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Joshua Nightshade

I think they're spectacle built around selling stuff. Starax's sim was lots of nice sculpties showing off what you could buy, for example. It's not a typical store but it's still a store.

Siyu Suen

Problem is, it's one of those things where it's unprecedented and not likely to work on cachet value alone. It's sort of like paying a fee to get into this one zoo, where there are zoos every five miles from your house and every one of them is free. There are a multitude of gorgeous and creative sims, Rezzable does not have a monopoly on beauty, and those sims are utterly free to visit.

There's a lot in my mind that Rezzable does very, very wrong, and a lot of it has to do with bringing too much of RL into SL. It's a very different beast. We don't need middle men in SL, we need organizers, and where Rezzable has been successful is in being the latter, but they still try to be both. Again, I'll bring up that if they simply didn't try to buy the artists, they wouldn't be in the hole in the first place.

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WarKirby Magojiro

The for sale stuff in black swan at least,is kind of hidden. but I believe most of the large statues have "buy" enabled (copy) with (imo) extortionately high prices. The chained angel above the lava is set at 35,000 L$.

Work of art or no, not many people are going to pay that much for something functionless. Then again, I guess they don't need many people to buy them, if just a few do.

Psyke has one...

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CaleVinson

I'm again rabbiting on about the theory/general-practice, rather than Rezzable in particular here.

Whilst I agree with you that Rezzable most definitely does not have a monopoly on beauty, my, perhaps biased, perception is that the number of quality "experience-based" sims is small compared to the number of retail.

I keep coming back to a thread in which we discussed how the fact that people could make money via retail was critical to the development of the quality of stuff we can buy nowadays. Why is financial incentive critical for those who make and sell "stuff", but not for those who make and sell an "experience"?

I take your point too about people not being used to this model. But, presumably (I'm not a genuine oldbie ) people had to deal with a similar change in SL when the monetary system was first introduced.

As Beebo points out, entrance fees should be relatively low, because the experience-seller is asking the buyer to take a risk on something unseen. Though perhaps even this could be mitigated by offering access to a free sample room first, etc.

Cocoanut Koala

I think it's maybe because . . . the experience doesn't have much "experience" in it.

The experience is, generally - gawking, and oohing and ahing.

I'm the biggest ooer and aher there is, but you know, even I have come to realize (after the NPIRL thing followed closely by the birthday thing) that a little of that actually goes a long way. I didn't even bother to look at everything in those.

I used to love - um, the amusement park that was in SL, what was that called? Something island. Lots to do there, riding rides, etc., but even THERE, you knew, at the bottom of yourself, that it was kind of lame, in a way. You had to be in a particularly playful mood to have fun on the rides.

Irl, the experience is so much more than just looking at . . . statues, colors, textures, etc. (Much as I ADORE those!)

In SL, even if there is stuff to "do," you aren't really riding the rides, or seeing real animals, or whatever.

I'll tell you the sort of experience that DOES work in virtual terms, and for which you could probably get away with charging, more than anything else I can think of - and that would be game shows. A really well-run game show. People will pay for interactive, organized fun that involves them. We used to have people literally unable to enter our full lot for hours, whenever we ran the Game Show Channel in TSO.

So with these sorts of things, like Greenies and so on, in SL, you are up against the fact that there is not really anything to do. People pretty much have to be in a playful, imaginative mood with friends who are feeling equally wacky.

Or to view things like NPIRL, you have to be in an oohing and awing mood, and as I said, a little of that goes a long way.

I think that's why experiences you can charge for irl, it is harder to charge for online. These experiences are simply missing the "doing" part. Disney World, for instance, has plenty of things to do - feel, experience - as well as plenty of things to keep visual people like me ooing and ahing.

Even a zoo is, actually, a real zoo, with real animals, smells, everything. SL is more like an art museum. I love art museums, but most people don't just spend oodles of money going to them all the time, you know?

Better to have something about them that you can "do", even if it is only being a nice, wacky backdrop for goofing off with your friends in.

Until we get holodecks, I suppose this will always be a problem.

coco

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Siyu Suen

I definitely agree with you both, Coco and Cale. And there are a few interactive sims, like I really enjoyed the haunted hospital at Ueno around halloween, but even then, it funded itself by selling the props and ghosts and things in a gift shop at the end. Retail, simply put, is a marvelous and effective way to get money in SL. A direct and simple formula of time+skill=money. I also agree that an actually interactive experience like a game show (can you imagine one like Let's Make a Deal... "I'll give you 300L if you have... a ROAST TURKEY in your inventory!") would be so much more worth paying admission for. But until Rezzable organizes that sort of interactive experience, their business model is definitely flawed.

prinţesă nină

ah...

prinţesă nină

well, thats the whole point.
if it were a freebie it wouldnt be nearly as cool to own and rez, despite the fact its the same exact statue.

IsaDaft Trollop

To me..while I don't like the idea of paying to see a sim, I will consider it for the talent that Rezzable has always put out there, from the pool SL offers. Even if it is only a few *choice* they see fit to ask. Not everyone of their creators are well known, but talented none the less. Perhaps they have a keener eye and search for exactly what they are looking for, for each theme sim they have in mind.

I can honestly say, I've never seen a Rezzable sim I wasn't impressed with, and didn't visit several times. I do hope that part of the L$ will go to the Artists that actually make Rezzable what it really is and why we go see the sims.

I would rather pay a small fee each time I visit, but I am also one that visits thier sims a lot, so perhaps 199L lifetime of the sim is a bargain.

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Osprey Therian

In Second Life as in many pursuits the fun is in making things. There are many more people making things than there are viewers and appreciators for what they have built. It's a buyers market, so to speak.

Siobhan OFlynn

I'm going to sound cranky and bitter in this post because "lifetime" in SL is bullshit.

I recall paying $16,000 lindens for a wand made by one of the Rezzables staff/creators. I think I got about 4 updates before the creator of said wand suddenly vanished into thin air with no explanation. I love that wand and I'm not sorry that I purchased it. But there is still a part of me that really resents what he did to all of us who parted with a huge chunk of change for something we thought would be updated and supported. I know about the permissions bug, I realize he was pissed about it, but ffs, don't screw every one because of the asshattery of a few. I live in fear of the day I log in and my wand is broken beyond repair by LL.

So, sue me if I'm hesitant to fork over any more money on anything promising "lifetime" in Second Life.

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Beebo Brink

I would argue that although L$199 may be nominal in RL terms, within the SL economy is not a token amount.

I'll toss away up to L$50 without thought, and often do. God knows I've spent hundres of Lindens, L$30 at a time for 7Seas fishing bait where I probably would balk at paying L$200 for the same amount all at once. Rational? Of course not, but perfectly human.

So if Rezzable actually charged what would be considered a nominal amount in SL, I think they'd be more likely to get a stream of people who are just curious enough to see what's behind the door. The L$199 price will work only for those, like Isa, who are already familiar with what the sim offers and will return often. That's not a large enough pool to sustain a sim.

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Ingrid N.

I agree with Beebo here. Despite the fact that I consider the items at Carnival of doom to be way too expensive for what was offered, I still bought a few because I enjoyed the sim and wanted to support the effort. I sure as hell wouldn't do that if I had to pay an entrance fee. In fact, I doubt I would have gone to the sim in the first place.

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Beebo Brink

I've got an Inventory folder stuffed with LMs of sims that are on someone's "must see" list and I've only visited a fraction. My grand plans to work my way through the folder are more often derailed by spending time building my own stuff, or hanging out with friends. The competition for sight-seeing is fierce and gettng more so all the time as the grid continues to expand. After awhile, I've grown resigned to the fact that I'm just not going to see them all.

So this is the context in which Rezzable is working -- finding a way to stand up so far above the crowd that 1) people will go see them, and 2) pay for that visit as well.

When you consider the percentage of residents who actually like bling and miss gambling casinos, this becomes a somewhat more daunting task.

Lucifer Baphomet

Rezzable Blingsino would work well

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Mabb Dilweg

In RL, the custom of tipping is not that common in countries other than the USA and Europe. It is somewhat more common these days but for example in Australia, its a gift for extraordinary service, not a given for everyone who carries your bag or serves your meal...

I am sure this carries into SL, however I also find that as a DJ, Aussie are great tippers if they like your music, because they understand that this is your only "wage".

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Joshua Nightshade

Yeah not tipping for stuff in Australia was surprising to me. I didn't believe Adam, went to look it up myself.

Wildefire Walcott

I'm kind of disappointed in all the "I'll never pay to visit a sim" sentiment, and the "they're making you pay just to shop" argument is disingenuous. Every amusement park and museum in the world has a gift shop, and no one accuses them of charging admission only so people can buy their stuff. A single class 5 sim costs $3,540 USD a year to maintain (and that's not even counting the purchase price) and this says nothing of the untold costs in both time and resources involved in building those sims that everyone loves to see but no one wants to honor.

L$199 is damn cheap. I do think they should have a day-pass/membership model, but I don't have any problem with artists charging for others to enjoy their work. It's not even about making a profit; it's about being able to afford to make your art available to those who would enjoy it.

I currently run two full free-to-explore public sims, and have another on the way. The first one operates at a loss, the second is dead break-even (so I'll never get that purchase price back), and god only knows how the other will do, financially. I'm lucky in that I could afford to bear those costs personally before I had any sort of in-world businesses, but very few people are willing- if able- to throw that kind of money down on a video game with no guarantee of recouping. Rezzable may not have found the formula yet, but I hardly fault them for experimenting.

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