Donations

This is a kind of continuation post from my last blog post entitled The Greenies Problem. This entry is going to be about Donations.

If you ask me, it is entirely reasonable for any place in Second Life that offers an event to the public to have a donation / tip jar area for offering events or resources. When we look at something like the Greenies, they would likely make a lot more money from donations than charging an admission fee.

One example of an area in Second Life that offers free entertainment but gets donations is the Music scene. Every musician makes a good sum of money for doing the music and also the venues make money from it as well. The venues could easily say “You can’t get in without paying L$1000″ and in some cases they do when it is a big musician like Louis Volare.

Another place in Second Life that offers a service to residents is the Destination Station. Itazura recently added a tipjar for people to donate to. Again entirely acceptable because they make no money for promoting these places free of charge and is a hell of a lot better than any standard telehub.

Soon enough SLPN will be getting a donation jar as well and we have some cool stuff coming down the pipeline.

Harper Berseford made an interesting comment on my last blog post on the Greenies that I completely understand the point of view of.

“They have to insure the survival of their business so they can provide MORE content and pay the electric bill to keep the server running.”

Again, my argument has always been, If they people like it, they will be more than happy to donate. If I ever see a donation jar at a sim that is fun, helpful, informative, entertaining etc. then people will donate. Combine that with Merchandise (Greenies sells merchandise already!) then THEY will surely make money.

The Greenies Problem

I know this is old news but I feel like I had to write about this. A while ago on Podmafia we explored the Greenies sim which is an amazing build that all newbies and oldies should see. However they are now charging for entry into the sim, which in my opinion sucks.

OK L$99 doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but to a newbie that’s like L$1,000,000. When a newbie joins Second Life it can be a daunting experience and I think it is important to let them know about the good stuff quick so they can understand what is cool and possible about the virtual world.

What I’m trying to say is that Second Life builds when its a public place that you want people to visit should not be blocked off at all. The only times something should really be blocked off is a residential area or if someone has been banned.

When you think about the Internet  you get websites that need to be paid to gain entries to certain areas, most of which never really work out well. Second Life is entirely the same, people expect to visit somewhere and be able to explore it for free. Sure there’s a cost attached to it for the service provider but they can make money other ways like Donation kiosks that can help facilitate the venue or merchandise.

I’m sure that Rezzable is making some money from the Greenies but to be honest I think they are already successful enough to not need to offer a charge for admission. I’m sure events like the Hair Fair make them money and the Greenies has always seemed to me like a good promotion of what Rezzable does.

Basically, charging for admission in my mind is a stupid idea and if people start copying the idea then it will negatively impact Second Life.

I am sure most of what I said has been said before but I don’t care because this is my opinion that has been badly written. Also thanks to Dakota Blackmountain for pointing out a typo

Whats your Second Life?

I am currently listening to SL Under the Radar’s part 2 of The Toilet Bowl and it got me thinking, what on earth is Second Life to people. What is it that they do?

Me?

I am an evil tyrant who wants to wage nuclear war on Nowhereville who is secretly an evil timelord.

Why?

I love Doctor Who and thats why I am an evil timelord. The nuclear war thing is because I am scared of Nuclear War.  I used to have regular nightmares about Nuclear War but for some reason, since I started playing around with nukes in Second Life it sort of eased my fears and I haven’t had a nightmare about it in a long freaking time.

Thats a sort of insight to why Warf is Warf. What about you? Do you do anything wacky that you wouldn’t do in Real Life that you do in your Second Life? Is this post entirely pointless to you?

Gridnaut

Earlier this week I was accepted into the Gridnaut program. For those who don’t know what a gridnaut is, A gridnaut is one of the beta testers for the Open Grid public beta. It allows me to use the Open Grid client and access both Second Life simulators and OpenSim simulators (that have applied the patch).

There is a lot of work that still needs to be done before this will reach the primetime but the developers are already working hard on this.

UPDATE - Radar asked in the comments about how he could sign up to be a gridnaut because dumb old me forgot to add that information in, so here it is  (Quoted from the Second Life Wiki) :

1. To participate as a developer, please send a request to join the Open Grid Public Beta Mailing List.
   • Please subscribe using an email address associated with your SL account. We may discard subscription requests that we can not confirm belong to Second Life residents.
2. Once you’re subscribed, you’ll be invited to join the inworld group for participants.
   • You will receive two invitations, one from the main grid, and one from the Preview Grid (aditi). We recommend joining the group on both grids, however only Preview Grid membership is required for intergrid teleporting.
   • To accept the preview grid invitation you will need to log onto the preview grid normally. You can use the normal preview grid viewer, available from the downloads page, or you can use your main SL viewer. To use the main viewer, hit shift-ctrl-g from the login screen and then select “aditi” from the pulldown menu that appears.
   • If you have more than one avatar associated with the same email address, we will invite one of them. If our guess wasn’t the av you wanted to participate, email us at ogpb-info@lindenlab.com
3. Claim a space on the map for your OpenSim region.
4. Download the Open Grid Beta Viewer.
5. Build an OpenSim region with the OGP patch.
6. Use the Open Grid Client to Teleport between Region Domains

Getting Somewhere…

For over a year I have been using an open-source piece of software called OpenSim which is a reverse engineered Second Life simulator. (If you don’t know what a simulator is, it is the thing that gives you land and prims and all that happy stuff). Ever since it was released I have always felt that those servers would one day interact with the Agni grid.

Another thing that I love about the OpenSim project is the ability to run your own simulator locally. This is great for a variety of reasons. Testing scripts outside of Second Life, Building Practice, Tutorials etc. I basically love OpenSim. There are a few problems with it i’ll admit. It is still unfinished in terms of physics, inventory and usability but this will all be ironed out in the future.

So, recently the main grid was able to connect to an OpenSim server, which of course excited the hell out of me. Then this happened to appear in my feed reader. Open Grid may still be in it’s early days but it is something that makes me excited for the virtual worlds. This obviously opens up so many possibilities such as independantly run servers.

I will continue to keep watching the space and finding out what happens with OpenSim because whatever it will bring. It will be a good thing for all.