Well the Amazon offer was a nice idea, I’ll give Linden Lab credit for that. Alas it has ran into a few, shall we say, teething problems. A few things have came to light over the weekend. One being that Second Life had apparently expanded to Amazon in December. Inara Pey has some thoughtful commentary on the issue, pointing out that there were issues with how this was being marketed on Amazon full stop. Inara comments on the lack of information about what Second Life is.
Tateru Nino is also critical of the way this was marketed, with Second Life being listed as a game. Now the question then arises, what category should Second Life be in if not game and as someone else on Tateru’s blog post points out, Linden Lab are using Amazon game connect, that’s where the linking of your Second Life account to your Amazon account comes into play. Amazon game conncect is aimed at free to play games who want to sell digital goods, so it’s the right fit. However whereas Tateru’s criticisms may initially look different to Inara’s, further reading shows they are not, Tateru is basically criticising the lack of information about what Second Life is too and points out that in terms of expectations, listing Second Life as a game is going to lead to people having different expectations as to what they will find when they enter Second Life.
There have of course been other issues, one of which has been that people were able to link more than one avatar to their Amazon account and therefore receive multiple bonus payments in Linden Dollar form. The way to deal with this going forward is for us to have a master account for Second Life, but I’ve blogged on the benefits of the master account before.
