When good ideas go bad
Win a Space in the Second Life Holiday Marketplace screams the official blog. There is a good concept somewhere beneath the surface of this, alas it’s well buried and needs dusting off, repackaged and delivered next year.
The infamous bag of swag, that I first heard about when Jack Linden asked if we’d like one after the Estate price drop seems to have seen the light of day. The problem here isn’t the concept, the concept is a good one. However it’s the delivery. The blog title to me reads like it’s going to be a competition for residents, it is a competition of sorts, it’s an auction. They don’t hide this fact but it begs the question how much is it worth bidding for sixty days of tier?
We don’t know how big the parcel will be but I can pickup a 1024m parcel for what, L$4,000 these days and I get to keep that without increasing my tier payments and I can sell it when I’m done with it. Not everyone will be in that position but like Bay City and Nautilus what sort of promotion is going on to make this worthwhile?
Then there’s the point of how late into the holiday season we’re getting. I know it’s not all about Christmas but the sims are named with a Christmas theme in mind. This seems like an idea that was forgotten about and them someone came into the office one day and said “Bloody hell we need to get the holiday marketplace sims idea out there“.
There are some rather cynical comments in the forum post about this and Linden Lab without a doubt deserve every bit of the cynicism over the way they’ve handled the openspace issue. However getting constructive here, this would be a good idea if:
1. The announcement had came in early November.
2. This was a competition like the Luna lottery rather than an auction.
3. There was more detail in what people would be getting and the sort of promotion Linden Lab are giving the sims.
4. Linden Lab were actually working hard to redeem themselves over the openspace debacle.
Next year this could work and generate goodwill to all men (and women…furries…nekos…dragons….) if they present it properly. Right now there’s not a lot of goodwill being shown by Linden Lab and there’s not a lot of goodwill being returned by the residents. Time is a great healer and we’ll kiss and make up at some point, that point however is likely to be well into 2009.