Over at New World Notes Hamlet Au is disappointed to learn that one of the Next Big Things to save Second Life isn't doing what he hoped it would, namely, turn SL into the gamers' paradise he apparently wants it to be. This latest revelation comes on the heels of his blog entry last week that hyped the "publish[ing]" of SL "on Valve's Steam distribution network", which is apparently the latest Next Big Thing that will save SL from the slow disintegration of the grid.
Some people are joining Hamlet in hyping this Steam thing as the feature that will bring swarms of 25-40-year-olds to the grid, injecting new life into it and making up for the loss of regions that has been taking place over the last couple of years. Others are downplaying these developments as not having any significant impact on the number of new users to SL, and I happen to be among that crowd. And there's a reason why we don't expect this to take off: the high price of land in SL and the inescapable fact that Second Life is simply not a gaming platform. It never was and never will be.
A popular region called Hosoi just announced that, because of financial difficulties, the sim owner is forced to close it down and leave the grid. And it's not just one but four full regions shutting down.
Now, this should not be surprising to anyone who has kept up with news of SL on NWN. In May and September last year, and in June of this year forecasts predict a ten percent loss of privately-"owned" regions. The single biggest reason for these region losses is the ridiculously high price of land in SL, with Linden Lab charging people up to $1,000.00 USD to buy a new region and $295.00 USD a month for maintenance fees on the server that houses it. And since servers are shared by several regions, this means that each server brings in many hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month. It's a pricing model that only barely worked back in 2006, when there was still the illsuion maintained that the U.S. and world economies were somewhat strong. But that illusion ended in 2008 — four years ago — and it is just plain stupid to expect people to sustain what has become an outrageously expensive luxury when most of us are not even able to earn a living wage and the ones who are able are finding their savings being gobbled up by everything from higher food prices to economically-crippling medical bills.
Now, the simplest solution to bring in more revenue is to cut region prices by one half to two thirds, making SL land pricing competitive with grids such as OpenSim and InWorldz, both of which charge less than $100.00 USD for private islands — both the initial buying price and the monthly server maintenance fee are around $75.00) — and provide far more resources for those regions. Linden Lab currently allows only 15,000 primitives (the basic building blocks that are used to generate the amazing constructs users have made over the years). InWorldz allows up to 45,000. If you had a choice between paying $75 a month for 45,000 prims and shelling out $295 a month for 15,000 prims, the choice really doesn't even exist. You'd opt for a grid that charges far less and gives you far more for what you're paying.
That's exactly what SL region owners are doing. OpenSim was reported this past February as having experienced a small explosion of new users flocking over from the ridiculously expensive Second Life, a healthy increase following a December 2011 report that OpenSim gained 915 regions with InWorldz being the busiest of the independent virtual grids.
It is simply foolish to market something that isn't a gaming platform as a gaming platform, especially when none of the tools are present for turning it into one and the interest from users isn't there. But that's exactly what Linden Lab insists on doing, and with its primary revenue base drying up without a replacement to make up for the losses, the company really can't expect to fund all the non-SL projects it wants to. The latest deal with Steam may be an attempt to secure a new revenue source, but I can think of plenty of more efficient, more viable ways to increase it than by trying to attract gamers from one virtual environment to one that is not set up for gaming.
That's why the Bloodlines clan I belong to is trying to raise funds for a full year for the Nocturne Project. Until or unless Linden Lab wises up and dramatically lowers land tier prices, it's just prohibitively expensive to try and maintain a full region unless you have the business acumen to rent it out at a price that bring in a healthy profit. You can have mesh and pathfinding and all the deals with Cloud and Steam and whatever going on, but at the end of the day it's still the economy stupid. And if Linden Lab refuses to wake up to that reality, it's going to price itself out of business within a few more years.
For an alternative take on this subject, go here.
Showing posts with label Cost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cost. Show all posts
Monday, August 20, 2012
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
More On Mesh: Marketplace Advertisements
I was perusing the SL forums for discussions weighing the pros and cons of mesh imports and found this thread by Flea Yatsenko:
This does indeed appear to be a tricky subject. Is this something that could have been predicted by Linden Lab? Did they predict it? If so, did they care? I don't pretend to know the answer to those questions. The first person to reply to the above-quoted post suggested that dishonest sellers probably won't last very long because they will develop a nasty reputation and ultimately go under. While this is probably true, what of those initial victims who bought mesh-based items having been told something that wasn't true? They'll have wasted money on something that costs more than advertised, and the damage will have been done. And then there are honest sellers who may not fully understand what it is they're selling or how to advertise it properly so that buyers understand what they're investing their money in. Do they get caught up in that category, even though it may not really be their fault?
Like I said in my last entry, mesh will probably be here to stay. After reading some more on the subject, I'm reaching the conclusion that it will be slow to catch on, and then settle into a niche similar to sculpties: created and imported by people who have the talent to make them (or at least upload them from other sources, a feat that could prove difficult to trace), but for everyone else, a pretty but ultimately expensive toy that may not be worth the bother.
Just my two cents, for what they're worth.
This does indeed appear to be a tricky subject. Is this something that could have been predicted by Linden Lab? Did they predict it? If so, did they care? I don't pretend to know the answer to those questions. The first person to reply to the above-quoted post suggested that dishonest sellers probably won't last very long because they will develop a nasty reputation and ultimately go under. While this is probably true, what of those initial victims who bought mesh-based items having been told something that wasn't true? They'll have wasted money on something that costs more than advertised, and the damage will have been done. And then there are honest sellers who may not fully understand what it is they're selling or how to advertise it properly so that buyers understand what they're investing their money in. Do they get caught up in that category, even though it may not really be their fault?
Like I said in my last entry, mesh will probably be here to stay. After reading some more on the subject, I'm reaching the conclusion that it will be slow to catch on, and then settle into a niche similar to sculpties: created and imported by people who have the talent to make them (or at least upload them from other sources, a feat that could prove difficult to trace), but for everyone else, a pretty but ultimately expensive toy that may not be worth the bother.
Just my two cents, for what they're worth.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thoughts On Mesh and Rebuilding
With mesh imports now becoming a reality in SL, I've been seeing blogs wherein the writers boast about revamping their regions with all new mesh builds, including buildings, vehicles, and the like. It's their regions and they can do what they want with them, but I have to admit I'm a little puzzled as to why so many people are being so quick to replace as much as they can with the mesh imports.
The fact is that a huge chunk of SL users will not be able to even see mesh imports (properly) because not all viewers support mesh. Sure, some third party viewers, like Firestorm, are cloning Viewer 2 in hopes of being able to adopt mesh, and I think someone told me that Kirsten's Viewer is mesh-compatible. But most people still seem to be using Viewer 1-based viewers, including Phoenix, Singularity, and Rainbow, which cannot yet support mesh (although the Singularity team is working on bringing mesh import-and-viewing capability into its viewer).
Then, of course, there is the prohibitive cost of importing mesh objects. See, sculpt maps cost only ten Linden Bucks to import, seeing as how they're actually texture-images you import like any other image. Mesh objects, on the other hand, are apparently priced according to the level of complexity, and they are said to come with a prim-cost. So the more complex and the larger the size of a mesh build, the more expensive it is to import it. Given this, why is it expected that anyone but people with surplus disposable income (a group the size of which gets smaller and smaller by the day) will even be able to afford a lot of mesh imports? While I don't begrudge the right of people who can afford to toss away money like that, it does puzzle me that anyone thinks that something so cost-prohibitive will catch on quickly, if at all. If anything, with the real-world economy causing people to tighten their belts, I don't expect nearly as rapid a switch to mesh from sculpted and reguler-prim builds as is being claimed in some circles.
I've made no secret about my opinion toward Viewer 2 and its clones, and the elitist attitudes of its proponents. But there is a practical aspect to this whole craze over mesh that some people may not care to recognize. Most of the grid can't and probably never will be able to see mesh imports, unless people switch to a viewer like Singularity once they are able to add mesh to theirs. So a lot of mesh-importers will probably begin to lose visitors to their regions once they start having to deal with people coming to their sims, seeing a bunch of blocks, spheres, and ovals instead of the supposedly super-awesomely-detailed mesh imports they ran right out and spent money bringing in; then the cost issue will begin to slow the growth of mesh importing. If region owners and moderators don't handle these two tricky issues correctly, they'll only turn people off and end up hurting their own traffic rankings, and in SL, losing traffic means losing a lot in donations and vendor sales.
Now, will mesh eventually become the standard of SL? Probably. I just don't see it catching on quite as fast as its proponents want to think. One thing Linden Labs can do to avoid that is to lower the cost, both in Linden Bucks and prim count, of mesh imports. Yes, it took a lot of time and labor to integrate it into the grid. But charge too much too soon for your nifty new toy, and don't expect a lot of sales. The second thing Linden Labs can do is to go back to the drawing board and bring back the Viewer 1 user interface for its current system, or something as close to it as possible. If nothing else, at least give users a choice instead of turning them off with the current cruddy viewer that seems designed only to frustrate people. Other grids, such as InWorldz, are catching up to SL in terms of stability, and they use viewers that are user-friendly and easy to learn. By lowering the cost of mesh imports and producing a better viewer than what is currently being pushed on us, I am confident Linden labs can avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
The fact is that a huge chunk of SL users will not be able to even see mesh imports (properly) because not all viewers support mesh. Sure, some third party viewers, like Firestorm, are cloning Viewer 2 in hopes of being able to adopt mesh, and I think someone told me that Kirsten's Viewer is mesh-compatible. But most people still seem to be using Viewer 1-based viewers, including Phoenix, Singularity, and Rainbow, which cannot yet support mesh (although the Singularity team is working on bringing mesh import-and-viewing capability into its viewer).
Then, of course, there is the prohibitive cost of importing mesh objects. See, sculpt maps cost only ten Linden Bucks to import, seeing as how they're actually texture-images you import like any other image. Mesh objects, on the other hand, are apparently priced according to the level of complexity, and they are said to come with a prim-cost. So the more complex and the larger the size of a mesh build, the more expensive it is to import it. Given this, why is it expected that anyone but people with surplus disposable income (a group the size of which gets smaller and smaller by the day) will even be able to afford a lot of mesh imports? While I don't begrudge the right of people who can afford to toss away money like that, it does puzzle me that anyone thinks that something so cost-prohibitive will catch on quickly, if at all. If anything, with the real-world economy causing people to tighten their belts, I don't expect nearly as rapid a switch to mesh from sculpted and reguler-prim builds as is being claimed in some circles.
I've made no secret about my opinion toward Viewer 2 and its clones, and the elitist attitudes of its proponents. But there is a practical aspect to this whole craze over mesh that some people may not care to recognize. Most of the grid can't and probably never will be able to see mesh imports, unless people switch to a viewer like Singularity once they are able to add mesh to theirs. So a lot of mesh-importers will probably begin to lose visitors to their regions once they start having to deal with people coming to their sims, seeing a bunch of blocks, spheres, and ovals instead of the supposedly super-awesomely-detailed mesh imports they ran right out and spent money bringing in; then the cost issue will begin to slow the growth of mesh importing. If region owners and moderators don't handle these two tricky issues correctly, they'll only turn people off and end up hurting their own traffic rankings, and in SL, losing traffic means losing a lot in donations and vendor sales.
Now, will mesh eventually become the standard of SL? Probably. I just don't see it catching on quite as fast as its proponents want to think. One thing Linden Labs can do to avoid that is to lower the cost, both in Linden Bucks and prim count, of mesh imports. Yes, it took a lot of time and labor to integrate it into the grid. But charge too much too soon for your nifty new toy, and don't expect a lot of sales. The second thing Linden Labs can do is to go back to the drawing board and bring back the Viewer 1 user interface for its current system, or something as close to it as possible. If nothing else, at least give users a choice instead of turning them off with the current cruddy viewer that seems designed only to frustrate people. Other grids, such as InWorldz, are catching up to SL in terms of stability, and they use viewers that are user-friendly and easy to learn. By lowering the cost of mesh imports and producing a better viewer than what is currently being pushed on us, I am confident Linden labs can avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
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