Coldwell Banker To Sell Second Life Properties

Dekortage sends news of what may be a new development in the attempted mainstreaming of Second Life. We've seen plenty of examples of real-world news media, politicos, and PR campaigns setting up in SL. But so far most of this action has been about first-life organizations trying to gain real-world publicity by their forays into SL. CNN is reporting that the real estate firm Coldwell Banker is moving into SL for the purpose of selling and renting in-world properties. From the article: "Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central 'mainland' of Second Life. (Most companies own 'islands' scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent... 'A small number of land barons mostly control real estate in Second Life, and we thought we could bring real estate to the masses,' [a VP explained]."

Supply and demand

Has Linden guaranteed in writing that they will never expand the world? If not, then Coldwell Banker buyers are idiots.

What is to keep Linden from increasing the amount of land? ( They did it back in 2003, IIRC ) Not only would this give them more space for more players, but it decreases the power of land barons. And having a 'new world' to explore would add more interest to the game. Anyone want to be Magellan? Or Columbus? There seems to be no downside for Linden to increase the ammount of land.
There definitely is a downside to NOT increasing the ammount of land: competition. If SL gets too crowded, that just helps up-and-coming competitors.

As supply increases, price decreases. There is not even the real-world parallel of "location, location, and location" to uphold property value in Second Life because of teleportation.

I predict that Coldwell Banker will lose their shirts on this one.

Re:Supply and demand

I think CW's buying the initial land in order to get the ball rolling on getting themselves involved in the transactional business of real estate on SL. Long after the current stuff is sold off, they want to be the agents you buy virtual real estate from later.

Re:Supply and demand

I don't know much about SL, it strikes me as a world where most people have more money than sense.

Re:Supply and demand

Hey that reminds me of another world I know.

Re:WTF is the point of this game?

I'm convinced that the only people "playing" second life are the people writing these articles. I think that technology columnists are fascinated with the idea of second life, and love to write about it. I can't fault them for that, because the idea does have interesting implications, but I think they do us all a disservice by continually giving attention to a "phenomenon" that no one actually cares about.

After reading countless articles about this wonderful new world of second life, I decided to check it out. What a piece of bloated crap-ware. I don't think the idea behind second life is worthless, but it's current incarnation is a joke.

I don't have a PS3, and have no plans currently to purchase one, but I think their new "Home" has a better chance of becoming popular than second life ever will.

Re:Supply and demand

As supply increases, price decreases. There is not even the real-world parallel of "location, location, and location" to uphold property value in Second Life because of teleportation.

Well, not quite true: it helps to have e.g. a lot of merchants together in one place, as it's a pain to teleport 30 times to look at everyone's goods. So new merchants are going to want to be where the merchants already are. Although I agree you can't use the whole "They ain't makin' any more land" line here, as LL certainly can do that.

Still, I have to ask, WTF? Don't people play SL to get away from assholes who add no value but take your money ... such as real estate agents?

Re:Supply and demand

In 2003? They increase the amount of land all the time. Every time someone buys a new island the amount of real estate in-world is increased, and the Linden-owned mainland continent grows all the time as well. Around a month ago over 100 new sims were added, and these sims the Coldwell Bankers bought were auctioned off meaning it was fresh mainland additions.

It's like when a company sells more shares, and all those idiot investors lose their shirts. You should probably get on the phone and tell Coldwell why they are idiots, and how if you were in charge you could save the company. They'll probably hire you on the spot.

Re:Supply and demand

Has Linden guaranteed in writing that they will never expand the world? If not, then Coldwell Banker buyers are idiots.

Indeed. This is what happened with domain names. They went sky high, then lots of businesses crashed and they increased the number of TLDs, so people who had invested in the land grab didn't always win.

The other thing is that any theory of scarcity presupposes that Linden will be the only, or at least the winning, item in this area. If someone came along and offered an alternate space, it wouldn't even matter if Linden had put a guarantee in writing... the value could still drop due to ordinary competition. No one has guaranteed Linden a monopoly.

Cyberspace is big... There's really no reason for there to be a scarcity of real estate. It isn't, after all, real estate. It's contrived. And if the prices go too high, that simple fact should invite competition. A key defining characteristic of real estate is supposed to be that they're not making more of it.

I wonder...

If I can get one of those 30 year, first 5 years interest-only subprime mortgages here? Maybe this is the way to "save" the sub-primes - virtual property! After all, it seems that "virtual" clients didn't work to well...

ouch........

Somehow this news made my brain urinate a little. No, I don't understand how that's physically possible, but nevertheless.

Anshe chung

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedLyae4b2s? [youtube.com]

Bringing real estate to the masses, in SL...

and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and other important issues...

More or less likely to use CB for a real house?

Does this make people more or less likely to use Coldwell Banker for real (ie., meatspace) houses? Or does it matter?

hmmmm

I wonder how much they would sell me Badlands for...actually all I would rather have is just Uldaman, I could easily turn all of them dark iron guys into my minions and just like invade the rest of badlands, maybe setup a post in Loch Modan. I hear its nice there in spring.

Blurring the line between real and virtual

When people are too addictive to games such that the line between reality and virtuality is blurred, it starts to get into a dangerous point. Life suddenly becomes all about speculation, nothing is real and no productivity is gained for human societies as a whole.

It's the worst kind of speculation we can have, worse than speculating on the stock or commodity market. If you buy a bunch of stocks on a company, and if the market crashes, you still own bits of that company, and the company may be just doing well, making a profit every year. If you buy the so-called lands in SL, and if SL were to die, what are you left up with?

I think this is where gamings are dangerous. And this is an area where I support legislative control. We already have regulations on stock markets, on currency trading, on casino, on auction, on the general trading, etc, we might as well have regulations on the worst kind of speculation: speculation on nothing.

Re:Blurring the line between real and virtual

I think trying to create an economy that allows for proper speculation while at the same time being completely under another company's control, it like asking water not to be wet. While there's clearly a monetary value to virtual items (like selling MMORPG-equipment on ebay), it's temporary. They could change the rules at any time, but that'd destory gameplay so you can be fairly sure the powerful sword you bought today is a powerful sword tomorrow. That predictability is the only thing that gives it value. It's not just a matter of regulating the content itself, SL could do all sorts of tricks like making TARDIS-like housing, choking the amount of new users which would force a price drop, rearrange the map/view/default starting locations to make the "center" be somewhere else, anything and everything. By the time you have it regulated in well enough, it'll be about as fun as investing in the stock market. Take it for what it is, it's basicly an e-penis. As long as you pay more than Joe Average (both for starters and in upkeep), you'll have this fancy thing to show off to your friends. This speculation is in that SL will be the next big e-penis thing and that it'll somehow be a status symbol to show how much money you've wasted on this. How can you possibly regulate the value of a SL property when the only value it has is perception? Might as well try to regulate the market for pet rocks.

The real question is . . .

Who the hell actually plays Second Life? I seed tons of stories on /. and digg about it, but out of all the incredibly geeky people I know, none of them plays Second Life (or at least they wont admit to it).

wow...

i actually don't even understand this... like, i've never played second life and i simply don't even understand how one could sell land in it... i dunno, it just doesn't make sense, from an outsider's prospective. obviously, i'm not the target market, and i give props to companies for understanding this "new frontier", but still, yeah, i just don't understand...I'm gonna go back to drinking in my first life, since there are some cute girls here, but uh, enjoy second live for those people that, um, don't have a worthwhile first life...
-Taylor

This made me check my calendar.

The first thing I did after reading the summary was check my calendar. April 1 is still a week away though. Maybe they're just trying to get ahead in the April fools market.

Personally...

I don't really care about any Second Life news that don't feature flying penises.

Do any of you actually use Second Life?

Do any of you actually spend time in Second Life? I'm not talking just popping in and poking around once in a while (I've done that), I mean you spend significant amounts of time in the world, you've actually invested some time and energy into making your character your own, and maybe you even develop content for it. I'm more interested in people who are more into the actual enjoyment of the world rather than speculators or people strictly trying to sell their wares.

The reason I ask is because so many companies seem to be on the bandwagon of this thing, but my friends are almost uniformly tech savvy early adopters and I don't know anybody who's ever logged into it other than to check it out and laugh at it. I've got nothing against it, and if anybody uses it I'm not going to laugh at you or anything. I may not see the appeal, but I don't see the appeal of a lot of things the average person likes. I just haven't seen anybody else who really likes it either, and that's made me question its popularity other than as a kind of inside joke.

I do think it's a great concept, and I'm sure true virtual worlds will be all the rage someday. I'm just suspicious that anybody actually sees this as a good enough implementation to really start spending time there. I've heard the furry community has taken up residence there to some extent, but honestly when I log in I hardly see any concentration of people anywhere, furry or not.

Re:Do any of you actually use Second Life?

I've seen the press for this roll by for the last couple of years. Finally after seeing this post I said well I better see what all the hype is really about. I, like your friends, installed it and laughed. Anyone remember MTV's Tikki VRML world from about 10 years ago? Well I was instantly reminded of it. Someone at Coldwell must be delusional, or Linden Labs paid them a heafty sum and gave them free land. It's the lamest thing I've ever seen as far as modern content goes. Is this what they mean by Web 2.0? I think I'll be sticking to my first life with the occational raid in World of Warcraft. Who has time for a second life anyway? I just can't believe businesses are pumping money into this, or is it just media fluff? There is just no way this is going to be very profitable for anyone but Linden Labs. Any company looking to diversify into a market like this really ought to consider sticking to the real world.

Re:Do any of you actually use Second Life?

It's easy to miss the point of Second Life, because the eyecandy is nowhere near the same level as WoW or similar. Graphically it's certainly around desktop game circa 2000 and the Lindons certainly do have a bit of a blind spot about upgrading it - largely because they seem predominantly focused on server-side issues at the moment.

However SL isn't really a WoW competitor. It's more like IRC in 3D - think of it as a chatroom where you can actually do things with the other people there. And of course virtually *everything* in SL has been constructed by the people in it. True the building tools have limitations and there's vast amounts of crap. but equally there's some very imagenative stuff too. The scripting language is by no means a toy too, even though that has some major flaws.

It's also an interesting question who does play it. I see several groups :-

1. Newbies. Vast numbers of people sign on, hang around the public welcome areas briefly, do a little touring then never play it again. It's quite common to see later reactions from them on /. and the like saying 'I looked and the graphics were crap' - which misses the point about SL being a social thing as above.

2. Wankers. Literally. A friend of mine who owns a SL club believes 50% of signups do nothing else but cybersex fot the first month. I think she's proberbly right.

3. Designers, Builders, Coders. Although the tools are limited with imagination there's a lot that can be done. SL seems quite a common outlet for amateur designers, coders and 3D artists. It may not be cutting edge, but you tend to get a lot of attention and feedback. If you're a professional coder then SL is well worth a look as it does have potential and some of the Lindons actually hold open office hours so you can talk to the game designers directly if you wish.

4. Roleplayers. There's large communities of roleplayers - most of whom spend 90% of their time in roleplay sims so will never be encountered by newbies. A quite common scenario is for a group to jointly buy a server, construct an enviroment, then play in that. Sort of like design your own game and play it using SL simply as an environment to do that. Roleplay covers a wide range from extreme characterization to mild 'wouldn't it be nice to live in environment X' types. Tends to be very hardcore players who spend a lot of time in SL.

5. Social players. Similar to roleplayers in that they have a community of friends but without the roleplay angle. Again these people hardly ever go near the common meeting places so a newbie will never pick up on them. A large part of the 'core' SL players are in this group.

6. Others - musicians, speculators, educators etc etc

People can belong to more than one group of course. Myself I am uncertain about the future of SL. Against it it has

a. Relatively poor graphics
b. Architecture limitations - the *bloody* asset server is a major pain point. It's not clear how far it can scale. The 50 avs in a sim limit is laughable for example.
c. It has a certain reputation in some influential quarters
d. The Lindons appear to be a bunch of bloody hippies :-). Certainly their business methods need to take a step up.

But for

a. Because the world is user constructed and designed to be at a fundemental level - and not given, as in WoW or other games, then in theory it can evolve. Games with Everquest, WoW, Eve etc cannot move forward in the same way.
b. It is one world and not sharded
c. It does provide enough tools that there is room for professional level interest in it.
d. It's totally generic
e. It has an established user base of people with graphic, building and coding skills who can jointly take it forward as the tools and capabilities improve. Real first mover advantage that.

On balance I think it likely to be here to stay and evolve as the prime metaverse. However I expect it to be the first among many (possi

Second Life?

Really, I think some people need to get a First Life [tm].

Coldwell Banker cares about you

From the summary:
But so far most of this action has been about first-life organizations trying to gain real-world publicity by their forays into SL

That sums up Coldwell Banker's move into SL as well.

. . . . 'A small number of land barons mostly control real estate in Second Life, and we thought we could bring real estate to the masses,' [a VP explained]."

Mainland real estate is the worst in the game and is already for the masses. It is hosted on the lowest class of servers (known as Class 3 compared to the latest Class 5) with more sims per server than "privately owned" Islands. Coldwell Banker is another stodgy corporation with no motive for being involved in virtual worlds other than trying to gain mindshare with the 18-35 demographic.

The whole financial concept of treating virtual space like real life land is flawed anyway. As metaverse-style systems evolve to become more distributed like the internet (an eventuality to which even Linden Labs concedes) these real-life style spatial limitations will seem silly. This market exists in this form only so long as Second Life is run exclusively on hardware controlled by Linden Lab. Linden Lab has already stated that at some point it intends on getting out of the hosting business and instead intends to license the SL server software. So as if a thinking person needed anyone to point this out, this land has no long term value (say 5 years). Coldwell Banker acting like they are taking SL land as a serious investment is all hyperbole. To them it is more like buying up Beanie Babies in the 90s and saying that " a small number of Beanie Baby barons control the Beanie Baby market and we thought we could bring Beanie Babies to the masses."

Gee thanks Coldwell Banker! My heroes!

Is SL wants it real, then.. lets give them real..

Virtual World War? Virtual riots? Virtual pillaging? Virtual squatting? Virtual Crime? Lets let the value of land plumet as it would in those real life situation.

RTFA

This is 100% about publicity and not money. They state that any and all profit will simply be reinvested into SL...

OTOH they do want to make the process of buying a house or land or whatever inside SL easier and more trust-worthy... maybe they will become trusted brokers for transactions and help people avoid being swindled due to ignorance of how SL works?

I look forward to more companies establishing helpful services within virtual worlds. Would be even more amusing to find companies like Toyota putting characters into middle ages style MMORGs to sell you vehicles "You really want to get the full warranty on that chariot, if it blows an axle you'll want to be covered"

Who plays this?

According to mmogchart.com SecondLife has around 65'000 subscribers. So if you look at all the articles about SecondLife, it looks like only journalists are actually playing the game.

This is depressing

I have a balloon payment coming up on my castle and it's value has dropped in half since the trolls burned all the surrounding forest. You know things are bad when gaming and internet based entertainment is as stressful as the real world.

A Brilllllllliant Game!

Like well I've just got back from the Cafe, where I was discussing stockmarket spirituality with my friends. You know I'm really a very imporant person...Priceless

Second Life is a brilliant conceptual masterwork...Priceless

Its like a second me in there- not as special as the real me though...Priceless

I tried it out after getting pwned in this horrible working class game called World of Warcraft but OMG I did see Ponies in there...Priceless

Accounting issues?

When you buy a tract of land in Second Life, can you capitalize it and stick it on the balance sheet under GAAP, since it will generate revenue in future periods (in fact, much of the publicity benefit would likely come after your venture were established for a while)? If so, is it depreciable or treated like real estate? Or do you have to expense the whole amount to begin with anyhow?

/IANACPA

Virtual Goods and Virtual Property

Something always strikes me very odd about conversations about Second Life and their ilk here on Slashdot. Invariably someone decries the concept of buying "virtual goods" and renting "virtual property".

Let's step back a bit here... What is the difference between "software" and "a virtual shirt", or "digital music"? Are they not both just some pattern of ones and zeros? Sure, a virtual shirt only makes sense in terms of Second Life... But for me this is the same as buying digital music that can be played on some hardware device. Or buying software that can be run on some subset of computers.

Virtual land... Who would rent "virtual property"? What sense does that make? Perhaps we should ask all those that rent space for web pages?

That being said, I think Second Life is kinda daft in its implementation, but the concept is very very cool.

The artificial worlds damage character...

Back in the 1980s, I was very enthusiastic about these 2 and 3D worlds. Older slashdotters may recall terms such as 'Virtual Reality' and such. Fast forward to today and it is not hard to notice a consistent flaw in people who rely upon electronics communications and escapist realities such as WOW, Second Life, MSN etc. The problem is these provide a barrier to genuine human interaction where our 5 senses come into play. So, such people become socially inept and in the eyes of those of us who have some values, incredibly rude and cold. I believe that the best use of these artificial worlds is not social interaction but simulating real world scenarios - from a business model to an aircraft design - before taking them to market or production. Those I interact with on MSN are the worst at real life social interaction - and I find this consistent, no matter the age group and am doing my best to ban iM from my company. (Yes, I use it as my team insist!) The most polite, 'together' and successful people I know do not use instant messaging or any artificial community. They use voice telephone calls and face to face meetings. I imagine this post is going to get flamed, but that is not the intent. I aim to trigger debate! Bring it on!

Publicity Stunt

Move along, nothing to see here.

Do you realize the importantce of this?

This is big big news. It means that if you own any shares or interest in Caldwell Banker, then it's time to sell before this news gets out.

Ok I dont get it

Last weekend I finally decided to see for myself what 2nd Life is all about. So after downloading the 2nd Life client, ran through the vast tutorials before finally getting to the public area.
I spent about 10 minutes flying around before I realised there's nothing going on. Many people seem to have wasted large amounts of time creating some complex 3D models of houses and miscellaneous other junk, but for what? Maybe its just me but I don't get it. There doesn't seem to be any point, objective or benefit of err.. playing?.. 2nd life.
I mean really can anyone who regularly uses 2nd life tell me what keeps bringing you back, what you spend most of your time doing, and why?

Invest Invest Invest

Is the ownership of any of those properties tax deductible?

There is no more brilliant money-laundering scheme than investing in property which doesn't even exist. How large is this industry?

Step 1: Qualify for low-interest loans for in game property.
Step 2: ???
Step 4: Profit!

It's tailor made to hide large investments or pass large amounts of money outside the line of plain sight. What's the most expensive domain name registrar?

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

You don't understand...

When you die in New Jersey, you die in real life !

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

No, but you could have your account warned/suspended for abuse(shooting someone can send them flying quite far, depending on how the weapon is made). You can't kill someone, by the way - even if you trapped them in a box or whatever, they can teleport out.

(PS. If you ever go into the sandboxes in Second Life, you'll see all sorts of other types of abuse too - floating batman cubes/bananaphones which follow you around playing an annoying/catchy* loop, hundreds of stupidly high-detail models just left lying around by their long-gone creators, bendy penises which follow people around annoying them, thousands of physics objects which attempt to waste the simulator's resources, etc.)
*delete where appropriate

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

Huh? Your comment doesn't even make sense. Oh, an why are you posting as an AC? Seriously.

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

Can anyone say...... loser?

The five million people who spend varying amounts of time in Second Life have probably heard the word before. Has it never been applied to you for playing D&D? Well, OK then...

So what happens if I create a person in SL, have this make pretend person go and get/buy a gun. Next I have this make pretend person go and shoot someone. Does that mean that in _real_life_ I get arrested for murder?

If you're in areas of Second Life that allow people to be killed (most of the areas don't). So, no, there's no ramifications for killing someone in SL. That doesn't mean there won't be someday. I could see a time where SL avatars' real life owners are sued for the equivalent of Denial of Service attacks.

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

I take it that SL is just some VR game?

Some VR game with, apparently, the BEST PRESS AGENT EVAR!

Seriously, they're in the news every damned day with stories like this. And yet the only people who actually play Second Life are furry pedophile rapists. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but that's the reputation the game has. How the hell do they get all this press? Sexual favors?

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

So, people actually pay real money so the can get a better "life" in SL? Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Can anyone say...... loser?

Well quite a lot of people also subscribe to slashdot. Why? Ask them.

Re:Whoa Cowboy!

It is better to think of it like a 3D medium. I wouldn't call it a game. More of a browser in a 3D world.

For example if I'm interested in star trek I can find places in the grid that cater for me. If I have an interest in RPG/D&D there are places for that too. Likewise with Coding, design, general chatting, etc.

Shooting someone in an area that allows it but not allowed by rules can get you warned/banned/suspended.

The money aspect is give or take. You can get free cash in the game if you take time to look, certainly loads of free skins/clothes/etc to look more personalised.

But if you go in thinking its a game you will probably be disappointed.

Re:Open M-F 7AM-5PM ???

PST/PDT is that standard time of SL, events are listed in that timezone, the client constantly shows the time in that timezone.