SL Economics

One of the things I find most interesting about SecondLife is the economy. On the whole the SecondLife economy seems to works rather well. Though I would be curious to see someone do an analysis of the rate of inflation vs rate of economic growth. People make money in-game by creating in-game content, land speculation and trading, currency speculation, services (such as scripting, creating animations, building design & construction, cyber-prostitution), and gaming (bingo, lottery, etc). This in addition to the weekly "allowance" that SL grants to all players with a variety of bonuses from player ratings, land dwell, etc. As SL has grown, an external currency market has sprung up. Similar to what one may have seen on other MMORPGs where you can buy in-game currency with real world money. However, at least from my experience, this seems to be much more advanced with SL than with the other games with some people making significant Real World income by currency speculation. Others cash in their weekly incomes from in-game object sales or land sales.

That being said, some statistics for "stats junkies" like Me.

Looking at one of the main markets for SL currency exchange (www.gamingopenmarket.com) I was pleased to see the Linden (the in game monitary unit) exchange rate was back to around where it was many months ago after some considerable trading activitiy seemed to push the value of the Linden up to around $4.10US per 1000L$.



Based on the current avg exchange rate, and reviewing the overnight stats, that puts the top three listed individual's stated net worth at:

Tony Tigereye - 4,107,500 (L$) / $16,183.55 (USD)
Kermitt Quirk - 1,648,228 (L$) / $6,494.02 (USD)
Anshe Chung - 1,635,440 (L$) / $6,443.63 (USD)

Though this undoubtedly doesn't include the people's true net worth since it only reflects SL cash-on-hand and excludes the value of land holdings owned by a Land Barron like Anshe.

According to the latest released economic stats (WE 5/15/05)

Total In-world Sales amounted to:
79,590,047 (L$) / $313,584.79 (USD)

Of that, land sales only accounted for:
$8,355,519.00 (L$) / $32,920.74 (USD)

Which seems to indicate the the buying / selling of in-world created content is still the engine of the SL economy, not real estate sales. Personally I think this is a good thing. Though sadly, the way Linden Labs reports the breakdown of transactions is a bit outdated in that it doesn't allow for clear distinction of transactions like land/stall rental so those numbers are not known.

Reviewing land sales statistics, the average cost of land per SqMeter is actually at it's lowest since 10/31/04, coming in at 4.37 (L$) / SqMeter. Median price being 4.88 (L$) / SqMeter. Perhaps the recent influx of lots of new sims/land has finally broken the run of inflated land prices.

Currently Wwe own 35,456 SqMeters of land in Periwinkle, or just over half of the sim shown below for reference.




The second is the same pic with the Show Land Owner option turned on to give a better view of how the land is parcelled. The green is owned by Uus, the red is the land owned by others.



I have hopes of picking up some more land in Periwinkle if the price is right, if for no other reason than to reduce the spread of some of the more "kitschy" builds the neighbors throw up.