Quote:
Originally Posted by Penny Patton  Intentional or not, Linden Lab has made it really difficult for anyone wishing to use SL for creative endeavours who doesn't have oodles of cash to throw at tier, just by overlooking and neglecting very basic creation tools which should have been addressed ages ago. |
Now, I have to totally disagree with this. There is a really damned limited number of places where someone with no formal art training, no graphics or 3D background and zero experience of digital content creation can sit in a sandbox and -- for free -- teach themselves using the
SL tools. Sure, to reach the top echelons of
SL content creation you really do need some outside software that costs a bit of money, but ANYONE can park their butt in a sandbox and start slinging prims or scripting for free. I don't see how the content creation tools could possibly be any more basic than they already are. It would certainly be nice to have some more functionality as your skills begin to stretch past what
SL can do, but otherwise you really can't do a whole lot better than
SL when it comes to "basics." What other 3D modeling program can a total newbie pick up and be creating a chair within a hour?
I also disagree it isn't easy for people to use
SL for creative endeavors. Content has to be hosted, whether it is a web site, photo, music, or whatever. The places that will host content for free almost always involve that service being paid for by advertising. Since the advertiser sponsored model isn't really functional in
SL, tier on large creative projects has be privately funded unless the project can support itself through sales. I will certainly agree that the $295 tier rate is outrageous, but even when tier on a sim was $195 it was still a large hurdle to overcome. But then again, not everybody has a creative vision that can span an entire sim (or several.)
Nobody is stopping anyone from creating in
SL, it's when you want to park those items someplace where they will persist that needs to be paid for. You mentioned Greenies as being too static of an environment, but that isn't the fault of
SL, that is the fault of the creator of that project. There are plenty of creative projects in
SL that feature all sorts of interaction; lack of interactivity was a choice made by the creator of the sim.