Just another unauthorised virtual world fansite
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Fantasy Faire 2013 will officially open its doors tomorrow, although I may know a route through a secret passageway hidden in a mountain to get early access. This blog is going to go deep into Fantasy Faire and to get the ball rolling, Draxtor Despres has a special edition of The Drax files highlighting Fantasy Faire, Relay For Life and a discussion with Fantasy Faire organiser Zandar Greene.
High Fidelity, the book by Nick Hornsby, then turned into a movie starring John Cusack and now a new virtual world by Philip Rosedale. In the new virtual world Philip, ably abetted by Jeska Dzwigalski, goes back to his former places of employment to figure out what went wrong and learns how to build a new stronger virtual world, with molecular cubes and a soundtrack featuring songs such as “I can’t Stand The Rain“, “Walking On Sunshine“, “We Are The Champions” and “Baby I Love Your Way“.
Philip and Jeska work at a store called Championship Voxels where they help other people who come through the doors of the store to reach their goals and dreams. Jeska educates people regarding the key differences between Whisky and Whiskey and in which cases it’s worth worrying about it or not and In the end we all applaud and live happily ever after! Hurrah!
Ok ok the virtual world isn’t anything to do with the Nick Hornsby book, but if they will pick a name like that! No it’s nothing to do with the book, but it is an interesting looking venture and it does feature Voxels….. I don’t know what they are and I’m not googling it either.
So what is Philip Rosedale’s High Fidelity? Well it is intended to be a virtual world and the blurb does look interesting, although at this stage we’re in vague city. The blurb tells us:
“We’re building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users.”
There’s a blog post today announcing the formation of the new company, which you can read here.
So I decided to sell a sim and a homestead as part of my tiering down exercise. This went better than expected, for a start I hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t realise Homesteads sold on the second hand market considering Linden Lab’s USD$100 transfer fee put a big dent in the resale value, I didn’t think that would sell, but I noticed some past group notices and tried my luck and yes there is a market for second hand Homesteads.
However, Linden Lab are extremely efficient when it comes to sim transfers these days it seems, well efficient to the extent that they ruined all my plans by being so damn efficient! Things started well, three minutes after I went to the pub someone asked me if I was selling a sim, unfortunately this meant I was in the pub and didn’t see the message and by the time I got back to them, they’d bought a sim. However a new opportunity was spotted and someone came to look at my sim:
Mystery Avatar: How much? Quick! It’s for the wife.
Me : Twenty shekels.
Mystery Avatar Wife: Wait, transfer time, minus delay, minus Linden Lab having lunch, we’ll give you fifteen shekels.
Me: Done!
Mystery Avatar: What? What are you doing, We’re supposed to haggle.
Me: No no, it’s ok I’ve got to…
Mystery Avatar: What do you mean, ‘no’?
Me: I haven’t time — I’ve got to sell a Homestead.
Mystery Avatar Calls Wife.
Mystery Avatar Wife: What is it?
Mystery Avatar: This bloke won’t haggle!
Me: Ok ok, seventeen Shekels.
Mystery Avatar Wife: Are you telling me it’s not worth twenty shekels? You asked for twenty shekels!
Me: But you said no!
Mystery Avatar: Of course we said no, we’re haggling, you’re supposed to haggle! Tut tut. Now try again, we’ll give you fifteen.
Me: …….Fifteen? Did I hear you right? Fifteen?? This cost me an arm and a leg — do you want to ruin me?
Mystery Avatar Wife: That’s better!
Me: Nineteen and I’m giving it away.
Mystery Avatar Wife: Eighteen.
Me: Seventeen.
Mystery Avatar Wife: Sold.
Me: …….. Hold on, damn they’ve gone!
So we exchanged ticket numbers and went about our business and the bloody thing transferred in twenty six hours, that’s right, twenty six hours, not five to ten days!
I haven’t sold land in Second Life for quite a while. I purchased land many moons ago, when you could pay 15,000 Linden Dollars for a bog standard 1024m parcel. Those days are long gone and I knew that the land market had crashed.
So this week I looked at my bills, looked at the return I’m getting from Second Life and decided it mght be time to tier down. I’m exasperated that Linden Lab seem to have made no obvious attempts to address the tier issue, which remains too damn high. I know I know, cutting tier would be economic suicide right now, it’s better to slowly lose income than cut income too quickly and risk everything, yadda yadda yadda, but Linden Lab need to realise that their pricing model is outdated, that their options, are outdated. There aren’t enough payment options.
By the same token, my inworld business models are outdated, I haven’t moved enough with the times, the fact that my business models are no longer working is my fault, not Linden Lab’s. I mean sure, it’s easy to say they should lower tier, but they haven’t, so it’s up to me to do something about that in terms of moving on to a new business or pulling out. I’m currently in the middle mode of deciding it’s time to cut back. My decision to cut back is long overdue, especially as Linden Lab won’t budge on the tier issue, but ultimately, it’s my fault that my Second Life business isn’t doing as well as it once was.
So anyway, I decided to cut some parcels and test the water with selling some, rather than flat out abandoning, as I have tier capacity to hold parcels, it seems silly to abandon without trying t0 sell. However, I didn’t realise how flat the land market currently is. One parcel I cut, is admittedly rubbish, so I decided to sell this 512m parcel for L$120, it isn’t selling! Goodness knows what price the land bots kick in, although I will have time to test this.
The Linden Dollar is in many ways ahead of its time, it’s a micro transaction medium that allows people in Second Life to purchase goods and services without having to signup to a new provider everytime they want new goods and services and of course those micro transactions mean people can spend pennies electronically, something the wider Internet is crying out for, particularly in the newspaper industry.
However due to its nature of being a license to use, rather than a real currency, it hasn’t gained the traction it could. Which brings me to broadcasting. We have in Second Life, Second Life broadcasters. People will setup their own shoutcast stream, play music, provide televisions that show inworld shows, but why don’t we have film direct from a film company or music from an authorised radio station? There’s scope here for companies to not only delve into new areas but certainly in terms of film, there’s opportunity for those companies to bring machinima to an audience outside Second Life.
Fandor are a company whom broadcast films, they have a subscription based model but unlike some of the larger companies, they look for films the mainstream companies won’t, from their blurb:
“At Fandor we believe our job is to connect amazing films with audiences who will love them. Most of our films fall outside mainstream channels and we love that, because there are plenty of places to watch those films online. We specialize in shorts, independents, film festivals favorites, classics and international films.”
Many Machinima films are shorts and they most certainly fall outside mainstream channels. Fandor are also San Frnacisco based and have at some point, maybe still at this point, employed an ex Linden. There’s potential here but I suspect the mechanics aren’t quite right for them to make a deal with Linden Lab to allow their films to be shown in Second Life, although getting films made in Second Life to Fandor may be less of a challenge, it might just not appeal. However going forward I think this is the sort of strategic alliance that does have potential.
Continue reading “Official Music And Film Streams Aren’t Quite Ready For Virtual World Deals”