M&M Creations Store Has Moved

 

Longtime Newser readers may remember M&M Creations. The store is still around, though it recently moved to the Eden Phoenix sim. 

 

"I moved my store from Paradise to Eden, all my builds are rezzed at one level now."

M&M Creations sells a number of items. A number of cottages, homes, and castles are up for sale. But there's also landscaping goods, armor, and for content creators textures, builder kits, sculpt maps, and more. Those interested in getting materials to make content to sell, please check to see if it is allowed.

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Eden%20Phoenix/206/71/1698

 

*Correction*  It was originally stated items made from any of M&M Creations goods could not be resold. Since then, the owner has contacted us that some can be, "I do sell FP items to be sold in creations of others."

Star Relay DJ Matt Carlton Sets Up Redbubble Store Page

  

Matt Carlton has raised plenty of Lindens over time for the Relay for Life, both for her Sunbeamer team and for others. This time, she's hoping to make a little money for herself. So she made an online store page under the name of Kavori-Bluesky. 

I am a Non-Binary, Freelance Photographer that loves to shoot many things, but has a fondness for wildlife and nature, especially weather.

As of this time, there are a total of eight items for sale. Most are wildlife stickers for less than two dollars. But there's also a print and one t-shirt that's normally $19.90. 

Matt's store is on Redbubble. The site was created with the purpose of making it possible for artists to sell directly to consumers as independent agents, to "Give independent artists a meaningful new way to sell their creations." While it was aimed at artists and maybe small companies, it has attracted larger ones, notably Linden Lab, which launched a store through Redbubble in September 2020. 

Bixyl Shuftan
  

Top Stories of the 2010s: Linden Lab's "Shared Creative Spaces"

In recent days, Linden Lab made the decision to turn to "Plan B" for Sansar, meaning either selling it or finding a partner to keep it going. So why did Linden Lab put energy in something else other than Second Life? Actually, it's been doing so since 2011, when the decision was made to develop or buy other products as well. They hoped that they would bring in some extra money and one or more would be a big hit. But for all the Lab's effort, only one of these "shared creative spaces" would remain after a few years.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Linden Lab Stops Development and Support of Three Non-Second Life Products

Linden Lab is trimming it's product line. In a statement made yesterday, they announced that they would no longer be developing or supporting three less successful goods, Versu, Dio, and Creatorverse.

After careful consideration, Linden Lab has decided to cease development and support for dio, Versu, and Creatorverse. We’re grateful for those who took the time to experiment with these products in their early days, but ultimately we have determined that due to a number of factors, we and our customers will be best served by focusing our efforts on continuing to provide exceptional service and compelling new experiences for the users of our other products.

Creatorverse was an iPad application launched in Sept 18, 2012 that drew comparisons to another app, "Crayon Physics Deluxe," which was made several years ago. Dio was announced in January 27, 2013 as a "creative and social experience" in which people could "create places by adding text, photos, videos, and interactive objects into interconnected 'rooms' " that people compared to a MUD or MUSH with pictures. Versu, released on February 14, 2013, was an interactive fiction (aka choose-your-own-adventure) product that gave the reader options on how the story would proceed. While some thought it was a good application, it was noted there were already a number of interactive readers with established markets that Linden Lab would have to spend effort and money to break into.

The end of these applications leaves Linden Lab with just three products other than Second Life. These are "Patterns," which has gotten comparisons to Minecraft, "Blocksworld," a child-friendly application where players can build things with blocks, and "Desura," a digital distribution service much like Steam, but with an emphasis on smaller, independent games. Of these, only Patterns was developed by Linden Lab. The other two were acquired.

(edited later) When Hamlet Au interviewed Ebbe Altberg, he stated “We’ll do some clean-up, there’s some things that are not as aligned." So this seems to be Ebbe's first major decision as Linden Lab's new boss.

Bixyl Shuftan

Rod Humble’s 2012 Outlook: Better NPCs for the Grid, Linden Labs to Launch “Products Next Year Not Related to Second Life”

In the latest Linden Blog post, Rod Humble looked back at what he considered Linden Labs best accomplishments for 2011, and had some announcements for what lay ahead in 2012.

Most of what Humble had to say was about noted accomplishments of Linden Lab. Considering his roots in the gaming industry, it was perhaps no surprise the first he mentioned was the making and launching of “Linden Realms, the Lab's first-ever game prototype.” For new residents, it was a chance to earn a few Lindens. For the Lab, Humble called it a way for the Lab to “learn more about what tools Residents could use to develop richer experiences in Second Life — and boy, did we learn a lot!” Humble states Linden Realms would continue to be worked on, with new tools released. There would be one catch: “to prevent abuse of these tools,” only “verified members” would have access to them.

Rod Humble also mentioned the development of Mesh, which he claimed had “more than a 16 percent adoption rate.” He stated he expected for it to continue at a strong pace (though many residents would probably be highly skeptical of this claim). He also talked about new versions of the official Viewer, which included features for newcomers, and the increase in Premium account benefits, notably Linden Homes. He told readers to expect additional “features and content” for Premium members.

For 2012, Humble stated “the primary engineering focus of” the first quarter “will be server side performance and fixing bugs. In fact, you may have noticed one upgrade deployed this week which should reduce the number of restarts and increase performance for all regions.” My observation for the latter is that it hasn’t. He also promised that land tiers would not increase in 2012. He went on to state, “For creators our first new feature for 2012 will be pathfinding,” what the Lab calls it’s new artificial intelligence programs for “artificial life and artificial people,” one example being NPCs for game areas.

The last thing Rod Humble stated was especially interesting: “we will be launching some completely different products next year not related to Second Life.” In short, Linden Labs will no longer have Second Life as it’s only product. This is not unexpected as Second Life is currently Linden Lab’s sole source of income, and open-ended virtual worlds haven’t really caught on with the public.

The question is, what will this mean for Second Life? Hamlet Au wrote this was Linden Lab’s best chance to stay profitable, predicting land sales would eventually crash, and with it the Linden’s source of money. “... a successful second or third product besides Second Life would help keep SL alive, since it can then be cross-promoted to this large new audience, while new revenue sources can help finance whatever changes are needed to keep SL stable.”

Any1 Gynoid, however, had a more dismal prediction. This she felt was a sign Linden Labs was giving up on Second Life, and looking for greener pastures, planning to close it down once they found something more profitable. She advised people to head on to alternative virtual worlds like OpenSim.

My opinion is closer to Hamlet’s on this matter. Unlike him, I feel Second Life could easily survive as a niche product (as does Tateru Nino). Diversifying from a single product is good business sense, and doesn’t mean the doom of the original. Blizzard for instance is known for “World of Warcraft,” but continues to market It’s earlier games, Diablo and Starcraft. This might not be the best comparison as we have no idea how successful these other goods the Lab will offer may be. But it does illustrate just because someone’s new product hits the jackpot doesn’t mean they’ll abandon what was selling before.

My Second Life friends have expressed differing viewpoints about these alternative virtual worlds. A few have set up a place there, in one case a man wanting to set up a casino where it would be outside Linden Lab’s restriction. Others I’ve heard balk at the idea of moving there, saying the graphics there aren’t as good, the choice of appearances is poorer, and leaving friends behind.

On one last note, it’s been a year since Rod Humble became the CEO of Linden Lab. His appointment was greeted with cautious optimism then. A year later, although not all is well with the Grid, on the whole things are looking better than back them. His first year has been a success.

Sources: New World Notes, CNN

Bixyl Shuftan