Sexy Beast
Makeup tattoo by Starley, cheetah mini-skirt by Cytra, hot legs by Twid. :) One of the interesting features of second life is that men and women can share the same clothing. Meoooow. :) I haven't played much SL, maybe an hour here or there. It's certainly a world that builders, designers, and scripters love. SL has good old fashioned lag as shown by these signs I found.
T$ On The Rise!
Therebucks recovered and then some. The crash was the best thing that could of happened to GOM! They have never had higher volume and the T$ has recovered more than I ever would of imagined. Revenue seems to have stabilized at a level.
Knight Online
Here is a game like Lineage that is in beta. Sometimes the download is hard to get. I played the game for like 5 minutes and it was not that bad.
http://www.knight-online.com.my
State Of There Radio Address
Did you listen to the radio address yesterday? I did. I wonder if someone typed a transcript...I haven't found one yet. Gawd. I shake my head. Half the time I was screaming at the radio and half the time I was howling. :D Some of the questions had me rolling. Here comes my overall opinion on these things so please take it with a bag of salt. There Inc stated several times "we are NOT closing". I don't know if they are trying to convince us or them that. Hee hee. Where the hell do I start.
If I hear the word "community" one more time, I'm gonna hurl! ROFL If the word "community" was said once, it was said 135 times in that radio address. I know I am a cold hard numbers lad, and so I will say it again
THERE IS A BUSINESS
It's all nice and fine that There is a community and we are all passionate about it, but that does not mean a rat's ass if they are going to be around six months from now.
A business is made to "make money".
There is a business with the subscription model.
You make money with the subscription model getting more signups.
Here are the two things that catch my eye on that old Michael Wilson post:
Michael Wilson wrote:
"As we go forward we will continue to evaluate the consumer service and our ability to meet our financial goals on an ongoing basis."
What does that mean?
It means that the consumer game version of There failed. This is why There was created. The company is still alive and feels responsible for the gamer community and will do its best to float the game side as long as possible. This is why they are trying so hard to cut the costs. They need to get costs to rock bottom and then they can keep it open for us to play.
Michael Wilson writes"
"Q: Is There going to close?
A: No. The company has just received new funding and will continue to operate; only we will now be focusing most of our resources on building out our platform."
What does this mean?
To me this is horrible in terms of business! This says to me that they burnt $40,000,000, but some how they got a new cash fish on the line for a few mill more and are going to toss that money down the well too. He did not say "we made a profit and so we can continue to operate...no, he said "we found some more funding". Eeeeeek! Eeeek! This sounds a lot like the dot coms.
Michael Wilson wrote:
"There is changing its strategic direction to focus on our technology platform."
What does this mean?
It means "we are changing our direction because we did not make any money".
I don't think There is closing anytime soon. As I said before, The Sims Online was a huge money loss and it's still around. The advice at the end of the radio show was "stick together as a community and keep playing". This is bad advice and will not save the game and here is why...
You make a subscription model succeed by getting a continual new flow of players or customers. The best advice would be "get 5 of your friends to join, and get them to each get 5 of their friends to join". And that advice is very hard to do. The There player base is going to suffer from lack of new blood, and so it will dwindle. It's got a half-life. I would say that every 90 days, about half the players will disappeared and moved onto the next game. It's not that There sucks...There is awesome, but we still get bored with things in time and move onto new hobbies and games. Did you used to play Sims? Did you love it in the beginning? I did and yes, I pee'd my pants over it. TSOL had me on six hours a day every day. The community was awesome...because...it was you and me. I could not play TSOL for three minute today...it's now boring to me. It's still an amazing game. I used to play There six hours a day, but now I can only play 30 to 60 mins. I can play City of Heros three to six hours now, but in a few months, I'll have the itch to move on. This is human nature. Players will continue to exit There as they reach their personal boredom limits. Therefore the only way to keep an active community that is not shrinking, is to get a constant or growing amounts of new players. I don't know if There has this or not and There Inc seems to ignore or not understand this side of the business.
There Inc itself, I personally think is still struggling to find their niche to see if they can succeed. Once that military project runs out...what then? They need cash revenue. They are now betting on the platform. Man...this is a long shot. Who needs a metaverse game engine and how much would they pay for it? You are now competing with all the other game engines out there and there are some damn good ones. To date, no social metaverse has succeeded in a big way. Maybe they could go all industrial or business to business and use the product like NetMeeting :)) and have corporations use it to host office meetings or something.
A Few Fun Items
Sidney built a swimming pool in SL last night! Starley got her Single's studmuffin to grab some boobies. Get your new Flip Ramp today in There Auctions!
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