Serenity Island, Kitely - photograph by Wildstar Beaumont
Today, Tuesday 21st February at 1pm SLT, Designing Worlds will be taping two important shows in our beautiful studio in Garden of Dreams – and we want your input into the discussions we’ll be filming!
Firstly, at 1pm, we will be taping a show about Kitely, the new grid that has caught a lot of people’s attention, as it works with a radically different plan to most other virtual worlds. At the moment, you access individual worlds on the Kitely grid through Facebook – although this will very soon be expanded. In addition, you can currently access one world (or region) at a time – and then re-log to access another world – although again, hypergrid jumps within Kitely are planned in the near future.
Dogwood Arts Festival, created by David Denton, photograph by Wildstar Beaumont
But perhaps the most radical difference with Kitely is that all land is free – indeed, when you sign up for an account, you automatically get one free world or, in Second Life terms, region (and you can have 100,000 prims on that region too).
So how does Kitely makes its money?
Beyond Sebgram X-99, created by Karima Hoisan, photograph by Wildstar Beaumont
By having in place a billing system that works rather like a a cell phone account – you pay for time used. And you can do this either by a pay-as-you-go of purchasing minutes, or by subscribing to a payment plan, which operates at different levels. A free account, for example, will get you 120 minutes a month and one free world; the silver account – which costs $20 per month – gets you 5000 minutes, a stipend of 1000 Kitely Credits (which can be used to buy extra minutes or purchase inworld goods) and 10 worlds (or regions). The highest level plan, the Platinum, buys you 100 worlds and unlimited minutes – and costs $100.
Lothlorien on Chakryn Forest in Kitely, a work in progress by Andrek Lowell
That, of course, compares with $295 for a full region on Second Life. But no-one has to pay for the minutes to spend on your region.
This is just the business side though – we will be exploring this and other fascinating aspects of Kitely with the CEO, Ilan Tochner – and talking to two leading creators with Kitely, Karima Hoisan and David Denton, and seeing some of their amazing and beautiful creations.
Dogwood Arts Festival, created by David Denton, photograph by Wildstar Beaumont
Then, at 2pm, our audience will have a chance to ask questions as we record the second of our two shows. This will be a panel with Ilan, Maria Korolov (of Hypergrid Business) and Mal Burns, metaverse commentator. We’ll be talking more about Kitely, and about building sustainable business models for virtual worlds. And we want to add in what you think too!
Please come to the taping at 1pm, find out more, and share your views and ideas!
The Mars Area of Serenity Island, Kitely, photographed by Wildstar Beaumont
The next cost & break-even analysis refers to:
- Second Life (fixed costs) vrs OS grids (fixed costs) vrs Kitely (variable costs).
From an industrial procurement viewpoint, you need to know that a LOW number of concurrent users means a VARIABLE cost model (like Kitely offers), a HIGH number of concurrent users means a FIXED cost model (like OS grids offer, yet the break-even level of concurrent users is not transparent), say at around $30 per month… Second Life flops at $295 per month…
What also flops is the simplified 2006 A or B platform notion… Leaving Second Life in 2012 can go in 2 directions, OS grids and/or Kitely, depending on the concurrent user forecast.
If you include the element of brand naming within SL, you would choose to downsize your frontoffice in SL, and establish a backoffice in an OS grid and/or Kitely. So it’s about A AND B AND C in 2012, not A OR B like in 2006.
Thus, astroturfing this headlline “Rivers Run Red leaves Second Life for Kitely, Unity”, and conjuring lots of nonsense conclusions leaves several economic variables outside the economic decison-making scope, and needs scrutiny by the industrial procurement way of thinking.
Kitely Monetization, though, shifts those break-even points to the advantage of Kitely, and the impact of this additional variable is not transparent at all… that closes our circle surrounding the issue of putting a price tag on e-infrastructure in virtual worlds…
How about Kitely Monetization contingent to Virtual Event Project Roles?
https://getsatisfaction.com/kitely/topics/how_about_kitely_monetization_contingent_to_virtual_event_project_roles
Placing a price-tag on e-infrastructure
http://www.isgtw.org/feature/placing-price-tag-e-infrastructure
New Billing Scheme
How about billing in a pure Prepaid way versus Monthly Tarif way? http://ow.ly/94Pbb
How about implementing a fully free Kitely world financed by “Sponsored Virtual World”? http://ow.ly/9cdNh https://www.facebook.com/groups/sponsored.virtualworlds/
Kitely Group in Second Life:
Raving Kitely World Visitors & World Owners, Mentors & Consultants in SL meet here http://ow.ly/994ku
How many times have we heard how overpriced Second Life’s business model is? When you are running this type of thing you have to make a profit. A profit AFTER you pay to sustain a staff that is continuously developing the technology and maintaining the current physical structures of servers and connections. A profit AFTER you pay for the bandwidth and subcontracts, the physical structures and attrition.
Linden Lab’s model is one that works and makes them a profit. Let’s get real here. No other virtual world has been able to do this yet. Not and sustain a development staff that is meaningful.
I have been on other grids and they are just fine, BUT the sheer size of Second Life is what makes it work. The diversity and the number of concurrent users is what drives it.
Also, don’t dare bring up IMVU, have you been there? It is a LAME substitute.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned IMVU, yet. This is more about Kitely’s new model.
Note: Break-even analysis needs a forecast of Concurrent Users, not empty ghost town sims… 1000 concurrent users and 1 sim IS BETTER THAN 1 concurrent user and 1000 sims…
Hi Scarp,
We’ve designed our entire organization and our operations to be very capital efficient. Our pricing model is only possible because of the way our on-demand architecture works and the way we are charged for our (and our customer’s) datacenter costs.
Unlike Linden Lab, we don’t maintain servers running when no one is using them. Our system automatically starts sims when they are entered and shuts them down when they become vacant of avatars. This enables us to rent servers from Amazon by the hour instead of needing to pay to have them available to us for entire months at a time. Our system also automates many business and operations processes that are usually HR intensive (thus further reducing our cost basis). This is what allows us to offer prices that are substantially lower than those that other grids charge and still make a profit after covering some very modest fixed operational costs (we only need a few thousand active users to break even with our pricing model).
Kitely uses OpenSim for its basic virtual world architecture. OpenSim is an actively developed open-source project that continues to evolve even without our periodic code contributions. As for our own software infrastructure, while we have a lot less developers than LL has, our solution already includes more than 150K lines of proprietary high quality code (for comparison OpenSim, which has been developed by dozens of individuals for more years than we’ve been developing Kitely, has just about 500K lines of code).
Kitely is hardly the first startup to have built a business that can successfully compete with an incumbent in its field by developing much more capital efficient business models. I wouldn’t rule out the little guys so quickly, most of the big online service providers we all use started out as 2-person operations with business models that didn’t seem financially viable at the time
Great Discussion Brewing James – Hope I can attend at least a portion!
Here is what I would like to see happen with Kitely:
> Linden Lab purchases Kitely and rapidly (2012) releases a multi-tier (pun intended) product offering that is optimized for “Casual” > “Commercial” users.
> Unified login to all products
> Users can purchase one or more “on-demand” (Dynamic(kitely) or Traditional (static) Sims
> Both Dynamic & Traditional Sims are Cloud-based and offer “Instant” setup with minimum setup fees.
> Dynamic Sims are brought online as soon as the 1st visitor requests access and remain online for 5-10 minutes after the 1st visitor has left or until the last subsequent visitor leaves.
> If more than the maximum number of visitors (determined by lag variable) request access to the same Traditional or Dynamic sim, provide an option for a clone of the sim to be dynamically rezzed and the next requesting avatar transported there.
* Note: For music venues with live performances, provide an option for media stream and performer avatars, within a bounded area, to be visually cloned in subsequent cloned regions.
> Allow direct synchronization between identical Traditional & Dynamic SIMS, owned by the same person or group, with content permissions replicated exactly. (Allows developers to use Dynamic SIM to build out and host content and move it to a Traditional SIM, when traffic (number of billable hours) make it cost effective.
> Not last and DEFINITELY NOT least, roll out a TRUE “Channel” (Consultant/Reseller/Developer) program that provides developers with a “Microsoft-style” (Robust & Supported) program that provides development, marketing, training and most importantly PROFIT incentives for using the SL platform (both Traditional & Dynamic) to create & sell innovative Virtual World solutions.
This is a “short” (LOL) list of things I’ve been thinking about lately, as I’ve thought about the Kitely platform and other OpenSim platforms. It is by no means exhaustive… ‘ok,’ maybe it is…
BTW @Ilan – I would love to see Kitely radically successful on its own. However, the huge stumbling block to this is content and feature / functionality ramp up time. The beauty of SL is the incredible mass of content that has been created for it. Being able to preserve this content, while providing a lower-cost option for creators and content hosters, as well as LL itself, plus the upside of more users being able to have their own sims (think Linden Homes on steroids – a TRUE Premium Membership Value) would be a WIN/WIN for everyone! If I were you, I would try to negotiate a deal with LL that provided you with both up-front as well as residual compensation for “Rescuing” SL and ushering it as an incumbent leader, into the next “Golden Age” of virtual worlds!
ps. This strategy also gives LL and you time to migrate to an enhanced Unity 3D-based product platform that could either be a 3rd platform option or in time, the next product platform base on which all SL offerings are delivered.
Thank you for your feedback Valiant.
We won’t spend developer resources on it now but some of the technical features you would like to see are not very hard to implement using our existing architecture. A few are partially implemented already, e.g. worlds remain online for several minutes after they become vacant to allow quick access by other avatars who may wish to enter them.
We will be providing multiple ways for people to monetize offerings based on Kitely, Not just for people who provide content but also for people who provide services. We expect to start doing so after we toll out several usability improvements people have been asking for (e.g. multiple login options, inter-world teleporting, inworld currency, etc.)
There are synergistic benefits for us working with LL but, even though it will likely take longer, our user adoption can reach a tipping point even without such cooperation. There is a growing number of SL business owners who are opening a presence on Kitely and slowly bringing in their content and clientele with them. Our solution is also designed to support multiple virtual world architectures so we are actually quite well positioned to support a transition to other viewer/server technologies. With each paying customer that signs up for a plan we get closer to being able to start hiring additional developers to accelerate our rate of service differentiation. It’s just a matter of time until we reach an inflection point.