For want of a nail

In the last few weeks, SL has been watching the Tragedy of the Commons acted out in virtual miniature, in the widely lamented but apparently inevitable demise of a popular and socially successful roleplaying worldlet based on the film "Avatar."

Pandora began three months ago in the usual way (i.e. as a labour of love and personal obsession/interest) and has grown to four adjoining regions, beautifully landscaped and filled with story-appropriate flora and fauna — and megaflora, the 115-metre-tall trees have to be seen to be believed. The RP seems to be populated largely by Na'vi characters; there are humans in the storyline but in my times in Pandora I've never met one.

The landscaping and story have been widely praised, the stores (merchandising subsidises the arts in SL just as in RL) are apparently doing well, and at last count there were over 2000 people registered in the four storyline groups (I don't know how many of those are regularly active; as I write this post, 31 group members (including myself) are in the RP sims).

Nonetheless, it is probable that one of the four regions will close down forever this week, and possible that two others may be gone by the end of April. [Updated: the region is safe for another month, they managed to raise enough money to pay the tier.] [Updated again: it's over, the landowners have announced that they are pulling the plug on all four regions.] [Updated a third and hopefully final time: some sponsors have come forward, the regions are all safe for the near future.]

The problem is, of course, the money. Nothing "free" is ever really free, the word just means that you don't see the bill being paid. To date the tier costs of the four RP sims have been covered largely out of the pockets of the founders, and they are getting tired of doing it. The landowners need to find L$42 thousand per week, but have been unable to get the RP community to contribute even half of that. The most generous donors of the week are listed on a subsidiary webpage, the current twentieth-highest donated all of L$100 = 37 US cents. (Which is fine, really, it's much better than the hundreds of group members who donated nothing at all.)

Now, if you divide those tier fees by 2000 group members, you get US 7 cents per person per week, times 52 weeks in a year is US$3.64. So go look up how much a cup of coffee at Starb*cks costs. You'd think that it would be possible to get people to donate a single cup of coffee per year.

And so we get the Tragedy of the Commons: it is in everyone's common interest for all of us to keep the sims open by pulling together in generous cooperation, but it is in nobody's individual interest to start doing so. For the price of a single cup of coffee, we all lose out.

(If you want to see for yourself: pick up quite good free skins and (modifyable!) shapes here, then customize your appearance here, then go to the central starting point here. There is a free-of-charge group for non-RPing visitors, please join it and wear the tag. Please make generous use of the donation boards at the arrival point.)

And just by the way, for those who are thinking "so put your money where your mouth is:" I did. Although I am merely an occasional visitor, not a roleplayer nor even a member of the community, I have donated L$4000 to Pandora so far. Your turn.

BBBC three: A sim of my own

Alicia asked:

You've been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

This is an easy question, because it's something I have been thinking about since reading a recent NPIRL post about Second Life artists and the difficulty they have finding places (and prim allocations) to create and display their work.

I would use my free sim to become a patron of SL art. I would invite artists to build on the sim, and encourage the world to come and see. How exactly I would do this is unclear: how to choose just one (or four, or twelve, or whatever) artist from the hundreds in SL? Perhaps I'd just deed the land to NPIRL or some other such body and let them choose.

As I said I have been thinking about this. I've been in SL for nearly two years now; I am inworld every day, for up to 30 hours a week. This has become a significant part of myself, much of my emotional life takes place in SL now. And I'm doing it all on free accounts.

I have taken so much from the Lindens' world, I have found happiness and friendship and even love here, and while I do try to give back to the SL community (as a mentor, a contributor to the wikis and in various other ways) I am deeply and uneasily indebted to Linden Labs. Gods know how many megawatt-hours of their electricity and terabytes of their bandwidth I have consumed. But unless the Lindens take a cut from Lindex deals, they have not earned a penny from me.

Something about this makes me increasingly uncomfortable. Is "everything free forever" really a sustainable business model? And if it is not, what will happen to my friends — and my identities?

So I have been considering upgrading at least one of my selves to a premium account, reckoning up what I could afford to pay for the next two years. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of running SL, I know, but it would ease my conscience and make me feel better about using their resources.

And as we know, premium account holders can own land. What would I do with my land? I don't need it for myself, I have a perfectly nice beach plot courtesy of Play as Being, which is quite adequate to my needs. I had thought about making my putative future land available to artists.