Linden Lab vs. Riot-E

Has anyone else here seen the movie-documentary "Riot on!" about a Finnish mobile phone game company called Riot-E? It was set right at the height of the dot-com madness in 2000-2001 and documented the company's burning through VC cash with wild parties, spending huge amounts on company credit cards, building a huge office to house 100 staff who don't actually do very much but sit in the company sauna, etc etc, before finally quite spectacularly going bump?

Anyone else think this is a bit like Linden Lab?

No.

Yes.

Penis.

Well. We actually have a product to show for it.
LL is sort of running around like epileptics on crack in a rubber-walled room.
The lack of customer feedback and repeatedly pissing on residents will be their downfall.

Agreed.

LL (I don't think) isn't just bullshitting around wasting money and waiting for their company to go down in flames. But I do think LL has many hidden schemes and agendas. LL is definitely out to succeed, but their goals have nothing to do with what the SL residents think their goals should be.

Does this have something to do with SLCC?

Lots of companies have conventions. Lots of successful ones do. Drinking happens at all of them.

I dont think LL has a hot tub or sauna installed. Nor are their digs too extravagant. IF they' weren't concerned about ROI and VC, we wouldn't see the no-validation account storm we see now.

No, I don't think that LL is a crazy dotcom.

How dare those bastards try to make money! *foams at the mouth*

not particularly.

absolutely.

Well, you have impressively described the complete opposite to what I think!

Duh...absolutely not.

I vote for Penis

You like those hanging chads, huh?

I'll say this much, the last post by Phillip Linden really disturbed me. What do you mean you let your employees pick the tasks they want. I mean what are the chances most people are going to pick QA? Dont get me wrong I have some amazing friends who are professional QA analysts and they do an incredible job. But in most dotcoms, the kind of people that are there are not the QA kind of people. So I dont get it Phillip, what do you mean you let people pick their own tasks?

I cringed as I read your piece about how you run the company. It seemed like it was pulled out of a time capsule from 2000. I have been through the dotcom craze and I don't know what gave LL the idea that all the potentials for disfunction from the start up culture of the late 1990s was a good idea to adopt. Obviously it served them well during the innovation phase of the Second Life Project but it seems if they are unwilling to give up their methodology or lack thereof, they will have to hand over Second Life to a company that's less creative and more of a service provider (perhaps one with a QA department *gasp*).

I hate to come across as unkind, and I hate being unkind to nice creative people but come on, the series of events since my visit to LL in June have been catastrophic. No other service out there would have survived with this track record. Imagine your cable service, your phone service, your water, your electricity performing like SL and LL have performed lately.

Troy

I rather like the way LL is run. All the lindens I have met in game have been enthusiastic and helpful! The company has achieved a magnificent 3d environment for us to play in and development is still going ahead at a crackling pace. Sure there are problems, but how do you solve them?

I believe we are still in the adventure phase of this environment. We are nowhere near ready to become a platform for commercial use. There are so many problems that much of the code probably needs to be totally rewritten. So I believe what we need at this stage is a pile of programmers and analysts able to submerge themselves in this environment and try out different ideas. I am a very willing guinea pig!

Hooray for us beta testers (or are we alpha testers?).

When LL is ready to go public in a few years would be a good time to settle down and hire some electricity company billing programmers to document the code.

It's not about the problems that exist in SL... we all know SL will have problems as it develops... It's more about how Linden Labs decides to treat a majority of their paying customers.

Perhaps you have lead a sheltered life? There are lots of people that have high degree of interest in QA. I know quite a few people that are excellent programmers that have chosen to be in QA.

Also, you seem to not understand that *most* programmers/software developers/software engineers have a strong desire to create QUALITY code. No programmer wants a reputation as a crappy coder. When they release something new & wonderful they want it to be as bug-free as you do. Stuff happens though, you can't think of every possibility, you can't test for every possibility. It's also why they have Preview, to give *you* a chance to bang on the code and try things that they haven't done, thought of, or automated.

I am glad that they let their developers choose what they want to work on. I would rather a developer work on a pet project and be happy at what he's doing, then be stuck on something they hate. The quality will be higher when they are happy and working on something they want to work on. And *YES* there will be people that will take it upon themselves to be the Hero and attack the mounting bug list... they will take great pride & personal enjoyment about being the one that knocked off 20, 30, whatever bugs from the list (do you read the release notes? have you noticed the large number of bugs being fixed?)

I could go on & on about this... apparently it is something you grok or you don't.

the only ones i have met like this are either ppl hired to deal with the public or liasons .. with the possible exception of adam, who ive delt with on the phone and recently inworld

look at their profiles ... they are either self rightious GODS OF COMPUTING that never fail or they have the "hi im a linden so fkin what, hit f1 goto live help which isnt supported by linden labs or piss off" profile

its not a hidden fact i have very low opinions for most of them, but out of gigantic list of them theres about 6 atm that i would call enthusiastic and helpfull