Land – The Financial Frontier

Linden Lab are no longer reporting economic stats,as reported by Tateru Nino here, but personally I’d long gone off Linden Lab’s stats and found myself far more interested in Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s stats. Tyche regularly reports stats over at SL Universe, as well as running her own site from where you too can access the data, at GridSurvey.com. There are loads of stats to be found over there, including details of Tyche’s awesome census data:

• 43.0% of Mainland owned directly by Linden Accounts (Contiguous Mainland is 6723 regions including Linden Home regions).
• 6.7% to 7.8% of Mainland by area is abandoned parcels (details – 2nd Jan 2012).
• 56.5% of Private Estate regions are Full Regions, 42.9% Homesteads & 0.6% Openspaces (details including top 20 Estates – 29th January 2012).
• Monthly Tier Estimates – Private Estates c.US$4.842 Million, Mainland c.US$1.008 Million.
• As of December 2011 38829 Linden Homes are occupied (details – 2nd Jan 2012).

Stats galore and more fun to be had on that site but the survey that gets most attention from Tyche is her weekly grid size survey and this week’s doesn’t make happy reading:

“48 hours late in reporting but still based on Sundays figures – Anyway this week the grid shrunk by 196 regions, Private estates had a net decline of 183 whilst Linden Owned fell by 13

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 30188 ( 23058 private estates & 7130 Linden owned) 126 new regions were added and 40 returned to the grid, with 366 regions removed (30 were renamed and 6 came and went since last report)”

This isn’t a record loss, but it is a big one, as Tyche explains when asked if it’s one of the top three losses since her surveying began:

“11th highest but largest since the 2008 Openspace repricing – there we had 10 weeks of between 279 and 622 lost per week (though of course some of these were conversions to full sims)”

Now before we start manning the lifeboats, let’s get some things in context, Tyche’s recent surveys estimate Linden Lab are generating tier of just under $USD 6 million a month, even allowing for losing the amount of sims they have this week, the iceberg is still a long long way off.

There are other stats we don’t see, how many people are spending time inworld? Are we seeing new communities emerging? These are the sort of things that stats won’t show. However, I fear the tier game is coming to its natural conclusion, tier is too high, Linden Lab need to find alternative income streams to assist the tier model, they need to do this sooner rather than later and even cutting tier doesn’t get us away from the issue of tier being too big a part of the Second Life model, they need to generate money through other streams to supplement tier and give them more flexibility on pricing.

Pathfinding is a cool feature, it will help with roleplaying immensely but roleplaying sims often subsisdise their sims with marketplaces, currently all sensible roads for marketplaces lead to Second Life’s own marketplace, that’s where content creators need to be and as it’s advertised more and more, even in the inventory tabs in the latest beta viewer, it must be doing something good for Linden Lab’s bottom line because why on earth would they be pushing it so hard if it wasn’t? The online marketplace is obviously going to have impact on land ownership inworld, it’s a natural consequence, it’s one that doesn’t have to be bad, the same as the way stores have moved online in RL doesn’t have to be bad but there are consequences and there will be pain.

The tier horse is bolting, the gate is too far open, Linden Lab won’t turn this round by keeping prices where they are, unlike World of Warcraft which can release an expansion pack to woo users back, Second Life doesn’t have that option, Pathfinding or Kung Fu Pandas? Pathfinding is going to be beaten into oblivion there.

As I said earlier, there’s no need to man the lifeboats, there are still plenty of tier paying residents and still plenty of people who want a new sim, but the curve is downward and Linden Lab need to strike now, whilst the numbers are still healthy and people will still want to expand their holdings, the tide is against land growth, Linden Lab need to realise this.

Second Life isn’t, and never has been, all about people making a quick buck, it’s about people engaging in activities, pathfinding will add to that but we need people who want to engage to achieve the goals of more fun things to do. Linden Lab need to shift their revenue models and entice people to use their product, tier is a barrier that needs to be overcome, sticking their heads in the sand won’t help here.

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