Ok so I know this will sound like the kid that says her dog ate her homework after she spent a REALLY long time on it but I swear it's true.
WAY back before the holidays a friend of mine said "HEY!" and this is a friend that you should always listen to so I listened and ended up with not one but THREE gorgeous Log Homes that no one had ever lived in before!
I know, why do I need three homes, right?
Exactly.
But!
This was for the SLuggle, I was deep digging into what might well be the most toxic and awful thing I've ever loved since my days of heroin and cocaine enemas. Ok, well I made most of that sentence up but you get the idea.
Game of Homes is a Bellisseria thing that my friends had told me about and I was always like ok, so? and then I played it and I've had a giant case of writer's block ever since.
Here's the deal.
Linden Premium Homes- the "freebie house" you get with membership, most people have said "no thanks" because we all know how terrible they were back in the day. So, ever since they started these landscaped and themed areas in Bellisseria in 2019, a big shift in Second Life has been happening.
At least once a week I meet someone from "old SL" who is like WTF is this in Belli? and we have SO much to catch up on the social side it's hard to even get to the homes part. Well, we need to talk about this because it's a really weird thing going on here.
The "Log Home Theme" was released ages ago, (April 2020 according to Daniel Voyager) and yet the many of the prettiest homes are being released now.
Never released before, GORGEOUS lakeside homes, sweeping views, low numbers of other homes in the region, these are Game of Homes winners. And so they release them without fanfare or notice or really seemingly any rhyme or reason at all.
When I got to Belli, I was just happy to get a home. I had heard they were really hard to get. Now that I have played Game of Homes a while, I am amazed I lived so long in a dull little home. Once I was clued in by my friends that this game exists, I rolled the dice and got some great places.
Well, that is like only just snorting the stuff.
If you really want the kick you gotta shoot it right into your vein and try to guess when the Lindens will release all these super luxury regions they are holding back.
Yes, this is a thing.
Can you imagine this in the real world? Everyone is entitled to the "same thing" for their monthly fee, but we're gonna hold back the "nicest of the same things" and drop them at some weird time in the future that we never tell anyone.
Well, then imagine the scandal that would erupt if it turns out the same people keep getting these best "same things" that drop?
Yeah, that's what happens here too.
It's nuts.
So I experienced this first hand. They crash the region and when it comes back up there's usually a Linden there and the houses are suddenly available and it's a hilarious fury of trying your "rolls" or daily attempts for a premium home.
My friends and I were able to grab the homes we wanted for the most part, there seemed to be one other player in the area who got a number of the nice houses as well. So it is totally possible to camp out and get the best Linden Homes before anyone else does.
Why do they do it that way? I have no idea and of course I got my investigative reporter hat on and stormed into the Linden Lab offices with my microphone high in the air and well no actually, what I did instead is my rolls.
It was between the holidays and I read somewhere that they don't release land between the holidays so I was feeling bold enough to "try my rolls" one night and I landed an OMG property WAY away from this lake we'd been stalking. We're talking corner cliff home jaw dropping location.
Well that felt good so I tried another and got a traditional home that is in such a perfect spot it will make you cry tears of beautiful joy feels.
Which is why I've been struggling with this story for so long.
When they designed Bellisseria, they designed a class war into the houses. Some of these homes are clearly the kings of the region in which they sit. I've sailed past homes and gawked, never imagining that I could own one. Turns out that is really true because most were snatched up early, but also quite possibly not true depending on one's luck in the draw.
And so I was all fired up to point out that with this "blind, random middle-of-a-Tuesday" release of homes policy they have, the Lindens are making a rift they've created even worse because a very few people bother to put in the time to camp out and study these regions and so a very small number of people have all of the very best homes.
And then I landed two homes in the random draw even better than the ones in the "new releases" region, so this reporter, faced with a dilemma of figuring this out, decided it's a push.
There's definitely some huge flaws in Bellisseria's design here, and personally I believe that announcing when they plan to drop a region so everyone has a swing at it would be the best thing as I'm a big believer in the power of transparency.
On the other hand, I like to believe that this isn't a conspiracy or yet another example of the cronyism that has plagued Second Life but rather something driven by the technical side or some other thing I haven't thought of.
So this story is ongoing as they are STILL releasing these log homes and the regions that everyone wants are being held back- yes, this happened.
And also, now that the release of these OMG regions is approaching, there is suddenly a glut of "meh, not great" log homes in other regions available.
Yeah, exactly, not sure what is happening here but it's definitely something being manipulated and I don't want it to be me, so I'm just doing my rolls and reporting the news.