Coldwell Banker To Sell Second Life Properties

Dekortage sends news of what may be a new development in the attempted mainstreaming of Second Life. We've seen plenty of examples of real-world news media, politicos, and PR campaigns setting up in SL. But so far most of this action has been about first-life organizations trying to gain real-world publicity by their forays into SL. CNN is reporting that the real estate firm Coldwell Banker is moving into SL for the purpose of selling and renting in-world properties. From the article: "Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central 'mainland' of Second Life. (Most companies own 'islands' scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent... 'A small number of land barons mostly control real estate in Second Life, and we thought we could bring real estate to the masses,' [a VP explained]."

Comments

Supply and demand

[Harmonious Botch]

Has Linden guaranteed in writing that they will never expand the world? If not, then Coldwell Banker buyers are idiots.

What is to keep Linden from increasing the amount of land? ( They did it back in 2003, IIRC ) Not only would this give them more space for more players, but it decreases the power of land barons. And having a 'new world' to explore would add more interest to the game. Anyone want to be Magellan? Or Columbus? There seems to be no downside for Linden to increase the ammount of land.
There definitely is a downside to NOT increasing the ammount of land: competition. If SL gets too crowded, that just helps up-and-coming competitors.

As supply increases, price decreases. There is not even the real-world parallel of "location, location, and location" to uphold property value in Second Life because of teleportation.

I predict that Coldwell Banker will lose their shirts on this one.

Re:Supply and demand

[Lally Singh]

I think CW's buying the initial land in order to get the ball rolling on getting themselves involved in the transactional business of real estate on SL. Long after the current stuff is sold off, they want to be the agents you buy virtual real estate from later.

Re:Supply and demand

[TapeCutter]

I don't know much about SL, it strikes me as a world where most people have more money than sense.

Re:Supply and demand

[Usquebaugh]

Hey that reminds me of another world I know.

Re:Supply and demand

[UbuntuDupe]

As supply increases, price decreases. There is not even the real-world parallel of "location, location, and location" to uphold property value in Second Life because of teleportation.

Well, not quite true: it helps to have e.g. a lot of merchants together in one place, as it's a pain to teleport 30 times to look at everyone's goods. So new merchants are going to want to be where the merchants already are. Although I agree you can't use the whole "They ain't makin' any more land" line here, as LL certainly can do that.

Still, I have to ask, WTF? Don't people play SL to get away from assholes who add no value but take your money ... such as real estate agents?

Re:Supply and demand

[rubberchickenboy]

I predict that Coldwell Banker will lose their shirts on this one.

Maybe, but they're only virtual shirts, and they can just rez others.

Re:Supply and demand

[John Hurliman]

In 2003? They increase the amount of land all the time. Every time someone buys a new island the amount of real estate in-world is increased, and the Linden-owned mainland continent grows all the time as well. Around a month ago over 100 new sims were added, and these sims the Coldwell Bankers bought were auctioned off meaning it was fresh mainland additions.

It's like when a company sells more shares, and all those idiot investors lose their shirts. You should probably get on the phone and tell Coldwell why they are idiots, and how if you were in charge you could save the company. They'll probably hire you on the spot.

Re:Supply and demand

[NetSettler]

Has Linden guaranteed in writing that they will never expand the world? If not, then Coldwell Banker buyers are idiots.

Indeed. This is what happened with domain names. They went sky high, then lots of businesses crashed and they increased the number of TLDs, so people who had invested in the land grab didn't always win.

The other thing is that any theory of scarcity presupposes that Linden will be the only, or at least the winning, item in this area. If someone came along and offered an alternate space, it wouldn't even matter if Linden had put a guarantee in writing... the value could still drop due to ordinary competition. No one has guaranteed Linden a monopoly.

Cyberspace is big... There's really no reason for there to be a scarcity of real estate. It isn't, after all, real estate. It's contrived. And if the prices go too high, that simple fact should invite competition. A key defining characteristic of real estate is supposed to be that they're not making more of it.

I wonder...

[LynnwoodRooster]

If I can get one of those 30 year, first 5 years interest-only subprime mortgages here? Maybe this is the way to "save" the sub-primes - virtual property! After all, it seems that "virtual" clients didn't work to well...

The real question is . . .

[GeneralAntilles]

Who the hell actually plays Second Life? I seed tons of stories on /. and digg about it, but out of all the incredibly geeky people I know, none of them plays Second Life (or at least they wont admit to it).

This made me check my calendar.

[fredmosby]

The first thing I did after reading the summary was check my calendar. April 1 is still a week away though. Maybe they're just trying to get ahead in the April fools market.

Re:WTF is the point of this game?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I'm convinced that the only people "playing" second life are the people writing these articles. I think that technology columnists are fascinated with the idea of second life, and love to write about it. I can't fault them for that, because the idea does have interesting implications, but I think they do us all a disservice by continually giving attention to a "phenomenon" that no one actually cares about.

After reading countless articles about this wonderful new world of second life, I decided to check it out. What a piece of bloated crap-ware. I don't think the idea behind second life is worthless, but it's current incarnation is a joke.

I don't have a PS3, and have no plans currently to purchase one, but I think their new "Home" has a better chance of becoming popular than second life ever will.

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

[Blakey Rat]

I take it that SL is just some VR game?

Some VR game with, apparently, the BEST PRESS AGENT EVAR!

Seriously, they're in the news every damned day with stories like this. And yet the only people who actually play Second Life are furry pedophile rapists. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but that's the reputation the game has. How the hell do they get all this press? Sexual favors?

Do any of you actually use Second Life?

[lewp]

Do any of you actually spend time in Second Life? I'm not talking just popping in and poking around once in a while (I've done that), I mean you spend significant amounts of time in the world, you've actually invested some time and energy into making your character your own, and maybe you even develop content for it. I'm more interested in people who are more into the actual enjoyment of the world rather than speculators or people strictly trying to sell their wares.

The reason I ask is because so many companies seem to be on the bandwagon of this thing, but my friends are almost uniformly tech savvy early adopters and I don't know anybody who's ever logged into it other than to check it out and laugh at it. I've got nothing against it, and if anybody uses it I'm not going to laugh at you or anything. I may not see the appeal, but I don't see the appeal of a lot of things the average person likes. I just haven't seen anybody else who really likes it either, and that's made me question its popularity other than as a kind of inside joke.

I do think it's a great concept, and I'm sure true virtual worlds will be all the rage someday. I'm just suspicious that anybody actually sees this as a good enough implementation to really start spending time there. I've heard the furry community has taken up residence there to some extent, but honestly when I log in I hardly see any concentration of people anywhere, furry or not.

Re:Do any of you actually use Second Life?

[Mondo1287]

I've seen the press for this roll by for the last couple of years. Finally after seeing this post I said well I better see what all the hype is really about. I, like your friends, installed it and laughed. Anyone remember MTV's Tikki VRML world from about 10 years ago? Well I was instantly reminded of it. Someone at Coldwell must be delusional, or Linden Labs paid them a heafty sum and gave them free land. It's the lamest thing I've ever seen as far as modern content goes. Is this what they mean by Web 2.0? I think I'll be sticking to my first life with the occational raid in World of Warcraft. Who has time for a second life anyway? I just can't believe businesses are pumping money into this, or is it just media fluff? There is just no way this is going to be very profitable for anyone but Linden Labs. Any company looking to diversify into a market like this really ought to consider sticking to the real world.

Re:Do any of you actually use Second Life?

[cruachan]

It's easy to miss the point of Second Life, because the eyecandy is nowhere near the same level as WoW or similar. Graphically it's certainly around desktop game circa 2000 and the Lindons certainly do have a bit of a blind spot about upgrading it - largely because they seem predominantly focused on server-side issues at the moment.

However SL isn't really a WoW competitor. It's more like IRC in 3D - think of it as a chatroom where you can actually do things with the other people there. And of course virtually *everything* in SL has been constructed by the people in it. True the building tools have limitations and there's vast amounts of crap. but equally there's some very imagenative stuff too. The scripting language is by no means a toy too, even though that has some major flaws.

It's also an interesting question who does play it. I see several groups :-

1. Newbies. Vast numbers of people sign on, hang around the public welcome areas briefly, do a little touring then never play it again. It's quite common to see later reactions from them on /. and the like saying 'I looked and the graphics were crap' - which misses the point about SL being a social thing as above.

2. Wankers. Literally. A friend of mine who owns a SL club believes 50% of signups do nothing else but cybersex fot the first month. I think she's proberbly right.

3. Designers, Builders, Coders. Although the tools are limited with imagination there's a lot that can be done. SL seems quite a common outlet for amateur designers, coders and 3D artists. It may not be cutting edge, but you tend to get a lot of attention and feedback. If you're a professional coder then SL is well worth a look as it does have potential and some of the Lindons actually hold open office hours so you can talk to the game designers directly if you wish.

4. Roleplayers. There's large communities of roleplayers - most of whom spend 90% of their time in roleplay sims so will never be encountered by newbies. A quite common scenario is for a group to jointly buy a server, construct an enviroment, then play in that. Sort of like design your own game and play it using SL simply as an environment to do that. Roleplay covers a wide range from extreme characterization to mild 'wouldn't it be nice to live in environment X' types. Tends to be very hardcore players who spend a lot of time in SL.

5. Social players. Similar to roleplayers in that they have a community of friends but without the roleplay angle. Again these people hardly ever go near the common meeting places so a newbie will never pick up on them. A large part of the 'core' SL players are in this group.

6. Others - musicians, speculators, educators etc etc

People can belong to more than one group of course. Myself I am uncertain about the future of SL. Against it it has

a. Relatively poor graphics
b. Architecture limitations - the *bloody* asset server is a major pain point. It's not clear how far it can scale. The 50 avs in a sim limit is laughable for example.
c. It has a certain reputation in some influential quarters
d. The Lindons appear to be a bunch of bloody hippies :-). Certainly their business methods need to take a step up.

But for

a. Because the world is user constructed and designed to be at a fundemental level - and not given, as in WoW or other games, then in theory it can evolve. Games with Everquest, WoW, Eve etc cannot move forward in the same way.
b. It is one world and not sharded
c. It does provide enough tools that there is room for professional level interest in it.
d. It's totally generic
e. It has an established user base of people with graphic, building and coding skills who can jointly take it forward as the tools and capabilities improve. Real first mover advantage that.

On balance I think it likely to be here to stay and evolve as the prime metaverse. However I expect it to be the first among many (possibly with interconnections) and remain a minority interest for many years yet. It is worth your time though to look at it on a deeper level than simply 'ooh the graphics are crap' or 'it's just full of wankers'.

Is SL wants it real, then.. lets give them real..

[JackMeyhoff]

Virtual World War? Virtual riots? Virtual pillaging? Virtual squatting? Virtual Crime? Lets let the value of land plumet as it would in those real life situation.

Re:Blurring the line between real and virtual

[Kjella]

I think trying to create an economy that allows for proper speculation while at the same time being completely under another company's control, it like asking water not to be wet. While there's clearly a monetary value to virtual items (like selling MMORPG-equipment on ebay), it's temporary. They could change the rules at any time, but that'd destory gameplay so you can be fairly sure the powerful sword you bought today is a powerful sword tomorrow. That predictability is the only thing that gives it value. It's not just a matter of regulating the content itself, SL could do all sorts of tricks like making TARDIS-like housing, choking the amount of new users which would force a price drop, rearrange the map/view/default starting locations to make the "center" be somewhere else, anything and everything. By the time you have it regulated in well enough, it'll be about as fun as investing in the stock market. Take it for what it is, it's basicly an e-penis. As long as you pay more than Joe Average (both for starters and in upkeep), you'll have this fancy thing to show off to your friends. This speculation is in that SL will be the next big e-penis thing and that it'll somehow be a status symbol to show how much money you've wasted on this. How can you possibly regulate the value of a SL property when the only value it has is perception? Might as well try to regulate the market for pet rocks.