Doing Business in SL

As soon as LL went with the decision to incorporate a currency and means of producing goods and services into SL, they altered the experience from a "game" where people expect to pour money with no dividend except pleasure into a "virtual environment" in which residents can and do make real money. LL now markets the platform to businesses and universities as a means of positively influencing the bottom line.

My experiences working in SL have involved two jobs. My first was as chief editor of an in-world journal that completely failed to see the light of pixels. Over the course of about a month, I watched the owner pour thousands of linden into properties and equipment and office goods to produce the journal. We hired a staff. We made assignments. The staff did great work. When I gave the owner the word counts of the stories so he could pay the staff, he fired everyone (via group posting sent in the middle of the night) folded the journal, moved into an alt, and never paid anyone for their work. In the real world, he'd be facing legal action, but in SL, other than us filing abuse reports (about which nothing was done) he faced no legal penalties.

My second and current job is as a dancer at Sanctuary Rock. Here, I essentially donate my time to the club, and my income is entirely dependent on the kindness of the customers, if they choose to tip me. My job is to be friendly and have a good time in local chat, thereby creating a positive environment to which residents might want to return.

I've friends who DJ, design, build, script, own venues or stores, play live music, and buy, sell, and rent virtual property. These hobbies become a means of self-expression, sometimes help them 'break even' in SL, and on rare occasion, translate to RL income. However, they also do LL a tremendous service by creating a world that induces those with "No Payment Info on File" to join the ranks of "Payment Info Used."

I'm not happy about the latest LL policy change regarding OS sims. You can read the forum's several thousand responses and get the scoop. I don't need to go into that here. The point is, if LL wants residents to keep pouring the sometimes thousands of RL dollars into the virtual environment, they would be served in the long run to remember the RL adage "the customer is always right." To institute fee hikes without warning, on either OS, mainland, or private ownership, is to fail to grasp the essence of what keeps SL going...the ones willing to invest substantially in time and money for this so called 'hobby' or 'game.'