Decimating primmage at Sylvan

I’ve been in talks with Spin Martin for some time about his sale of Saijo City. Some time amidst all the hubbub of the Openspace debacle (though I’m sure mostly unrelated), Spin piped up in a friends conference chat and said he wanted to sell Saijo.

Why?

Mostly because he was fed up with the limitations of SL as a platform for his Saijo concepts, and that it was pretty much time to move on. (Spin, if you’re reading this, feel free to correct me, these were just the impressions I got).

In any case, I’d been stressed out about the whole fee increase, and was really put off by being asked basically to put up with a 66% price increase for no visible improvements. In fact, LL is proposing limits on agents per Homestead as well as scripting limits.

It’s true that I really don’t care about the script limits for the most part, and the only times Sylvan hits over 20 agents are Sundays when either Todd or Erehwon DJ (and even that is variable, as we only really hold these things for fun and to be with friends on a weekly bass). BUT. the whole thing about paying $50 USD more a month for that with no actual product improvements had really been getting to me.

I mean - really. Keep in mind here, that most people who own Openspace Sims are probably doing so through third parties… and paying an extra premium to do so. To begin with, I was already paying an extra $20/mo on top of the usual $75. Sticking on with a ‘Homestead’ would mean paying just abut $50 short of a full class 4 region. For the privilege of NOTHING MORE than fewer people able to access the sim, limited scripts, and absolutely no change in available prims.

So i guess this is really a roundabout way to say that I had a chat with Spin and we’ve arranged for some changes in the near future.

I spent most of yesterday tearing down the bulk of my stuff at Sylvan, which has already reverted in ownership to Azure Islands. It was a pretty painful experience, given the time, effort and memories put in, but I really hope it is for the better. Sylvan isn’t going away entirely… in fact it will probably come back with renewed growth for 2009.

But it’s always difficult to start again from the ground up, and doubly so when it feels like I was forced in to making the decisions I made like a subject of Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning. A small part of me wonders when the time will come when I just can’t take it anymore and leave entirely. I really hope that time doesn’t come… or when it does, it comes on better terms than this.

The last few trees in Sylvan, just prior to deletion.

In other, completely unrelated news, I’m pleased to announce that Nov 17 was the release date for a project I had been working on for about a month and a half.

In collaboration with Craig Wacker at the MacArthur Foundation, In Kenzo of Non Profit Commons, as well as AWS colleagues Mistress Midnight and Brian Rutherford, the MacArthur Foundation’s sim ‘Foundations’ was released to the public and was host to a panel discussion on “Real World Impacts from the Virtual World”, as well as a sim tour from Craig.

There are still some bits and pieces we’d like to fix up before our official opening in early 2009, but being able to give folks a sneak peek on the 17th was great fun and wonderful insight. I really look forward to doing more work along these lines.

Foundations can be reached through the following slurl:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Foundations/198/101/36

LL cemented their decision on Openspaces recently when they sent out their email notice to Estate Owners on Openspaces. M’s final word? Graduated pricing, reduced resources, and a semantic ball and cup game in which everyone is a loser except LL.

By the end of 2009, Openspaces as they are currently will be called Homesteads, and will cost $125/month. They will have a throttle of 20 max agents, as well as some scripting limitations. Another, wholly different and almost useless service will be dubbed the new ‘Openspace’, and still cost $75/month, BUT be limited to 750 prims and only 10 agents at a time, and no dwellings will be allowed. Scripts will also be severely limited.

So this is what becomes of popular dissent, these days. It used to be that LL would listen to suggestions and actually take them to heart, being flexible to the needs of its userbase.

It’s disheartening, really.

At the same time, while i COULD go ahead and keep paying for a homestead, the additional cost combined with the extra bit I pay my landlord puts me pretty damned close to full tier on a grandfathered full region, which is pretty damned ridiculous, considering i am already up against my 1/4 region prim limit as it is.

All this to maintain a place I enjoy, more or less on a hobby basis. :/

So… winter 2008/09 is one of choices, i guess. Already over a thousand regions have been either abandoned or coalesced back in to full regions. For the first time ever, the grid is shrinking, and faster by the week.

While there have been developments towards getting governmental agencies, schools and solution providers more involved in SL, it’s hard to see how LL can possibly find merit in stepping all over its userbase right now because *IT* made bad decisions and can’t now own up to them.

I don’t have much more to add except to leave you with this poignant video Wildefire Walcott put together in response to the whole debacle:

Roslin Petion surprised me earlier today with a new set of gothic themed skins, and I ended up agreeing to DJ a couple of last minute sets, so here’s the outfit i put together around the skin…

Read more…

Wow. Just.

Wow.

If you’re an Estate owner of any kind and have Openspaces (or rent them out) at all, this latest blog posting will knock your socks off.

And when I say knock your socks off, i mean seriously make you wanna throw up your hands and give up on LL completely.

Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

A little background, if I may?

Back in May of this year, Jack Linden announced that Openspaces would be made available for purchase to existing Estate owners individually, rather than in groups of four. Additionally, it was mentioned that prim alottments would also be raised to double what they were originally - so from 1/8 region prim alottment to 1/4.

So of course that very month, there was a *huge* jump in Openspaces.. and from that point onward, many private estate owners began marketing use of those low prim islands for rental use.

Since then, opinions have emerged either for or against.

One problem that is part and parcel of the use of Openspaces has to do with the reduced ability to run many scripts, or time-dependant scripts. As such, many content creators who make products dependant on
high script time tend to be against this usage. Additionally, Openspace sims that are rented to many tenants and which are home to heavily scripted clubs, etc, end up aggrevating user experiences for
neighbors.

On the other hand, Openspaces allow, for the cost of 1/4 region’s tier, a full region’s space, privacy, control over terrain texture and terrain map upload capability. This allows for a much more customizable environment for a low script home or nature area for personal use. This is a very powerful alternative from the atrocious condition of the SL Mainland as it currently stands.

For years, Linden Lab has allowed adfarmers and extortionists to riddle the Mainland with useless ad lots and spinning ‘for sale’ signs, adding hover-text, particles, shouting text chat spammers, as well as any other sort of visual griefing imaginable. This alone has driven people off the mainland to private estates. The Mainland would never have been in such a pinch if Linden Lab had actually done something about the parcel-cutting situation long ago, and done something to keep folks interested in keeping a cohesive community running there.

By making Openspaces more accessible with individual purchase and additional prims, they practically DROVE people off the mainland and left a ghost town behind.

It’s not as though they can really claim they weren’t complicit either;
Darien Caldwell mentions:

and goes on to post a chat log with an unnamed Linden from back in July of 2007, mentioning the possibility for Estate Owners to market Openspaces to tenants as rental property.

*sighs*

I guess there’s really not much more for me to say except to mention how I feel about this.

I took on ownership of Sylvan in mid-July, and opened Organica for business August 3.

Since then, I’ve been slowly recovering from changing my location from off the mainland, dealing with the slight increase in Openspace sales (but also the stark decrease in value and overall usage of land - especially on the mainland). Land values have been plummetting lately. I was lucky enough last month to drop my mainland land usage from about 14.5K sqm down to 3096. I was thinking that might give me a leg up on promoting my business a bit more, and as a result generate more sales… and maybe lead to a full-fledged sim.

But Organica, at best, pays for its own rent, some advertising, and a little personal pocket change in world. I don’t cash out anymore, and what money I do make gets kept in my account so I don’t have to worry about losing my land because I can’t afford it.

I no longer have to pay for both Tier and rental to Azure, and that’s about a $50 reduction in my overall costs, but this recent announcement has basically shot that cost right back at me with a vengeance.

Ultimately, I understand that my personal in-world businesses will probably never make ‘real money’ beyond supporting the land they are hosted on. But it’s becoming increasingly evident that it will be more and more difficult to do even that. The increased cost is totally coming out of nowhere and if it’s a measure to increase the marketability of the Mainland, I certainly don’t believe this is the way to do it.

I don’t often agree with what Khamon Fate has to say, but here he hits the nail on the head;

Which basically says it all about how well this effort to make the Mainland more attractive will ultimately screw over everyone.

This has been a tiring and stressful day, and this latest announcement really hasn’t been the best news to end it with. All I can really say is I will try my best to make things work.

But what LL pulled today is incredibly hurtful and totally without merit.

In two years of being a resident of SL, I’ve not attended one of these. So when Lily Joliat posted an invitation to SLU-ers to attend hers, I decided ‘What the heck, i need a change! And i’ve never been to one of these before - it could be interesting!

Indeed it was The build is beautiful and looks even more wonderful with KirstenLee Cinquetti’s Shadowdraft running. We laid out lanterns to float on water and Japanese geishas danced to the beat of a Taiko drum. Their outfits were truly wonderful and made for a great, relaxing afternoon.

For the uninitiated, Hair Fair is a charity event, whose proceeds go towards Locks of Love, which is a charity which works towards providing hair replacements for those who are in need. Hair designers in Second Life come together to offer a number of styles exclusively for the duration of the event, and a portion of their profits go to the charity. This year, four sims were set aside for the event, featuring over 90 designers, and everything was geared towards a Mayan ruin theme.

Fairly straightforward, right?

Well, unfortunately, as with any fashion related event, there will always be drama.

I should disclose that a week before the event, one of the vendors was participating in a ‘content creator show and tell’ party. She’d been scratching her head wondering just how to make her bland, ultra basic booth, more interesting and enticing for the event. I happened to be around and suggested a few options - which as it turns out many people thought of as well - involving vegetation, which might fit in with the Mayan theme. Little did I know that spiffing up of booths would be such a point of contention for those who had a finger to point. Read more…

Ah, Hair Fair.

Overall, I was really impressed with the demos I picked up. A lot of them were really nicely done, but just didn’t fit what I had in mind for my av.

I’m particularly impressed with the Argrace styles - nice texture changing functionality and the underlying hair is top notch. Also enjoyed some Wonderhair, as well as Kin.

Hair makers also did very well in providing freebies for purchase. There were quite a few who provided reasonable freebies, but here’s the real eyecatcher…

Takeli-ki - Eve GenII

Really classy, different, probably not anything i’d wear on a regular basis, but still very pretty to look at

Here are a few of the styles that finally worked out for me:

Read more…

Okay. I’ve been putting together a new website that will seperate my SL stuff from my Illustration stuff and perhaps better represent my interests in virtual worlds overall.

I was thinking about how to do that and not leave it to be specific to Second Life, because ultimately with the way intergrid operability is happening, the focus for virtual worlds will shift to the ability for users to go from domain to domain, yet retain one central identity as much as possible. Read more…