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income too quickly and risk everything, yadda yadda yadda, but Linden Lab need to realise that their pricing model is outdated, that their options, are outdated.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By the same token, my inworld business models are outdated, I haven’t moved enough with the times, the fact that my business models are no longer working is my fault, not Linden Lab’s. I mean sure, it’s easy to say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 thing is I know the land market is depressed, I didn’t quite realise how depressed but now I can see why people abandon rather than sell. I always felt abandoning was silly, as at the right price you would have a bot in a parcel by you rather quickly, but those days are over.
So we have all this abandoned land, on servers, doing nothing, which can’t be good for overall efficiency costs. Of course Second Life isn’t like an MMO where they’d just announce they were shutting down some servers and merging them with others, Second Life doesn’t work that way, so we have all this abandoned land, because the tier is too damn high and we’re in a bit of a spiral.
The SL Marketplace has hit inworld sales hard, that’s one of the reasons we have all this yellow land on the map. I’ve been over this time and again but inworld sales helped to subsidise something to do parcels and sims, which in turn meants more parcels were occupied, the disparate parts made up the whole. The Marketplace broke one of those disparate parts rather viciously, and now the price is being paid.
I’m not saying The Marketplace is bad, but there seem to have been no thoughts on the impact it would make on the whole. Linden Lab have not reacted to this, whereas people inworld have, by moving out.
I’ve said many times, Linden Lab still have very healthy income from Second Life, they have time to make a plan, but the clock is definitely ticking and the tier is most definitely, too damn high!
You say the pricing model is outdated. So the move to marketplace was the right thing to do: Get less dependend on tier and make more money on marketplace commissions. Another reason for land loss is the huge economic crisis in the western world. People loose their jobs and cannot affort land anymore. They might return once the economy is back on track. But you are right, tier is too expensive. We Europeans even have to pay additional 20% VAT on tier. So a sim in Europe costs around 360 USD per month.
@Eric, there have been a number of analyses on tier and LL revenues and what seems to be a general agreement is that what LL makes out of marketplace commissions is peanuts in comparison to tier. Thus, the fact that many merchants have less reasons to buy/keep land ultimately affects LL.
The Marketplace definitely has plus points but as Indigo points out, it’s unlikely that the indirect income marketplace commission provides replaces the direct income tier provides.
I am European, so VAT is a problem but that’s something for our politicians to address rather than Linden Lab, that’s not Linden Lab’s fault.
I also agree that the RL economic problems are part of the problem as is the fact that Second Life is getting older and isn’t as vibrant as it once was.
I wish they would just take some of the empty mainland and turn it into lakes, or parks… put something there! You could still offer it for sale but at least make it look attractive! Mainland has been empty since they kicked out all the adult rated places and moved them to Zindra. Land prices might rise a bit, if so much of it wasn’t empty.
That’s not a bad shout at all, those areas would be attactive and may even bring benefits to the surrounding land owners.
I’ve always wondered if there isn’t a third option besides lowering tier or keeping it the same.
How about different kinds of tier?
For instance, making tier for a sim cheaper the first year will help many new projects get started, it will give people a reason to try something without going broke right away.
It will also allow people to buy a full regions for sims that they only need for a special event or for a few months.
Or maybe the other way around, reward those sims that have been around for a few years with lower tier, helping them to survive but also perhaps giving them the means to expand and buy another region.
Or maybe let people pay tier for the prims they use, making it VERY cheap to rent a region where you just build one single house.
I just wonder if there aren’t other things we can do that will make tier lower for some people but not take away the income.
Because in the long run, making it cheaper to buy a region, at least at first, will eventually mean more people paying tier.
You’re touching upon issues I implied in the blog post when I talked of the lack of options in the tier model and you’ve raised some great ideas.
I’m also a fan of a time based tier option, so if your sim is only open at weekends you pay a pro-rata fee for it being online. This would work out a bit more expensive than a flat daily fee so that ventures who want to be open 24/7 have a better deal per day.
Opening offers happen all the time, I see them regularly with my Cable company, signup and get reduced fees for the first x amount of months etc. so that is a common issue.
Yes absolutely, great idea.
If you could have a sim that is just active in a weekend and not have to pay full prize for that all the time, nightclubs and other sorts of sims would pop up all over SL and only a very few would stop being full time sims.
I pay for a full mainland sim.. I would love to add to my holdings.. but I am not ready to pay tier for a sim and a half. I could do a sim and an 8th or a quarter. But not half. If only I had the option
I agree that the second mainland sim syndrome is a problem, if you could increment the second sim the same way as you can a first it would be tempting to increase your holdings.