Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Massively Overpowered has an article about a surprising purchase of an in game rifle. See: ONE-OF-A-KIND ENTROPIA UNIVERSE RIFLE. Will we ever see such high priced items in Project Sansar?
One of the problems in Second Life™ is the copyboting. It isn’t just a problem for those of us in Second Life. It is a problem for anyone placing content on the web or digital media in general.
A thread in the Second Life™ forum starts with the OP asking what prices will be for goods in the new Project Sansar world. That is something we would all like to know. I’ll collect and expand on some of the thoughts from that thread.
I think many have decided we can’t know what prices will be charged until we know the cost of land and the transaction tax rate. We know the transaction tax rate in RL (sales tax) tends to be 10% and less. People often shop online or outside their state of residence to avoid sales tax. So, we have good experience to tell us the Sansar tax rate can be expected to influence sales volume, prices, and user retention.
Second Life™ made it in the news this week. PSFK ran an article titled: A Look Into a More Social Virtual Reality With the Makers of Second Life. This is an interview with Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO, and Senior Director of Global Communications Peter Gray. While referencing Second Life most of the information is about Project Sansar.
Both Ebbe and Peter think the social interaction in VR will be huge. While that is debatable, they have a lot of company.
The Ghost Town is a free-to-play MadPea game. Canary Beck is writing about it. See: Merchants: A chance to get out in front of new Second Life residents, which is a comment on marketing.
MadPea needs merchants to provide prizes… gifts… for a hunt that is part of the game. For details see Canary’s article.
…and this video has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was neat.
Canary also has an article on body shape, men’s and women’s. How men and women draw up the “perfect body” in Second Life. Interesting.
Lots of us are blogging about Project Sansar®. Well… there isn’t much happening in Second Life™, so… Loki Eloit has posted his thoughts on what Sansar won’t be. His ideas are different from those of the blogs he is reading. Loki says he hasn’t seen any evidence that technically Project Sansar will be anything like … Read more
Ciaran has an article up expressing his belief that Project Sansar® won’t eat or cannibalize Second Life™. In the first paragraph he says he isn’t sure where the idea of Sansar cannibalizing SL comes from. Really!?! Well, maybe there are too many possible sources to be sure which one it is… naw. His points are … Read more
In working my way through the Anxieties Canary lists in her article I get to the tenth, taxes…
In America the IRS is the Internal Revenue Service. It is the taxing agency of the American government that has its own courts and law enforcement officers. It also has over 1,977 forms, 90,000+ (2015) employees, and 74,000 pages or 3.7 million words of tax law that it enforces (Reference) without regard to the Constitutional principal of Due Process.
The eighth of Canary’s anxieties is about dumbing down Sansar. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the ninth anxiety: too complex. Opposite sides of the same coin, sort of. It is true the Lab is trying to make Sansar appeal to the masses and that an easy to use factor. But, is Project Sansar really going to give us a dumber virtual world?
The term ‘dumb down’ will have different meanings as it is somewhat ambiguous. Another term in the gaming world that could apply would be NERF. Will they nerf SL into Sansar?