Zindra: Did the Lindens Bite Off More Than They Can Chew?

I've just gotten a response to my Zindra move ticket that indicates the Lindens could be overwhelmed:

Hi there,

Due to the overwhelming demand, we are pausing our processing of the Zindra migration tickets so that we can bring more land online.  Please read https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/land/blog/2009/07/03/a-zindra-update-more-land-on-the-way for more information.

Thanks!

Have the Lindens bitten off more than they can chew here? They told us that adult content in their carefully-scripted definition only takes up "five percent" of the grid.

Could they be wrong about that?

I had already gotten a holding message from the DPW telling me that I had to make sure that my parcel had adult content because not everyone would be moved.

That was annoying because I had just finished packing up all the vendors and all the pictures and such and left only a few rooms with tenants still in them intact and a big sign outside that says ADULT MOVIES IN EVERY ROOM.

It occurred to me that even with an X-rated adult hotel in search with x-rated vendors, content, X-movies etc etc. which I've run for 4 years, I might not get moved to Zindra. Because at least one other person wrote me that even their similar operation with even more of those gross search words than mine did not get moved.

I didn't hurry to get my ticket in on Monday at 10 am last week -- I was busy with work and it wasn't until more like 10 pm that I finally filed it, thinking that if I chose non-waterfront back lots away from the city, I wouldn't have a problem. I TP'd to my first choices today -- they've all been handed away. And...I only put down 3 choices, thinking that was plenty, and I should have probably put 10 -- I just couldn't see where there might be parcels and gave up.

Zindra is absolutely bustling, the green dots have all migrated there, just as they always do with brand-clean continents, as they did for Nautilus for a time, until the tide flowed away, as they do for any green growing tip. Perhaps more so. There are loads of ugly sex buildings going up everywhere -- the two tasteful gardens I found for this business were more than offset by the Black Sun School of Snowcrash Architecture that abounds in SL.

The Lindens are hurrying to put up new land -- which they said they'd do -- but I wonder if there's a built-in accident-going-somewhere-to-happen, which is the question I asked all along: competing clubs.

When you have more than one club per sim, they are in a duel for who gets the FPS. If the Lindens are going by which site people requested rather than by FPS consideration for dueling clubs, there will be war. One club will simply TP in all their friends and lock up all the avatar spots available on that sim. The other will be SOL unless they go to war, shooting, griefing, harassing and engaging in an avatar-camp-war over who can get in the most friends to lock the spots. It's an ugly business, one that I had to put up with for years on Refugio, where the sex club there on a tiny portion of the sim by contrast with me and another large owner on that sim dominated the 40 slots nightly, meaning my shoppers and tenants couldn't get home some times. Zindra was supposed to solve this problem for the rest of the mainland, so that we can finally be free of these sex-club-FPS-suckers. But...how can it solve it for Zindra itself?!

Then there's the marketing problem of the glut of content that Gwyn is always fretting about. I never worry about the problem of concentrating all the stores in one theme in one area, or having, say, three rentals businesses competing in one sims area. That's because anyone who actually studies free enterprise knows that if you make a street, say, in Manhattan, devoted entirely to shoes, or entirely to fur coats, or entirely to flowers, and have dozens of shops with repetitive content, that in fact you get more traffic and more sales. People say "I'm going to the garment district or the flower district to shop" and they browse lots of stores, and in the end buy more and feel they have had a huge selection and a variety of styles -- and they come back. So it's not a problem inherently as a marketing issue -- except in SL, where you have petty and amateurish minds that don't understand this, and will convert their jealousy to griefing and FPS-sucking tactics, like stationing "models" that are unnecessary traffic boosters and avatar-slot-lockers.

Somehow -- I could be wrong -- I don't expect that lovely Chamber-of-Commerce merchant cooperation so long sought in SL -- and so elusive due to greed and pettiness and the ignorance of the newbie merchants without RL experience -- to spring up fullblown and robust in Zindra. Perhaps I could be pleasantly surprised, but the sex business draws hate, crime, and griefing much more than any other business in SL, so -- look out!

There's also the sort of pall of depression that falls over you as you wander among look-alike sex bed joints built on the mode of Concrete Malls in Paramus, New Jersey. I even saw some "slave bunkers" in a depressing rentals for those who want their humper bunker to actually look like a bunker! And I realized that it's one thing when one of these concrete sexbed joints was just one on a sim, and sort of unobtrusively part of the neighbourhood and getting its traffic, and another thing when it competes with 10 more bunkers just like it. 6 more bunkers makes a street like West St. Mark's for shoes. 10 makes it a tawdry East St. Mark's lost in a jungle of bong pipes and greasy gyros. There might be a balance point between bringing traffic and losing it -- and SL merchandising scenes are not where you look for balance.

The sex trade in SL is HUGE of course, and drives much of the other trade, but nobody really reviews it or studies it except as an end user, often lost among a lot of offerings, some of very dubious quality.

I wish I could help out my dear readers on this, but it's just not my profile. I did give it a college try to get myself into the mood for a Zindra -- where in fact, I might not be moving, and may be invited to compete on the auction with a lot of other losers.

My first stop was of course to buy some bits, as they are affectionately known. I haven't bought any bits in years, because it's just not my thing -- I find the concept of a talking and scripted cock too laughable to get the use out of it, I suppose. In the old days, there was only one such joint to buy joints, and it was in a kind of secluded booth. It had a name like "Lotus" something, and this expensive item which was like in the $1500-3000 range for all the "features," seemed a huge expense. Once you got this thing, you could get it to do different tricks, but that required constantly puppeteeting during one's intimate moments, which only made for more laughter and/or annoyance.

As every male knows, if you have to go out and buy a cock, and not have one gifted to you by a girl, then you are a loser. So I had several give me these gifts when the Excite products came online -- but that's when the chat-happiness really took off. These things would chant  'PLAY SEXY COCK I GET EXCITED WHEN YOU TOUCH ME' when you landed on sims if you forgot to turn them off and added to a constant climate of ribald embarassment at every event. Their dialogue was probably a step up from leaning on the M key mmmmmmmmmmm  -- but they were so vapid and stupid that they were a turn-off all their own.

Of course many people happily used them. Then, when sculpties came on, naturallly, the very first purpose to which they were put was to create more more realistic scrotums and labia. Oh, maybe Qarl Linden made that fruit plate, but that was just a test.

So now you can get very realistically saggy/contoured bits, but they look sort of...too real, compared to the rest of your avatar that has a prim or chiselled look. In any event, for those new sculpty ones, the best place to go is Midnight Lotus, which is right next to my sim Refugio in Whiskey, and will likely be forced to move (or maybe not?). This store seemed to cater exclusively to the BDSM trade and the sort of middle America mall crowd that thinks having the word BONER tatooted on your thing is a real erotic achievement lol. The tatoos are very elaborate. There's only a few "normal" ones.

I bought one of the "normal" ones that could do all the stuff you'd expect, including turn into 3 sizes bigger than life -- something that I actually think is grotesque, but someone might find fun. However, to operate this thing, you need to keep clicking on a HUD. I wonder if some people in SL who enjoy cybersex in fact don't dispense with all that obstruction, just park their avatar on a sex ball where it does its mechanical motions, and use their hands either for typing more exciting chat than the scripted bits can chat, or for just jerking off, which is, after all, what they are there for. In any event, the problem of the HUD and the selecting of actions all the time introducers that puppeteering challenge to SL that gestures of all kinds and animation overrides introduce -- and I personally solve that de-immersifying experience by simply NOT using animations and AOs ever. Simplies everything : )

I found this exercise less than stimulating, but then, I'm not the demographic upon whom this industry is supposed to act -- which I suppose is 20-something young men with nothing going in RL -- and the stay-at-home or part-time Wal-mart moms in their 30-40s that they wind up hooking up with because their actual cohorts are out in RL with the non-losers. (If I haven't gotten the demographics on this right, shoot me, but that's my take on it after all these years of watching considerable loads of SL demographics).

Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful if SL users can use it for cybersex. I think everyone should. It seems like a great thing. It's a natural human activity, and why not have it online, too? Given that you can't get pregnant or get venereal diseases from it, why not even promote it, especially for people who  for all kinds of reasons can't enjoy a RL sex life? I don't have any scorn, but only support for people who may be losers in RL lotteries but winners in SL lotteries. More power to them!

I personally just find it a little sad. I wish I didn't find it sad, then I'd fit in better. But I find it -- sad.

I haven't visited any of the sex establishments in ages, I find them too gross, but for the purposes of trying to understand how the sex business will change in moving to Zindra, I went to some of the still-botted and traffick-gimmicked joints that have all those words like "bukkake" in their search terms.

The first few I visited with sort of sad and depressing establishments. Industrial mass sex joints just don't have any eroticism or joy in them. They are joyless by nature, I guess. They tend to cause people to be AFK or non-communicative by their very nature -- some people are doing it as a low-paying job, and others are doing it as a high-cost entertainment, given what they get.

So there are a lot of men standing around with their prim dicks out at the ready, and a few bored sex workers sitting AFK or stuck on dance poles. Since people tend to be in IMs at an establishment like that, it has the eerie feeling of a forest in which trees are falling and never making a noise.

The biggest turnoff for my money is that the owners of these clubs always put really tacky RL porn going on large TV sets. That really destroys whatever immersion you *might* muster staring at a prim dick or prim tits and clitoruses with rings pierced through them inevitably (ouch!). But...I guess the customers like it. Perhaps the customers NEED it, given that even the best and most realistically sculpted bits are going to be...still unlike the real thing in a number of ways.

I'm afraid some other investigative reporter will have to pick up this line of inquiry because I just find these places DEPRESSING as all HELL. I wish that even the music would be good -- but it's often terrible. It would be great if some of them even had a little HUMOUR involved -- sex can be improved by humour obviously -- but these places are utterly humourless.

So the thought of transporting these spots all into one sim and concentrating them seems even more humourless and depressing -- but, your mileage may vary.

I'm not sure what the Lindens' goal is here, really. I realize there is a cover story, about helping the adult industry get more sales by having people be able to find it better. It's true, they probably lose a lot of sales from the poor layout of newbie orientation, and the loss of 9 out of 10 newbies could really be due to the fact that they aren't able to click immediately in Ross and go to the Midnight Lotus store in the next sim to buy their prim dick -- even though I thoughtfully provide them this landmark on the first poster they see as it the sim rezzes, since most of them are there for this purpose (there's a limit of what I can do with this in a PG sim, of course).

Still, even with poor orientation and advertising capacity, many newbies find free prim dicks -- and wear them! -- in the welcome areas, so I think the hit-and-miss approach has still generally...worked.

I don't know if the Lindens' REAL purpose is corral the sex industry and reduce its visibility. It may well be. I don't know if other people will react like me, seeing all the boring sex boxes all in one place and being even MORE turned off by them. I'm not the demographic for this, so we'll have to see if works for all the 20- and 30-something males hot to trot. I hope it does for their sake, but the buildings in Zindra themselves, despite their desperate attempt to allude to water sports, seem to have the effect of salt peter on some.

The point is, despite all the forums whining, all the hand-wringing by oldbies, all the nay-sayers, Zindra filled up and is hugely busy with people building and buying stuff already in a storm of activity. It's too early to say whether this will diminish after the shiny new car smell wears off, we'll see.

In the mean time, the Lindens are faced with a real quandary: the emptying out of the mainland and ticking to move to Zindra or private sims way, way beyond their anticipated response. Hundreds filed tickets within the first hour, they say.

That means they are now in a huge, stupid, discretionary slow-down examining each lot to make sure that it has adult content on it, and didn't appear yesterday as many suspect it did for some of the new Zindra pioneers, quite a few who managed to flip their land to next buyers already and turn a nice dime. While the map isn't filled up with yellow, yellow appears often enough to let us know that the usual land flippers succeeded in snookering the Lindens once again.

That means then the rest of us are punished, as Lindens go painfully through parcel by parcel, looking at amateurish and depressing sex content. Just like too many potato chips or Hershey's kisses can actually make you dislike the stuff on the 100th bite, so Lindens having to judge sex lots for Zindra move capacity will likely get jaded. And will want to start cutting it off.

They have to do that not because they don't have enough land -- they can always print one more -- but because then they have the problem of a HUGE BOTTOMING OUT of the already bottomed-out land market to contend with. Three weeks ago, I could get $8 or $10 for a waterside prime landscaped old Linden sim lot; today I can get $4/meter or $3.8 or less. It will be $2 as the summer slump kicks in. The Lindens fix their *own* land market slump with a high-priced Zindra auction. For all the shlubs left in the mainland whose sex lots didn't get accepted as adult enough, or even for those who *did* get accepted, now there is a lot of $1-a-meter or even abandoned land, depressing the market to all-time lows. And that inevitably worsens the summer slump significantly.

And kick in, it has. The Lindens did the SLB6, LandExpo, fire sale of homesteads and Zindra all at once to try to compensate for the summer slump, that comes July 4 with a vengeance.

This year, even before the 4th, traffic at their top, prized new shiny infohubs was a third of what it usually is, i.e. 20,000, not 60,000. That's a good indicator to watch for how many newbies come into SL. All the other infohubs are at a fraction, too. The Linden statistics for the month aren't up yet I don't think but those need to be watched. Summer slump and huge land crashes are an institutional norm. Like other land owners, I buy in the summer for $2/meter and sell in the winter for more, you learn to do this, but it's still unsettling to see each summer.

Comments

[Crap Mariner]

Did someone say HUMOR?

Um... not touching that with a 10 meter pole, eh.

Blech.

-ls/cm

[Darien Caldwell]

"the sex business draws hate, crime, and griefing much more than any other business in SL, so -- look out!"

Prokfy, I know you have a personal problem with sex in SL, but really, that comment couldn't be more wrong, and you know it.

People are people, no matter what they may do, there is no one group which has a monopoly on the 'bad people' in the world. You in fact blog every day about those who put on the mask of education, good will, and helping mankind while furthering their own selfish, and often evil plans.

Businesses in the sex industry are no more, and no less competitive than any other business segment.

In fact I'd like to hear even one example of the sex business being involved in any crime in SL. Has never happened.

[Ciaran Laval]

Personally I'm no fan of the in your face sex imagery in SL. For example searching land sales for plots over 50,000m I see an extreme image that has no place being there. No need for that whatsoever.

Going to Zindra I see a store of some sort with two cocks at the entrance and extreme photos in full view, no need for that either.

If that's what Zindra is going to be then I'm extremely disappointed.

Yes LL have bitten off more than they can chew, but they were told this time and again.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Darien, you're wrong. And I don't "have a personal problem with sex in SL" as I just explained. I'm all for it. I'm for legalizing it and promoting it. I don't think the Zindra move will do that. I think it will cripple some people's businesses and that's wrong.

The reason I know that sex clubs bring more griefing, shooting, drama, and violence than other businesses because I used to have tenants with sex clubs. In the earlier years of my business, I didn't specify what kind of business could rent the commercial land. But after a year of struggling with a number of them, I decided never to rent to clubs of any kind again. Because it's just too much trouble. Someone else can fill that niche.

And I think other landlords share this assessment, which is why you find a lot of clubs by cheap land in the scruggiest areas.

Any place with a lot of males with testerone is going to be a place of violence, and any place where you have a lot of menopausal-aged women emotionally guarding their business from competitors is a place of drama. This isn't something I need to prove.

That you don't find it persuasive isn't proof to me. The sex business is overrepresented among all businesses in SL in part because there isn't anything anyone truly needs out of SL but sex. They don't need food, water, transportation. Housing and clothing are subsets of sex, enhancements of sex, and not needed to shield you from the elements of the real world. So it's very much a big part of the economy, and those in the raunchiest type of sex business get the most griefing and violence.

There were certain divas constantly screeching about this on the forums. They couldn't seem to find enough security orbs, bans, groups, alts, methods to get themselves the lockdown they sought. It was never enough. Their security drew fire instead of repelling it. So I draw my impressions from all those constant rants as well.

It's not like the sex business is "no different" than a furniture store or a TV store or a rentals office. It is different. Because it involves people making all kinds of rules to sell something that they can sell because they have power over people.

Often, a club will have all sorts of signs warning against escorts, because escorting would take away from their own inhouse prostitutes or compel people to leave the premises -- and they want to keep them in the club, AFK dancing and making traffic and buying from vendors, rather than have them go away somewhere else for sex. Or they make a compound with a club and sex bunkers too but they want to make sure they control who goes into the sex bunkers, and are not opened up to all kinds of freelancers.

That sort of dynamic isn't happening in a furniture store.

[Ann Otoole]

There is a problem with the idea sex related establishments in Zindra will have issues with griefing. There just are not that many accounts used for griefing that will be entering Zindra. I went to a party last night and it was refreshing because there was absolutely no concern about the scum LL likes to have infesting their welcome areas at all.

One disturbing aspect of this article is the concept of prok 'packin a package' rofl.

And yea it is real evident there were blatant irregularities with the way the whole adult move thing is going down. If you complain about it you get moved to the back of the bus. Mafia goonism at it's best. FIC, even if not in the adult content business, get the prime spots and the rest get ignored. There is even word of full sim land flipping going on already when the purpose of all this was to move adult content. I know were I running LL I would not want justified consumer complaints building up on a mass scale in a large surge as that would attract government regulator interest.

Hey I hear you can get mainland for L$2 per square meter now!

[melponeme_k]

On Dusan Writer's blog there is a whole essat dedicated to the burgeoning dating sites in SL. Will all those people co-brand in Zindra? XD

It will be interesting to see how much old mainland prices free fall. Many say they won't go back up. And the auctions are sure to be a fascinating spectacle.

Since I've been in-world, everything reminds me of an army of Dung beetles rolling their precious ...cargo around. Or perhaps locusts are a better symbol. We feed then run to the next new patch of greenery.

[Ciaran Laval]

"Then there's the marketing problem of the glut of content that Gwyn is always fretting about. I never worry about the problem of concentrating all the stores in one theme in one area, or having, say, three rentals businesses competing in one sims area. That's because anyone who actually studies free enterprise knows that if you make a street, say, in Manhattan, devoted entirely to shoes, or entirely to fur coats, or entirely to flowers, and have dozens of shops with repetitive content, that in fact you get more traffic and more sales. People say "I'm going to the garment district or the flower district to shop" and they browse lots of stores, and in the end buy more and feel they have had a huge selection and a variety of styles -- and they come back. So it's not a problem inherently as a marketing issue -- except in SL, where you have petty and amateurish minds that don't understand this, and will convert their jealousy to griefing and FPS-sucking tactics, like stationing "models" that are unnecessary traffic boosters and avatar-slot-lockers."

Disagree with this, not because your RL example isn't valid but because of how many clubs sell the same content to subsidise their usage, there are only so many sexgen and dicatatorshop vendors to go around. If they are all in the same vicinity that becomes problematic, not just due to market forces but due to the reseller rules those businesses apply.

[Prokofy Neva]

1. My "packing a package" is no more ridiculous than you, um titillating with tits, Ann. Possibly less ridiculous, but who knows. The main thing is to ridicule though, correct? Then you can have a sense of self-superiority for the day. Glad I provided it for you today, but don't keep looking for it forever, I may run out of stock.

2. It's true I hadn't thought right away that in theory, adult verification might get rid of some of those annoyances at the welcome area that run around in free prim dicks, but I don't think it will get rid of hard-core mafia griefing which is rampant with clubs. It may worsen as competition worsens for scarce resources like avatar slots and markets.

3. Maybe Ciaran is right that having 10 sex vendors in a row means somebody's sales drop. There are always losers with every Linden change. Always. Big time. It's why people hate LL and hate change. Because they always ensure there are big losers.

4. Yes, mafia power and thuggishness very much in evidence. For example, I asked Vryl Valkerie why she, a texture reseller, was in Zindra suddenly with an 'adult business'. She said her "boyfriend" had a sex anims store. This boyfriend, her partner now (or was he always?) is either her alt or an alt of some guy, but he's rather slight on the description department.

Said boyfriend named Script Shark IM'g me thuggishly calling me by my RL name (which people do to say "we'll get you in real life, watch out") to ask why I came on his land, and landmarked his land.
Sigh.

This, from an, er, public establishment made by public figures. Remember, Zindra is a commercial sim, not for private residences.

Then he IM'd and said, oh, I see you blogged about it -- like to say "watch out".

To which I say: uh, sorry, you are public figures surrounded by controversy getting first dibs in a hotly-contested space, that's news.

[Prokofy Neva]

>In fact I'd like to hear even one example of the sex business being involved in any crime in SL. Has never happened.

It starts with the theft of stealing porn content or lifting free porn content from the Internet to recycle for sale within SL, and then goes from there.

[cube republic]

SL is a complete waste of money. Funny how some more sacred zindra land was found on the holiday weekend. How many people do you think purchased and flipped mature mainland to get onto the next new great server farm in silicone valley and sell their binary dildos? I mean give me a break, is this really great entertainment value? They even offered to give back all those sims that were abandoned during the homestead server push.

[Ace Albion]

I think you're right about the mostly depressing and sad state of "adult" stuff in SL. Few people seem to make the effort to create spaces and social scenes full of eroticism and humor. There's a kind of worn down, low rent industrialism to it all. I am curious how the Zindra thing will work out. I have a feeling that the "anything goes" freedom of an adult continent seems to be encouraging even more of that "fuck you" mentality- if it's ok to sell genitals and sex balls, then it's also ok to advertise them with pink megaprim spinning cocks over the prefab store. How is anyone going to create a genuinely *nice* adult area when it'll be surrounded on all sides by giant spinning cocks/rl extreme porn jpegs? Can an adult community grow in such circumstances, or will they retreat to private island builds again, with their more predictable experiences?

[Seraphim Rhode]

As a person currently relocating a small store and romantic "adult" garden to Zindra, I salute your blog. We need companionship among shopkeepers, not griefing and wars. Not only that, but I refuse to believe that their defination of adult content is only 5% of sl. My experiance shows to the contrary. I ahve also transversed Zindra, and have noticed that sex in over-kill is no attractive for the land or visiters. It's like a skeezy sex district, all fumes and girls with bullet-wounds. We can only pray that the more sophisticated side of sex n SL will migrate soon, to help the rest of us out.

[Ann Otoole]

I think that fake official looking linden lab info hub in mosh is quite interesting. I'm amazed LL allows there content to be used like that rofl. whatever. I'm sure it won't be long before tub girl is on 20 meter billboards across zindra soon.