Friday, November 28, 2008

SL Economy

We all know the SL Economy sucks! Sales have slowed for many vendors, shops are closing, and if like me, you are a dancer, our VIPs just aren't opening their wallets like they used to. I have come up with a couple of ideas to remedy the situation.

Free accounts - While the makers of SL have been very generous in not having a time limited free account, this could be hurting the economy. Most game makers have time limited game trials, from a few hours, to 30 days. My suggestion is to limit the time on the free accounts or limit the area in which they can roam on the grid. This might help the griefer situation as well.

Increase the stipend - For people who pay to play the game, how far do you really think L$300 goes in a week? People can't spend money they don't have.

Vendor pricing -uploading textures in to SL costs 10L. So, when vendor charge $L1200 for a pair of boots, that's one helluva profit! Why do they need to cost that much? I understand the time that goes in to making these shoes is several hours, maybe days or even weeks. Why sell 1 pair for 1200, when you could sell hundreds of pairs at $L120. Wouldn't that stimulate the economy?

Many vendors offer freebies, or dollarbies to lure you in to their store. They do this in hopes you'll look around, and spend more money. Do people with free accounts spend money? It's too bad that there isn't a way to limit the access on free or dollarbie items to those who have paid accounts.


Reduce the cost of land tier. So many sims look like ghost towns with vacant spaces and empty stores. Real Estate companies and land owners can't make money on empty plots. Lowering land costs would encourage more people to put up homes, open stores etc. I know of a couple of stores that no longer have a presence in SL, and are selling their inventory on places like onrez and Xstreet (formerly SLX).

I know my ideas aren't perfect, but I'd be interested to see what would happen if some of these ideas were to be implemented.

Anyone have a crystal ball in their inventory?

1 comment:

Abfab said...

I agree with the economy being in the tank in SL.

Free accounts are a pain in my ass cause there have been times that I have tried to log into SL and get a message that log-in are temporarily suspended cause of the servers overload. If anyone should be made to wait....it's people with free accounts, and I don't care if they have a business or not.

LL does need to raise the stipend for premium accounts. 300L is just not doing it anymore and with LL consistantly ignoring residents requests (more groups....less crashes) they need to make it worth dealing with all the hassle. I think we with premium accounts should get 1000L per week. If we received something along those lines, more people would sign up for that kind of account.

My days of spending 1200-1500L on a pair of shoes is over with, no matter how much I want them. Some of these shops and there egos are getting out of control. It's great that they make a super product, but I cannot afford them anymore.