Journal of an Aircraft Factory in Second Life
posted by Karl Reisman at
9:14 AM
I run a small company inside Second Life, concentrating on products from the 1925 - 1945 range, basically covering my interests in terms of Cars, Fashion and Aircraft. In the agressively modern or fantasy world of SL, the stuff is distinctive. If one is interested you can see the entire product line available on Second Life Exchange (see links above). But at the end of every month, I take large sums from the profits and set aside money for our ridiculously large mainland plot, and I pay my employees. I actually feel pretty good paying them, I REALLY appreciate their work, and show it with the apportionment of the sales revenue. I like to reward good work. On SL Exchange, the formula is fairly simple. I build and texture the vehicle, but without scripts, it just becomes a pretty sculpture. With the scripts in it, it can move under the control of an avatar sitting in it, make the appropriate noises,and in some cases, engage in combat. So, I feel that because the scripter has made the product useful, I give him half of the proceeds. So on the 30th or 31st, I tabulate all the sales for the month, and calculate the sales of scripted objects and pay the scripter half of that.
In world, we have vendors. This makes the sales a bit more complicated as there are more people involved. To handle that I came up with a formula for products so that people all get paid. Builder gets 40%, Scripter gets 40% The Scripter of the Vendor System gets 5% of every sale, and the owner of the land that the vendor sits on gets up to 15%. If the item is not scripted (such as a hat or a piece of furniture), then the builder gets 80%. The scripts within the vendors calculate and pay out the participants automatically. Any percentage below the 15% for the land owner, the Employee can negotiate, the emplyee can keep as a sales comission. Now this doesn't happen often as there are two other vendors of aircraft that provide the land owner with 50% of vendor sales from vendors sitting on their land, but we do get requests for vendors because of the superiority of our objects, The Messerschmitt BF-109E we released recently seems to be a minor hit, and is proliferating amongst the SL dogfighting community. Sales are increasing steadily month to month.
I am proud of my Employees. My main scripterhas taken up the reins of making vehicles work from previous scripters in my employ, and has added more and more capabilities to not only the vehicles but invented a new combat system that sidesteps some of the limitations of SL. I also have taken on another builder. a talented young Pole, who has stepped up to produce aircraft of matching , even surpassing mine in terms of detail. I don't make a dime off of his stuff (unless he sells it on vendors on land I own), but it makes more money for the scripter, and his work compliments mine well (Same quality, same Time period) He also challenges me to take up new construction techniques and tools to match his work. My Vendor Scripter has unfortunately been missing due to a new job and college studies, but she has contributed ideas and small scripts to keep things running smoothly at the company. All in all I like the people, they are amused hard workers, doing this mostly for fun, and without drama. I feel good about them and the work they do, and so, paying them gives me a chance to show my gratitude for their work for me. Thank you .
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