Schlagwort: second life

Slowing down on the economy

When you take a look at the recent development of Second Life, then there are some things different compared to earlier developments:

  • There are still no key metrics available for August 2007. Those tend to get published later and later over the months.
  • The exchange of Linden dollars has reached a peak in the 1st quarter of 2007; since then it has been slowly decreasing, so Q1 is its peak (take a look at the last graph here).
  • Premium residents have reached their peak in June, there have already been less again in July.
  • The number of new residents entering the game has slowed down.
  • Business people are complaining in world about a lack of sales, meaning those are going down at the moment. There is for example being rumored that 70% of the Plush sims are unused right now.
  • Many Europeans are pissed off that they now have to pay VAT in most cases. This is not LL’s fault at all, but could lead to more in world payments again and/or higher prices on their products.
  • Many markets tend to be sated after a while, so it goes with many in world markets when the rush of newbies tends to be over.

So what does that mean? Well, for now the hype is over in most countries. If Second Life should prove its worth as a tool, it now needs to improve to appeal more for business usage and to be more stable to sustain the established in world economy and returning residents.

Premium residents are not enough in numbers to sustain SL at all, so most of the money Lindenlab makes has its origin in land sales and main land tier fees. The borders of growth have been reached for now, as it seems, so now it’s time for a consolidation of Second Life at all.

Since all are dependent on Lindenlab, this means of course more stable sims and clients, which is on the way according to them, a better scalable grid, too, better customer service – face it, most think it’s as bad as it can be and slow, slow, slow – and getting more in touch again with the community.

For many residents the relationship with Lindenlab is kind of love/hate. Love, that they made Second Life possible and hate, because of the high land prices, not stabilizing the client/server enough, being dependent on Lindenlab, slow customer service and many more of such things. Oh, and since you can’t see the Lindens in world often anymore, they became something like the spooky people running all of the stuff in the background.

Also the main focus of Lindenlab shifted from promoting Second Life to promoting the technic behind it, the grid. This is perhaps a good move for them, but of course also means that they’re now focusing more on the technic behind it than on the well established community in Second Life.

About megaprims

The official Second Life blog has today an entry about so called megaprims (greater than 10m at one side at least). Megaprims where never intended to be, but they happened some while ago and they are in use in different buildings, you can either get them just so or buy them at stores.

They are rumored to have a negative impact on the physics engine and to cause lags and such, but none the less many builders have adopted them very fast and used them in their buildings.

So there’s a discussion about it they should stay or not; at the moment they are only tolerated by Lindenlab, but they don’t really like them.

So what’s the sensible approach? Are they needed or not? I guess they are needed, because they fit into a gap. I mean, why would you use for example 9 prims (10x10m) to make a floor that’s 30x30m wide when you just can use one prim? Because they are needed, they’ve been used and there’s a market around it.

But of course too big megaprims are not right, so they should not be bigger than a whole sim, meaning 256x256x256m. In those parameters they could really enrich the building experience.

10 million residents reached!

The statistical mark of 10 million residents in Second Life has been reached today. No big fanfare nor press message at all, this shows the shift from promoting Second Life to promoting the grid. Heck, the number of residents isn’t even been shown on the first page of the website anymore for quite some weeks.

Stuff and all

  • There is now a blog from Charity Colville in which she tells her side of the story about "The rise and fall of Phat Cat’s". The events around Phat Cat’s have been going on for quite some time now, I still wonder that they haven’t come to an end, yet. In the end it’s a story you cannot find out on your own, if it’s right or wrong, so it’s about whom you believe more.
  • Metaversed has been running an article about a LL-function that has been disabled by the Lindens without notice and has broken many seats and other sitting furnitures. Ouch. It has been undocumented, but widely used all the time, the Lindens considered it a hack instead. And, oh well, one of the residents even got wind before it happened weeks ago and told them that it’s a bad idea at all. No reaction. Bummer.
  • Want to ger rid of the "missing from database" error? Vote for the according error over at JIRA!

Braggs‘ lawsuit settled

You can read this on the blog of Second Life now:

Linden Research, Inc., Philip Rosedale, and Marc Bragg have agreed to settle the “Bragg v. Linden and Rosedale” lawsuit currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The parties agree that there were unfortunate disagreements and miscommunications regarding the conduct and behavior by both sides and are pleased to report that Mr. Bragg’s “Marc Woebegone” account, privileges and responsibilities to the Second Life community have been restored. For the benefit of the Second Life community, the Parties have mutually agreed that the terms of their resolution shall remain confidential. The Parties ask that this confidentiality be respected.

So this is lawyer speak. What does that mean in real speak? Something like this from Lindenlabs point of view: we would have lost the case! So better agree to restore Braggs‘ account and properties in world and see if this is enough for him to drop the case before our roof really starts to burn and we’re losing big money!

It’s that easy.