the Lindens. That means (speaking in economical terminology…) that they “inject” new currency everytime that the demand rises (e.g. every single time we need to buy LL$ from them).
    And this leads us to… here: actually the amount of Linden Currency *is* unlimited. And that’s the only way they have to control it. As far as the majority of people are not making a *real* life from SL, almost no ones “cashes out” (i.e. sells LL$ for U$) but every one of us re-invest its wages in clothes, skins, etc… Basically we have only buying on the LL$ side and no reselling for real dollars.
    Again, if the amount of currency would be “limited” as in a real-life economy, the prices would rush high, let’s say… hmmm… like crude oil
    I am waiting for evidence to be contradicted :P

20. Rheta Shan, on January 15th, 2008 at 1:05 pm Said:

    Dandelion,

    when I said land barons have to to scale their prices to the in-world economy, I wasn’t meaning land sales, but rentals / tiers (stop me if I am mistaken, but I have been assuming until now that you cannot buy land on a privately owned sim in the sense that you can on the mainland) — mainland land speculation, as you rightly point out, is pegged to the price the Lindens set for land.

    I’m still not convinced that this translates to the land barons doing « real » business while everybody else is in for peanuts. SL’s popularity is vastly due to it being « dirt cheap », as has been pointed out, i.e. the domestic micro-economy being on a scale that, for most SL users, translates to their advantage in terms of buying power. The fact that wages are scaled to that indicate a healthy economic balance in my opinion, though I can understand why to the ones earning L$, the US-$ sums changing hands in land trade seem to devaluate that balance. But as Eidur rightly said, that only counts if you try to « cash out », e.g. cross the divide between the in-world economy and the out-of-world one.

    Essentially, I don’t think you should expect to derive a RL income from SL sources, unless you want SL to sport RL price tags for products, soon, too (fancy a SL skirt for US-$ 169 ?). The economies would have to adjust on both sides, and I can’t see how that could be good for SL. Yes, some people interface everyday by doing sim trade, but that needs some financial clout in RL terms to start with, which would have translated into big money in-world no matter what. It’s about different RL fortunes coming to SL. Where two economies interface, you are bound to have imbalances ; but then I fail to see how that is undercutting domestic prices. People with enough L$ income aren’t, after all, usually the ones pushing for things to be free — I’m sure I don’t :).

    As to Windows / Linux — I knew that was trouble as soon as I wrote it :). I’m not going to argue that point, and anyways, my iMac is due for delivery in two weeks :P.

21. Eidur, on January 15th, 2008 at 1:47 pm Said:

    Again, I agree with Rheta…
    And slightly off topic… I think that SL is one of the most powerful “marketing-social-networking” tool ever.
    It’s maybe too early to plan massive investment in SL to spin off your RL business, but after all I have personally assisted to development of an almost unknown internet radio who, after one year of SL “clubbing”, has now a much bigger audience and is selling RL merchandise too (they could only dream about that before the venture in SL).
    And I have not forgotten the skilled but unknown canadian fashionistas who, again, after 6 months of hard work in SL (reproducing her RL creations in SL) has managed to outnumber her previous visits on her RL ecommerce website. I don’t know if she is selling more than before SL now. For sure, lots of people now know who she is and what she does.

22. Eloh, on January 16th, 2008 at 12:08 am Said:

    A. “Supply” in SL is non-rival and unlimited–if you buy a product in SL it does not reduce supply of that SL product–you do not deprive someone else of the opportunity to purchase that same SL product [1].

    B. “Demand” on the other hand is not unlimited–it is still very much tied to RL tastes and foibles. This effect of limited demand and unlimited supply creates a problematic scenario for the fundamental supply/demand theory/chart. Matt from dualanalog.com sums it up fairly well:

    “The problem is that when you plug infinite supply into a supply/demand equation, no matter what your demand is, the ratio becomes zero. So how do you make any money off of a product with a price of $0.00?” [3]

    C. That said, I don’t believe that the propagation of free items are negatively effecting the SL “economy” (by either bringing down prices or destroying businesses). Rather it’s the problem of having unlimited supply coupled with limited demand in SL that’s causing the economic shifts that we’re witnessing today in-world.

    Also, it’s not just SL that’s grappling with this problem–the music industry, as well as almost any media-based sector (e.g., film, television, video game, entertainment, etc…) are all trying to find solutions to this issue. It should be interesting to see how media and intellectual property distribution changes (with respect to economics) to adapt to the new Internet medium in the coming years.

    —
    [1] Unless said SL product is a “limited edition” run or will somehow be discontinued/no longer offered, i.e. artificially limited in its supply.

    [2] “The console industry is completely backwards.” http://dualanalog.com/?p=32 (second paragraph)

23. dandellion, on January 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm Said:

    Eidur, whoever controls any economy has to control the amount of money that circulates inside that economy. If Lindens put more money in the system that system is worth there will be inflation. It is true that a small percent of residents “cashes out” but they cash out not so small percent of overall money. But that is not what draws lindens from the system. Believe it or not, our currency is keeping up partially thanks to uploaded photos and textures, payed classifieds and other small but regular payings back to Lindens.

    Two examples of biz you mention are great achievements, but let’s not forget that those are using SL as marketing tool.

    Eloh, I am not stating that freebies are negatively affecting SL economy as much as SL creativity. (Or better, the overall look of the world).

    Rheta…. I am really not sure about this, but I hardly see any difference between buying land on mainland and on an estate. It is feudalism this way or other.You buy a plot (from Lidens or baron) and you pay monthly tier.

24. Eidur, on January 16th, 2008 at 8:43 pm Said:

    Dand… about the 2 examples… that’s what I said, marketing tool, no matter the economical return…
    About currency, if you still believe that there is a limited (”controlled” is a different thing) amount of Lindens dollar in SL, then please, check this out:
    created by Linden to represent wealth, but no economic production was involved in creating them. These deficits occur when the weekly L$ stipends Linden pays to premium residents exceed its revenues from land rentals and other administrative services it provides to residents. In order to fund the deficits, Linden creates new L$ and injects them into Second Life…” “>
    There are some interesting graphs too… ;)

25. Peter Stindberg, on January 16th, 2008 at 9:16 pm Said:

    The Linden’s DO take money out! Not only the cash-outs, but also upload fees (which probably accumulate to large sums daily), classifieds, even weddings/divorces – basically all money you pay the Lindens takes money out of the economy.

26. dandellion, on January 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm Said:

    I am not educated in economy, but economy of one system tends to behave very accurate and transparent. If Lindens mess up and add new amounts of money to the system we will all see that in less than a month. Inflation is a very harsh beast.

27. Op/Ed: Skinning the Economy « Detachable Penis, on January 19th, 2008 at 7:19 pm Said:

    [...] this connects to the economy. Other sloggers have been bitching about free skins for a while now (Exhibit 1). I decided to stay out of it for now. Until I logged in today and I was mercilessly thrown into a [...]

28. Dalien Talbot, on January 20th, 2008 at 2:49 am Said:

    I thought at first to write here, but figured this would become completely impossible to read the other replies, so I wrote up a (long!:) post with my opinion:

    http://daltonic.blogspot.com/2008/01/2323.html

    It does not touch the landbarons – I think the land area is probably something where the RL and SL economies overlap much stronger, and also it is much easier to automate – so, similar to RL real estate business… or resell business… it’s more money than actually *creating* stuff. But besides that – I think that giving away for free is a good thing “at large” – well, maybe not for the economy per se, but to ensure that SL in one year is somewhat different from SL today – for sure.

    And the difference is what would keep the SL attractive, hence keeping the residents, and hence help sustaining the economy.

    my 2 eurocents :)

29. Prokofy Neva, on January 20th, 2008 at 3:46 pm Said:

    Um, prices drop, but quality doesn’t rise. But this is life in the big city. Markets need to be free. Putting freebies on them doesn’t make them free, it just means you have some other source outside of SL that can pay for you free time and labour, that then undercuts the SL remittance economy.

    What I sense here is some kind of crusade to undercut people who worked hard, created value, and sold it, just because you feel there is something evil about market systems and capitalism. You’re about 120 years behind the times with that ideology.

    Argent, you’re out of touch. For the last 2 years, builders of the best sort, as well as designers, have ceased charging toy wages as if they were in Animal Crossing where people collect nuts off the ground to pay their little friends, and started charging their actual billable hours, because the hours didn’t somehow compress or add on to real life hours just because they are in virtuality and not reality. And that’s ok. There will always be a portion of the market with amateurs and hobbyists and newbies who charge a lot lower, but that doesn’t mean that is somehow more legitimate. The market is the market. It’s a synthetic one, made more synthetic by the fact that half the people in it are backed by offshore companies called “their real life jobs or support”.

    London, you, like so many grumping about land costs, seem to forget that you are not buying some mere server, some mere rack with documents on it; you’re buying server space holding a virtual world interactive with other servers 24/7, with programmers maintaining it. And it’s priced what the market will bear.

    There’s this enormous fantasy fueled by the copyleftists and Creative Commoners and all the rest that you can have all this free stuff out there and there will just be a tip jar or a grant from a foundation or somebody’s dad to pay for it all. It’s astoundingly infantile.

    dandellion, I marvel at the tenacity of the Linux cult…

    Content creators work hard, sure, and their hours in photoshop are real, but hey, there’s something fake about all this, too, because a content creator with a really good idea can spend 10 hours in photoshop, then put a vendor out and sell his creation for $2000 Lindens 24/7/365 until the heat-death of the sun, never log on, and keep kachinging out the profits without a second more of labour — not even customer service. Done all the time in SL.

    Eidur, you’re truly mistaken with this idea that “almost no one cashes out”. There are at least 50,000 people in SL who take in more Lindens than they spend, and the huge volume every day on the Linden ($70 million) lets us know there are loads of people cashing out, if nothing else, to pay tier, but often to pay RL bills. You can’t posit an idea that there are only purchases of Lindens, when it is a currency market where every purchase means a sale of someone cashing out. Oh, to be sure, Supply Linden can print a million US dollars or more of money in a month, but that’s not the only source of sales.

    Yes, the printing and sale of Lindens depresses our wages. It keeps us artificially at low wages where our time, our improved work, our increasing in skills, can never be properly rewarded except by volume due to the growth of membership, and that’s an artificial overheated sort of economy. Ideally, the Lindens should stop printing money, it’s not a good policy for RL either.

    Freebies truly are the bane of SL existence. They occur because socialists and copyleftists and anarchists are constantly trying to overthrow capitalism and free enterprise, but when they do this, it doesn’t work in a world where people keep making and rewarding value, it’s kind of funny to watch. They can dent and harm the economy, but it is very resilient.

30. Dalien Talbot, on January 20th, 2008 at 4:38 pm Said:

    …there comes prok with the usual conspiracy theories :)

    Camarades – we’ve been discovered ! Hide!

    :-)

31. Argent Bury, on January 20th, 2008 at 6:02 pm Said:

    that doesn’t mean that is somehow more legitimate

    I don’t recall claiming that it was more or less legitimate, Mr. Neva.

32. dandellion, on January 20th, 2008 at 7:10 pm Said:

    Prokofy, this is not a crusade to kill capitalism. Don’t be paranoid. I am idealistic, but not that naive to think I can kill capitalism in second life. Beside that, only reason to kill capitalism is because it is against people who are working hard and create value. No, I am not against free market, quite contrary, this post is written because something is not free on the market. And after all, second life is not capitalistic system, it is by large feudal.

    Btw, people who maintain servers are not called programmers.

    And about operating systems, I marvel the people who are persistent in paying for operating system that is buggy, insecure and user-unfriendly. But I stand for their right to do so (as long as I am free to have the other one).

33. Freebie Challenge - Should I? « Double Entendre, on January 20th, 2008 at 9:10 pm Said:

    [...] or SLogosphere as Harper would say ;).   Living in the Metaverse wrote a couple of opinions on To Free or Not to Free (read the clarification, as well). Around the Grid with Harper and Myg got a track backs from New [...]

34. Hen3ri Mensing, on January 20th, 2008 at 10:24 pm Said:

    I guess i am going to weigh in on this from my own personal experience as someone who makes and tries to sell clothes. The problem isnt the freebies the problem is the way the whole system is set up. The whole system is gamed for users to try and become one of the top 10 sl sites, i may be mistaken but i think that top sites get money back from sl for being there. So this system feeds upon itself to attract people they give away freebies and have camping chairs. I was once at a site were the sim owner was giveing away 20,000 free articles of clothing almost all of them full outfits no one can compete against that.
    I have been making clothes for a year and a half fairly consistantly and i have at most maybe 300 items. I design clothes because i enjoy creating things. If it wasnt clothes in sl it would be painting with oils in rl or drawing or building a bookshelf (you get the idea).
    I have no illusions that i am going to quit my day job, basically i make my 9 dollar tier every month and im happy. I even give things away for free usually because i dont really like the item i have been working on or have reached an impass on it, but it is wearable.
    One person giving away a freebie isnt a issue heck everyone in sl giving away a few freebies isnt a problem the system can handle that, the good freebies stay and the bad ones disappear ( i mean who here remembers the metalic lime green zippered vest ). Users giving away hundreds and even thousands of items for free to attract visitors is the problem and the system that promotes this is the problem. A few free skins floating around isnt going to break the skin sellers market. 20,000 free skins will and i think we are looking at a real tipping point here where the system will eat itself as more content creators will fall by the wayside or move on to other games taking their skills with them. Heck when i dont make tier anymore im breaking out the oil paints.

35. Prokofy Neva, on January 21st, 2008 at 7:08 am Said:

    Um, I’m not paranoid, I’m calling you on *your* paranoia when you rant about land barons, which you indeed did. THAT is the FUD here, nothing I’m saying.

    Henri, no, there isn’t any system where people get “money back for being there”. Some 2 years ago, yes, there was a system they started called “dwell” and “developers’ awards” where you got paid by LL in US dollars on a formula if you attracted traffic to your land. They withdrew this incentive system as it began to be gamed with camping.

    The problem with Second Life, which is a deep one, is one you portray here: the people in it are mainly doing it as a game or a hobby. They have their day jobs, and they have no real stake in making the economy to sustain their real life selves. So it can never be real. That may be a built-in contradiction no one will eliminate, but there it is. And there are way too many freebies in SL, and that deprives newbies from having incentive to make and sell.

    Dalien, Yes, comrades indeed.

    BTW, the people who maintain the Second Life servers *are* programmers. They *are* coders. You’re splitting hairs here, and refusing to concede that the servers of this world have more value than those in a rack someplace just holding ordinary data.

    Argent, you’ve implied it.

36. Argent Bury, on January 21st, 2008 at 7:33 am Said:

    Argent, you’ve implied it.

    Ah, well, unfortunate that you interpreted it that way.

37. dandellion, on January 21st, 2008 at 9:43 pm Said:

    Hen3ri, I cannot agree more. I am not sure if LL is still paying or giving any reward for traffic, but as long as search results are affected by traffic (read: number of campers) things will not be good.

    Mr. Neva, you know that I am not going to fall on that trick. Leave it for your readers. In the meanwhile try to learn difference between programmers and system administrators.

38. Dalien Talbot, on January 21st, 2008 at 9:57 pm Said:

    Prok: We

39. Dalien Talbot, on January 21st, 2008 at 9:59 pm Said:

    … we

40. Dalien Talbot, on January 21st, 2008 at 10:00 pm Said:

    argh. It is the damn “<” sign that it did not like. sorry i am becoming too dense that I need a second repeat :)

    So, what i wanted to say:

    Prok, we <3 you. Rock on. *throws in the THIRD bouquet of flowers, previous hidden by the markup*

41. dandellion, on January 21st, 2008 at 10:06 pm Said:

    Third time is a charm ;)

42. Argent Bury, on January 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm Said:

    Group hug!

43. Prokofy Neva, on January 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 am Said:

    dandellion, does a system administrator not know any programming? Does a programmer not know how to administer the system? Well, then.

    Argent, so far, SL, due to its rapid growth, has resisted being tugged toward the usage preference of any one group, really. That is, there is plenty of room for hobbyists and amateurs — I’m an amateur myself. There is plenty of room for skilled artisans, designers, architects etc — they have proven that.

    SL would not be viable if it were completely shut off from the real world and its economy and became like one of the pet games, with Linden dollars not being able to be traded for real-money. That sort of closure never works, as black markets always develop and value is ultimately lost that way.

    I’d also hate to see the Linden removed, the LindEx closed, and the entire thing dollarized (as it is partly already) so that only wealthier people could eventually afford the most skillfully-made items.

    So I guess we are doomed for this kind of twilight zone of neither fish nor fowl. However, I think there are certain practices to be encouraged, and one of them is for all these people thinking they are so magnificent as to give something “for the People” in the form of freebies should turn on “transfer/sell” and “mod” and let them resell it modified if they like. That would do more to help the newbie economy than anything out there, because people could be concentrating on making and selling and trading rather than sitting like zombies in camp stations.

44. Nikita Weymann, on January 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 am Said:

    I, for one, enjoy the fact that search results are skewed by campers. I unhesitatingly scroll to the very end of the results and begin my search there. :)

45. Wayne Porter, on March 22nd, 2008 at 9:11 am Said:

    Do you do this know that Google is the dominant system?

    -wayne

46. dandellion, on March 22nd, 2008 at 9:19 am Said:

    I am not sure I understood the question.

47. Wayne Porter, on March 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 am Said:

    Prok,

    To me some of the obvious solutions are:

    a) homogenous systems for vending/partnerships- helps one scale in a world not meant to scale.

    b) keeping both Lindens and $ in play

    c) building in mechanisms that allow for scarcity of goods and guarantee they are authentic

    d) teaching scriptors/builders how to market- the most successful are usually

    e) As Prok notes (I give her props for really understanding attention = revenue) indoctrinating users beyond camping and get rich quick fantasies is important.

    f) lack of accountability has tainted the faith many had in the system. e.g. the banks, and stock markets, etc.

    g) lack of meaningful metrics. I am talking micro-metrics and these are hard to study because of the instability of the grid.

    There are solutions,but in the end, is a micro-transaction only model going to allow one to quit their day job? Highly unlikely for most and if you could would want all the concentration risk of LL- no matter how much I like the spirit of the platform?

    Diversity is important and quality is relative and probably the data, translated in a meaningful way- is worth more than some of the products.

    regards,
    Wayne
    (AKA Corwin Chevalier)

48. Wayne Porter, on March 22nd, 2008 at 10:52 am Said:

    Was replying to Nikita- sorry. Google’s AI is now powering search…and how it will alter behavior. IMHO it has already.

49. Creamy Cooljoke, on September 27th, 2008 at 7:05 pm Said:

    This is a really tough one which i am torn about. 

    It would be interesting to know if the majority of people offering freebies are noticing an increase in sales of full price items because of the attraction of the free gift offered in store.

    I have a large group called Free*Style which has around 3 thousand people – many store owners and creators have joined the group so they can send notices of any free gifts they have to offer.   I have had some feedback from designers who have been over the moon and reported loads of sales after sending the notice, but not as many as I thought.   I think I may do a poll on my blog to see if it does actually increase sales for the majority of designers, I know it certainly introduces people to lesser known designers which is a good thing.   

    Many people are just in the game for fun and creativity so aren’t really bothered about making money, but for those who make a living off SL I would be interested to know if freebie giving actually has any benefit to them :)

50. dandellion, on September 28th, 2008 at 7:32 pm Said:

    That is a much broader problem than it seems. As Wayne said, we lack any meaningful metrics. E.G. all I know about my parcel is some number representing traffic and a list of names who came since the last reset of the script in parcel greeter (that list is actually made to prevent spamming those that came back often). Compare that to all the data one can have for a web-site. So, most of our conclusions about what works for a parcel traffic and sales is mainly guessing.

    And then, it’s not just offering freebies that will make any change. You can give a world for free in your little shop and nothing will happen if that offer isn’t advertised well. That’s where your blog and group do a terrific job. Please share some results when you do your survey.

51. Ghanima, on October 7th, 2008 at 7:23 pm Said:

    ok… first of all I want to say I am not against freebies in SL, I actually encourage the freebies thing giving many away to my clients. one thing is true though, and even the owners of freebie groups know it: no matter how generous we are, somehow more and more people each day keep acting like we owe them something, and treat us badly for it. One doesn’t expect them to thank for every little freebie… but I guess answering a "hi" or at least not push you aside to get the freebie 2 seconds earlier wouldn’t be to much of an effort. That attitude is not shared by everyone, there are people who are really educated and polite, but I see more and more designers each day leaving freebie groups for being treated badly by "clients" who think everything in sl should be for free. I say freebies are ok, but I also think it is OK to value our effort… stuff doesn’t make itself, we work a lot on it. Whether we want to be paid for it or give it away as freebie, we are the ones to decide that. One of my best friends got burned in mainchat in front all f her clients because some freebie grabbers thought "her freebie was not good enough"… now that is harsh isn’t it? THAT is definitely the kind of thought that will kill the freebie giving thing… not the thought of the person who made the original post I am commenting on. I think she is right thinking our work should be valued and I do not think the second readings on her post bent over the thought she is against freebies are right. If the post is read with a critic eye, instead of a "defensive" eye then you understand what she is saying

    PS: I tried to make my english as good as possible for this post, I apologize for any mistakes on it

52. dandellion, on October 7th, 2008 at 8:14 pm Said:

    You’re addressing two important things here.

    One is that some (and "some" counts a lot of them) resident’s manners. It’s not only with freebies, it’s everywhere. I guess it’s the same as it was in the first wave of web communities, when sense of anonymity and shelter behind the screen made some people behaving like they are living in the caves. That will pass. Etiquette will be formed and pressure of civilized society will do its way. But, how to react until then?

    Other is that people expect everything for free. That is a complicated one. Recently, when Rezzable introduced entrance fee for some of their sims voices raised. As far as I’ve heard, their traffic on those sims haven’t fell, but still, protests were there.

    Those two adds up in a weird combination of residents running for free stuff (whether it be free clothes, entrance on sims or whatever) and being rude if they don’t get what they want or simply don’t like what they get. Accent here is on "running". What happened to the communication? What happened with meeting people and having fun time? Is that game outdated? Seems that for some it is.

53. Ghanima, on October 7th, 2008 at 8:43 pm Said:

    well I definitely agree with Dandellion on that one I must say… seems communication is dead and gone for a great number of residents these days and with that goes dead too the understanding that it is great to have fun but if you’re rude and ill mannered just because you’re free to do so (hiding behind a computer I must highlight), then you’re ruining the fun for those who deserve it as much as you do

54. dandellion, on October 8th, 2008 at 11:09 am Said:

    Please, please, please… don’t let the few rude and ill-mannered sociopaths ruin your fun. Good communication is not dead, nor it will be. There are some people that have problems, there always will be. But never step back because of them.

55. Ghanima, on October 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am Said:

    I almost did once, but I thought it over and I decided I was stronger than that ^^

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