Schlagwort: Business

Phat Cat’s for sale – again

The biggest and most popular jazz club in SL, Phat Cat’s, is for sale, again, but this time for real, as it seems. The owner, Dilbert Dilweg, wants to get at least 1.000.000 L$ (equivalent to about 3.501 US$) for the whole private island including all buildings and objects.

Now I wonder if we are going to see the most popular place in Second Life at all according to Tateru Nino under new management soon…

Let me quote the in world sales pitch here:

Phat Cat’s is for sale. The sale is 1,000,000 Lindens and will include full transfer of simulator and costs.

Buy at time of tier payed and get 1 full month without having to pay tier.

All transfers will be completed WHEN ALL monies have been transfered.

Paying thru pay pal without Lindens is also acceptable payment. Payment should be the equivelent of 1 million lindens at current market rate the total would be US$3,500.72.

Cotact Dilbert Dilweg for purchasing information if you are seriously interested in buying one of the strongest clubs on SL.

The price is quite a bargain for such a well established and good running sim, if you ask me. Other sims with that kind of traffic have been sold for much, much more money in the past already.

And if you take a look at the finished land auctions at the mainland, a new sim without any content there is still being sold for around 2-3000 US$ there, so this price is not out of reach or far too much asked for it.

A few thoughts on the age verification

According to the Lindens there is coming an age verification to us in about one week. If I read the FAQ correct, it is done by a third party company and you’ve got to provide them some info, e.g. social security number, drivers license number, passport number, to verify that you are over 18 years old. If you provide the info successfully, then you’ve got the "age verified" flag and are allowed to enter parcels with "adult content" flag. If you don’t have an age verification, you still can play in Second Life, but don’t enter such regions anymore.

The question I asked myself can be split up in two parts: how is this going to influence the game and is this verification process going to be really secure?

Well, the first part is: I expect, who until now enjoyed adult content, are going to leave the game, since they are not willingly going to provide the necessary infos. I can understand them. If you take a closer look at the search and don’t check "mature content" in it and search for some things, like escort, you’re still going to find such content. Now the Lindens want that the people rate themself or they are going to take measures against them. If you take the big size of SL into account, it is not hard to predict that many people are not going to rate themself properly and that, if any, actions are going to be taken against them, this would take quite some time and they would still try after that, again.

Second: is the process going to be really secure, meaning, can I be really sure that the avatar if flagged "age verified" is played by an adult? After reading the FAQ: plain and simple no! It is no problem at all for most teenagers to lookup such infos, like a social security number, in the documents of their parents and pretending to be their father or mother. To be really sure that you are who you pretend to be you need a personal review of a trusted 3rd party in real life.

And even, if you would be checked up that way, there would be no security in it, since the son of the father just could have looked up his password with e.g. a keylogger.

So in short: while the idea of it seems nice, you are not going to have real security at all with such a kind of a system. In reality it is not going to be introduced to make SL a safer place for all, but to protect Lindenlabs better against possible lawsuits, which in result still benefits the community, though, since all of SL well being depends on LL. Period.

Griefers at Mercedes-Benz Island

A few days ago I visited Mercedes-Benz Island to take another look at their in world presence. Well, there was not much happening, anyway and there was also no employee of the company present at this time. They are around there, normally, at some time.

They’ve got not very tight settings on security there, either. This means – just pushing is forbidden, all else works – user scripts, flying around and placing objects is available for every visitor. This means: very bad settings in concerns of security and an open invitation to griefers. I guess, autoreturn is in action, though, but placing objects allows the use of weapons.

And guess what? There were some bored griefers, who came into the island and wrecked havoc upon it. They were somewhat harmless, though, since they did not cage or orbit people. This would have been possible for them, too, without big effort at all.

So, how do bored people or griefers look like? Well, like the gentlemen on the picture down below, for example. Click the thumbnail to get the bigger view.

Well, and how does it look like, when they’re doing there hobby? For example like on the picture down below; David Hasselhoff spreaded all over the place. They also nuked virtual bombs all over the place, used weapons to bring avatars to them and made other stuff. Unfortunately there was no one of Mercedes-Benz around nor the info how to contact one of them. Well, it lasted a few minutes, then they left.

When I asked one of those, if he’s bored, he just told me: "This game is shit." Riiight… then just leave it and go away playing Scrabble!

When you’re online for quite a time, you’re going to develop a feeling for those bunch of guys when they’re around; they always mean trouble and just want to get attention. In a way they’re like spammers; ruining the whole thing if you’re not doing something against them.

The sim Amsterdam has been sold!

The well known sim Amsterdam has been sold for about 50.000 US$!

Well, the price for sure is real enough when you take in account the work needed to build such a big sim and calculate the prize you would need to pay if you order it at some agency.

But what’s to say about it… while the sim itself is nice and well done, I don’t like the crowd that’s normally populating it so much, I wouldn’t have paid so much for it nor felt the need to buy it myself. I wonder in which kind of direction it is going to develop, now, since it’s been sold. This has been for sure a good deal for its previous owner.