Monat: Februar 2007

Article about „The new economy in Second Life“

Yesterday there was a very good written article about "The "New" New Economy in Second Life" in the German web magazine Telepolis written by Karin Wehn (English: Google).

It is a very good written article about the economy – or the lack of – in Second Life, what SL is, why Lindenlabs did not herald the 3rd million resident and so on, the stability of the grid, how some land barons got rich and so on and on. Also has some very interesting pointers to other sides or articles.

Well worth a read. Very important is perhaps this link to the official economic statistics from SL: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php. Just about 229 users had in December 2006 an in world income from 1000-2000 US-$, 140 from 2000-5000 US-$ and 90 greater than 5000 US-$.

You should always keep those statistics in mind when you think you can get there rich very fast and live off it. Mostly not happening for you, until you work really hard and are really good, so better scratch it.

The conclusion of the article is: the usage statistics should be read carefully. While Second Life is innovative, it is still unstable as a business platform and the downtimes can hinder the business for sure, so that it is no wonder that the declared priority from Lindenlabs is to stabilize the grid. Some are also in doubt if Secondlife is here to stay or not, because the prerequisites to connect to it are quite high and it should be more userfriendly in terms of usage.

I doubt it, of course, but we are going to see.

„Where can I get a job…?“

Arg! Newbies are coming around in masses again at all places recently. I’ve got no problem with this. But some of them are just getting too much annoying!

I’ve noticed quite a change in the last few weeks about the newbies behaviour; some of them are still good mannered, though they are the minority, it seems. Others are just thinking "money makes the world go round" and looking for the perfect job, though they are still newbies and inexperienced.

And guess what? They are bothering many people on many places with questions like "Where can I get a good job?", "Are here jobs available?" and so on… d’oh!

Get a life! You don’t need a job at all in SL. You can play for months, still have some money and have much fun without having any job at all! And if, I repeat, if, you are really in need of money – first learn to calculate!

What I mean with this one? Well, one US-$ could be exchanged into 280 Linden-$ at the moment. Most good clothes are around 1000 L$. So… which job is getting paid most in here and all can do it? Right: being a prostitute, or nicer called being an escort. An escort gets around 1000 to 1500 L$ normally for an hour of sex. These are average rates, first they need to invest into themselves let’s say 10.000 to 15.000 L$, to have a nice skin, hair, shape, dresses, toy for sex and so on.

If you calculate now those rates back – 1000 to 1500 L$ would mean around 3,57 to 5,35 US-$ per hour. That’s not much money, and if you are earning for example 10-12 US-$ normally in your daytime job per hour – well, you’re blasted there.

So, what’s the bottom line of this? When you want to get money in SL – either play in a casino, or just, for goodness sake, buy it! And if you really, really want to earn money in game, become an escort, or better a custom builder, shop owner with a nice niche, scripter or try to rent land to people at affordable prices!

But, hell, stop bugging us all for jobs! It’s annoying as hell. If you’ve get it inside yourself – fine. Be your own self-made man or girl. If not – take some time to grow up. Most better paid jobs are only available for avatars at age > 30 days, and that’s for very good reasons.

Serverside to be opensourced within three years – or so

 I’ve stumbled about an interview with Mitch Kapor through a blog entry of Prokofy Neva about a possible happening decrease in land prices. Seems the interview has been edited since then, but the lines Neva cites where there. Definitely.

So… Mr. Neva is upset about the possible opening of the server side. Well, I can understand him (and needs to write an article of biblical propotions again, just to say: „This is nuts“, like always…), but it is the only way to take it on the next level.

How Lindenlabs can generate money after opening up? Well, for example perhaps like this:

  • You want your own server connected to the maingrid? Well, you can, but you will have to pay a monthly fee to LL for it.
  • You want access to the central login- and asset-manager of LL? No problem, also available for a fee.
  • Need to backup your database? Yes, do it with LL.
  • You want to be able to buy and sell L$ on your own server? Sure thing, again availabe for a monthly fee…

and so on and on…  I would not be surprised if some of those ideas are going to manifest in the future.

SL simulator clone started

It seems that after opening up the client code some people just cannot await the arrive of the server code under an Opensource license any longer and took matters in their own hands right now.

Enter: Opensim. This is first project that I know of trying to reimplement the server side parts of SL, written in C#, using libsecondlife. So far they claim that you can login, object creation, movement, object updates and chat are working. It started at the end of January and is considered pre alpha.

But – who cares. It has started and now I am curious to see where this project goes and how far it is going to evolve.

So, if LL never opens up the server, people could aid this project and well – who cares, then, if they make it right and get it going.