SL Promo Videographer Bernhard "Draxtor Despres" Drax Discusses Business Relationship With Linden Lab

Bernhard "Draxtor Despres" Drax, who produces the excellent, Linden Lab-sponsored "World Makers" series about Second Life creators, took issue with my describing him as "paid by Linden Lab to promote Second Life as a contractor" in Monday's post on SL's failure as an education platform, explaining some detail on his financial relationship with the company:

"I am NOT paid by Linden Lab to promote Second Life. Linden Lab has the right to use my documentaries that highlight individuals who thrive in SL for marketing purposes. We have a sponsorship agreement that reflects that and also contains a provision whereby I have complete freedom to choose subject matters as well as a 'final cut' assurance which they have honored since we started this in mid-2014. To spell it out: I decide who I profile and how! Yes, I am biased: I am an advocate but not so much for Linden Lab but for living a creative life!"

This reads to me as an alternate, longer way of saying "paid by Linden Lab to promote Second Life as a contractor", but readers can decide for themselves. In any case, I'm glad he shared this disclosure with NWN readers. (Not sure how it covers stuff like the Dr. Phil show, but OK.) I had a different but somewhat overlapping relationship with Linden Lab between 2003-2006, so I can relate to the tension between compelling editorial which accurately depicts Second Life, while also getting checks from the company that most profits from it. Based on that experience, I'd make add a couple other thoughts:

As a sponsored media creator, it's challenging to choose which users to profile, and what to include in their profile and what to edit out. Profile someone with some strongly negative opinions about the platform, and corporate sponsorship is likely to go away; edit out those negative opinions or only choose individuals who are universally positive about the platform, and seem disingenuous. For similar reasons, advocating people "living a creative life" is great, but it's probably important to also acknowledge the factual reality: In this case, Linden Lab makes far more money from Second Life as a creative platform ($75 million a year, according to the company's own reports), then all the creative individuals making any income from it --probably less than $10 million per year combined $60 million total last year, but only a few dozen or hundred actually making a substantial living from it.

Anyway, just some thoughts on issues I too face on some level or another, even now, for on a basic level, one's audience tends to be the ultimate sponsor.

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Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

Ok so take out all the 'according to' and 'probably less than' bits - can you nail that 10 mil a bit closer? Let alone the few dozen (12) or erm few hundred (100) =^^=
Disclosure - sponsored by my local grocery shop who knocks off a few euros if I help shift the odd box of cauliflower. Honest

[Ezra]

"probably less than $10 million per year combing, with only a few dozen or hundred actually making a substantial living from it"

More like 60 million: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2015/05/ebbe-sl-users-cashed-out-60-mil-last-year/

That's 60 million cashed out, not processed credit that went to tier.

[A.J.]

No sense in picking on Drax. He's not the exception, but more like the rule. There are so many murky relationships that Linden Lab has developed regarding SL. It's greedy tentacles have reached in and corrupted every angle of the world and replaced it with crippling insanity.

That's why this ethically broken company seems to be out to destroy itself.

I really would have like to have seen the Second Life that could have been... one that developed without stacked decks and backroom deals. The one where we could trust that accomplishment and reward would have been earned and a world where things that need to die would be allowed to die.

[Wagner James Au]

Fixed the revenue number, my bad! From everything we know, only a fraction of the people who cash out that $60M make a living from SL, tho.

[Ciaran Laval]

Drax was producing the Drax Files before Linden Lab sponsored the series.

Drax and Linden Lab have both been open and upfront about the relationship.

"This sponsorship has no impact on Draxtor’s editorial independence; we’re not taking control or trying to dictate what stories are told or how they’re presented in the series, nor does our agreement have any impact on his other work (his podcast, for example). What our sponsorship does mean is that Draxtor will be able to continue to produce new episodes of The Drax Files: World Makers series each month, which we can all enjoy and which Linden Lab can use in support of our Second Life marketing efforts."

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Linden-Lab-Is-Proud-to-Sponsor-The-Drax-Files-World-Makers/ba-p/2740116

[irihapeti]

6 people making 10 million dollars each
60 people making a million each
600 making $100,000 dollars each
6,000 making $10,000 each
60,000 making $1,000 each
600,000 making $100 each

+

with 900,000 uniques a month then

60,000,000 / 900,000 / 12 = $5.55 each a month

sooo

i would like to know who is getting my about $5 each month. bc I don't make anything myself

but if I did then I could buy a yearly Premium with it, and get a 540m, and another $5 a month L$ allowance

(:

[Tankgirl]

Jealous much Hamlet?

[Issa Heckroth]

Its the way of the world these days, isnt it? Nobody wants to be called a Shill. They are a "Freelance product expert who are passionate about people expressing themselves". Yeah!

Barf.

[joe]

Look. If LL wants to hire fools like Drax or Ciaran then let em. After all, their efforts have done nothing to increase their business after all which is another sign that the company is run by people who consistently make bad business decisions.

But this is America. Fools need to eat too.

[Hector Cuprill, Jr., Esq.]

Problems: a "laggy" slow moving world needing a NASA grade computer to run SL software, the steep learning curve, plus its business model is more like Compuserve right before the consumer www--no push for OpenGL/or 3-D inter-connectivity among virtual world platforms. All of these factors will contribute to the "land barons" of SL starvation to death . . . Short run theory: I believe that LL is investing in infrastructure (buying new servers, techs, contract specialists, engineers) to make themselves more sexy to a possible offer by one of the big threes--just like it happened with Cloud Party, Oculus, and Minecraft. For now, they will have to compete for Dollar attention being spent on GTAV Online, Garry's Mod, Roblox, Skyrim, PlanetSide 2, and so on . . . LL is stuck in a snake eating its tail kind of status role and away from any sign of a possible "IPO."