Prok's Rentals in Island Life!

Eat your heart out, Desmond. I'm on to such a sweet deal -- it's going to make your Blue Mars caper look like an Etch-a-Sketch. Anshe? Yes, I've beaten you for once after all these years, because, well, I showed up, and put my hoe to the ground, and while you were busy flattening Adam's cliffs into pancakes, I was parlaying my modest cabbage and palm trees stake into a multi-extension island empire with a flourishing raspberry-tomato-melon-asparagus farm, and yards full of sheep, chickens, turtles and more, powering me to level 15 -- and more adventures ahead.

Yes, I've already gotten the 20,000 metabux lighthouse. Nyah.

Really! I'm part of an exciting new invitation-only beta program for renting land in Island Life, an existing new Facebook game invented by Raph Koster and the other fabulous devs at Metaplace, the Place That Became Meta, and exists forever more in our hearts, where the best virtual things go.

Instead of scratching on Governor Linden land chasing prim hogs and security-orbing cybersexers like my fellow SL landlords, watching my chickens grind to a halt and not lay for days due to the new sim-laggy 8-to-a-server "neighbors" policy, I'm basking in the sun, sipping my raspberry-tomato-melon-asparagus smoothie, lying on a towel under a yellow umbrella, watching my never-die, never-feed Island Life chickens bob their heads up and down approximately 6,000 times a minute and listening to the waves crash on my rocky shores that never balloon up on me like sculpties, but always, every day, any hour, reliably look like what they are: virtual rocks. 

But I need company. This is where you come in.Did you know you can *chat* in IL and come over to other people's islands, just like the Sims or Second Life?

And where there's land, there's rentals and land barons not far behind!

That's right, you can now *rent my land* in Island Life, just like you do on the sunny green sim of Juanita in Second Life, whose name is like a prayer. But unlike Second Life, where you can't grow plants like sioncorn without using up every prim on the server just to feed your chicken for a day, in Island Life, you can enjoy a rich, lush, prosperous faux-farming and object-placement experience for ever more, with my great new rentals plan.

As you can see, I have plenty of fertile, lush squares that I've carefully tended with a series of environmentally-sound companion planting of cabbages, then pineapples, then melons, then onions, then strawberries -- things that go together like a fish goes with a bicycle and help make that marvelous humus that we love to dig in here at Island Life just because it manages to smell like that time the freezers went dead at Gristedes during the New York blackout, even in a game where there isn't any smell! Perfection!

When you get a square -- or 10 or 20 -- come on in, we have plenty -- you know you are going to be doing business with somebody who has stayed on the servers of Second Life for more than 2,000 days and nights, and who has been in IL since beta. We don't do angry inches here like Jerry in Detroit, making you buy tiny parcels where you can't possibly grow anything and have to step over all kinds of other weird people just to see your property.

No, at Island Life Rentals, we offer happy squares -- only Raph-Protected Land, which like Linden protection, means that you have an open view not on to something ugly your neighbour is doing, but clear blue sky and waving palm trees. Perfection!

Now, you may be looking around right now at these lush graphics and asking yourself, "But hey, Prok, I can't seem to dig my spade down into this here land here at your rentals. Can you send me an invite to the group? Or do you need to turn on terraform for me? I'm new here."

Well, I'm glad you asked. First of all, there's no group to join because there's *no autoreturn in Island Life*. Joy! Never worry about your belongings flying off the server into some data dump in Texas where some Linden on a smoke break never bothers to send it back to your Lost & Found folder. *There are no lost and found folders at Island Life* Never lost inventory! Like, I said, the Joy of Island Living!

OK, but I see what you mean there. You can't *actually* dig into Prok's Island Life Rentals. But what you get when you rent my land is what we like to call out here in the Metaverse *a limited license to access content*. If you can't figure out what *that* means, let me explain -- and I'm always here to help.

No, you can't dig in your earth that you'll be renting -- yet. But no worries. Raph and I are in talks about my proposal for an exciting new API called CropShare (TM) that would enable visitors not only to dig on your neighbour's land to help till the fields, but share in the proceeds from your planted crops if they pick them for you -- while you are doing boring things like going to work or feeding your children instead of doing the important stuff in life like picking your acres of IL mushrooms that spring up like, well, mushrooms after you plant them.

And very soon, I expect Raph will be rolling out CropShare (TM) with other social media hooks that will enable you to tweet and twitter and yammer and yimmer about how you picked my crops, got a pittance for doing so, but enabled me to avoid a rotting mess when I finally got to log on because the M16 was stuck in a flood and took an hour to get across town. We have our priorities straight here!

But for now, let me share with you this FANTASTIC plan I have that will save you money, save you time, but preposition you to be "in the know" and "with the groove" with all the "cool kids" just like Desmond, who gets invited to the Lindens parties.

See, when you *pay me to rent land* what I will do is *grow your crops for you*. After taking out a modest commission, I will keep your money and buy new crops. Sound fair? Of course it is! Why chip ya nails? Then, together we can browse the shopping catalogue and YOU decide what object should go on your square! We want you to have *full control* of your land here at Prok's rentals so that you can have the simulated farming and object-placement immersion that you want and need.

Do you find that farm games are just a fucking *chore*? Well, rent with me, and all that fuss and aggravation is lifted from your shoulders. I will grow the crops you request or those I select on my Prokombo (R) plan, place the animals around strategically, and then send you crop yield reports and progress reports on your animal husbandry in an email once a week or straight to your mobile phone.

Can you imagine the fun when you're staring at dull spreadsheets at your cubicle at work and then all of a sudden PING! -- without having to click a mouse! -- you get a report that eggplants are ripe -- and they've already been picked, and even sweated and salted and parboiled and already sold at the deli and the cash is now waiting for you when you get home, to browse for broken branches, rocks, pieces of fencing and a desert plant? Perfection!

Imagine how you can be the envy of all the people at your work lunch table and after-work bar hops, telling people how you "yielded 275 from the eggplant today" or "was the first to get the rubber plant" or even "put out the yellow marshmallow bunnies" before anybody else in your neighbourhood.

Imagine if you could tell your friends that you *saved a lost baby goat* today on your island, but didn't have to go trawling through your friends, suffering deep humiliation, to find someone who would take it from you. I'll take care of all that for you!

See, I can watch the trends for you, and I can tell you when the toucans have peaked, when the turtles are hot, what Raph is putting out on *his* parcel and setting the trends, the hordes of stuff that Uri's students shower with him in a desperate attempt to get good grades -- and who has the treasures.

You won't have to embarass yourself with your friends that *don't* get it about farm games by desperately sending them requests for windmills and leprechauns -- I'll take care of all that for you with *my friends*, who consist of hundreds who don't speak English and don't understand what I'm doing but just click because it seems sociable. Imagine the thrill of having someone from Georgia -- the country! -- send you a rabbit -- and with no customs charges!

Say, hate that tinkly bongo music? Well, I understand. I liked it the first 88,409 times I heard it too, but then I noticed it never changed and I couldn't change the channel, so I muted it. So I'll get rid of it for you.

Oh, you're wondering how I can reach into your computer and turn on your mute button? Well, pay me, and I'll take care of that!

OK, I'll bet you're thinking right about now but wait! How can I pay Prok, and how can he give me the proceeds from my crops, when there's no economy and no payment interface? Well, silly, that's what Paypal was invented for! And there's always Second Life, which, despite the robust challenge it faces from 75 million Facebook farmers, is still churning along, and provides an adequate payment platform for your greater adventures on other games abroad. So just pay me inworld in my Sl office in a special scripted object that I will set up to you and *forget about the chores of farming, and just enjoy the pleasures of island life!*

OK. I hear you're thinking this through and you like what you hear. But...Are you still worried about how your plants are going to get fertilized, since I can't fertilize them on my own island? Put that silly thought RIGHT out of your head. Because I will shamelessly hop around to all my friends' islands, cravenly fertilizer all their crops like a total suck-up, and guilt-trip into coming back here, so that your plants will then be fertilized too! Honestly, I don't mind. One of the highlights of my day is that little raft graphic with the cow and the chicken on it.  And that little tattered flag? I can't tell you how much I *love that cute little Island Life cow and chicken and that little tattered flag*. They're so sweet! I want to be right there on that raft with that *adorable* little cow and chicken and that cute little tattered flag!

And so I am!

Comments

[Fleep Tuque]

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thank you Prok. :)

[MitzyShino]

For the first time in my life I'm laughing with you not at you :P

[cube inada]

Roboprok.
it was inevitable.

[Edward Orendorff]

Could SL use another Tiny Empires?

Maybe on more steroids...not that it needed it at the time.

[Tami Baribeau]

LOL. :)