- [S]ome reporters glance at the front page's "Online Now" stat- currently around 40-48,000 at peak times- and assume that's a more accurate tally of total active users... A better reference is posted monthly by the company's demographer on their blog, and includes an industry standard of unique monthly active users. As of June, that number was closer to 500,000.
- While it's true that "homegrown" content generates far more enthusiasm, traffic to the top real world promotional sites [in SL] are actually competitive with other forms of Internet advertising. During June, about 400,000 Residents logged in each week. In a typical seven day span that month, according to my Second Life blog's demographer, the five most popular locales generated anywhere from roughly 1200 to 10,000 visits. (The top ten earned over total 40,000 visits.) Therefore, each of the top five sites garnered a.8 to 2% visit rate. Typical click through for a traditional banner ad on the Web is generally estimated at.5 to 1%.
- Much as a conflict between idealists and exploitative capitalists in the metaverse would be an exciting story, that hasn't observably happened to mass effect since 2004, when the world was vastly smaller.
- In terms of land mass, Linden Lab reports that just 18% of the world has been designated to have "Mature" content; explicit sexual activity is relegated to a subset of that percentage.
> as soon as there are too many people trying to take money out of the system > the whole thing falls flat
That's actually not what happens-- people don't take Linden Dollars out of the system, they just sell L$ to other SL subscribers. So the currency stays in the world. Linden Lab adds more L$ to this pool via a tightly controlled monetary policy (they have an economist on staff) to keep inflation in check.
> there isnt any 'natural resorce' in SL
There is: new content created by the Residents. As long as they keep creating new content that people are willing to pay for, the economy will stay active.
Thanks for the fascinating conversation, Slashdotters. Two quick corrections:
- My name is actually "Wagner James Au". - I'm still blogging about Second Life as an embedded journalist at http://nwn.blogs.com/, though now on a commercial basis with Federated Media, the kids what bring you Boing Boing, Metafilter, and other juicy goodness.
Lot of worthwhile points worth discussing, but rather than wade in too deep, let me hit at one in particular:
> The author is trying to posit an implied (but untrue) connection between previews > allowing mediocre games to sell and all games 'sucking.' Mediocre stuff sells in > every entertainment industry that exists -- if only the best games sold then the > market would be too risky to enter.
Actually, I didn't say all games sucked. What I did say is that due to previews, the few games which don't suck have to compete for shelf space with the 95% of games that do. Preview hype, not game quality, is what guarantees retail store shelf space--especially if the game is backed by a large publisher and/or it's connected to a known brand. And since the average consumer only buys the games that are on the retail shelf, they are far more prone to walk away with a shitty game. This means good games are artificially disadvantaged on the market, which is not open, and it's substantially different in this sense from all the other mediums. A good book or movie can cut through the clutter by word of mouth or good reviews, while it's far more difficult for the same thing to happen with a game, because all the good reviews in the world won't help a game that isn't even on the shelf in the first place.
Since my Salon article was/.'ed (and thanks for the link, Emmett), I wanted to clarify the above a little. Warren Spector's role at LGS for games like Ultima Underworld, its sequel, and System Shock was actually as producer, not designer--
as I inaccurately stated in the article. The
main design work was done by the kids at Looking
Glass, with Warren offering some important design/conceptual suggestions, and helping to keep the overall aesthetics focused (and on time,
and on budget). He did work on Thief some, but in its very, very early stages (as he told me
once, "I don't even put it on my resume.") What's more, for the Ultima games, he was doing it at a remove, since he was still based at Origin, then.
None of this is to take away anything from Spector, who I still think is one of the industry's top intellects and best designers. However, the way I stated it in the article (by necessity, hastily written) probably took away from the contributions by the Looking Glass folks, Doug Church and the rest-- who were, in fact, the prime movers for those titles. Warren's also a very modest guy, the first
person to credit his collaborators, so I'm sure he'd want them recognized that way, too.
He did in fact, however, come up with "the lean", so anytime you get Garrett to peek around a corner-- as opposed to idiotically stumbling out into the open, Carmack style-- whisper a word of thanks to the mad professor of Austin. And thanks
that he's the guy in charge of telling us about
Garrett's further adventures.
-- James
Slashdot Mirror
And after much research, here's my reply to this rumor.
... so it's no surprise they don't even want to fight virtual ones.
The BBC article was even more inaccurate than the current one being discussed: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/11/five-bbc-fact-fails.html
http://gigaom.com/2007/07/12/debunking-5-business
- [S]ome reporters glance at the front page's "Online Now" stat- currently around 40-48,000 at peak times- and assume that's a more accurate tally of total active users... A better reference is posted monthly by the company's demographer on their blog, and includes an industry standard of unique monthly active users. As of June, that number was closer to 500,000.
- While it's true that "homegrown" content generates far more enthusiasm, traffic to the top real world promotional sites [in SL] are actually competitive with other forms of Internet advertising. During June, about 400,000 Residents logged in each week. In a typical seven day span that month, according to my Second Life blog's demographer, the five most popular locales generated anywhere from roughly 1200 to 10,000 visits. (The top ten earned over total 40,000 visits.) Therefore, each of the top five sites garnered a
- Much as a conflict between idealists and exploitative capitalists in the metaverse would be an exciting story, that hasn't observably happened to mass effect since 2004, when the world was vastly smaller.
- In terms of land mass, Linden Lab reports that just 18% of the world has been designated to have "Mature" content; explicit sexual activity is relegated to a subset of that percentage.
Full links and background at the GigaOM article
.> as soon as there are too many people trying to take money out of the system
> the whole thing falls flat
That's actually not what happens-- people don't take Linden Dollars out of the system, they just sell L$ to other SL subscribers. So the currency stays in the world. Linden Lab adds more L$ to this pool via a tightly controlled monetary policy (they have an economist on staff) to keep inflation in check.
> there isnt any 'natural resorce' in SL
There is: new content created by the Residents. As long as they keep creating new content that people are willing to pay for, the economy will stay active.
Thanks for the fascinating conversation, Slashdotters. Two quick corrections:
- My name is actually "Wagner James Au".
- I'm still blogging about Second Life as an embedded journalist at http://nwn.blogs.com/, though now on a commercial basis with Federated Media, the kids what bring you Boing Boing, Metafilter, and other juicy goodness.
Lot of worthwhile points worth discussing, but rather than wade in too deep, let me hit at one in particular:
> The author is trying to posit an implied (but untrue) connection between previews
> allowing mediocre games to sell and all games 'sucking.' Mediocre stuff sells in
> every entertainment industry that exists -- if only the best games sold then the
> market would be too risky to enter.
Actually, I didn't say all games sucked. What I did say is that due to previews, the few games which don't suck have to compete for shelf space with the 95% of games that do. Preview hype, not game quality, is what guarantees retail store shelf space--especially if the game is backed by a large publisher and/or it's connected to a known brand. And since the average consumer only buys the games that are on the retail shelf, they are far more prone to walk away with a shitty game. This means good games are artificially disadvantaged on the market, which is not open, and it's substantially different in this sense from all the other mediums. A good book or movie can cut through the clutter by word of mouth or good reviews, while it's far more difficult for the same thing to happen with a game, because all the good reviews in the world won't help a game that isn't even on the shelf in the first place.
Since my Salon article was /.'ed (and thanks for the link, Emmett), I wanted to clarify the above a little. Warren Spector's role at LGS for games like Ultima Underworld, its sequel, and System Shock was actually as producer, not designer--
as I inaccurately stated in the article. The
main design work was done by the kids at Looking
Glass, with Warren offering some important design/conceptual suggestions, and helping to keep the overall aesthetics focused (and on time,
and on budget). He did work on Thief some, but in its very, very early stages (as he told me
once, "I don't even put it on my resume.") What's more, for the Ultima games, he was doing it at a remove, since he was still based at Origin, then.
None of this is to take away anything from Spector, who I still think is one of the industry's top intellects and best designers. However, the way I stated it in the article (by necessity, hastily written) probably took away from the contributions by the Looking Glass folks, Doug Church and the rest-- who were, in fact, the prime movers for those titles. Warren's also a very modest guy, the first
person to credit his collaborators, so I'm sure he'd want them recognized that way, too.
He did in fact, however, come up with "the lean", so anytime you get Garrett to peek around a corner-- as opposed to idiotically stumbling out into the open, Carmack style-- whisper a word of thanks to the mad professor of Austin. And thanks
that he's the guy in charge of telling us about
Garrett's further adventures.
-- James