Stop me if you've heard this one before

Today someone was lamenting the closure of Beek Haven, I had never been there but reading the description I'm a bit miffed I hadn't because it appears it was a pirate harbour and pirates quite simply rock.... I blame Monkey Island for this but that's not the point.

During discussions about such matters as a favourite sim closing people talk of fond memories but they don't talk of the cold harsh reality, tier needs to be paid and eye candy sims and hangouts simply don't generate tier income for the owner regularly enough. People may well complain of boring ugly malls but they generate income. That's the bottom line. Three hundred bucks (before tax) is a bit more than people usually spend on online entertainment per month, compare those costs with WoW or Age of Conan, it's a huge difference.

This permeates through a lot of entertainment within Second Life, clubs go for the tried and trusted (and offered failed) formula of strippers sharing tips with the management. Well you can't sell virtual beer, charging entry is a no no, even Seven Ultra Lounge dropped that idea and therefore people look to raise tier via adverts, store rentals yadda yadda yadda, this undoubtedly stifles creativity but what's the answer?

I donate a whopping 2048M of land to others, 1024M to a hangout and 1024M to an art gallery. The deal with the art gallery is that if they start selling loads of art, they tip me. One day I'd like to donate more land. Now if more people did this we'd have more hangouts on mainland but the tier costs would still be on the shoulders of the people paying mainland tier now. Estate land faces different challenges, not only is tier generally 50% more expensive, but others can't donate land tier to help pay the bills.

 If people truly want to see creative sims thriving and prospering, if they want to see cool hangouts developing and they want to see something different in Second Life they have to get their head around the fact that Second Life is not free. I know the blurb says differently, but someone has to pay for the resources and those are the people who end up having to close their venture because they can't justify the fees anymore. Second Life costs money.

The responsibility for subsdising sims should not be on the shoulders of Linden Lab, I've seen people call for subsidies from Linden Lab before and I'm totally opposed to it. The community however by spending a few Linden dollars can help to subsidise the sort of sims that so many people claim to want. I'm not talking about donating thousands of Linden dollars, but people need to realise there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Live music faces these challenges, musicians rightly want a fee for their time but if the owner of the venue decides to charge entry they will be derided and people will often go elsehwhere because elsewhere has free entry, but then elsewhere closes because they can't make tier payments.

Maybe we should Ask Kate for the answers because I honestly don't know how we circle this square. I'm also tempted to ask Kate why we're asking Kate questions that can be answered on the forum but that's a different issue.

The world can't grow in amazingly creative ways whilst people cling to the freebie culture. Commercially it can and will grow, despite the best efforts of Linden Lab to throw a spanner in the works with their policies, however commercially is what leads to people bemoaning those ugly malls and we're back to square one.

There was an interesting comment on a post here recently where someone suggested that merchants selling from Xstreet instead of an inworld store would allow more creative ventures to be inworld, now if we ever reach that stage we'll be getting into win-win territory, content creators will be happy because their overheads are lower and residents will be happy because there's lots of fun and creative places to see, but that's not going to happen whilst the commercial viability of fun and creative places is reliant on the concept of Second Life being a free virtual world.