All graphs/charts in the blog post are reproduced with the kind permission of Tyche Shepherd, they remain the copyright of Tyche Shepherd and should not be reproduced without Tyche’s permission.
Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s mainland census for June 2013 is out, it can be read here at SLUniverse. This does not make pretty reading unfortunately and whereas it’s far from fatal, it does appear that mainland is wounded, far more than I realised. Some key points to take in when compared to the March 2013 Census:
- Overall number of parcels down 2.2%.
- Total number of Owners down 2.8%.
- Individual Owners down 3.0%.
- Total number of land holding groups down 1.6%.
- Abandoned land up from 11.7% to 12.6% to a new record high of 13.4% to 14.2%.
- Governor Linden owned land up 1.6%.
- All Linden land holdings up 1.5% to 49%.
- Land for sale down 35.8%.
The extremely worrying figures relate to the increased Linden Lab holdings, which at 49% amont to nearly half of all mainland, the increase in abandonded land and the significant drop in land for sale. Tyche reports that land is being abandoned faster than it is being sold and the fact that land prices are basically rock bottom explains why people would rather abandon that wait to sell, but even then, land at rock bottom prices simply isn’t moving.
Now if you squint and look at the above graph from a funny angle, you’ll be able to see how it represents an ongoing increase of abandoned land. Alternatively you can go to the SLUniverse link and look at the graph properly, all graphs will follow this pattern because I can’t squeeze them in nicely, but trust me, this bar chart shows an increase in abandoned land and it’s quite staggering. The increase of abandoned land over the last quarter is the the equivalent of 108 to 115 full regions.
When it comes to Linden owned land, Tyche doesn’t include welcome areas or Linden Realms. Linden land also includes roads, Linden Department of Public works land etc. So it’s not just abandoned land that is Linden owned, but LDPW land hasn’t increased during the last quarter.
The above chart gives another overview of mainland land status, as can be seen … I hope, the red section is non Linden owned land, that has been falling since September 2011, the green and purple sections represent protected Linden Land and abandoned land respectively, and as can be seen, both have been increasing.
However the really worrying stat is the sorry state of land for sale, this isn’t just an issue of land prices being extremely depressed, the worrying issue is that more land is being abandoned than being bought. Abandoned land on its own wouldn’t be a great indicator, but it would be less worrisome if others were picking up that abandoned land. Therefore it seems people are deciding it’s better just to abandon their land than set it for sale.
The purple part of the chart represents non Linden owned land for sale whereas the blue part shows Linden owned land for sale. As we can see….. come on you can see this, right? Anyway, as we can see, non Linden owned mainland for sale has been in decline since December 2011, Linden owned land for sale was pumping up the amount of land for sale since June 2011, these will be parcels Linden lab auction or possibly set for sale when it has been abandoned.
Why Linden owned land for sale is on the slide when abandoned land is on the increase remains a mystery, as there’s plenty of land to sell, but there’s probably a good reason for this. However one interesting stat comes to light when we look at the large land holders, including Linden Lab, those with holdings over 750.000sqm:
- Governor Linden owns 185,384,544Sqm (42.0% of total) in 28234 parcels
- Linden Department of Works holds 26,751,760Sqm (6.1%) in 2448 parcels
- Largest Non-Linden group holds 5,747,552Sqm (1.3%) in 88 parcels
- Second Largest Non-Linden group holds 4,318,080Sqm (1.0%) in 69 parcels
- Blake Sea group holds 3,167,280Sqm (0.7%) in 140 parcels
- Third Largest Non-Linden group holds 971,056Sqm (0.2%) in 224 parcels
- Fourth Largest Non-Linden group holds 861,312qm (0.2%) in 191 parcels
- Fifth Largest Non-Linden group holds 776,608qm (0.2%) in 371 parcels
Now I don’t know if the Non-Linden groups have changed over this quarter, but the largest Non-Linden group is up 0.2% and 13 parcels since March, the Second Largest Non-Linden group is up 0.3% and 20 parcels. The third largest Non-Linden group is down 0.1% whereas the fourth is unchanged, but the fifth Non-Linden group didn’t even make this threshold for the last census, so some groups are certainly increasing their land holdings.
However what about the all important score on the door, tier, Tyche informs us that based upon the same tier assumptions as the previous Census Total Monthly Mainland Tier is down by by US$32,406 or 3.6%, although still at a healthy looking US$871,460 per month.
I’m not quite sure what to make of all this, as I said at the start it doesn’t make happy reading but I’m not sure what exactly can be done here. Mainland tier for small land owners is not particularly expensive, but maybe the problem is that small land holdings aren’t as attractive as they once were. I am still firmly in the tier is too damn high camp when it comes to wanting to hold more land and I certainly think second sim syndrome should be looked at, this means that if someone holds a full sim of land, their next parcel that takes them into the next tier level works out to cost half a sim worth of tier. Maybe the tier steps are too steep all through the mainland cycle.
I don’t see the trends reported in Tyche’s census changing anytime soon.
There has been a steady decline in concurrency since about two years now. Landownership is a resultant from that.
If I would pay half the tier, I would buy double the land, but the costs for LL would not improve.
LL should organise a land move, cut off a continent. That would reduce costs.
And somebody should find a way to get residents in, and have them stay.
However Linden Lab has ignored for two years the decline so I don’t expect any innovations from them.
In the comments on Tyche’s post over at SLUniverse someone comments that abandoned land that in some cases had been for sale at L$1/m has been merged into one large 42,000sqm parcel. That’s about two thirds of the sim, I wonder if they have plans to close the sim if the Linden holdings go above a certain size.
I would certainly like to see some more creative thinking from Linden Lab, that’s for sure.
I used to rent with a mainland community, back when I had my first account in 2006. Mainland has never been a particularly good option, because of a number of factors:
1. Limited terraforming
2. Limited parcel/land management options, even for the managers of themed communities
3. If you have an idiot neighbour who wanted to put an eyesore next to your door for whatever reason (ranging from lousy taste to sheer spite), you’re stuck with the moron.
Are there ways to improve mainland? Well, if LL can address the three points I made above, and encourage themed communities to purchase mainland and enable them to manage it properly, I think there’s a good chance of turning things around, especially if they reconsider their pricing schemes.
However, as Inara Pey has documented, lower tier prices won’t guarantee more users will come to rent land (mainland or private regions). I really don’t see this happening before LL manages to cut some costs first and then manages to actually attract real users (instead of spambots and sockpuppets owned by lower forms of online and offline life) who will stay the course, purchase land, create their own virtual presence and participate in the virtual economy.
LL can cut costs. I can think of two ways:
1. The “master account” system you mentioned some time ago (Argent Stonecutter’s SVC-6212) would result in an easier to manage and cheaper to run user database.
2. Prune inactive users. GameForge does it, InnoGames does it, Yahoo! does it, everybody and his dog does it. And if someone wants to log into SL once every blue moon and still retain their account, they can very well pay LL a relatively small price (say, $30/year) to maintain their account, inventory and whatnot. That way, hardware will be freed up or rendered redundant, which will enable LL to get rid of some machines running the inventory database (thus cutting electricity etc. costs).
Now, as for attracting real users…
Sorry, but LL’s board is made up of people who are too fixated on the corporate pipe dream (a dream that won’t be realised anytime soon) and can’t see the opportunities that have already been there from the very beginning.
The first facepalm was when they axed the discounts for academic institutions and non-profits.
The second could very well have been the handling of Woodbury University’s in-world presence. Trust me, academics tend to take academics’ word at face value, not the word of paranoid vigilante griefers like the Golden Dawn wannabes of the JLU or the likes of Prokofy Neva. And personally, on this particular matter, I’m not convinced by what the JLU and the Prok had to say – both of these parties have sub-zero credibility and reliability.
The third facepalm was when the G-team colluded with the vigilantes of the JLU. Policing simply cannot be outsourced, and wannabe superhero vigilantes (and there’s a whole lot of things that are wrong with the ideal of a superhero, actually) can’t be trusted.
The fourth facepalm was technical: didn’t anyone in LL hear about KQML and FIPA-ACL? OK, KQML is older than dirt, and now intelligent agents use FIPA-ACL. Couldn’t they have sat down and developed an integration of FIPA-ACL functionality (combined with some proper in-world database implementation) to really enable true AI scripted agents to be used in-world? The possibilities from such an integration are practically endless: from realistic dialogue games to argumentation-based negotiation between human and artificial agents, and much, much more.
Second Life could have enjoyed, had the board taken things seriously, instead of trying to ride the gravy train and make a quick buck in the bubble years, a prolonged buzz in every sector imaginable: from the casual user who wants to immerse in a virtual world and be and do things that they can’t be or do in RL, to researchers, scientists and even developers of serious (and expensive) software.
But nooooooo…
LL’s board brought this agonising decline on themselves.
I don’t think tier is the issue with mainland that it is with private sims, which are likely to dip below the 20,000 mark this week or next week. Tier is quite flexible in mainland, although not as flexible as some would like, in my post I highlighted the silly jump from owning a full sim worth of mainland to owning one more small parcel, it’s half a sim worth of tier, the same is true if you own half a sim of mainland, you end up in the full sim tier bracket.
Changing that would make mainland parcels a little more attractive but there’s far more to it than that. Linden homes have without a doubt hit mainland as people use those.
The drop in land for sale suggests that the land flippers were selling to each other when there was a market for it and held a lot of a land, now that the bottom of the market has fallen out, the land flippers have nowhere to go, not even to each other.
One area that is never reported and likely never will be, is how many people have tier donations for land that isn’t in use. People donate tier to a group, that group offloads the land, but people don’t offload their tier donation and therefore are still charged tier.
As for AI scripted agents, I’ve wanted to see these for years, there are umpteen possibilities for these and it really shouldn’t be that challenging to implement them, I’d also like to see LL offer database hosting, I could make good use of services such as that, or object DNS and sensible easy to configure HTML communications, that could improve matters a lot.
Regarding mainland tier, it may be flexible, but managing your parcel in mainland isn’t, and that’s a serious contributing factor, especially when one has to deal with “difficult” neighbours.
As for Linden Homes, they’re a few generations behind. I’ve considered getting one (as I have a premium account), but I didn’t like any of them. Plus, in my homestead I never have any stupid issues that manifest themselves as lag.
As far as private islands are concerned now, I would like to see a more diverse range of products being offered by LL. But I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
Good point on tier donations. This could be a potential drama grenade for many groups, now that you mention it.
Finally, on AI scripted agents…
1. Fat chance of that. When I mentioned KQML and FIPA-ACL at last Tuesday’s Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden said he couldn’t foresee any work along those lines anytime soon. As a matter of fact, the Lindens were unaware of both agent communication languages. That says a lot, and what it says isn’t encouraging.
2. Database hosting is something that should have been offered in the first place (if LL’s board wanted their company to be taken seriously), but after the revelations on the PRISM scandal, I don’t think anyone with more than half a brain would choose a US-based company for database hosting. But yes, LL should really work on connectivity to external databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB and the like), as its current implementation has come under heavy criticism on many occasions.
a surprisingly large number of groups have more land than they land donations for the true scale of the problem is hidden..
I just mentioned the reverse of this situation above, there are groups with more tier donations that land owned, but yes, I know what you’re talking about and that’s not a good situation and it really should be an easy one to deal with.
The analysis of this is simple and by now, after all these years, easy even for new members to understand:
* Instead of reducing their tier over time as costs descreased, Linden Lab increased them significantly to boost their profits. In other words, they put $$$ above customer welfare– as is their historical path.
* Land is just to flippin’ expensive. Some people are paying $350 a month tier (with VAT)– the cost of a NEW CAR. That is just ridiculous… especially in the face of power-grids like Inworldz charging $75 a month for 3x more prims and far more powerful building tools.
* Linden Lab has formed an “Iron Curtain” business policy based not on customer good– but on “too lazy to do it the right way” management. I have seldom seen a company so short-sighted and “take-the-easy-way-out”.
* Basic company “we say so” attitude. As Pathfinder adequately stated, a virtual world is a partnership between customers and the company. Yet Linden Lab has taken the role of “grid gods”, expecting their customers to bow to their whims. They’ve destroyed entire economies, hundreds if not thousands of businesses, literally thousands of regions, and despite that still stubbornly stuck to their “What we say is how it is” method of running business. As one ex-Linden said, just about every problem LL has experienced in the past has come from general arrogance and disrespect for their customers.
Frank and to the point I know, but honestly… if certain people weren’t so heavily vested financially in Second Life I believe the system would have died long ago. And with companies like Inworldz biting at their heels for 1/4 the price… one wonders just how much longer Second Life can last. At what point will the call of “abandon ship!” go out… and people move to a far less expensive and more user-friendly environment?
This is especially the case since Linden Lab’s Iron Curtain policies have made it virtually impossible to export our own creations— which frankly is one of the reasons I left Second Life in the first place. I figure if my own creations aren’t my own– time to cut my losses and search for a place where they are.
In short– Linden Lab is a maximum-profit company that consistently disregards customer welfare. They alienate their customers on a regular basis. Is it any wonder their sales figures are dropping? They’ve been told time and time again but they just never have got it: Put the customer first, and the money will follow.
Tier remains the number one issue, I’ve just blogged on falling tier revenue with private regions set to drop below the 20,000 mark and yet Linden Lab are caught in a web of their own making because they haven’t made enough strides to remove the burden of their financial income stream away from tier.
Tier is too much of a central plank, this means LL are tied to it despite the answers to falling land mass being tier reduction, as they haven’t got enough alternate streams, slashing tier would be a massive financial gamble and I can’t see them doing that.
Inworldz and Kitely are both attractive in their own way but for reasons you highlight, one being people having content in Second Life and not wanting to start again, they are still smaller, although for groups such as yours where you moved en masses, I’m sure it works well and you all feel a little less stressed at the costs.