Love is Love

Beginning and I at Quantum. Where else?
posted by CyFishy Traveler on Quantum Fields using a blogHUD : [permalink]

And now, the rant . . .

At the long-lost Diversionarium, there was a marvelous game called Quoste where you had to guess words that made up a notable quote. One of the quotes was from Mark Twain: "Buy land. They're not making any more of it." Every time that quote came up, of course, all of the avies would laugh, since we inhabit a world where they are, in fact, making more of it. But knowing that going in, why would anybody be foolish enough to think that the laws of supply and demand for virtual land would be the same as for the physical? (Heck, even physical real estate is having a bit of a time of it right now.)

Suppose you have a big sprawling building owned as a sort of artistic collective creative space. There are public areas where people can come in and work on stuff, but they also have an arrangement where you can rent studio space, which works something like this: for a monthly membership fee, you have the right to rent space. You pay a one time "key fee" for the studio itself and your rent is based on how large the studio is. If you have a larger space, you can sublet to other people or even add some walls, get an extra door and sell the key to someone else.

Now, you don't absolutely have to buy a studio, of course. There are, as before, open space where people can do stuff and some artists leave their studios open for anybody to use. But those places can get a little crowded and unruly and sometimes you just want a place to call your own.

The arrangement worked well enough, and they even added extra buildings for the collective and had enough space left over to build entire mega-studio buildings that individuals could own and operate. The owners of outbuildings could run things in there the way they liked, and could even have the same key-and-rent arrangement as the collective buildings, except that the rent went to the owner instead of directly to the collective, and membership wasn't required.

And somewhere along the way, somebody realized that you could make good money buying keys for studio space and then turning around and selling the keys for profit. Especially if you did things like fix up the studio so it was ready to move into, or managed to get a space with a window to the outside.

And maybe this wasn't so bad. At least until people started doing things like blaring death metal in their studios 24/7 and if the neighbors complained, they were told they could always buy the key for an extortionate amount of money. Suddenly, the outbuildings started to look pretty good. Then again, the outbuildings had the problem of certain unscrupulous owners abruptly vacating, leaving all the tenants stranded.

Even people who tried to conduct their key-selling business fairly got ultimately screwed over by supply and demand, as more space kept getting added, both public and private. Suddenly, it was a lot harder to sell your key for enough profit to make it worth your time. Some people got really upset at this and felt that some kind of promise had been broken because of it.

Two recent developments in . . . studio space, if you will, have gotten me thinking about this particular issue.

So they added some new outbuildings that were sold for cheaper because they shared walls with other outbuildings. But because the walls were a bit thin, they asked that people keep it down and try not to get too crazy in them. Few people listened, and the bleed-through of sounds and smells made things a bit difficult for everybody in the outbuilding. So they had to step in and change the way they went about it and people are still bitching about it to this day.

Now they're talking about dealing with people who have been dividing their studios into closets and trying to sell the keys for extortionate amounts.

I've probably stretched this metaphor to the point of snapping, but it pretty much frames the way I feel about land in Second Life. I don't see it as an 'investment', I don't see it as 'private property', I see it as space to create that is sublet under the good graces of Linden Lab. Complaining to Linden Lab because your 'investment' in virtual real estate didn't pan out is the biggest waste of time and energy I can imagine. It's like key-sellers bitching that artists have too much room to create in. Did that thought make you cringe? Because that's how I feel every time the Linden blog announces another development with the mainland and the land sellers bitch and moan about it.