and many told you all so…

i too make money in SL and only came to it last year- after 10 years of running other vr worlds for profit, WHEN there was enough buyers for my sellings. REAL money.

I questioned the obvious TOD issues dealign with our IP, the obvious problems of back up and control of our property when “offered via LL services” etc.

But frankly, to continue “being an expert in virtual worlds design” i had to, and continue to seem to
swallow the snakeoil being offered by this crowd of 500 metanewbie pundits. I wont swallow..;) and finally as reality shines into your virtual playhouses, i see many attempting to vomit or get their stomachs pumped….and of course taking no responsability since they were only “avatars” and “as so have the right to anonimity”

Strokers a realist. thank god for a few of them. much needed. just fyi– web bubble 1990s….. desktop publsishing bubble -80s.

and the solutions are open STANDARDS not open source for content. Let tool makers make better servers and browsers for HIRE/lease/ etc….. let them compete. but lets NOT lose all our content efforts to cloed formats wit no backup or easy transportabiliy between browsers and server tools…

open source is a total lie for content makers…..thats why its spoken here of as some holy grail, mainly by IT and programmers of software tools NOT content services.

ivve sold vr goods 12 years online… so getting OUT of SL wont be too hard, but for all those who built IN it.. good luck

c3

I am reminded of the insurgange of “Dot Com’s” in the mid ’80′s. Eyeballs were at a premium. Thats what LL is dealing in here “Eyeballs”. However, just as in the early days of Web 1.0, quantifying the value of said presence comes with a responsibilty to define and renumerate. It’s a bit like brokering the “Force” of Star Wars fame. It’s all around you, flows through you and has a definitive result to those Jedi who are adept enough to utilize its potential. But try and pitch it to ConAgra or Proctor and Gamble.

There is but one exit strategy here IMHO. Open Source.

Need I remind anyone that LL has never brought one Corporate presence to Second Life. LL did not create the vibrant economy. Every issue to date (btw, today is my 4 year SL birthday) has been dealt with knee-jerk retroaction. Second Life is by no means the first successful Virtual World. It is however the first that puts the reigns of content in the hands of its residents. Content is King. It has a definitive value. It has been marketed as a commodity in every platform I have ever been associated with. And they are many.

One could easily make the argument that User created Content is being “taxed” by LL. These “taxes” come in the form of upload fee’s and Lindex exchange fee’s and tier payments. Personally, I prefer a “hands off” approach in governance matters. I am a dyed in the wool capitalist. I make no bones about it. We need faster severs, we need critical support as well as sustained growth. These are not passive matters. They require considerable capital expense and resources. This is where LL should focus their attention. You cannot do that with “smoke and mirrors”.

It all comes down to liability in my view. I do not envy anyone who has to deal with the issues that we have all been confronted with in a global economy. The web IS a global economy. International regulations, Adult Content, Gambling, Taxation and Litigation have impacted everyone to some degree who maintains a commercial prescence on the internet. In the chaotic soup we claim as the metaverse, these issues have a predominant effect on everyone’s bottom line. Whether you are a parent or a producer.

I recently was given the link to an article concerning what is now the largest Adult Website (accordining to Alexa) on the web. It is all user generated content. The creators have been unsuccessful to date in marketing their product to any of the mega-conglomerate moguls in the industry. Why? No one wants to deal with the compliance and regulatory issues that come with user created content (particularly adult).

http://www.portfolio.com/…YouPorn-Vivid-Entertainment-Profile#

I drank the PhilipBerry KoolAid.

I was willing to invest in a “partnership” with a company lacking a Mission Statement.

In recent days I find myself wondering if indeed said “KoolAid” wasnt actually “Snake Oil”.

disingenious? well suggest that the the millions spent by CBS:0

never your world, always your work, and now others money.

never a “game” always a platform for money exchange. Never a system of law ( a messy TOS, or metaeconomics( no more than ebay)

must have been a scary meeting when the emporer TOLD you how naked he really was..:)

maybe finally the end of this year of metanonsence and the rss fed blog .

c3

Linden Lab walks awfully close to the edge with their “metaphors” and I wish they’d just either just reject or embrace a real cash economy and be done with it. Either position works, but they have to pick one. Look at Entropia — for better or worse, they don’t mess around. It’s cash. They’ll cash you out if you leave. You can sue them (albeit in Sweden) if they don’t. By all reports, it is damn near impossible to make any money in Entropia, but at least they’re intellectually honest.

That said, I don’t think it will make much difference to the broader user base in the short term, most of whom don’t really care one way or the other what Lindens are called, as long as they can cash them out. It will keep coming up in the context of lawsuits, however, and it makes for interesting fodder for the academics and design guys (Fairfield, Castronova, Koster, etc.) who are writing on “virtual property.”

Regards,

-Flip