January 2013 – Page 4

January 23, 2013

Extending Affiliate System Could Help Sims Providing Something To Do

One of the problems with creating a something to do sim, is monetising it to offset tier costs. Many people find USD$295 a month a step too far when it comes to creating an entertaining experience. Old models included selling commercial spaces to merchants. The rise of the marketplace has somewhat negated the need for merchants to have such spaces or invest time in affiliate systems for sim owners to have their own stores selling merchandise for others.

However the affiliate model still has potential, and ideally it could benefit from a royalty system such as Cloud Party has, but we haven’t got that in Second Life yet However maybe sold items could come with two versions, the stand alone version and the resale version, whereby the resale version can be sold with commission going to both the merchant and sim owner.

How this would work would be that you’d buy buildings, props, scenery, accessories etc. for your sim and then they’d be set for sale, so there’s no need for a store as such, but the items can be purchased. A sim owner would receive a commission from sales on their sim, along of course with the original merchant getting their fair share too. This also has the advantage of exemplifying use of said creations, so that people can see how well these items perform in a setting where they are used.

Then there are other areas of collaboration that are under explored. 7 Seas fishing is a good example of collaboration, when you setup a 7 seas fishing area you also get a 7 seas affiliate vendor, it’s a small item, doesn’t take up much space but people who see your 7 Seas area may decide they want one of their own and buy said items from you. I’d like to see more of this sort of thing.

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January 21, 2013

Kitely Market Has Early Bird Offers

Kitely are currently developing a marketplace for their virtual world, one they hope will also be able to serve other virtual worlds. They have recently blogged some information about how their market will work and they are offering an early bird promotion for merchants to apply for, the details can be found here.

The Kitely market will be different from the Second Life marketplace, for a start there will be listing fees, although I’m unsure how often you have to pay a listing fee, or whether it’s a one off fee. The listing fees are:

Add product: 100 KC
Add variation: 25 KC

KC being Kitely Credits. Now the reason for the variation fee is because variations will be listed under one product, so instead of seeing umpteen different listings for a shirt in different colours, you’ll have a listing with variations.

Kitely are also offering some early bird offers to try and encourage merchants to start setting up shop:

Early-Bird Discounts for All Merchants

There will be a 50% discount on listing fees until the market opens for buyers.

In addition, we will provide a special free world that registered merchants (see below) can use for creating their objects. Since we don’t charge upload fees, this means that even users using the Free Plan will be able to create items without any cost except for the listing fees. This world will only be available until the marketplace opens.

However if you’re an established merchant, you can apply to be a featured merchant and get even better discounts.

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January 21, 2013

Second Life General Discussion Turning Into Schoolyard Farce

I don’t use the Second Life Forums as much as I once did, many reasons for that, the first being that the forums lost their charm when Linden Lab decided to ditch Resident Answers and move from real forum software to an all singing, all dancing, more than a forum software. Since then they’ve moved onto a second version of all singing, all dancing, more than a forum software and it’s still rather cack to me, but these things happen. People who used the really old forums didn’t like the transition to the version of the forums I enjoyed.

The creation forums are generally good and full of helpful advice. The merchants area is an area of healthy and vibrant discussion with some spiky threads and healthy disagreement. The technology forums are full of good information and whereas people can disagree, there’s good participation from Lindens there, which make it more useful. General discussion is an area where you’d think you’d gone back in time to the days when you were at school, with obvious cliques, trolling, flame bait and what seems to be bullying. I refrain from calling it outright bullying because I don’t know if there’s some sort of forum cartel at play feigning injury in order to whip up discussion.

The really sad thing though is that some of the participants in these playground antics have forum ranks of Helper or Advisor, they are supposedly responsible residents and yet they are fully engaged in these silly antics, which quite frankly they should be embarrassed about.

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January 21, 2013January 21, 2013

Dwarfins Creators Unleash Dwarfins Avatars

The creators of Dwarfins, the breedable game, have unleashed some avatars to accompany their breedable Dwarfins, so that you too can look like a Dwarfin! This has manay advantages, some of which I’ll get to later. The avatars are rigged mesh and come in three styles for males and three styles for females. The styles are Peasant, Farmer or Viking, which are the traits of the breedable version of Dwarfins.

Each style comes with a choice of four outfits, eye colours, hair colours, skin colours and if you’re a male, beards, female Dwarfins don’t have beards, they do however have chestpieces! There’s also a weapon!

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January 20, 2013

The Trouble With Mesh

I haven’t yet released much into the wild in terms of mesh and the reason for that is largely me being a fussy bugger. The trouble with mesh is also part of the beauty of mesh, you have extra control over mesh and this leads to me constantly deciding I can do this better and never actually finishing my build, ignoring the advice I was given years ago in Second Life that at some point you have to say to hell with it, that will do, or you’ll never finish your build.

Years ago that was with relation to the dotted lines that appear on builds when you have certain settings, I would try and find ways to avoid it, someone then said to me that you just have to roll with it. I’m back there now with mesh, not with regards to dotted lines, but with worrying that I could be more efficient, that I can make the inside a lower LOD than the outside, as the inside doesn’t need to be seen from so far away, whether I should worry about inside faces in the roof space that probably won’t be used …. but what if someone wants to use it? Arghhhh!

I can then build a very basic roof, with insides, all in a low land impact modular roof, but you can’t rez inside said roof, you can drag things inside and rez them that way but that means any scripted items that rez inventory won’t work. This constant second guessing of use cases becomes stifling in the creation process, but I realise it’s me whose stifling myself.

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