Prim Perfect Poll Results Suggest The Tier Is Too Damn High

The results of Prim Perfect’s recent poll are in and unsurprisingly, there’s large feedback on the tier being too damn high in Second Life. The poll received 246 responses, which in some ways makes it a representative poll, on the other hand the poll was self selecting, which means it might not be representative. That’s the way polls work but they are usually weighted in some ways to select certain groups of people to try and balance results, 246 out of Second Life’s user base would satisfy most professional polling organisations in their results, the self selection wouldn’t.

I’m not trying to invalidate the results, largely because I agree with them mostly, but I think it’s only fair to put some perspective on the poll. Prim Perfect do the same, they’re not trying to hide anything, which is good to see.

I’m not going to cover all of the poll, you can go to the Prim Perfect blog for that, but I’ll look at a couple of results. I’ve covered the decline in private estate ownership on this blog, most recently with news that private estate ownership is down 12% this year, a result found because of the wonderful work of Tyche Shepherd. Prim Perfect’s poll also pays homage to Tyche, although at that time the losses were 11%.

What do you think are the major factors causing the decline of private landholding in Second Life?

• The high cost of tier in Second Life – 84%
• The economic situation in the real world –  66%
• The dominance of the Marketplace making holding land less viable – 41%
• A sense that Second Life is outdated –  27%
• A move to other forms of social gaming – e.g. Facebook, phone apps –  16%
• Other – 21%

Wait wait wait! That’s more than 100%! Yes that’s because it was a multiple answers question.

I don’t think there are any surprises to the answer to that question. I’ve talked of the marketplace upsetting the applecart inworld before, the marketplace means merchants can get more for less. The knock on effect of this is that arts sims, entertainment venues and roleplaying venues are losing those inworld store rentals that helped subsidise their ventures. This in turn leaves people feeling that the tier is too damn high!

What single factor would make you more inclined to buy or rent land in Second Life?

• Lower tier – 70%
• Support for educational or non-profit enterprises – 8%
• Improvements to the existing grid (e.g. lag; group chat) – 6%
• Greater communication with the Lab – 2%
• Support for commercial enterprises – 2%
• Support for game creators and managers within Second Life – 2%
• New features (such as the Pathfinding tools) introduced by the Lab – 0% (although 1 positive response)
• Other – 10%

Again no real surprises here, tier is and always has been the big barrier to land ownership in Second Life. I said the same when an average inland mainland parcel could fetch a price of L$15 per square metre, these days you can pick them up for less than L$1 per square metre.

The wider issue here though, is what can be done about the perceived high tier costs? I say perceived because we don’t know Linden Lab’s costs, we may compare them to Inworldz and Kitely but to be fair, Inworldz and Kitely are smaller ventures. I’m not dismissing them, because I respect the work both venues are doing, but they simply do not have the overheads Second Life does, which makes cost comparisons difficult.

Personally I think Linden Lab should be looking at pro-rata pricing in some form. If a venue is only open at the weekend then a sim owner should not need to pay a full month’s worth of tier, although the pro-rata rate should be higher per day than the flat monthly fee. Linden Lab already operate along these lines with premium memberships where the best daily rate is found on the yearly membership.

I also think Linden Lab need a bit of a culture shift, they seem to be unable to see the Marketplace/Inworld store issue and why The Marketplace has an impact on inworld land holdings, even with Direct Delivery which means people can operate a marketplace store without the need for even renting land in world, let alone owning some. Land owners have been adapting to this shift, by downgrading in many cases.

I also think Linden Lab need to be investigating other revenue streams, such as advertising on their site. I’ve said it before but the likes of Adobe produce tools that can be used to create content in Second Life, so do Blender, GIMP and Autodesk, surely there’s room for some strategic partnerships here.

Tier in Second Life is starting to feel like my old dial up phone bills did for my internet usage many moons ago, expensive and out of date in a changing world. UK phone companies were very slow to jump on the unmetered billing bandwagon, bills were expensive, but eventually they had to change, Second Life needs to too. However in the case of Second Life it’s really adding more options to the billing process.

However I don’t expect to see any changes overnight, or even in the short term. Tier income may be declining, but it’s still at very healthy levels for Linden Lab and I can understand why they won’t slash tier, there’s absolutely no guarantee that slashing tier will raise income. Slashing tier would I’m sure increase land ownership and probably halt the decline in private regions, but it may not increase income for Linden Lab.

For full results of the survey, funky pie charts and graphs, please read the full analysis of the survey on the Prim Perfect Blog.

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