Neo Machina & Other Changes in Second Life

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Ever since I started a store in Second Life, I’ve always wanted to own my own full sim. There were reasons that wasn’t possible in the past, and reasons that became possible in the now, or, at least, around the beginning of 2023. It was quite the chunk of money to maintain, but I built by hand my own rendition of a sci-fi/cyberpunk city I used to visit in my earlier days. This is one of the reasons I have had such a hard time shutting it down, and saving my money. To … stop paying one hundred dollars a month for something people really only pass through in seconds and minutes.

Of course, my store gets constant traffic, and it’s been consistent in sales for over eight years now, and that’s amazing.

But running a sim, if even a homestead, is a whole other beast. It’s neat to have, it’s pretty, it’s huge, and you can do whatever you want. But it’s costly. And building a community, pulling people in, that’s not really something I have the energy to do on my own, you know?

I’ve got a full-time job. I’m trying to consistently make funny and neat content as a video “producer” of sorts. I have a whole album I need to get working on, and that’s not to mention the book I’m also writing, that hasn’t seen any development in months.

When I say, I really don’t have the time and energy to get people to come together, and be a community, I don’t.

And then there’s inflation, and everything being expensive, and my priorities changing as the years go on.

So, as of today, Neo Machina will actually be shutting down as of August 31st, 2024. Maybe sometime in the future when I have an extra thousand dollars a month to kick around, that I don’t need for anything else, I’ll bring it back, or maybe someone else will pick up the torch.

Either way, it was fun building and running my own city.

And I want to be clear, so that I don’t sound like the owners of IYC, I’m not blaming people who did or didn’t come to Neo Machina. There are so many places in Second Life to choose from, and people with much more free time and energy than I have, and more power to them. It’s not anyone’s fault that I’m taking the city down, I just gotta save my money, and evaluate where my priorities should be. I am grateful to those who came by, those who decided to live there for a time, and those who enjoyed it.

I hope Neo Machina will be a piece of your Second Life memories.

But this isn’t an episode of mourning. One of the reasons I kept bringing it back online the last couple of times I took it down, was because I kept look at this as like, the death of a friend. The death of my own work.

That’s not how we look at these things.

Neo Machina was an art piece. It was performance art, an experiment. And, like a lot of art, it comes, it goes, and it transforms. Like Walter White in his chemistry: Decay, and then transformation.

Keep your head up, choom. You never know what could happen next.