The Fate of Slate

Look at my photo album to see a momentous historic occasion in Second Life: Khamon Fate, one of the oldest Mainland business owners, sold his Fate Gardens, home of his tree and garden business, to move to an openspace sim by the same name in the Fairchangs Continent. The old sim of Slate was among the very first sims created in early Second Life, and of course had something of a tumultuous history.

Khamon was able to sell his prized Old World land, which contained beautiful stone textures and Linden protected borders of water, road, and railroad, for an amazing $1.5 million -- an equivalent of US $5475, to Jopsy Pendragon, another oldbie FIC mainland dweller, a particles designer whose Ethereal Teal sim on Teal is now joined to neighbouring Slate (the earliest sims were named for colours).

An august group assembled of very Old World FIC, midbies like your humble correspondent, the noble dragon Talarus Luan, Guardian of the Mainland against evil Ad Farms, and newbies like Bettina Tizzy. I recognized a few other oldbies from the old forums who have long hated me : )

The event was made entirely luminous by a large ceremonial portal with a ribbon made of particles and placed between the borders of Slate and Teal. Jopsy looks to be something like Pan or an elf; Khamon of course has green hair and skin and leaves growing over him. Snoopy was there, and a girl with a laurel of flowers. I felt as if I were in Narnia...a feeling that grew as Talarus loomed and a man on a horse came clambering up the hill from Dee's farm.

Khamon still owns some land in Taber, Alice, and Samoaa if you want to contact him for more sales -- he wishes to be done with the Mainland. I tried to think of how I could personally mark this solemn event -- and couldn't think of anything but symbolically booting Khamon from the group I founded called "Mainlanders," which he was an active part, coming to meetings and demonstrations against ad farms, once even making himself into a spinning ad-farm avatar and visiting Robin Linden's office hour in protest.

Slate used to be owned by oldbie Bob Bunderfeld, who put it together out of accounts with the free 4096 for life that you got if you purchased a charter account from the Lindens back in the day. First, if I have the sequence correct, Bob built a Wild West town, across a kind of chasm made out of the mountains -- the sim has the old terraforming capacity of plus/minus 40 m2. I remember visiting the Wild West town as one of the first malls I shopped at in September 2004 when I joined SL as Prokofy for the duration, and I bought a tuxedo in a shop there. I remember there were pets for sale and I kept hoping to buy one when I got some land, but they were kind of expensive.

Then, Bob pulled down the Wild West town, which I remember had a casino, or bordered on a guy's blackjack parlour nearby. Then Bob had a kind of community there -- I'm not sure of all the people who lived there, but Khamon was one. He would help newbies learn to build. I once got a few lessons myself from Bob, who taught me how to put clear textures on the ends of prims so that the seams wouldn't show in say, a pool.

Bob had some sort of conflict with Lordfly, who put up some sort of sign on his border protesting something or other -- this is before my time, someone could fill in the blanks, or perhaps it was on our oral history on my Talk Shoe site. Eventually, Bob moved from Slate and sold it to Khamon, who wanted to expand out the tree business by having room to put up a giant castle, where he put up screenshots from his other various battle games, and array the trees around a landscaped sim that had a river, a bridge with a kind of ogre on it, and waterfalls. It was truly beautiful, and while Khamon is of course making a beautiful sim now on his openspace, well, it doesn't feel the same.

Khamon had good neighbours for the most part -- Jopsy's Ethereal Teal was also very beautifully built and landscaped. There were, of course, problems breaking out on the flanks -- the awful Jennyfur Peregrine, wife of FlipperPAY Peregrine, has an ugly store with horrible screenshots of slutty looking avatars in bathing suits or something, blocking the view of what otherwise might have been a nice railroad. Still, things can and do bet worse on the Mainland. I think Khamon had some other "issues" with people stubbornly refusing to landscape to smooth out the terrain between properties.

Anyway, I will let him tell the story -- he has thoughtfully scripted my part as well : )

Prokofy: Let's begin with the end. Why have you sold Slate and moved Fate Gardens to an openspace?

Khamon: Two reasons, wanting to live and work on a virtual continent where the owners trust me with estate tools and wanting to shift my business model, from supporting Linden Lab and the Second Life project with ninety-five percent of the profits, to remitting forty percent to them as a necessary cost of doing business.

Prokofy: You can hardly expect employees of Linden Lab to operate their Mainland as residential estate owners do.

Khamon: I have expected just exactly that for five years, but have finally given up.

Prokofy: Do you think the Mainland has any value?

Khamon: It is valuable to hundreds of Mainland parcel owners, just not to me.

(I'm gonna skip the whole land rental v ownership because we can trust LL more than estate owners fallacy knowing you know the truth of that.)

Prokofy: Picking up your second reason, are you reducing anything other than financial support for what you call "the project?"

Khamon: Yes, I'll not be attending office hours, initiating conversations with Linden Lab employees, or paying my way into any more Views sessions as well.

Prokofy: So you'll just be working on your little island?

Khamon: Yes I see the move as the beginning of an exit strategy at least in the sense of not trying to participate in the development of the software or the advancement of The Grid All Hail The Central Grid. By November 3 I'll be just a plain user in a position to walk away, in a day, when it no longer holds my interest.

Prokofy: or until something better comes along

Khamon: "Better" is a project that'll license grid software for me to operate my own world without having to rely on their central asset and space servers. I don't think any service similar to SL will appear on the market. Can you imagine a company looking at this and thinking it would be a good idea to emulate?

Prokofy: It's not quite the epic end of era; but give a brief synopsis of how all this began.

Khamon: Jarod Godel originally showed me Second Life in the interest of using the software to offer a 3D environment to our instructors and students. We quickly determined that neither the software or the company would serve any useful purpose for us in that arena. It was, however, fun to build and script freehanded, in real time, in an online multi-user environment. I noticed right away though that the foliage selection was severly limited and that most of the builds simulated real world enclosures rather than natural settings.

Fate Square was built in a 96sm parcel on top of Kissling Mountain as the first step of a plan to place small parks across the grid and ensure some natural settings for residents to enjoy. Each venue would display a few plants for sale in order to make enough inworld money to pay the required weekly land taxes. As the income grew, and could support more land, new parks would be built and new plants would be produced. There were no options, at the time ,to buy or sell lindens, or to support land using external funds.

The plan was heavily adapted when 1.2 was announced and Fate Gardens was formed to sell plants from a single garden area in order to help people "green" their own area of the grid. As time passed, and sales grew, the gardens expanded from 4ksm in Olive, to 16ksm in Taber, to 50ksm in Slate requiring a full sim monthly tier. Now they're being rebuilt in a Fairchang openspace and I couldn't feel more relaxed and happy with the change.

Prokofy: Thank you for taking time out of your busy and important schedule to answer these questions. As always, your insight and wisdom shine as a beacon of reason and hope in this weary wora'uld of ours.

Khamon: and thank you as well

Comments

[cat magellan]

Thank God it was Jopsy who bought it. Ethereal Teal is one of the most amazing sims in SL; i used to almost live there, when i was a happy and careless newbie.

[Ann Otoole]

Abandonment is the only way to get rid of some mainland. Including mainland next to a welcome center. So this is a real odd ball of a deal. For the most part mainland no longer has any value at all since you can't even give it away.

Lucky guy selling a chunk for so high. Proves the Barnum theory still works.

[Desmond Shang]

Quite the end of an era. Sounds like a great enhancement of the Fairchang estate too, something worth having a look at.

Khamon, if you can, mention when it's all set up to visit.

$L 1.5 million. That's a new definition of green, for you! Congrats to Jopsy for getting such historic land; it may seem curious to outsiders, but I can see it as a fair dinkum deal.

Not sure what the rates are at Fairchang, but we are talking four or five years of openspace tier fom that deal, easy.

Going to be interesting to see what Jopsy does too.

[John Crane]

Ann-

What can I say? I gave this decision careful consideration.

I was willing to pay L$30 per square meter for land that allowed me to:

1) keep my land contiguous
2) keep my monthly costs reasonable
4) avoid relocating
4) .. and of course ... expand

Sure, most of the mainland has no value to me, it's too far away, not terraform-able enough, too many eye-sores & neighbor issues... but in my little corner of the old mainland continent, I'm quite content.

The the final decision came down to this: Pay more up front for Slate? Or pay more every month for a similar set of private isles?

As it turns out by staying on the mainland... I'll save enough in land use fees that it will cover the cost of this purchase within a very reasonable period of time.

I'll miss having Khamon as a neighbor though, but that was unavoidable. =)

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Erm... pretend that I actually used this name on that previous post. Thanks. ;)

[Marianne McCann]

Was good to be there for the transaction, an nice to meet everybuggy there. :-)

[Cocoanut Koala]

lol Jopsy!

coco

[Funaria]

I loved Slate and I'm still proud that I have been a member of it's residents. What a loss for Linden Lab!