Timeless Prototype’s ‘Swiss army knife on steroids’
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Nov 3 (Reuters) - If there is a must-have tool for die-hard Second Life residents, it just might be the Multi Gadget — capable of doing everything from creating a grappling hook to translating foreign languages.
“It’s like a Swiss army knife on nuclear steroids,” said its creator Timeless Prototype (right).
Creating the Multi Gadget’s laundry list of functions — which also include flight assist, tear gas and bridge building — and its carefully crafted business model has taken a toll but with more than ten thousand sold, it’s been worth it.
“I’ve literally burned myself out twice during two years making this product in my spare time,” he said in an interview conducted via email, instant message and Skype. Prototype is based in the UK, but declined to provide his real world name.
“I’ll need to keep it that way till I can afford real-life bodyguards,” he joked.
After experimenting with different business models, he has established himself as a wholesaler, with the Multi Gadget on sale from a variety of different suppliers offering a range of prices from L$238 and up.
“Simply put, the business model for the Multi Gadget is that I am the ‘factory’ and wholesaler, and retailers can buy in bulk with quantity discounts,” he said. “This works very well. It does impact my profit margins but most of the sales are by word of mouth, and having a network of retailers helps break the product into new social circles that I might not necessarily be a part of.”
Once someone buys a Multi Gadget they also get a lifetime’s worth of free updates. Version 2, which will include new features and a new heads-up display interface, is on the way, but development was put on hold when Prototype’s best computer crashed.
“I like to think of it as being similar to car sales: almost everyone eventually buys one, but not all at the same time. But once you buy one you are entitled to free updates. It’s very compelling to get one,” Prototype said.
Multi Gadget fans include IBM metaverse evangelist Ian Hughes, aka Epredator Potato, who uses its multichair feature to arrange seating for meetings, with chairs created for however many people are present.
“Idz Ni my colleague likes the Sky Station,” he said via IM. “Equally the flight assist is very useful for getting above 300 metres and many of the other tools also get used for building.”
Despite his success, Prototype worries about the protection of his intellectual property if Second Life’s servers are open-sourced, as Linden Lab has promised to do within several years.
“There are inherent security problems. Linden Lab owns the servers, so you can’t just do what you like with them. But if the server is put in control of users, they can reverse engineer everything,” he said. “If they had access to that source, they could take (the Multi Gadget scripts) in 10 seconds — it’s a big worry.”
