We should explore a key finding from my recent Patreon report, that nearly half the Second Life merchants surveyed believe the virtual world economy is dominated by oligopolies (see above). A solid plurality of merchants believe some SL brands have oligopolistic power over the virtual economy, while 37% are open to that possibility.
Anonymous comments by the surveyed merchants highlight their specific concerns:
There is a lot of gatekeeping in the SL creator's world, especially when starting from zero. They limit too much the access to certain body devkits like [top brand A] or [top brand B] or to certain events so it is hard to grow as a creator when you are just starting with the brand, even if you have the knowledge or potential, it relies too much on followers rather than quality or original content.
All you have to do is look at the clothes market and how many bodies have come and gone and how much stuff is unusable without the outdated bodies. Folks have to keep up with what the body makers are doing, as well as making things fit multiple bodies, often with intentionally obfuscated devkits, it's a mess.
Devkit gatekeeping is a huge hurdle to the health of the SL third party content creation ecosystem… you know what i'm talking about.
It's so dependent on event companies, other creators, and ultimately… whether the audience has money to spend at all let alone log on, not just our work.
I think some of the negative trends occurring in the SL creator economy fall on the shoulders of choices made by other brands. The body brands really seriously impact how our market works, and the amount of brands and bodies and mods on the market has negatively affected the market in as many ways as it has positively. It's turned customers at odds with creators more than ever.
Faced with growing oligopolies, real world governments tend to impose regulations or taxes on these powerful companies/coalitions, even breaking them up into smaller companies. As Second Life's effective government, Linden Lab can't exactly do anything like that.
I do see some potential in offering "carrots" that lessen the feeling of oligopoly power. Here's three suggestions:
(more…)
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 