Recent Comments:
EA CEO Riccitiello doesn't think investors care about quality
Massively
Jul 23rd 2008 10:59AM Most of the time, the investors may as well be putting their money into basket-weaving for all they care about the final product.
Besides, isn't EA itself proof that quality isn't necessarily tied to profits?
Peering Inside: Disconnected advantages
Massively
Jul 21st 2008 1:32PM You've a good point there. Ultimately, of course, the users of many of these island grids might never venture into SL at all. Mostly, though we were thinking along the lines of the users and organizations that are already present.
Certainly any solid community can draw compatible people to itself -- the SL main grid isn't strictly a necessity for them to acquire users, expand community or draw revenue.
Hellgate: London subscriptions suspended
Massively
Jul 18th 2008 9:50PM Our local EB Games store took all the discount stickers off of Hellgate: London yesterday, and I think put every copy of the game they had out for sale back at the original full price ($90USD) -- it had previously dropped to only $60USD.
I pity the poor folks who decide to pick it up.
Thoughts on the Linden Prize
Massively
Jul 16th 2008 2:12PM "Gold-backed economies worked just fine without some governmental body creating new money constantly."
This is so. However, ellz are a fiat currency.
The gold-standard for fiat currencies is the a percentage of the sum of available goods and services
Thoughts on the Linden Prize
Massively
Jul 16th 2008 1:35PM Actually, even more complex still.
Given an increase of the availability of goods and services within the economy, corresponding amounts of ellz need to be created and injected into the economy in order to prevent destabilization.
Those L$ *have* to be created to keep the economy stable. It's less than a single week's stipend payments for the Lab. Yes, it's lost *potential* income, but that doesn't necessarily translate into an equal amount of lost *actual* income. There's many a slip twixt cup and lip. Potential income isn't guaranteed.
L$ change hands quite a number of times and every time they pass through the Lindex, the lab gets a percentage of that. As long as created currency is matched to the availability of goods and services (and Supply Linden does that in a very elegant way that isn't available to economists in the physical world), created currency continues to earn money for the Lab far beyond its face value.
Primarily what the Lab loses here is the ability to control the *timing* of the injection of the amount while trading a short-term gain for a long-term one. US$10,000 injected into the economy would be barely noticeable from the users' view of the economy, however, and with Supply Linden at the helm on the Lindex to balance things out, the currency created forms an ongoing gain for the Lab.
Lab wants users to walk the walk
Massively
Jul 12th 2008 8:30AM Indeed, it should be quite trivial to still make the current animation available to juvenile, cybernetic anatidae. Indeed the persistent availability of it as an option seems to be a better notion than discarding the animation.
Lab wants users to walk the walk
Massively
Jul 12th 2008 12:08AM Some of the content team were still around through 06. The current Orientation Islands were their design and construction, according to LL.
Mitch Kapor's SL5 keynote and the Linden Prize
Massively
Jul 7th 2008 2:00PM Once per year, that's a drop in the economic bucket. Technically to maintain a stable economy, the currency in circulation has to grow (or shrink) in line with the availability of goods and services. In RL that's a really tricky calculation to figure out. In SL, though - the math is considerably simplified.
Mitch Kapor's SL5 keynote and the Linden Prize
Massively
Jul 7th 2008 1:24PM $10,000 USD in L$ costs the Lab nothing, and they even get some of it back in exchange fees if it is sold for USD again which would defray organizational costs. This is *amazingly* cheap for them.
Second Life daily news
Massively
Jul 4th 2008 7:24AM Unfortunately, Teen SL is folded in as a corner of the main (adult) SL grid - so Teen SL's statistics are a part of the ones above - but Linden Lab doesn[t tell us how big or small a part they are. We'll try asking them if they can provide us with more data.
