There will be a blog post with pictures this week, I promise!
Last week I mentioned that I'd had this awesome idea for a blog post that I wanted to share, but then I'd forgotten it; until near the end of the one I did do. So, this week, the topic is just how much are you paying for items in Second Life, and is that really a fair price for the hard work of creators.
First off, yes, I know that things in Second Life are ephemeral, not as much as food maybe, but we also do not need to eat in SL, either. And SL might be less durable than WoW, but I'm sure people who bought extra costume packs in City of can tell you that even that can be an illusion. So, yes, its 'not' real, like a chair in Real Life, but its still something that exists, like an MP3, which is a virtual thing as well.
So, how much is a linden dollar actually worth? It varies, based on market fluctuations, but one l$ is worth [are you ready for it?] .4 cents. That's all. So that roughly, 1000 linden dollars is $4 USD. Or, to put it in terms of an outfit, you can get a decent wardrobe of stuff from top notch creators for about $10 USD or less. And you can effectively get plastic surgery [mesh body parts] for less than $15 dollars.
So, why do so many people complain about how much they spend in SL, then start rattling off these high linden dollar amounts? Is it because 20,000 lindens sounds like a huge sum? Well, okay, it might start going into large sum numbers, since it would be roughly $80 USD, but let's look at the creator's side of the equation before we start griping, shall we?
What goes into an item for SL
Okay, time for a breakdown on how creative work works [well, really any work - minimum wage in the US is somewhere around 10 an hour, unless you wait tables [that's still 2 something an hour + tips, last I heard]. Okay, so, on to the discussion at hand. Let's say I'm making some jewelry. I've made a fair bit of jewelry, even if its not all made it in world, so it might take me an hour or so to come up with my design, then another few hours to model, UV unwrap, texture, and make some lower definition meshes to cut down on the LI costs in SL. So, we're looking at about four or five hours of work so far. At minimum wage this would come to about 60 dollars, or 15000 l$ worth of work.
Then, of course, you need to upload your piece into Second Life, along with the textures. Let's say I'm going to offer four different metal textures and nine different gem textures. Okay, if I combined the entire mesh onto one texture, I can get the four metals onto the same textures as the gems, so nine textures and the mesh. This is roughly another 100 l$ in upload costs. Another hour or so in assembling either a hud, or the individual pieces in all combinations. Then packaging and taking images for the ads, which need to be uploaded as well, so if you -aren't- using a hud, that is another 360 l$ in upload fees for those, and another few hours in taking all those images.
We're up to nine or ten manhours of work for one necklace, and an additional potential of almost 500 l$ in additional costs. This means that one necklace costs roughly 25,500 l$ or over $100 USD to make. Some folks might work faster or slower, I figure I'm on the average side of work flow, especially on the assembling and image taking side of things.
Okay, I -know- that we can now sell as many copies of this necklace as people want to buy. Surely we'll make up that cost quickly, right? Well, in theory, yes. But let's say you are in a niche market. There are only so many goths, for example, or roleplayers, or faery types. Let's say I opted to do everything as a hud - that probably cuts out a good two hours of work, since I already have the basic hud setup done, and I'll only need to take a few pictures of the product to make my ads.
But there is only so much I can charge for my piece before people won't buy it, and I'm really niche, so that already cuts into how many folks will buy my stuff. So, I'm maybe charging 300 l$ for a piece that is effectively an uber fat pack. To make back the money spent making the item, I need to make sixty-nine sales. That's to break even.
That's break even assuming our time is worth the same as someone working at a fast food restaurant, though. Really, artists are skilled labour, we ought to be making twice that an hour. So, that means really we need to make one hundred and thirty seven sales to make what our time is conceivably worth.
I'm not putting this out there to discourage creators. Second Life is, among other things, a wonderful sandbox environment. It is a good place to learn how to model and work with others, and could lead to skills that are worth real money. If you enjoy it, then keep with it!
But before you complain next time about how much something costs, or how much you spend, think of how much it actually was, how much the creator is probably actually making, and then if you still think its too much, then complain away. But I somehow think most of you won't complain after all.
Because 5000 l$ really isn't much for cosmetic surgery after all.
