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It's Too Bad
LiteLucidity
Member Posts: 18
Second Life could be wildly popular (more than just the most popular product of its type as it currently is). This was.. yes i said WAS, an opportunity for Phillip Rosedale and his cast of Lindens to surpass the ordinary, to exceed resonable expectations, to create a new KIND of reality. Sadly they have failed. The emphasis is on money first, not on greatness or on creating something new. The business philosophy at linden labs is to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from every user while limiting these same users as to how much they can earn. Players have been sabatoged by linden labs if they become too wealthy, I know of many stories and it happened to me. My income stream was erased and my land confiscated. Oh they admitted it was an error, here is waht they offered: NOTHING but "oh well, it happens". Funny how poor players are less prone to "errors". I lost the equivilent of several hundred real life dollars in land alone and a stream of nearly a hundred per month (real dollars I am talking) with growth potential.
Apart from this, the game has become so bogged down and prone to crash that the experience is no longer enjoyable. Expect to spend more time relogging and rebooting then interacting with the SL world. During game play you can expect to experience significant lag and loose the use of various features periodically. Not addressing these issues and failing to sink more money into the future (servers and coder salaries) will ultimately see a competitor with a more far sighted vision capture the promise that Linden Labs has failed to forsee. Anyone remeber BetaMax? Beta lost to VHS even though it was better technology. The forsight behind VHS was broader and this growing market segment will see a broader intillect swoop in and capture what could have belonged to Linden Labs. Just another sad story of not knowing what you have until its too late.. just ask anyone at Xerox about the mouse.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
Comments
Sadly, money seems to ruin most everything artistic. Great art, great music and indeed great games. Once they figure out they can make money they worry more about making money than making quality. It becomes a Mcdonalds mentality. Not that I didn't just eat a double cheeseburger from Mcdonalds...everything has its merits, we just have to decide how much and how little we are willing to put up with.
I'm sorry to hear that they seem to have screwed you out of your in game acquisitions. Is there any hope for retrieval?
Thanks for the nod my friend. I also wish to point out that I generally find the good in most things and take things for what they are. In this case (second life) I just felt the need to point out what is so obviously flawed in a product that had so much potential. At the moment it stands apart from it's competitors as the premier choice it it's realm. It's designers and promoters short sightedness will rob us all of a rapid head start toward what lies ahead in this genre. We will unboubtedly take a step backward as SL is replaced by a better run but noticeibly inferioir product in the near future.
And NO, no chance of recovery or compensation for my losses due to "error". I have had three instances with the game where I was literally cheated out of money. According to their agreement they are right... they technically owe me nothing. But now they get ZERO per month from me instead of 85 bucks. Penny wise and dollar foolish. That kind of behavior lands you in the trash heap of gaming history's lost treasures. Move over Atari, Linden Labs is coming to keep you company.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
I'm very sorry to hear about your loss. I come from There where we have very few erros of that sort. But I have heard of a Porta Zone (Paz) having over 200 days on it and then the next it timed out and had 10 minutes on it. It seems to always be something with the server.
I don't think you can blame Linden Labs. Servers are the main problem with any Virtual World. They have large amounts of data on them and can sometimes just give up. Many people are rich in There (In Tbucks) and sometimes this sort of stuff happens.
But its not the company's fault. See what i'm saying? It is just the server having an error or data loss. Really you can recover when something like this happens. Gather what you have and rebuild, so to speak. I have not had a very good expience with Second Life but I think it does have potential.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
I understand your point completely Joel. To clarify: I am patient about server glitches and overloads and I realize that much of this is caused simply by the popularuty of the gme. My dissapointment is that new features which generate money for Linden Labs are rolled out on a regular basis while the game play issues have gone largely unaddressed for many months. The other issues are soley the fault of the owners and managers. It's a shodt sighted philosophy and there is no mistaking that. As far as the money, I was talking about real US currency (not linden dollars) you can see the exchange rate at the open gaming market. Part of the SL hook is that you can make real money.
Potential?.. you are 100% right, Second Life has loads of potential and can own the market for virtual worlds if the management wises up. It's not a forgone conclusion that it will fail, but significant changes do need to be made.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
Well remember Second Life is owned by Linden Labs which is a company. If they don't focus on money there is a chance they'll loose money. That means they won't be able to pay bill to keep Second Life running and they'll have no choice but to shut down the grid entierly.
On the There forums we have many discussions on the economy and the price of Tbucks. It always leads us to the same thing, There is a company which needs to make money in order to keep There alive. The reason Linden Labs is focusing on money grabbing features is so they'll be able to keep Second Life online.
If you look around you'll see them improving the game play every day. The main reason people join There and Second Life is for building a world the way they want. The members of each are creating and improving the each all the time.
The developers created a canvas and let us run wild. The same for Second Life, members are the creators in reality. Its up to us to make Second Life and There a better place for all. If you look at it that way then you can make the features you want when you want them.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
Well as I understand many people buy the monthly package. With around 100 people joining every day and buying that pack they don't need customers to stay around. So in any case they will just forget features as long as they get people paying that package at least two times.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
Don't need customers to stay around? I hope you are not in sales my friend. With an attitue like that you would not do very well. It's not just loosing customers, it's gaining a reputation as a company that does not treat customers well. That is the real killer and it will cause this huge influx of new users to slow over time. It's not rocket sciencs and it's not a new concept. It has been repeated over and over in the anals of failed human endevours.
What exactly are you defending? SL's righ to pump out an inferior service because new customers will keep coming and pumping money in so the old ones dont really matter? Yes, Joel they have that right. I have a right to be a bone head too, I choose not to exercise that right.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
Well in this day and age customer service just does not matter to a company. As long as they get the money to pay their workers its all right. I think that is the attitude of Linden Labs right now. They are having volunteers do all the work, take Live Help for example.
I think they are running out of money and its just a matter of time until they reviel it to the community on a large scale. They are trying to bleed members dry. I know alot of members know they are having problems because There volunteer helpers see recruiters all the time.
I'm not saying Second Life is bad, I am just saying Linden Labs is in trouble and will do anything to keep Second Life on the market. Even if it means stealing members from another world. I heard about an increase in prices for land, that is a perfect example telling you they are in trouble.
Like I said, its only a matter of time before an anouncment pops up saying "We Need Help!" I believe a small amount of the community knows this already, the recruiters are the ones who know. I just don't believe they have not admited it already. Just a matter of time.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
Joel obviously I agree that the company is in trouble. But I am astonished that you think customer service "in this day and age" is not important. In this day and age it is more important then it has ever been in human history. There are more competitors fighting for the same customers now then in any time in the history of mankind. Internet services are even more exposed to this since acces to information and reviews about competitors for a givem product flood in from everywhere.
You simply have that backwards. Customer service may not matter to a company but it matters more then ever to consumers. And that is my very point of all this: SL will fail due to woefull customer service, not because of the product. Only one kind of company can afford to ignore customer service: A Manopoly. AT&T was once once a monopoly, since the break up it's amazing how much the consumer has benefitted from lower prices, better products and better customer service. Think about it Joel, customewr service is not only important, it's the key to long term success as a company.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
My point is if a customer of Linden Labs stays around for 2-3 months only thats ok. As long as they pay a fee each month, they don't care cause they sqeezed some money out of 'em. Thats the only thing I am saying. With Linden Labs customer service is not important.
Since they are in trouble they are only focused on making the money to pay the bills that month, not giving the mebers what they want. So untill they have made quite a bit of savings they won't care about features or customer service. Thats the only thing i'm saying.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
Yep, they dont care and it will be their undoing. No customer service equals no company (sooner or later). A businees model focused on churning and burning paying customers just wont cut it.
- Lite & Lucid <---- On top of it Like Stink on Shinola! WooHoo, It's all good until someone spikes the virtual punch with prune juice.. Yikes!
It would be the undoing of any company. They are bent on making money no matter what the case. I'd give them about 9 months until they admit the company is in trouble. Then they'll get sued by members because the amount of money they put into Second Life was so high.
If Linden Labs slowly dies off they'll last another year, but if they keep going for money then only more will leave and they'll close the doors within 9 months. I would not give Second Life much long at the rate they are going now. I bet Philip is pulling his hair out for leaving Real Networks.
There
The only limitation in There is your own imagination!
*looks at Joel's post* Holy crap. Did you just...
You didn't use the word "There" in your post! AMAZING!
I've read the above thread - which is a few months old - and it seemed important for me to clarify some things...
For ages people have suggested that Linden Lab is "in finantial trouble". What this means is that right now, since the company started in 1999, they haven't had a return on investment yet. That's quite correct - their plans are long-term, not short-term.
Secondly, you have to take a look at what costs to run an operation like that. Just an overview:
So, running costs are perhaps around US$ 350,000 per month or so.
Now let's look at their income... from the 44,000 users, only 9,000 have Premium Accounts, and 5,000 of those hold, on average, 1024 m2 of virtual land. Since the first 512 m2 are included in the accounts, that means they'll only pay "land tier fees" for 512 m2 on average. It's hard to say how many Premium Accounts pay monthly, and how many just pay every year, so let's go for an average. Also, 3000 people join Second Life every month and pay only the lifetime US$ 9.95 (ie. no recurring monthly costs for those). Every month, 20 or 30 new "private islands" are also added to Second Life, so they'll get US $1,250 upfront for each of those. I'm not sure if their own statistics of "owning land" includes or not the private islands, since technically private islands are charged US$ 195 monthly, but owning them does not increase the "land tier fees".
Besides private islands, you can now auction land, one server at the time, for US $1000. They release perhaps 4-5 new servers on auction every week (I'm not very sure).
Breaking up the monthly income:
The total, as you see, is just perhaps a bit over half of what they need every month. Notice that increasing the user base is not a good option - you need more servers and more staff to support the increased amount of users, meaning that you will also add to the cost.
So, where is Linden Lab cutting expenses?
First, the average salaries are probably much lower. Of those 50 employees, half are Liaisons (in-world technical support), many working from home on 4-hour shifts. They may earn as low as US$ 500/mo. On the other hand, even top-of-the-line programmers, who would earn up to $US 10,000 or so, get part of their salaries in Linden Lab shares, so they may eventually accept half that money. At the end of the day, perhaps LL just pays US$ 50,000 in salaries.
Good co-location facilities are offering to co-locate servers for around US$100/month. You just have to buy them yourself instead of leasing them. Now, we know that Linden Lab got an investment of the eBay founder of around US $8 millions. They may have bought the servers themselves and now have drastically reduced the monthly costs of co-locating. That way, the monthly costs would be under US $200,000 - much more manageable!
They're also cutting costs by having volunteers (around 500 or so) doing many duties, like technical support. And now they routinely outsource many of the content to users instead of hiring designers to do their work for them. Some of those buildings are first-class design, and what they're paying is perhaps something near just US$ 5/hour. That's another way to cut investment costs dramatically. And the number of volunteers is growing, as well as the number of people willing to accept below-market wages to create content for Second Life.
And where are they making money?
Basic accounts really aren't very important in terms of "making money", since Linden Lab just gets a tiny amount from the one-time lifetime fee. Although they have to increase their staff to handle technical support. This means that it's in their best interest to "convert" basic accounts into premium accounts - it means that with the same amount of staff, you're able to get users which give you a monthly revenue. As the old business saying goes, it's always better to sell to your existing customers than to get new customers (this is called "upselling"
). For that they need to provide reliable service and give those users more features, so that they stay.
Private islands is clearly the area with much more interest. Currently there are only 2 staff members dealing with technical support, and private islands amount to 20% of their income, so this is where they're putting some emphasis!
Conclusion
Linden Lab does not operate at a loss, if they're doing things like they should. But for the common crowd around here that thinks that everything has to be for free, and that Linden Lab is "squeezing money" where they can, you have just to think a bit about the reality of economics. You can't run an operation like this on a vacuum. Money has to come from somewhere. Unlike what many would think, increasing dramatically the user base is not a good option, because infrastructure & salary costs rise in the same proportion - you don't make a profit from that, you just increase the volume of money that you handle every month. This is certainly important for getting good loans & leases from banks and finantial institutions, but it doesn't mean making a profit. Just take those numbers and see what they would earn and spend every month with a million users. The only advantage is that the only group of employees that would grow would be the technical support staff - and since these are the cheapest, and eventually, with telecommuting, you wouldn't need an increase in office space, that would eventually mean some reduced costs overall.
At the end of the day, what Linden Lab tries to do is to increase customers' experience, so that they convert from Basic Accounts into Premium Accounts. That - and private islands - is the best approach to make Linden Lab more profitable. But even if they fail in that approach, the current model works quite well, if they manage to keep running costs low.
Of course, this is just an outsider's view :-)
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
-- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08
Love Conquers All
Love Conquers All
Naturally enough, it's in the best of my interests to have this world of 4.8 million people and counting "live long and prosper". It has done well so far, but one should also criticise things that are not going that well and keep an open-minded and sceptical approach to the future of Second Life... nothing is perfect, though!
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
-- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08
She develops content for companies that wish to have a presence in a virtual world.
In other words, Gwyneth, you are a marketing consultant who seems to depend on the recent influx of companies and/or new non-traditional MMO players in Second Life to create a profit for yourself, yes?
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but let me point out a few technical realities of Second Life that will forever limit the overrhyped "vision" I hear Philip Rosedale spouting in every tech/mmo mag that will interview him recently.
First, Second Life is based on a graphics engine that is 8 years old. Yes, you can build in game, but if you are used to anything like 3DS Max, Maya or any modern 3D building program you will be sorely disappointed by the outdated methods of building. Yes you can important textures but ultimately, the tools available in Second Life, and the inability to import models from other programs like those available on Turbosquid means that to any player of other MMOs, you are taking a huge step back graphically.
So to take a step back graphically, there must be compelling gameplay reasons. But those are few and far between in Second Life.
The truth is, Second Life is really the heir to something like the Palace, rather than being any sort of new thing. Most areas are just chat rooms, not the Metaverse that Snow Crash makes you think of. There are of course, some sub-cultures that thrive inside Second Life.0
The biggest subculture that spreads across many "Sims" in Second Life is Gorean master/slave sex role play.
The combination of outdated graphics and build programs, the predominance of sex oriented chat over MMO/FPS gameplay and the influx of companies coming in looking just to market to people is not the recipe for a successful Metaverse style, visionary future, its just rehashed aol/palace chat.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
As a veteran of many, many on-line games I can honestly and safely state SecondLife has the very worse devs of any game currently or past. And this includes the ones at SOE which we all know about.
These guys don't have a clue as to fixing bugs or things that need fixing in sl.
For example: The teleporter broke down. Players couldn't tp more then half the times and at times not at all. Forums were filled with complaints and for something as essential and important as this in this game it took forever to be fixed. And still it's not fixed 100%.
This is just one of many things that go on with these devs, Linden.
You have players who have made lots of money and who pay LInden a big share of it. Maybe by selling land or in many other ways. Well, these people get away with murder, they cheat or prey on others and reporting them to Linden won't matter as nothing will be done.
Why? because as I stated they pay Linden a lot of cash monthly and Linden will not risk losing them so they won't take action against them no matter how much proof you have against them.
With Linden it's all about money. Play this game and you'll see it for yourself first hand.
what did he say?
WWIIOnline The Real War!
You had me for a second. I can agree with your rant on teleporters. There was a time when teleports were in specific locations on mainland, and islands had a spawn point. Most sims were within a sim or two of a telehub. So, you had to fly to where you were going. Believe it or not this was much more stable than the point to point system they have now. It took a little more time, sure, but it was stable. Stability vs convenience? I'll take stability.
The rest of your post has no ground. Players have ripped other players, but I have not read anything about kickbacks from Anshe Chung to Linden Labs. Anshe does have a major stake in the company, she owns a continent ffs, but my contact with her over the years has been fair. I bring up Anshe because she is the largest of the land barons you say are paying off LL. It's, simply, not based in fact. This is not EvE.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
I wouldn't know what the impact of an X-rated Twilight Zone game (or place) like SL would be in the world of real business. Graphically the majority of computers out there are considered dinasaurs anyways so all those fancy graphics engines you guys are talking about are greek to most of us retro nerds
Love Conquers All