Monat: Januar 2007

New land coming in masses!

Today Lindenlabs dropped the bomb: there is going to be a new continent in the east! Not only that, they are adding the new regions at a higher speed than earlier (which was 4 regions per day) and putting up some mechanisms to avoid the buying of the parcels through bots.

This sounds like a nice move. Ok, the people seeing land as an investment are going to cry if the prices drops significantly, but in the end it’s better that way, because so more people are able again to get new land and for Lindenlabs to generate more income, of course.

If LL would not have taken this step, it could have been that many people were leaving the game or just not buying land anymore, so that LL would have been on quite a stock of unused land sooner or later. Now, there is a new force in the land business, a new motion and I am thrilled to observe in which direction this might leed us!

The land bubble

Darius Lehane did it, again. This time he wrote an article about the land bubble in Second Life. Quite an interesting read and he got some critical points absolutely right.

He’s right: land prices are out of control, taking off to unseen heights and are prone to crash sooner or later. Why? Well, what are you buying actually? Not really. Actually the partition of computation time of one server. One server normally hosts two sims and consists of a dual-core CPU. And servers can get added day by day, a fact unseen in the real world. So you theoretically can add as much land to the grid as you like.

Why is it going to burst? Because sooner or later the point of no return will be reached when most people are unwilling and/or unable to pay the prices. That’s why, and the fes are eating up he owners.

And if this point is reached most are going to sell their land – even with loss – just to get it away.

Another possibility, of course, would be when the Lindens are opening up the server side part of SL and you can host your region everywhere you want. This would also ruin the land prices immidiately.

So, investing into land is perhaps a short time investment in SL, but no long time investment nor a good investment at all.

New media coverage from „Der Spiegel“

The German magazine "Der Spiegel" (English translation via Google) has opened up an own avatar for media coverage in Second Life. This is after "The Avastar" and Reuters another major media player – well, at least in Europe – joining this world. The main usage seems so far to report Second Life and make some entries in a blog actually.

The avatar him(her)self is named Sponto; no surename given in the article so far. It’s a rather nice read about the impressions a newbie can get out of SL and seems to be the first in a series of entries. They even opened up a German forum on their website to discuss SL, well, we’re going to see how it is going to develop.

FN in SL

Yesterday, 1/27/07,  Philippe Borremans wrote in his blog an article about the arrival of the Front National (FN), a right-wing party from France in SL and the possible implications of this move.

He’s musing about the implications like this:

Well, both Le Pen, the head of the party and some of its members have been condemned in court because they made negationist comments about the holocaust. But I guess that doesn’t count in a virtual world.

Wrong; depending on the country it can count. Very much so.

How will anti-racist organisations react ? Do the same, set up a presence in Second Life and take the political battle online ? Does this mean that what is considered as condemnable by law in the real world is not in a virtual one ?

Good question;  but after some investigations you should already know the answer. Yes, those organisations are – or at least their supporters – are online too, and yes, they take this battle online. Very much so.

Just take a look at this article from the German magazine Der Spiegel from 1/12/07 (Germany only, here roughly translated via Google). There already have been in world demonstrations against the FN in SL before the article from Mr. Borremans was written.

So, SL already turned into another platform for this political struggle – for both sides. Where the one goes, the other follows suit in no time at all. That’s the way it goes.

How a place can run down the hill – quickly

This is about a place called „Sinner’s Paradise“ in the region called Wales. It’s a private island with two adjacent regions – Wales and Wales harbor.

It’s a very nice and romantic spot, great landscape, many different places to enjoy and discover. Short: one of the better sex places in SL, and quite a popular one, too.

But what comes, when you are successful in SL? Right, griefers. They had their own share of griefer attacks and tuned down all bells and whistles now to get rid of them.

But what also comes? Well, of course much traffic. Sinner’s Paradise has no money paying chairs whatsoever, it generates the traffic on its own. Good for the place and also for the store. But, there was a big problem in earlier times: the entrance area, where all people landed, was way too small. So it god crowded very fast and the people were bound to move on.

So what did the owners of Sinner’s Paradise do? Right: they upgraded the size of the entrance area, they added much more space to it. Sounds like a good idea? At the first look: yes. At the second look: hell, no!

Please click on this thumbnail to get the big picture:  Entrance area of Sinner’s Paradise. This photograph was taken today by myself, in the region of Wales were at this time 98 avatars online, in the region of Wales harbor about 29.

So… this shows: traffic goes there over quality at the moment. The entrance area is way too much crowded, no one looking after the people, if they are nude or not – some just prefer to be nude. Some even had actually sex in this entrance, pimps are going around, trying to sell their escort services or escorts on her own.

I konw quite a few people who were one or two months ago frequent visitors of this area, you can call them perhaps an old incrowd of this place. They have filed some complaints to the owners of Sinner’s Paradise now because they find this development bothering and are not satisfied with the place any more.

Or you could also say: if nothing happens, this place is going down the hill and getting less attractice for certain groups of people.