SLOG: Sitting On A Goldmine

Well, it's good to know that one of the SLOG glitterati has made the same kind of observation as I was thinking of: how sad it is that camping chairs exist.

It's equally ironic that it appears a few posts up from Aimee's post about the "platform party". I finally realised what was bugging me so much about that. It's that you can't simply choose for something to become a platform. The "platform party" can't, David Linden can't, even Philip Linden can't.

The only way something becomes a platform is when it develops applications, based on it, which are significant enough that their quality is judged apart from that of the platform - or can be judged without caring about the platform. The average gamer doesn't care about the technical specification of the Xbox, they just want to play Halo. They don't care about how the web works, they just want to shop online. They might think Windows sucks, but who cares when it lets them run Photoshop?

SL has yet to develop that. There isn't anything where someone can "not care about what SL's like, they can just do something within it". AV customisations, toys, gadgets - what's the point of any of them if you don't want to stick around in SL? In-world games might have a chance, but the engine at the moment is too limited - the only reason to tolerate it is because of SL itself.

Now, looking at camp chairs and other things has made me reach (but possible jump to) a conclusion: The present economic model of SL will prevent it evolving into a platform. As long as newer players are expected to create items, market, camp, or whatever in order to earn the L$ to afford anything, they can't possibly evaluate the quality of any app seperately from that of SL because they can't even gain access to the app without doing a whole bunch of other stuff which is intrinsic to SL but is, from their point of view, irrelevant to the app. This means that, in evaluation of the whole experience, the significance of SL's quality inevitably overpowers that of the app's quality. The only exception would be if a "killer app" was produced which was free - and that would be a disaster, since every other app would have to be free too in order to compete, and the business potential of SL would be wiped out.

"But people can buy L$!" Sure. But that means that the users of the app will be "pure L$ buyers" (because going into business in SL would, per se, remove the app's independance) and that means that the app will basically be being sold in US$. That means a) it'll have to compete against other things sold in US$ for the entertainment buck, and b) odd phenomena will arise in the currency exchange (eg, when the L$ goes up, so do all your prices)

At the moment, SL can't even deliver its own premise ("be what you wish and do anything" without burdening it down with economic issues. There might be good reasons for that, but it's still true. So how is it going to start operating as a delivery platform for a different application?

For those who are new to SLOG, you can find the articles Yumi is talking about here:

http://secondslog.blogspot.com/

Give it a rest.

I don't think platform means the same to us both. A platform doesn't need an economy. The L$ is irrelevant.
Platform means the technology behind SL gets used for real work, by real professionals.
The end goal of SL should be to make the content development tools powerful enough that Sony or Blizzard seriously starts looking at building their next MMORPG with Second Life.
If SL succeeds as a platform, the current virtual world thing will probably be subsidized, bundled with ads, and become irrelevant as a revenue stream compared with such licensing deals.

Thanks for the link. No kidding. I actually lost it momentarily (I thot it was http://slog.blogger.com for some reason). Gosh I got to get my bookmarks better organized.

I don't understand a lot about money, apart from, well, it's nice I can use it to buy watermelons. I do read the articles that come in about SL about this schtuff, so for me, it's very much about digesting what comes along in the hopes of having a fuller (or at least, less-empty) worldview.

One article very relevant to the discussion at hand is this gemmy gem, The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. I rec a good read of it!

Some great insight Yumi, and I see where you are coming from. I guess it boils down to how we define "platform." When I wrote that piece for SLOG a few things came to mind.

1. Tringo. Not so much the playing of Tringo, but the use of Second Life as a platform for the creation of the game.
2. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Training project by Satchmo Prototype uses Second Life as a training platform.
3. LearnLand, a project in its infancy dedicated to using Second Life as a corporate training platform.
4. Machinima, Alt-Zoom in particular is using Second Life as a platform to create movies.
5. The Wells Fargo project.

I feel that Second Life as a game also sits upon the Second Life platform, but it becomes complicated because (with the exception of Wells Fargo) you have to PLAY the Second Life game to access the Second Life platform to use in your other projects.

I will let Ingrid comment on her own SLOG article.

Well first off, thanks to anyone who read my ramblings.

I guess just from my non technical standpoint, I feel that SL is sort of set up to really appeal to "hard core" ... "players". People who are motivated to learn the tools and get the most out of them. But what about everyone else who doesn't fit into LL's expectations? If it really is a second life as opposed to a platform, shouldn't the world be able to accomodate everyone? Even those who don't necessarily want to toil away at a large project, or those who just feel like kicking back and being part of it? Why isn't there a fun, simple way of making a few bucks in SL?

i think you raise some valid questions. I was just writing something else sort of aligned with your post, but I'll take a step back and dump a few comments for better or for worse.

I agree that while SL remains a closed technical platform, a lot of things made in and for SL will be tied to and limited to SL customers. But not *everything*. Tringo is a perfect example of something prototyped in SL and then transferred over to other plaforms.

I also agree with your point about the exchange rate, however, if you wanted to make sure that your customers were always paying the same amount in US$, you could always fix your L$ prices to the US$-L$ exchange rate. I agree, though, that this isn't currently practical for most people.... exchange rate volatility can be a real problem for both creators and consumers.

To look at your Windows-photoshop analogy: Windows was very buggy in it's early versions, so many fewer people bought Windows and applications for Windows. To say you now use photoshop on windows even if windows is bad... well, Microsoft has had a lot of years that Linden Lab has not had to expand functionality and remove bugs so that even if it isn't that great, it still basically allows photoshop to function.

My point is that we're not there yet technology-wise in SL.

When SL does get there in terms of technical performance/scalability/tools, there's still going to be a challenge to get people to want something enough to pay extra for it. This is a universal fact of business... and so people dream up all sorts of clever ways to try to increase demand or let people demo or etc etc to get past this hurdle. SL entrepreneurs will face the same challenges.


I do agree with ingrid that the current Second Life demands that people remain very self motivated to remain interested... whether on a social or creative front. I still don't view SL as a world/platform/whatever that is ready for the mass market.

I bet it's because there are simply not enough jobs. The few big players can afford to hire managers, sales people, designers, architects, strippers, but most creators with their own stores do everything themselves.

We need better tools for handling such things. I don't think it's all because we're a world full of do-it-yourselfers. The group tools simply don't cut it for handling collaborative business arrangements. There are things I would love to hire other people to do for me but it probably wouldn't save me any time. It might in fact take up more of it trying to manage employees, delegate, do payroll, sp forth and so on. There are some simple things that we need that just aren't there, like simple ways to do split payments. I should be able to put an item in my store and set it to pay x percent to me and y percent to someone else (or several someone else's) without having to use a complex scripted vendor. I should be able to search a history of all my transactions going back a few years to see what someone bought and when, without having to spend half an hour every week copying and pasting out of the account history (please for the love to god add item names to the downloadable excel files!!!!). Those are just a couple of examples.

The risks are simply too high as it stands right now. In order to have someone work for me and actually save me time I'd have to open up all my textures and permissions to them. If we had a spat they could easily destroy my entire business by putting out copyable versions of my stuff. Who's willing to take that risk? Not I.

you said it chip...

btw, you should really send robin a note on your wish list for new group tools... and I've been meaning to do the same for weeks... she stated at SLCC that they are working on coming up with new group functionality and wanted ideas.

My guess is that there is a lot of focus on land group tools issues, but there are a lot of business organization issues that i would love to see built into group tools and permissions... and remain a big roadblock in the way of large scale projects in SL

Lindex! Jesus. Where would SL be if nobody ever bought money?

Strictly speaking I disagree. A platform is nothing more than an environment that supports development and use of applications.

Even if NOONE ever develops and uses anything on my platform it's still a platform because it CAN be used as such.

What makes a platform successful is a stable usage of applications on that platform. Stable enough that the benefits outway the costs of maintaining it.

Is SL a 'successful' platform?

I really think it is way too early to make that judgement. There are applications on SL of all types. There is an ever-growing usership of those applications and new ones all the time.

The real test, for me at least, is watching to see if RL-value within SL increases continuously and eventually reaches comparable levels with RL services of similar nature.

For gambling will SL gambling eventually reach the same RL-value as RL gambling?

Will programming within SL eventually reach the same RL-value as programming in RL?

Will modeling (architecture and building) eventually reach the same RL-value as similar services in RL?

I think the key to making this happen is to move RL-valued applications and services into SL where they might enjoy a lower cost or risk.

My interest, for example, is to build a turoring business within SL that is equivalent to the Sylvan Learning Centers in RL. Lower overhead and travel costs resulting in lower prices BUT still prices that have RL-value. That will trickle down to other areas within SL such as scriting and building to support the facilities and infrastructure. That, in turn, will trickle down to other areas in SL such as the fashion industry. Eventually all these will areas will move to position more in line with RL-value for the time of the people providing the services.

Technology will also bring RL-value into SL as the virtual world and our interface with it become more interactive with our RL senses.

SL is SO young in this respect that the kinds of issues I see people concerned with in a large part I find trivial and out of place.

For me, from a business perspective, the main issues are:

1. Curtailing those that attempt to bring the grid down as this directly affects the viability of any RL-valued business.
2. Improving the crippling lag and time dilation problems.
3. More seemless and efficient ways of moving information between SL and RL.
4. Maintaining a stable exchange rate between L$s and RL$s (be they US$s or any other RL currency).

Quite frankly the issue of what newbies do to earn money is one of diversity of the jobs within SL. THAT diversity will begin to happen on a larger and larger scale as more RL-valued jobs move into virtual space.

it would be in Super Happy Fun Land?

On the contrary.

People buy money so that they CAN have fun...by THEIR definition of their OWN fun.

Money is nothing more than an abstracted barter system.

The people that buy money provide goods or services in RL for which they are paid and choose to spend it in SL.

The people that SELL L$s provide goods or services in SL for which they are paid by the ones above and choose to spend that money in RL.

SL is only an extension of RL. That is the whole point of SL...to be the virtual space extension of RL.

It hardly matters if you trade your 'free' widget in exchange for my 'free' widget or if we both put them up for sale for L$s that we earn through other more indirect means. It amounts to the same thing as direct barter but is MUCH more efficient and versitile. It also allows those that don't have skills in the, very limited, set of SL skills to enjoy SL...by 'bartering' their RL skills for L$s that they can spend in SL.

I believe money chairs are a symptom of a larger problem, like many others. With stripend changes and other moves by LL, they have created a class of very poor folks that will resort to all sorts of tedious ways to gain L$.

Let's face it, shopping is a big attraction within SL. Folks like to shop, and like to get those new outfits and gadgets, because it's fun.

I meet so many new folks these days that don't have 2 L$ to rub together, but will do just about anything to earn some, within the boundaries of thier skill set. They will chase down money trees for the few L$, they will sit in money chairs, they will attend any event that might offer a cash prize. They chase they almighty L$ with a passion, and they grow frustrated while doing so.

Some causes and symptons of SL's illness:

1. Event support taken away (for the most part) has led to most event hosts concerned only about dwell or selling products to make thier L$ back. There is no question that it hurt the "creative events" aspect. For those of you that have been around for quite some time, take a look at the changes and when they really started coming into play.

2. Taking away bonues. Sure..it ended rate parties, but it also made SL alot less fun for many folks. Less "handout" L$ has made a huge difference in the SL society, and most of it is negative in my opinion. It's such a rat race now.

3. The Focus on the economy by LL and particularly in their advertising and sound bites. LL has made SL sound like the land of plenty, when in fact, it isn't unless you have the time to spend developing creative and marketable skills, and can push your product in a virtual world already over saturated with products. Again, it's such a rat race now.

Now, I have enough L$ to get by, because I tiered down, and I don't shop much, and I've been around awhile. Certainly not because I've ever made any really money here. I've spent tons of RL $ on SL though. It's not the land of plenty for me, but it is a social and creative outlet. But who can deny that the community has changed toward a capitolistic, money chase and away from an artistic, creative and social society?

Many folks come into SL to have fun. If they have to contend with spending far more $$ than they would on a MMORPG, and/or if they don't have alot of RL $, and if they mistook LL's continual pushing of "you too can get rich in SL" for a common or even remotely common occurance, then chances are they will tire of SL quickly.

If they are hardcore business oriented, than they might do ok, and enjoy the struggle for financial success within SL, but I don't think that is the majority of folks stepping through the door.

I'm not positive about anything, other than SL has some deep seated problems, in my humble opinion. If you want to retain folks, and you want creativeness and artistic endreavors to thrive, making it have the same stresses as RL is not the answer.

Do you need money to have fun in SL? I'd say no. But ask the 1000's of newbs and not-so-newbs trying to get enough L$ together to go shopping, and what they go through to get it, and you will most likely get a different answer.

I have seen and still see this as a far more fundamental problem.


Simply, people equating material "stuff" as the pinnacle of their enjoyment.

This is not capitalism per se, but it's certainly a function of it. Materialism, as it were, is the call and the creed here in SL. In many ways that's just a reflection of the real (American) way of life.

In pushing to make goods "tangible" in Second Life, grasping at a closed economy, and pushing the almighty power of the L$, Second Life has more or less brought itself to mirror the real world. I find that pretty unsurprising.


History loves to repeat itself.

That problem can't really be "fixed," unfortunately. Not everyone is skillful, nor can all understand the difference between personal happiness and wealth. And so, the net result is a rat race for the bulk majority of residents.


Is this a bad thing, though?

Maybe. It's exploitative in some ways. But truly, the masses are adults. If they're willingly getting exploited by the "big bad business model," it's their problem.


Personally, I say let them have their rat race. If you're seriously concerned about your business and don't like it, find an effective niche instead. There are plenty that Second Life has yet to cover in its relative infancy

It's an inevitability, and the only way SL can hope to move beyond being a niche product. In order to appeal to the masses it needs compelling content, and lots of it. If all anyone has on their mind is just noodling around with the tools and showing off to other creative people (what first got me hooked on SL) there's not likely going to be enough stuff (or the right type of stuff) to appeal to people who don't want to make stuff, or just noodle, but want to be entertained with quality toys and things. Having a real money incentive to develop for SL ends up giving the non-creative people more quality content to play with. They just have to pay for it. The ability to pay other people to make you toys (through buying L$) opens up SL to be more entertaining to more types of people. Not less.

Right on, Chip. Second Life itself shouldn't be a niche; niches should be able to form in Second Life.



What bugs me is SL's inability to harness the lion's share of what the world wide web has to offer, content-wise.

I think the reason we see such a large proportion of "rat race" businesses versus "compelling content" is due to the limitations of a Linden-run, closed system. Second Life, as a platform, isn't yet to the point where it can compete with the rest of the world on more than a very basic level.


For example, Tringo is very competitive with things like Yahoo! Games. And yet, as Eggy loves to point out, SOE or Blizzard could not even consider hosting a content-rich game on the platform. It's closed, rigid, and has several major holes that are continually defered.

As for the few content-rich games we have, I went through the frustration of having my game broken out from under me. This is due to a few fundamental flaws Hamlet paraphrased from me in the article.



Over time, I'd like to think those barriers will be broken. HTML on a Prim shows promise, but really what we need is an API. Or at the very least, a standard level that would let us build onto the architecture itself.

Because, let's face it. The Lindens are human beings. We cannot (and should not) have to come to them for all of our content-related woes.

This upper limit to creativity needs to be overcome.

Ingrid, I was here before the L$ had a value. It was certainly fun, but the world was immensely smaller, to the point that LL had to lay off most of its dev team and almost gave up on SL altogether.
Content was an order of magnitude simpler and unpolished. People did things just for the creativity and not to make a buck, so they never made it user friendly, featureful or properly debugged. Speaking from my own experience, when I say something was done in Beta, well, you can bet your ass we did invent and experiment with pretty much everything in the pre-1.2 world, but never bothered to get it up to production quality, market or distribute it.
Hell, when I got here, the culture was such that the mere act of BUYING something, rather than making your own, was frowned upon. People who bothered to make money just to get their names on the leaderboard were tacitly labeled "ruthless capitalists" and handing out things without full permissions was also discouraged (back then everything defaulted to full permissions).
Certainly it was a heap of fun since it was a smaller world where everyone knew each other and you could get land for free. I miss it. You would have loved to have seen it, and I would surely give anything to go back to it. But that's just me being selfish and wanting to isolate myself from the "masses" out there, who actually drive the economy and ultimately helped propel SL as a content development tool, first for personal/amateur use (making L$ and GOMing them) and now even for professional projects.
Without those masses LL would be bankrupt.

(nod) And this is another issue. It ties in a lot with the Habitat article linked above. All that actually matters in the virtual world is the links between people. What this means is that having an item in SL - a graphical bit of clothing, or a house, or whatever - is only valuable for one thing: it forces the community at large to join you in the imagination that you have that item. That's all. If you just say "I have a big house", then that house is no more imaginary than a Damianos marble palace, but the person you say it to can choose not to participate in that fantasy. If, on the other hand, you can actually fly out to your land and show them your house, they're forced to in a way - there are very few players who, having done that, will say "yes, but it's still not really a house", even though that's perfectly true.

Realising that means that goods in SL can't really have the significance they do in RL. If you get a bunch of people who'll grant that you possess something in imagination, then you have it just as really as you do if you bought it from an SL store. Yes, it does feel uncomfortable and jarring to push your suspension of disbelief over the natural position SL tends to encourage (ie, graphical = real, scripted = real, textual = not real) but it's doable. And, at the end of the day, no matter how many graphics you have you're going to need social endorsement to make them worth anything. There's no point having a house if no-one else ever sees it, after all.

I wonder if this is partly to blame for the popularity of BDSM and cybersex on SL and other RP games. You can keep on all you like about "socially maladjusted folks" and "ugly in real life and making up for it" but I suspect there's a deeper issue than that: that cybersex is a situation where it's beneficial to socially endorse someone else's role. You believe that they're beautiful/handsome because that way you get to cuddle up to a beautiful/handsome partner. Same with BDSM: the very role of being a "slave" is basically socially endorsing the role of a "master" or "mistress". Beyond that, the roles get hazy. If you want to be a spy, who's going to socially endorse that by playing the guy who gets spied on? Yes, there ARE people that do that, but it requires a far more complex social contract which just can't be assumed of people in general.

Is it really viable as a content development tool for personal/amateur use? I'd dearly love it if LL would release the figure of what percentage of landowning players who have items for sale recieve enough L$ in a month that, if all cashed out, it would pay their tier.

And the "masses" out there are, I'm afraid, sitting in camping chairs. That's how they're "driving the economy". They're feeling the same way I did when I was a newbie - that I just need to avoid doing anything that costs money because I have so little of it. Even socialising felt bad because I was ashamed of my av!

This is the most perceptive post I've read in a long time.

I really can't see a genuine general point here. There would be nothing to prevent my doing the following:

I develop a superb game, playable within secondlife.
I sell a cd giving access to this game. Its enabling app autoguides me through the process of signing for a free account, and drops me straight into the game start point, may be even taking over my keyboard control and kitting me out with game gear before it uncovers the SL client viewer and releases me to play. Also loading me with an HUD giving special game capability.

Wouldn't this be using SL as a pure platform under your definition, much like an Xbox ?

If I liked I could probably negotiate with SL to constrain my players to my own continent, provide spevial login etc etc, special bulk prepayment of special entry charge etc etc.

This is all possible, beginning to happen (Wells Fargo Bank was it?). Just need a good enough subgame, and maybe the new renderer and physics would help.

In my opinion, Yumi, your post is based on a misunderstanding of what is possible. And this "killer App", bought externally for a single payment, and internally isolated or not as desired, needn't be a game. It could be anything.

Has it changed? Are there FEWER creative artistic endevors today? Or is the relative percentage just lower. Because the more people you have that want to buy/do interesting things then the more of a demand there is for creativity.

Seems to me that the demand generated by the masses has created more competition and an escalation of creativity and uniqueness. Those that create for free aren't affected in the least by this and those that like to see their products at the pinnicle of success will fight competion through perfection and creativity.

And why do you think SL was 'made to have' the same stresses as RL? It seems to me that more and more SL is having it's economic reigns released...to the extetent that still alows stability control over the L$. What results when central control is released over the masses? Creativity certainly doesn't suffer THOUGH it might appear as if it does. The appearance is only because the creativity is generated by a relatively small number while the numbers of the masses are growing at a much larger rate.

Today do you REALLY think there is LESS creativity or FEWER actual numbers of players creating than a year ago? I really doubt that is the case. You just see the numbers of masses increasing at a larger rate than the creative core is all. That is a GOOD thing though as it gives the creative core an outlet for their efforts.