Just another unauthorised virtual world fansite
The roleplayers on my roleplaying sim have decided to hold a week long festival entitled Hallow’Dee’n … I suggested it might be better to hold this next week and run into Halloween, to which they responded:
“Halloween is a popular time of year.”
“People will be doing their own thing.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Noob!”
So it’s happening this week instead, with two Saturday parties, some games, competitions, quests a fashion show … a medieval style fashion show.
The recent Linden Endwonment For The Arts deal for the arts community to be granted the use of twenty sims for a year has once more brought the tier issue to the fore, tier is expensive in Second Life, however there are some cold harsh realities that even a British (Ok Half Irish) lefty like me understands. Linden Lab cannot give away land to all and sundry, they have salaries to pay, bills to pay, development needs, they can’t run the place on free air.
However, it is about time that Linden Lab looked at some alternative means of income, tier is still too large a factor in their business model, which gives them very little wiggle room when it comes to reducing it. Linden Lab’s other means of income appear on the face of it to be transaction fees on Linden Dollar sales, selling Linden Dollars directly and Premium Memberships, Premium Memberships are actually relatively cheap, especially when you take into account the three hundred Linden Dollar stipend a week, older accounts have higher stipends, such as four hundred and five hundred Linden Dollars a week, which basically pay for themselves.
There was a time when Linden Lab could also generate income from auctioning mainland sims, it was not uncommon for a sim to sell for USD$4,000 at auction, those days are long gone.
Even though there was quite a hoo-ha when Linden Lab announced they would be removing the educational discount in Second Life, educators are still actively involved in Second Life, I might come to tier issues later this evening.
This weekend, Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE 2012) is holding an informational meeting. The meeting is free to attend, the agenda is as follows:
The Agenda:
Please join us for our first information meeting for 2012!
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway/127/128/25/
For more information go to the eventbrite site where the event is listed, which you will find here.
Via Inara Pey comes news that the Linden Endownment of the Arts have secured a twenty sim deal to promote the arts in Second Life. The actual announcement from the Linden Endownment for the Arts can be read here, it explains the process for artists and curators to be able to apply to get their hands on a sim:
“The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) has negotiated with Linden Labs to make available twenty new regions for the arts in Second Life. Four regions will be reserved for exhibitions curated from LEA sandbox art, and two will be allocated through a land rush. Details will follow on those six regions. Fourteen will be allocated by application. These regions will be awarded to selected artists for a period of five months. After the completion of five months those regions will be transferred to a new set of awardees. Recipients can be considered for a second endowment of five months.”
I’ve already passed the link on to some artists I know, however I haven’t really changed my mind on things like this, I find it uncomfortable.
Continue reading “20 Sim Arts Grant For LEA Makes Me Uncomfortable”
I made my way to the Adult Content User Group Meeting tonight, fully expecting to hear who had won the proposal to run the adult gateway on Zindra, I was late to the meeting but missed the announcement, however the winner is …. drum roll please:
Viale Linden: First and foremost … No update on the Welcome proposal. still working on that.
So the announcement will be sometime soon, the whole proposal is odd to me, four residents will be responsible for tier on four individual sims and will get exclusive rights to the Zindra name for their parcels, from what I can workout, this isn’t an ideal solution as those who have a parcel on Zindra, really should be able to mention that in your parcel name.However Linden Lab want the new adult gateway to be found easily, so finding a happy solution was never going to be easy. I can’t think of a better way of giving the welcome hub top billing in search and those who are opposed to this idea really need to come up with a solution about that rather than just saying no.