Cristiano

Anshe has announced she has a team of developers who are creating high quality content to be sold for $10L. In her own words:

What is your reaction to this?

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* slu stuff *

Charlemagne Allen

Someone's playing Godzilla versus Bambi with original, distinctive content in SL.

Rev Eponym

Let's wait and see how good it is.

Could be the equivalent (or the RL analog?) of cheaply made, imported Chinese products.

Aodhan McDunnough

I have no decided reaction to the "flooding" part because there will be too many economic factors in play, plus I don't know what "decent" and "high-end" are supposed to mean in the above context.

I'm not familiar with IMVU but, correct me if I'm wrong, it's not a contiguous world where you can bump into people randomly but rather a very sophisticated IM replacement with the contiguous part of SL substituted with a Facebook-type social network. This would mean IMVU can substitute for a large chunk of the SL experience but do so with less lag.

If the above is correct then it would make sense that IMVU would explode. I'm not sure if her plan will do the same thing for SL not because her products will be cheap, but that there is a lot of decent to excellent free content in SL.

Xplorer Cannoli

perhaps its an appeasement by Anshe to LL. Is it still rumor that 195 islands will be going up in price?

Just a thought.

Ewan Took

Good for consumers, bad for designers if she floods SL with quality skins, hair, clothes and whatever.

Maybe she wants us to have more cash to spend on rentals or property... preferably hers.

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Aodhan McDunnough

Well I hope it doesn't drive people out of business completely. Now I don't mind killing the mediocre-to-crappy product market but I wonder how high up the "quality" chain people are going to take a hit. Will I be affected?

We could use some price lowering across the board but that's already been taking place.

Also I'm not too convinced about the motivations. The reasons SL isn't growing like it did before are not necessarily economical.

1. As I mentioned earlier, IMVU substitutes for a chunk of the SL experience. People go shopping all the time for experiences they want (e.g. mmogs, blogs, facebook, etc). SL is just one experience.

2. I find SL really fun and had an easy time learning it. But for many the learning curve is really steep, steep to the point that we actually have huge help groups in-world who set out to supplement tutorials, we're talking The Shelter, Help People, NCI, Metaverse Mentors, SL Helpers and the like.

3. This goes without saying: lag. I very much expected this as the population grew. Now that LL has the info maybe they can come up with some solution to ease the asset server's traffic. I just hope we're not asking for too much because I consider SL a bit of a miracle already to even exist as it does. We may come to a point where the lag problem becomes intractable and thus not further reducible short of massive advances in communications and storage technology.

I don't know how Anshe will be affecting the economy in the months to come but all told, SL's slowdown in concurrent logins growth I believe is NOT related to economy. There are millions of good freebies out there, heck I even get some cute stuff from my friends without even having to ask.

Cristiano

I totally forgot I had this custom smiley, but it seems appropriate for the moment:

Wilhelm Neumann

I looked at some of her stuff and watched the fight at slx over her 10L category with her name on it. To be honest I think she is focusing her sights on the "business in a box" community and there are some people gouging for things that I have not the heart to gouge for like vehicles which simply will never work properly due to SL issues. I hate it when I see a motorcycle on sale for more then 500L or so even the high prim ones are not worth that much. Houses is another thing the prices have been on a steady rise.

anyhow I wonder if she is hiring (joke its a joke ..)

Joshua Nightshade

What bothers me about it is less on whether or not she'll be successful but that she just took it upon herself to try.

Prices have been coming down across the board because sales have been dismal due to the constant grid issues. That's the reason the economy has been stale this summer, because you can't log in more times than you can.

It's just astoundingly arrogant to me that she just up and decided to do this without regard for anyone else.

Wilhelm Neumann

On a side note maybe they got tired of banning people for giving negative feedback. If they had made a thread like this a few months ago they would have been banned.

Maybe slx is feeling the pinch and has come down a few rungs on the totem pole in their little pea brains and is starting to realize you can't ban people because they have some criticism over your system.

Usualy for this stuff they are worse then LL. when mentors and people who have zero problems on main forums start getting banned for things on slx something is very strange with the universe

Joshua Nightshade

SLX is ridiculous and Apotheus is a raging asshole.

jacqueline trudeau

my question is - no doubt AC is an astute businessperson, but whats the strategy behind this? it's bound to raise a shitstorm of negative publicity for ACS and adversely affect her core business and reputation. and for what? to dominate the freebie and near freebie market? to run smaller content creators into the ground, many of whom no doubt are paying tier to her? bait and switch loss leading? does she think people are paying too much for content and not enough on her land? what do you think, i'm not sure i get it.

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Cindy Claveau

Some fallacies in her statement:

- The real reason IMVU has had good growth is because it is a cartoon designed to appeal to the Myspace/AIM teenybopper crowd. Not because of pricing -- you can get an IMVU account or an SL account for free. Of the two, SL has a far greater range of content but more of it is adults-only.

- The August "stagnation" she mentions was due mainly to the closing of casinos, with the commensurate drop in land prices (she's still buffing out the scars from that one) and that entire week when Search was down and TP didn't work reliably. My own store revenues, never really large in the first place, stalled that week but they're back on track since then.

The people she's going to hurt with this move are the small merchants just starting out who are trying to learn how to create simple clothing and prim hair or shoes. Granted, most of those aren't the best quality anyway but you have to start somewhere.

Wilhelm Neumann

I"M glad we cleared that up

Cristiano

Anshe has always been remarkably impervious to negative publicity - she has managed to weather her villification pretty well and even thrive. Her business certainly has never suffered for all the tales of her misdeeds and general bad behavior. She is a shrewd, relentless person who dominates whatever space she is in.

I admit, her strategy here seems a bit off - it is going to take a profound amount of sales to recoup the labor costs of creating all this stuff and the ongoing costs of such a large staff. Yeah, the stuff is $10L, but then you have to sell 30 to compete with the sale of 1 from other vendors. i just don't see the volume being there,and low prices are associated with low quality generally, no matter how nice the items might be.

One thing Anshe is right now is totally and completely vulnerable because her overhead is so high - her business could easily be wiped out by even relatively minor changes in SL (and selling trinkets on IMVU hardly mitigates the risk). She could be hit by a virtual tsunami at any time, and selling $10 prim hair isn't going to keep away the risk.

Cristiano

Perish the thought that this is the future of the metaverse:

Wilhelm Neumann

I"m pretty sure she would confine this to starter stuff mainly due to the fact that she does in fact make higher end content in SL

If you look and use search tool and type in ACS you will see higher priced packages available. If she started releasing higher end content to compare to her higher priced stuff she would be shooting herself in the foot.

The broohahah at SLX was due mostly to the unique link to her stuff which I agree is somewhat tacky. If she wants to have a 10L site then make it seperate but use the same system as everyone else otherwise it becomes silly.

I dont think she is intending to flood the market with say high quality skins that one normally pays 2kL for or whatever and charge 10L for them or furniture or houses that normally and truly is worth more then 10L quality wise. It makes no sense to because she does sell furniture and clothing etc for more then 10L already if you go to SLX type in ACS and you will see several of the ACS creators there who have things up for sale for several thousand lindens even. I dont imagine she has any notion to suddenly start charging 10L for those products.

I saw a house though it was transfer only so I doubt it sells very well can you imagine screwing up your house or having it go poof one day after paying 2.5k for it ? I certainly can't. When it comes to content she is a bit weak on the delivery she is used to land and building little cities her content creation and content marketing skills need honing and we are (for now) not in any danger as individual creators.

Also she speaks english better then that post was having dealt with her in the past her english is better then my english..

Also one of the posters Ann O'toole is a funny one at one point she was very pro LL and in a heartbeat she suddenly changed and started slamming LL. She sort of changes her ideas like the wind but when they change its like dr jekyl and mr hyde. She can be very nice to you one minute and then hate your guts the next with no rhyme or reason behind it. Although I didn't like seeing this 10L category stuck out there like that I truly am not at this point worried that Ansche Chung is worried about unseating me or anyone else when it comes to the bits of high end content that we may churn out once and awhile. Most of my stuff is very "ordinary" but once and awhile I make something extraordinary as time permits. I dont think that she is looking to lower the price of my "extraordinary" stuff only the ordinary stuff which is fine with me. I raised the prices because everyone kept telling my stuff was undervalued and to raise them. I have no problem lowering them again to the previous pricing lol. Also for me my sales have not really suffered a whole lot so she must be experiencing one heck of a slump in order to be starting to produce 10L items like this and I think this is her prime motivator. To create small ticket items for those who are on an impulse buy or with very few spare lindens. Heck its what I keep telling some of my friends to do when I see them making only higher priced items. I tell them in order to get a little bit of the lower end of the market to start making some simpler things for less then 100L in around the 25L-50L mark or so. It makes sense really

Aodhan McDunnough

It will be, but thankfully not the only future.

blazespinnaker

I have a better idea than 10 L$ goods, how about 0L$ land:

http://deepgrid.com

Smoke on that, Anshe!

Anyways, I think 10 L$ is too expensive. The real future is free supported by advert models.

ZATZAi

Does no one see it? Look at what she was selling, couches, chairs, tables. This is not stuff you wear... What did people enjoy most about The Sims, was it telling your avatar to read a book? Or buying stuff and arranging it in your house, building up your pad?

You need land for that, don't be surprised if these items somehow advertise the Dreamland estates. They could also have the side effect of lowering prices across board, but I don't think it would be wise for other content developers to react that way.

I don't see this affecting high quality content developers, these items are decidedly midrange at best. The type of clientelle she is shooting for would never pay 500L for a chair anyway, perhaps they'll get this stuff, get used to owning land in SL etc. Then when they're tired of looking like a noob with all this cheap stuff they'll seek out something better...

This could actually help the economy, by being an easy introduction to SL for people who would have otherwise taken off, but only if the other developers don't panic.

...

But that's the idealistic possible outcome, regardless of intent. I'm not going to get into possible intent though. I'm more concerned about how to react to this in a productive way.

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Cindy Claveau

Zat's onto something.

Khamon

I'll buy midrange copy/notrans furniture from anybody before paying 500L for every single individual item over and over again.

The Grid All Hail The Central Grid isn't anywhere near being stable enough for me to spend money on things that might vanish totally when I rez them.

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Cindy Claveau

Personally, I enjoy making my own furniture. I already have the textures, so it's basically free

I can even make my own poseballs. Woot

Joshua Nightshade

Personally my irritation is less about whether this works or not and more about why she's doing it. I think it's arrogant and selfish.