Second Life now reporting "Active User" numbers

[Furiously]

A friend of mine here in Chicago owns one or two islands and just rents out lots. She makes enough to break even plus a few hundred bucks/mo that she uses for going out and whatnot.

So it's entirely doable.

The $1,700 one-time set up fee would scare me too much and the $295 monthly fee. But you are right, I should keep my eyes open for cheap parcels to snatch.

Then again I just had an idea...

A 12-15 linden an hour camping spot isn't too hard to find. So for 24 hours that would be 288 to 360 lindens. Let just say $300 lindens per day. With an exchange rate of 270 lindens to the dollar, that's about a dollar a day...

Since the game is open source now, modifying the client should be fairly easy to make a "minimal" install that doesn't bother with lots of the overhead. Get it so you can run 10 copies on one machine then: (Insert picture of 21 computers UO gold farming dude used) And there is 210 dollars a day...$75K a year! I'm pretty sure it wouldn't last. I've already run across one, 12 people all dressed the same with newbie clothes and newbie hair.

[dusematic]

 I had a Second Life once.  I went to the forest and met these two dudes who showed me their base.  Then, later, we watched a snuff film in 8 mm.  Then I uninstalled and reformatted my hard drive. 

[WindupAtheist]

I should make my brother post about his SL adventures.  He joined with a bunch of guys from the WW2 Online forums who went there with the express purpose of griefing the shit out of the place.  Nothing spoils a virtual sex party like a midget in a Wehrmacht uniform armed with an ass-shaped gun that fires shit.  And given the nature of the SL community, by spoil I mean make better.

[Furiously]

I went to a live concert three nights ago in a pretty bay. They provided security, and when a boat broke loose from it's moorings and rammed into the stage, security rushed in to help the skipper and move him someplace safe.

I've also been visiting a nightclub that plays a nice selection of old wave/industrial/goth music, last night two handicaped individuals in wheelchairs appeared to be imbibing too much alcohol and got sick on a couple of club patrons, the hostess asked that they stop drinking, when they continued they were ejected from the club.

Is it easy to grief in SL? Yes. Especially because you can create an account in about 5 minutes. Is it easy to deal with griefers? Yes, you just need someone present with the proper permissions.

[Furiously]

I ran across a donkey show last night. And no - I didn't search for it...

Thought this was a pretty cool video of a zone someone made...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVDVggLqsA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Esecondlife%2Ecom%2F%3Fs%3Dwindlight

[Numtini]

They banned all gambling.

[Furiously]

Quite aggressively in some cases I understand. Like taking money out of people's accounts.

[Trippy]

This cracked me up:

In spite of these concerns, a number of residents found a silver lining to the news - with fewer players online, perhaps the grid will perform more reliably.

Full article from Second Life Herald:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/07/the-disneyifica.html#more

I forsee more lawsuits in their future.

[Numtini]

This is really the Second Life version of the NGE. Except instead of $15/month for entertainment purposes, they've sold this as an investment vehicle and people have thousands of dollars at stake.

I'm very much on the side of "well it stinks, but it's just a game" side on something like SWG. But when you're talking significant economic investment as well as emotional, that's a different story. Linden declared that this was legitimate activity within their world and people made investments based on that.

[CmdrSlack]

It would seem to me that it's an investment, which isn't without risk. Sure, people relied on LL not stopping gambling to last forever, but people rely on the government not changing the rules all the time in RL. Their TOS is still technically legally solid, even if a specific part was invalidated, so until there's movement on that front, according to the statements provided by LL to the user, all of your virtual stuff is without value and subject to the maniacal whims of the LL staff.

Granted, I also think they should take somewhat of an asspounding in general, but that's because I have serious misgivings about behavior that has already hosed them once in court. Not only is their TOS largely unenforceable (IMO), but I don't think they're really a simple "service provider." Banning gambling demonstrates further control they're exerting over their network, which already had significant company involvement (due to the social aspects) above and beyond that of a traditional ISP or portal.

Ok, broken record rant over.

[Venkman]

How prevalent was this in SL? We talking a good percentage of the playerbase being banned for the activity right now or just any new activity being banned once discovered?

Seems to me spotting gambling in SL is not as easy as spotting gold duping in a directed-play experience. I imagine they can follow the transactions to a degree, but industrious folks will find a way around that too (like betting with prims instead of LLs ;) ), no?

[CmdrSlack]

Short of actually policing the grid themselves, they have community policing (ratting out casinos), and the most visible ones are easy to find, obviously.

More likely than not, this is just yet another move to try and disclaim liability for stuff the users do that is not quite legal in many places.

"Hey, we don't allow that, and we remove people we catch doing it, and cooperate with the authorities. But hey, we're jsut a service provider, we don't really KNOW what goes on in our network."

[HaemishM]

It's pretty damn easy to find gambling in Second Life without looking for it. There are tons of casinos, and hell, I even did some betting on sports games in a soccer kit shop while trying to buy a Liverpool jersey. It really was pretty prevalent, at least in my experience.

[Numtini]

Gambling was very very common in SL. There were a load of casinos, enough that people were making solid RL money just selling the different forms of slot machines. There were also a ton of different places that used some form of gambling to draw people in. A few slot machines in the corner or a "sploder" (put money it and it starts counting down until it "explodes" and randomly pays $ back out) over the dance floor.

Starting a casino was also a big draw for "get rich quick" types and a lot of money was poured into prefab casinos that failed miserably. That money all ends up in the hands of SL content developers--not just slot machine makers, but furniture, buildings, and so on. So it affects lots of people who never gambled.

Enforcement is easy. If you can't advertise, you can't make any money. And you have an asset worthy of confiscation, your SL land, so you have a lot to lose by violating the rules.

Most of my friends are feeling a bit like death row inmates waiting for their turn. They all have something they do in SL (bondage/kink, furries, violence, kid avatars) that they assume is going to be banned within the next year and will result in them leaving the game.

[Furiously]

It was insanely common. But I don't understand why. You had nothing to insure you had close to a fair payout rate.

I see lots of poker tables opening.

[Krakrok]

Casinos were almost all of the top destinations in the 'most visited places' list. Same goes for the advertising lists (whoever paid the most was at the top of the advertising list or some such).

[SnakeCharmer]

Question for you lawyers out there...

On TV, there's advertisement for poker sites, that says in a nutshell that you're not gambling with money.  Couldn't these casinos put up a disclaimer that by entering you agree not to be gambling with real cash?  Or is the inherent value of linden dollars (as put forth by the sales of linden dollars by linden labs) the issue here?

Is LL scared of the FBI coming knocking on their doors, saying they are enabling illegal and unregulated gambling?

What am I missing?

[Trippy]

Is LL scared of the FBI coming knocking on their doors, saying they are enabling illegal and unregulated gambling?

They already did:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/04/fbi_considers_p.html

[SnakeCharmer]

 

[CmdrSlack]

Question for you lawyers out there...

On TV, there's advertisement for poker sites, that says in a nutshell that you're not gambling with money.  Couldn't these casinos put up a disclaimer that by entering you agree not to be gambling with real cash?  Or is the inherent value of linden dollars (as put forth by the sales of linden dollars by linden labs) the issue here?

Is LL scared of the FBI coming knocking on their doors, saying they are enabling illegal and unregulated gambling?

What am I missing?

Since the not-real-cash is readily convertable to USD via a system that LL owns, it's pretty hard to say that, in the context of a casino, the $L is anything less than a poker chip. The more that LL tried to tap into revenue streams (like the $L market), and the more it hypes the "Make money here!" meme, the deeper it sinks itself into a mire of potential liability.

It's really fascinating to watch.  Well, for me at least.

[Furiously]

It's definately going to have an impact on the game. I think this is a good move on their part given how unregulated it was.

Payouts were horrid. If you had a busy casino, you more then made any money you lost.

On the bright side for, I expect some cheap land sales fairly soon :) There were a lot of casinos. With no gambling income I expect many to sell their land. I also look forward to seeing the effect this has on the economy in the next few months. If I wasn't so risk adverse I would consider buying an island when the fire-sale happens and turning it into a residential island, renting the houses in lindens.  I'm really curious if LL's is clueless on their economy or if they have a plan in place to no put the world into a recession.

[CmdrSlack]

They'll probably eliminate the stipend for all accounts.

That'd be one way to do it.

[Bunk]

Question for you lawyers out there...

On TV, there's advertisement for poker sites, that says in a nutshell that you're not gambling with money.  Couldn't these casinos put up a disclaimer that by entering you agree not to be gambling with real cash?  Or is the inherent value of linden dollars (as put forth by the sales of linden dollars by linden labs) the issue here?

Is LL scared of the FBI coming knocking on their doors, saying they are enabling illegal and unregulated gambling?

What am I missing?

The TV ads for the poker sites all direct you to go to pokersite.net
Those sites only deal in play money, but all encourage you to go to the real .com site for real money play.

[SnakeCharmer]

Question for you lawyers out there...

On TV, there's advertisement for poker sites, that says in a nutshell that you're not gambling with money.  Couldn't these casinos put up a disclaimer that by entering you agree not to be gambling with real cash?  Or is the inherent value of linden dollars (as put forth by the sales of linden dollars by linden labs) the issue here?

Is LL scared of the FBI coming knocking on their doors, saying they are enabling illegal and unregulated gambling?

What am I missing?

The TV ads for the poker sites all direct you to go to pokersite.net
Those sites only deal in play money, but all encourage you to go to the real .com site for real money play.

Ah, ok.  I've never been to the online poker sits before.  When I gamble, I want to see the actual cards in front of me. 

Besides, I quit playing poker the minute all these celebrity tournaments started happening and it became the 'in' thing to do.

[Furiously]

They'll probably eliminate the stipend for all accounts.

That'd be one way to do it.

I still don't understand why the taxes are in RL dollars instead of lindens. (Well - I do, they want an assured income in RL dollars).

[Amaron]

Have they changed anything about land costs over the last few years?  I always liked the idea of playing around with SL but it all hinges on the land.  I'd want a quite large plot without obnoxious neighbors and I'd want it for 15 bucks a month.  I'd probably settle for something even smaller if it was on a tiny island or what not.

I can't see how SL will ever have any large appeal without afford land.  Limits on primitives and scripting make sense but if I want a very large building that's nothing more than a box I expect to be able to get it cheaply.

The last time I checked years ago though it seemed like any decent size plot was 50~100 bucks a month.  Certainly way too expensive for a mere diversion.

[Numtini]

Land costs are about the same for tier or rent and prices to buy are actually higher, but I suspect will go down.

If you want a large plot but don't care about prims, there are "low prim" areas in some of the private islands. They are used to balance out lag. You get, if memory serves me, 16000m but the same prims as 4096.

There's sort of a floor on pricing because one "sim" apparently really does equal one CPU.

[Furiously]

Islands are priced at US$1,675 for 65,536 square meters (about 16 acres). Monthly land fees for maintenance are US$295. (Mainland is $195 per month - but good luck finding someplace without blight)

So if you get lucky you could get 1/16th of an island for $18 a month? You would be "renting" this land though to avoid the $15 per month "Allow me to own land" loophole. Which means the owner could (And will) sell it out from under you when they get a better offer.

So yea - owning land is pricey.

[CmdrSlack]

If there's a lot of land that goes up for sale in teh wake of the "no casino" thing, I think we'll see the land market change a bit in the near future.

Well, not the renting vs. buying part, but maybe some cheap bought land.

Yes, you'll have to worry about neighbors, but to me, that's half the fun of leaving your ground area very minimal and doing kickass floating builds.

ETA -- On the casino subject, if someone wanted to get really pissy and sue about the change in policy, this case may be useful. I doubt they would, but that's a pretty nifty little case there -- changing the terms on your website is not sufficient notice to make a binding change to an EULA/TOS.

[Numtini]

Doesn't redisplaying the TOS basically solve that issue though?

Also there's been no change in the TOS, only a change in the interpretation of the TOS. "As you review this new policy, please remember that Resident compliance with real world laws has always been an integral part of our Terms of Service."

It's not that gambling or virtual child molesting was against the TOS. It's that Lindens just didn't realize that gambling online was against US law or that virtual child prostitution was broadly offensive.

[CmdrSlack]

Redisplaying the TOS upon login MAY remedy the situation, but given the nature of how the contract is accepted, I'd argue that, without more, there's no effective notice.

Basically, you need to make it SUPER DUPER CLEAR (all caps makes it a legal term) to a user that there has been a significant change to the TOS.

It may not apply to this as much because it's a new policy/interpretation of the TOS, but since those policies/interpretations are incorporated via reference into teh TOS, and since apprising oneself of THOSE policies involves even yet more website use, it may be even more problematic.

[Amaron]

So if you get lucky you could get 1/16th of an island for $18 a month? You would be "renting" this land though to avoid the $15 per month "Allow me to own land" loophole. Which means the owner could (And will) sell it out from under you when they get a better offer.

How much do people really rent 1/16th of an island for though?  Considering the initial costs I can't really think people would rent that much land for 1/16th of the maintenance fees.  How does renting work too?  Is there a game system to handle it or are people just "trusting" each other to not scam?

f you want a large plot but don't care about prims, there are "low prim" areas in some of the private islands. They are used to balance out lag. You get, if memory serves me, 16000m but the same prims as 4096.

That's quite interesting to me but how does that work?  I didn't know people who rented out land could change the prim limits on it.

[Deniz]

With rentals, you just pay the sim owner and they pay the tier. If you don't pay on time they just retake the land and resell it.

[Numtini]

Renting vs. buying. At least in Ansche Chung's sims if you "buy" land from her with an upfront payment, your payments to her are $6/1024m a month. If you rent, it's $8/1024, but there is no up front payment at all.

On the low and high prim stuff. Island owners have a lot of discretion. I've seen some where whole sims are low prim to reduce lag. I've seen other sims where all the pricing and prims are double, but they leave big spaces between the different plots for sale that are empty or have

If you have an account, go to the Vidar sim, it's one of Ansche's low prim ones. It's $24/month but you only get 450 prims. So you get the land space of 16000m, but you pay as if it was 4096m, and you get the same prims as a 2048m. Great if you want a large beach or you're a very light builder.

[Amaron]

With rentals, you just pay the sim owner and they pay the tier. If you don't pay on time they just retake the land and resell it.

Can they scam you though I mean?  Like offer to let you rent then kick you out before your time limit is up? Or change the rules on you somehow?