Making Secondlife available on Steam is a great idea. But unfortunately, inviting Steam users to try Secondlife while tier costs are impossibly high makes no sense. Why invite millions of users who can't afford the Secondlife product - Land - to come play.
What we're about to see is the most awesome churn over ever experienced by an MMO or virtual world. Apparently Secondlife already fails to retain 16 thousand users who try it per day. Why try to attract more customers to a platform that is so expensive and the current user base is so frustrated and alienated by the pricing that they are leaving in droves.
If Linden Lab thinks their current user base has been and is overbearing and critical, wait until the Steam community makes their feeling felt. Their used to gold standard games at discount prices.
Secondlife takes the power away from the user. Secondlife tier costs make the user feel powerless and poor. Tier costs are so high educators have left, role players are choosing alternative grids because they need lots of land, music venues are closing, inworld shops are empty and closing. Projects are closing, projects are not being started. All around we are seeing the decay of a unique platform.
It's really quite incredible to see an amazing technology like Secondlife, a trail blazing company like Linden Lab, fossilise in front of our very eyes. Their inability to change the one thing that would improve their bottom line, make their customers happy and invigorate their product, is the one thing they refuse to do - DROP SET-UP FEES and LOWER TIER COSTS
The build up of negative energy because of high tier costs is so great it's quite possible we'll see a mass abandonment of the platform. Right now customers are dropping private sims at a rate of approx. 100 sims per week
The sad truth is that even if Linden Lab convert some Steam users in to Secondlife TRY-OUT TOURISTS, as soon as the Steam users realise how much it costs to own land and really do the cool stuff, they'll walk too.
Recently Rod Humble said they had no problem getting people to try Secondlife for a while, it was getting people to stay that was the problem.
Well Rod, why do you think that is dude ?
Do ya think that maybe, just maybe, you might be pricing your product beyond the pockets of your user base ?
Why do you think you are not retaining customers ?
Why do you think nearly 100 sims are being abandoned every week ?
Why do you think converted, passionate users are abandoning the platform ?
Secondlife is dying. the price of land is killing it. churning over thousands of Steam users a day is not going to improve Linden Lab's bottom line. The Lab will keep losing sims and money until they lower tier costs.
i agree.. too bad LL is too thick headed to realize this!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. It's a matter of economics. LL inflated the price of land out of greed. This caused a drop in people willing to buy land thus lowering demand. Now in this situation most companies would take a small hit to their profits, and lower the price of their products and/or services in order to attract more customers, and spur growth. What Linden Lab has done, and continues to do is the opposite. They meet the lowered demand for land with higher prices driving demand even lower. It's a vicious cycle that will only end in two ways. Linden Lab's bankruptcy, or a dramatic change in the way they conduct business.
ReplyDelete