Need To Finance Your Metaverse Arts Project? Try Virtual Product Placement!

As anyone who's worked in the performing arts knows, it's difficult to fund large scale productions, in the real world or Second Life.  Ina Centaur of The SL Shakespeare Company has a clever solution-- integrate advertising into the set of their latest production, a contemporary era sci fi-flavored one act called "One's A Pawn of Time". 

"Where possible," Ina explains, "we will create a 'rock band' poster of your brand (or something similar) to make it look seamless with the room."  Prices start at L$75,000 per show series (embedded teleport link no extra charge)-- around USD$281.  This may seem pricey, but the company projects 5000 audience members per theatrical run, and 1000 viewers who'll see subsequent screenshots and machinima of the production.  Pretty good virtual world ROI.  Get the full details here.

It's a potentially fruitful way for SL artists to subsidize their work-- though of course, it'll also likely provoke another round in the ever recurring debate over art vs. commerce.  But do the assumptions of that conversation change when the context is a user-created virtual world? 

Comments

[Dedric Mauriac]

I saw this note card from Ina the other day. She definitely has the skills to do seamless interaction and attracts large crowds.

[Ina Centaur]

I just want to say that tier for our theatre is a big huge 4 digit USD number per month! Yup, just tier alone!

Were Linden Lab/Second Life not operated on such a feudal tier system, we wouldn't have to worry much about funding.

Art vs commerce? Look at tier and then ask Linden Lab on that one.

[Ina Centaur]

Hi Hamlet, would appreciate it if you'd read the notecard more carefully! Prices start at L$5000. Also, *ALL* orders come with custom professional design (RL standards). That itself is worth at least 10 times as much. There's still a lot of the "starving artist" here.