Sony Online Entertainment’s Landmark, formerly known as Everquest Landmark has issued a call to arms for the creative types to sell their wares on the Landmark marketplace via their player studio :
Player Studio offers players the opportunity to create in-game items that can be sold in the marketplace for royalties (i.e. real world money!)
After you’ve mastered building in Landmark, take your creations to the next level! Save a piece of your creation or the entire project as a template. Price them and place them on the Showcase Marketplace and earn real money when other players purchase them.*
Get to know the builder audience, understand their needs, keep tabs on what is available on the Showcase, and build things that players will need or want. You can contribute to the Landmark community while earning real money. Turn your hobby into a profit center.
The email I received about this had some additional information regarding who can participate, which is rather an important piece of the pie :
Player Studio registration is available for Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. More countries coming soon!
There are other important points to note, some of them very important. The FAQ makes for interesting reading, especially the part about how player studio works :
SOE’s Player Studio program invites players to download sample geometry files for actual in-game objects and through the use of standard third party art tools, learn how to develop, design and personalize items of their own – from re-coloring and re-texturing, to reshaping an item’s geometry. Once complete, players are encouraged to name and create a description for their item, describe how the item will fit into the game’s ongoing narrative storyline, and submit it to SOE for review and possible inclusion in the SOE Marketplace. If a player-created item is selected for inclusion in the SOE Marketplace, SOE will share 40% of the net amount it receives from the sale of the item with the player that created the item.
The free nature of the Second Life marketplace definitely has advantages over Sony Online’s player studio, both in terms of commission and in terms of freedom to create.