Witchcraft's blog: "Witchwerks"

There have been several threads started recently about how to stimulate Second Life growth and economy. Many ideas have accurately demonstrated that the overall economy in Second Life has a strong basis in real-estate. True enough, real estate IS what most of those servers are about. 

Premium account holders are able to use up to 512sqm of mainland, with no tier charge. Understandably, in the early days of Second Life, this could represent quite a bit of space. Second Life has grown exponentially since those early days, but look at how much empty space there is in so many of the Mainland regions today. Vast open spaces of barren land, abandoned land and sliced-and-diced parcels for sale all across the grid.

It's only wishful thinking that something could be done to clean it all up, so my questions today aren't about logistics or arguing about how to re-assemble all the broken pieces. It's not about pointing fingers at who or what the real problem is or even how to solve it.

But here's what I want to talk about:

Private estates are mostly "themed" regions. There's an overall landscape, a climate and a theme, to prevent the cluttered and random look that plagues much of mainland. Since there's room enough for absolutely every theme imaginable on the mainland, and without getting into a raging debate about how people's artistic expression is subjective, should more (not all.. just more) mainland regions adopt "general" themes, similar to private estates, which residents should generally abide by to live there? Should these themed mainland regions have a loose covenant to preserve an overall look-and-feel to the place and prevent what's happened to other loosely-themed mainland regions?

And with that in mind, I would like to hear from other premium-account members. Since virtually nothing can be accomplished on the speck of land 512sqm is, imagine for a minute if your land bonus were increased to 4096sqm, again with no tier? What would you create? Would you do something just for yourself? Would you create an area to improve the landscape of mainland? More parks and forest while keeping your personal stuff in the sky? Something futuristic? Historical? Fantasy? Re-create a real-world location? Would you make a space for fun - or profit? What would you do with a large blank canvas like that?

Is 4096sqm a realistic land size based on the number of premium members and the amount of unused space on the mainland grid? Do you think such an increase in the size of land available would draw new people to become premium account holders? Could there be unintentional consequences, like hurting private estate owners who generally cater to the "Free" account holders? Do you think adopting the "themed" regions and implementing a loose-fitting covenant in those areas would encourage more people to locate land they liked and create more and better content in the spaces available?

Lots of questions.. Lots of ideas. Pick what you like most and run with it.