Thursday, July 29, 2010

Double Dips

I am wrong. I suspect I may even be dead wrong but I cannot help it. It just doesn't seem right to me and I have to say something. If I keep this bottled up inside me I am sure to explode like some hapless alien meeting the business end of a plasma cannon. That isn’t the ending I want. I want to die mostly intact so I am going to just say it and hope for the best.

Forcing your customers to pay twice for an asset is wrong! I don't care what you say. It is wrong. The funny thing is, if my shop actually had sales, I would be doing the same thing. Yesterday at least. Today I turn over a new leaf. From this moment forward, I will never ask a customer who has purchased one of my products to again purchase it on a new grid.

Crap!! What did I just say? Am I Mad? I think I just shot myself in the foot, financially speaking. Isn't it common practice to double dip when your customers change grids? Don't I reserve the right to decide when and where the content I have created is use? Some might even say I should even be able to control how it is used. So why not charge my customers twice for the same asset? After all, if the market doesn't like it, it can go shop someplace else damn it! Unless of course I am the only supplier. Then they have to play by my rules. My sandbox, my rules!

When the majority acts in one way, we tend to accept it. There is science behind group think and we have some understanding as to why we demonstrate an inability to personalize large numbers. But even at the extreme, when those numbers reflect horror as in the case of Darfur, we quietly follow the pack. We often know the majority's inaction or lack of outrage is wrong yet we cannot muster a voice against the wrong doing.

Pay twice for that asset if you must, rationalize it anyway you need too as well, but in doing so just for a second, try to remember your double purchase is supporting what I believe to be an injustice, albeit a tiny one in the big scheme of things.

4 comments:

  1. You have the right attitude.

    It reads to me as "ethics".
    Ethics, as I define the word, is simply doing the right thing when no one is watching.......and no ones gonna know.

    And you aren't alone...my home creator has told me she will enterr Inz and bring my house with her...'cause it's the right thing to do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. another option....create new products on the new grid as well as bring in a few of the favorite products (to be given to those that purchased them on the other grid). They get their old product already purchased elsewhere and will come back and buy new products!

    Ethics...it's a beautiful thing and thanks for posting this. It was needed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Totally agree with this post. Ethics seems to be a dirty word on the net in general, and shouldn't be. I won't be paying extra to port any papa grid stuff over to IW. I see the new grid as an opportunity to build a new life anyway, not just move the old one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This blog post was well written, and very true. The fact that designers charge one thing on the other grid and then double on IW to try and make up the half cut seems wrong to me. Maye that is why I changed my major in college from business to something else. In reality, businesses try their hardest to avoid ethics as much as possible and that seems to be the case within virtual worlds as well. Of course they would justify it as simple supply and demand, but I am not one to believe in applying a little make-up and a smile to an ugly situation.

    To the people who fall into the category of believing the worth of a product is based on "branding" it works, hell it keeps them from having to shop around...right? To those of us who choose to shop around for better deals also know there is more supply available within Iw than they realize, and better quality too!

    Example: This name brand designer needed to make a new release so she could avoid being yesterday's news so she takes a scarf already made in inventory, slaps a new texture on it and ups the price of the new scarf. While the smaller not so popular chick or dude down the road builds everything from scratch with more quality and a cheaper price... however the smaller designer wont be recognized when the shopper wears it do the consumer sticks to the name brand, overly prices, template instead of the made with love, lower priced, quality item.

    Advice: Shop around. :)

    ReplyDelete