07 July 2015

Another one bites the dust

I did something this morning I haven't done in years on my main account: "set home to here".

For the last several years, my home is on a sim run by my good SL and RL friend Axi Kurmin. Cursed is a Goth village, home to the last true Goth club in SL, Gothika, and carefully curated to keep an overall theme. Axi did all of the landscaping and, after an incident with a former business partner, controlled all of the building as well. There's a small commercial section, and Tonya's Restraint Works' main store and demonstration playroom are there.

All of that is, at minimum, moving elsewhere. Axi finally gave in to the stress and the economic pressures and is dropping the sim. Gothika and the cemetery that goes with it are moving. So is Axi's workshop. The other rentals are ending as of July 23, the due date of the next tier payment.

Why? Put simply, the US$295 a month sim rental is too much for Axi to support. Having her own sim let her run events her way, on her schedule and on her terms, but that's become far more stressful than fun. The rents she was able to bring in didn't come close to covering the cost. And she's got a lot better use for US$295 a month these days than running a sim that's become a source of stress.

So now we have one fewer privately-run sim in SL.

Last night, my wife Chibi and I moved our home to a new location. I have my own homestead that I used for other things, but mostly rented out. My home is now there, on a very tall hill another friend terraformed for me. (I can't terraform worth a crap.) We got a copy of the house, and moved everything to the new one in just the same spots as before so it immediately feels like home. There's still some work that needs doing, but not much.

The store and playroom are, at least for now, going to close. It's not like I got a lot of business out of them anyway. I've got a project percolating in my mind that will eventually require a new physical store, but for now my stuff will only be available on the Marketplace.

Perhaps I should rename my sim, though...somehow, Catalina doesn't seem appropriate any more.

I have to wonder how many sims are going away because of the price. US$295 a month is pretty stiff for a hobbyist, after all. With the release of experience tools, LL is giving creators the wherewithal to create the kind of experiences that Ebbe Linden says he's after. That's great, but it's getting harder and harder to be able to afford the kind of space needed to create a great experience. (And individuals are not getting grid-wide experience keys.) LL's just shooting themselves in the foot keeping tier as high as it is.

I know tier's LL's cash cow...but is that business model sustainable in the face of the outlays needed for Sansar? How many more sims can LL afford to lose? Axi's one sim isn't much, true, but it is emblematic of a bigger problem.

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