Two months

I’ve been –mostly– away for two months, and that’s the time it has taken the airfield of which I raved about (roll eyes) in my previous post to shrink. Yes, it didn’t even survive the summer in all its original “spreador”. After all the effort its owners put forth in building this now failed two-sims attempt of yet another huge airport in SL, half the land sits, once again, desolated and empty as it was before. For aesthetic reasons, I’m delighted it’s partially gone, but when you honestly think about the cost of acquiring all that land in the first place and then the investment –in the broadest sense of the word– its founders obviously “wasted” in –poorly– planning an infrastructure for the good of all the aviation community in SL (even though it seems it didn’t have a real significant appeal for that target audience) must be terribly frustrating.

It is popularly said that in Second Life you can pursuit (and build) whatever you dream, no matter what that might be, but beware: SL dreams demand a –high– monthly maintenance cost that, for the most part, must be covered with funds from sources beyond this fantastical realm: it requires –oftentimes a lot of– RL money.

The moral of this “experiment”? Obviously, it isn’t safe to merely rely on people’s –suspected– attention or –apparent– needs. If you’re building for your own use, calculate the cost and keep a –wise– balance between personal satisfaction and real life economy. Staying small is always safe, a two-sim project is not necessarily so. If you’re going big though, why not do some marketing beforehand to, at least, secure the patronage of the community you intend to serve? At least you can extend the life of your illusion a couple of months longer (more if it’s kind of unique or not that common).

Before
Before
After
After

From my point of view, this airport’s biggest “accomplishment”, considering the available hangars didn’t rent and I never saw a single plane taking flight from there, was to disrupt and disband a long established community that, in the best-case scenario, will have –to try– to reinvent itself. But that’s something that rarely happens in SL. Once residents are gone and luckily established somewhere else (if at all), they usually never look back. Gone. Bye.