The V2 Thresher is on hold for a bit. While I am very confident that what I need can be done, I’m still not entirely sure it can be done by me, or at least not yet anyway. The basic skills necessary are rudimentary enough, but it’s the finer aspects of my virtual omnipotence that I need to work on and master, so as a bit of an exercise in understanding how each of the primitives work, I’ve spent the last few days building, and destroying, houses. Nothing screenshot-worthy yet, but an invaluable way to practice simple object construction, and a good way to familiarise myself with the vast ‘freebie’ texture library I seem to have accumulated.

So I’m working on my most recent house, a Mediterranean-style villa, in one of the larger sandboxes, and a surprisingly non-descript chap floats over. We get chatting about pine blocks, and he says ‘You could sell that,’ pointing at my, frankly, far-from-polished stucco and red-tile block-pile, and that got me thinking.

While Second Life is often described as a grand social experiment, I’m more curious about its economics. Graphical chat rooms are nothing new, but SL has almost total RMT (Real Market Trade) linkage, facilitated by the game itself – the official website has a ‘buy and sell money’ page, and several other third parties also trade in ‘Linden Dollars’ (L$). As of writing, their rates seem to be; 10$ US buys 2,512 L$, and 1000 L$ buys about $3.84 US. Of course there are transaction fees in there someplace, but currency speculation must be possible, if not hugely profitable. Interestingly, it seems that Linden Lads never actually pay out USD themselves – they merely offer a system that matches up resident sellers and resident buyers. I’m not entirely sure if they are making new L$ to meet buy demands though.

Frankly, all this scares me a bit – playing games with real money always does that to me; I am no gambler. It’s a complex economic system, but I’ll have a go at trying to pick it apart.

    Money in:
  • New Accounts: All newbies start with petty cash of about L$250. This doesn’t go far.
  • Weekly Allowance: Everyone gets a weekly ‘pay check’ which varies depending on the type of account. My freebie account gives me L$50 a week.
  • Land Popularity: Extra money is given to landowners each week, based on the ‘dwell’ of their land – i.e. how many people go there, and for how long. This gives rise to all sorts of tacky harebrained ideas to get people to stay on your bit of land – usually casinos, offers of free stuff and offers of sex.
  • RMT: As far as I can tell, this seems to be the main way new money enters the world. While it’s certainly possible to make everything yourself, it is much quicker to pay someone else to do it.

    Money Out:
  • Upload Fees: L$10 per upload of images, sounds and animations.
  • RMT: Successful residents can cash out and buy real money with their haul.
  • Advertising: Listing your shop or event in the Find Window Classifieds costs about L$30 a week, but is probably necessary if you want anyone to know about you.
  • Rating: Adding a +1 to any other residents Behaviour, Appearance or Building scores costs L$25 each. I think this cost is mostly to give the rating system meaning, but is still money destroyed. I have +1 building so far!

    Other Costs:
  • Premium Account: Required to own land, this is a monthly fee, just like any other MMO, for US$9.95. This is isolated, and can’t be paid directly with in-game L$. It pays L$500 a week allowance, instead of L$50, but if you don’t actually need land, it is more effective to stay on a basic account and just buy money for the same cost. US$9.95 would buy about L$2499 each month.
  • Land Use Fees: In addition to needing a premium account, and the initial L$ cost of purchasing the land, parcels over 512m2 begin charging a further monthly cost, on a sliding scale, ranging from US$5/month for 1024m2, right up to a staggering US$195/month for an entire region or ‘Sim’ at 65,536m2. These islands are custom built by Linden Labs, and presumably, use dedicated hardware. They are also more popular than you might think. This land rental fee must go some way to covering the costs of the servers running each land, and seems a fair way to do it. This fee is a billing matter, and not directly payable via in-game money.

So far, I’ve not needed land – the sandboxes are ideal for larger construction, and many landowners allow building on their lands, albeit in a temporary and smaller basis. I’ve also not needed to use any money yet, although my current balance – L$350, is only 35 texture uploads, so picking through freebie dumpsters has been the order of the day so far. Many generous, or foolhardy, souls keen to generate ‘dwell’, or interest in their other, real products, or just wanting to help new folks, often have a little ‘freebies’ section in their shops – boxes of free-to-use textures, clothing, poses, vehicles, sounds, etc, and collecting as many as possible while avoiding duplicates is becoming quite a hobby for me.

In particular, using these already-uploaded textures means I can save my L$ for very specific custom Photoshop jobs that I am unlikely to find elsewhere – Vanu Sovereignty logos, etc.

Actually selling things myself is the next goal, but this is more difficult than it sounds.

SL is an economy where there are zero material costs. Apparently, it used to cost money to ‘rez’ objects. That has since ceased to be the case, but I can only imagine the bland, empty and stifled kind of world that must have been. Now, making a pine block costs nothing, and appears from thin air. There are no mines or farms in Second Life.

SL also has zero production costs. Any finished item you’ve made can be duplicated instantly and perfectly, and requires no resources to do so, meaning no need for a manufacturing industry.

Everyone in Second Life has the capacity to design and make things. We can all pull pine blocks out of the air, on a whim. Not everyone is as good at it though, or enjoys it as much, and this is where the chief economy lies. What is really being bought and sold is imagination, dexterity, and patience. My better house attempts took about two to three hours, although I am fairly new still, and those can sell for around L$200 - L$300, roughly. That works out at about 33 cents an hour. However, I can sell the same house over and over for no additional time or material investment.

Marketing it is another matter altogether however, and one of the real difficulties in the scheme…there are just so much competition – how will anyone ever find my goods? In keeping with the Renaissance feel of my current endeavours, I think ultimately I will need a wealthy patron – an decadent social gamer with more money than building skill and an eye for the finer things in life, who doesn’t mind paying for me to spend my time doodling in margins and building canvas corkscrew helicopters!

At the moment though, I'm fine just throwing shapes in the sandbox for the sheer satisfaction of it. I suspect the lack of grind is making me lightheaded. My next project will be a sphere and a stick that counts how many times I've hit it, and adds a point to a score every 20,000 whacks...

(One popular way to make money, is the Oldest Profession In The World, or course. I always chuckle when I see escort vacancies in their classified ads. Apparently being a virtual ‘ho’ pays the equivalent of about 50 cents (USD) an hour. For godsakes woman! Just pay US$10 RMT and put your feet up for the rest of the month – and think of all that dignity you’ll gain!)

All in all, a fascinating toy box to rummage through.