Written 18 April, 2009
What Does it Mean When the Grid's Favorite Sim Sports the Red Fence of Friendship
James Au's most awesome blog New World Notes had a post about Second Life's most favorite sim for the first quarter of 2009, as determined by Koinup users. Koinup is a social networking website for Second Life.
And Koinup users selected a sim called MaxMoney as top banana.
So of course I had to go there.
And of course, MaxMoney being as absolutely fabulous and popular as it is, I was absolutely the only avatar on the island during the 45 or so minutes of my stay. It was only as I was about to leave that one person finally came by.
I have to admit the entry area is impressive. A glass floor covers roiling waves that break over banana plant-covered hills (at least in the vicinity of the entry, the land is bare almost everywhere else). Glass stairs lead downward over a stream, ending at an observation platform at sea's edge. Other stairs arch upwards to a series of meeting rooms.
The landscaping on the sim is first-rate, and the waves are well done, but except for what I just described, there is absolutely nothing on the sim.
Well, of course, except for the money exchange machines. It seems MaxMoney has been licensed by Linden Lab to trade in Lindens.
The March 2009 issue of The Best of SL was displayed at the entry, with MaxMoney CEO Maxmilian March on its cover. Okay. Good for you. The mag was there purely for hype, since touching it didn't even get me a copy.
Build and scripts were turned off, which always pisses me off slightly-- but I was still giving the sim the benefit of the doubt.
That is, until I hit the goddamned red fence of friendship, of course. I was pretty much over both MaxMoney and Mr. March after that.
So now I'm wondering-- in a world with thousands of enchanting sims with no red fences and lots of things to do, how the hell could a region with nothing in particular to do or see, a sim that was vacant during the lengthy visit in which I composed this post, a sim with that frigging red fence, be voted number one sim of the quarter? WTF is up with Koinup?
I rather suspect Mr. March advertised heavily to get his photo on the cover of The Best of SL. And may have had the fix in at Koinup as well.
I checked MaxMoney's website and compared their exchange rate with Linden Lab's. I can buy $5000 from LL for $19.61 USD. 5K Lindens from Mr. March costs $22. That's a markup, according to my calculator, of 11.21 percent.
I like to see business people get ahead in Second Life, but I have an instinctual lifelong distrust of slick operations like this, paving the road to picking our pockets with glossy magazines and fixed popularity ratings.
I mean here's someone offering the same service as Linden Lab for 11.21 percent more money. Where's the attraction in that?
And where's the attraction in any sim with a red fence?
4 comments:
I have to say I paid very little attention to this popularity contest. The owner of the sim where I live and "work" encouraged us all to nominate and vote for the sim in one or another category but I wasn't convinced -- as much as I like my sim -- that it was worthy of such a nomination. Hell, I helped build parts of it and, despite my impressive ego, I just don't think it's the "best" I've ever seen at anything.
I'm going to treat this whole thing like many people treat Highlander 2. It didn't happen.
It's everyone's favoritest sim because it was built by all the cool kids.
The ban line parcel is named 'secure area,' but there's nothing in it at banline altitude except some phantomed sculpty rocks.
It mostly reminds me of the absurd architecture of Dubai, and really it comes from the same motivation.
I realize this is literally years after the fact but just so you know... the red fence was there to protect a tiny skybox many meters up that ran the inworld scripts that delivered Linden Dollars to Residents. We tried operating the scripts without a red fence but griefers would find the scripts and mess with the objects. The main purpose of the sim was to operate those scripts or there would be no service to speak of. So yes, we picked a bunch of people, some very talented and yes cool folks who were rocking the grid at the time to help us make the sim more than just a script repository and something meaningful that contributed to SL. We were very passionate about SL in those days and genuinely saw it as the flagship to the Metaverse. I wish I would have seen your post years ago because I would have given you access to that fence to show you the script objects. Putting them in another sim would've defeated why we bought the sim in the first place. Peace. -Max March
Thanks for explaining the red fence, Max, and thanks for taking the time to explain. I absolutely understand the important of protecting your servers. I wonder, though, if a security orb in the sky would have served the same purpose.
I should visit your sim again to see how things have progressed. There were many professional elements that made it attractive. I hope it's more interactive these days.
I'll admit to being irritated when projects that obviously cost a lot of money and took a lot of talent are, although beautiful, sterile, with no sounds, no wildlife, no interactivity. I was probably in a grouchy mood when I visited.
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