If SL isn't a game....

how come the CTO of Linden is giving a talk on Databases For MMOs at the Austin Game Conference?

I'm just sayin....

http://www.gameconference.com/conference/tech.html#database

linky linky so you can see for yourself

oh oh oh and the VP Product Development is on the Advisory Board. Not a game??????

More linky goodness! http://www.gameconference.com/advisors/coryondrejka%20.html

LL sure nuff gonna hate me now -- damned rabble rouser.

Someone (not me) could say, "Well, that's because there are games within SL, so it certainly counts like green is part of the rainbow!"

It's applicable, just not all-encapsulating.

Outside of SL, Cory is involved with a number of gaming projects. Before joining LL he was a well respected game developer. People still very much respect his ideas and opinions on game development. These kinds of people are asked to be on Advisory Boards for events like this, regardless of thier current job.

As far as speaking at a games conference. Well one could see it as a way to get more game developers to use the SL platform. Not to mention the database architecture used to build a Massive Muli-user Virtual World is something that is damn handy to MMOG developers. You don't actually have to be a part of a particular industry to be invited to speak at the industries conference.

My "don't post any more rants and hack people off unintentionally" pledge:

"Second Life is a game.
Before I installed Second Life, Lindens meant nothing to me.
The looks of my avatar meant nothing to me.
The scope of my land meant nothing to me.
If I uninstall and cancel now, they will mean nothing to me again.
If they mean anything now, it's because I've decided I want them to.
I make that decision because I enjoy it being so.
I enjoy having what I have and I enjoy trying to get what I don't have.
I enjoy learning, I enjoy scripting, I enjoy practicing.
If I cease to enjoy it, I can undo my decision any time.
The person with the gold makes the rules,
but only if you want the gold."

LoL!

Got something to do with mixing metaphor, reality, illusions and the perception of it all!

Ain't life grand!

More ice cream please!

It's not a game, it's not a platform, it is a stage, and stage is just another word for phase, and phase can be synonymous with facet.

Thus, Second Life® is a facet. Q.E.D.

Can't we just say, its a game to some people, its a platform to others, its a stage to others etc etc... it all depends whose playing

Well, the problem is when "it's a platform, not a game" is used to justify a change that stops it being fun for many people in exchange for it being more powerful for content creators (or, mostly, pre-established content creators).

My point was that, sure, it's great that folks can sell their stuff and it's good to encourage them to make it, but without the underlying entertainment value there's no reason to want any of it, and it's all pointless if they don't have customers (unless the whole game's going to come down to Anshe going shopping at Chip's mall)

Well thats what I've been saying for a long ass time - but alas - seems that a goodly majority of the ppl on the forums have an overwhelming need to tell us how we should think and view the world

To those I say 'Pooh to you with knobs on! SL is an overweight man on a laz y boy in his underwear - his name is Fred!'

Siggy Romulus, SL is NOT an overweight man on a lazy boy in his underwear. Stop thinking that RIGHT THIS MINUTE! I command you! Further the man in the lazy boy is not named Fred. And further still, if you think that Barca-Lounger is a Lazy Boy, you have a sorely mistaken view of the world.


P.S. Maybe you were thinking about Fred Flintstone or Fred Williard or somebody on tv or something, that happens sometimes.

There is a perfectly good reason why the Linden staff should be addressing the online game community - that is to tell those juvenile little babyfied game players to keep their lousy paws off our platform!

People running around trying to play games in the SL online collaborative modeling and programming developers toolkit? That's crazy talk!

I'm not into the whole platform/game debate, and obviously it's many things to many people. However, I've never heard a good arguement for it being strictly a game that couldn't have been said for the early web. To some people, the web is just for games too. If you cease to enjoy the web you can choose not to use it and in 1994, without entertainment, the web had no value.

To me it's a tool. I have RL clients that want Serious Games for education and training. I can build it in Torque, Gamebryo, or SL. How can you argue it's not a tool for me, when I get paid in USD and don't take part of the SL economy*?

* of course I buy $L on LindeX and go shopping and play games for entertainment, just like the web!

Thankfully (so far), this (in the general sense) hasn't devolved into the pathetic arguments I redundantly heard at the hamfisted vanities of the lame-ass technosnobs years back. (One of the fundamental reasons, as much as many will deny it, why electronic music didn't succeed as widely in North America as it could have, until the terms were grumbled up and more hybridization with rock and pop happened anyway... much to the dismay of the dinosaurs.)

Because MMOGs and MMOVWs share a great many technical challenges that Cory is qualified to speak about?

BUT! He wears underwear - even in the extremes of our viewpoints, we find a common ground (though a slippery path fraught with peril it may be!)

Second Life isn't a game because it's a hobby platform.

The technology that makes SL work resembles that of an online game more than anything else. Like a game SL needs to render 3D space efficiently. Like a game SL has a database for keeping track of accounts and records. Those are subjects that are often discussed at a game developers conference which is why LL participates.

Also like a game SL is a source of entertainment for most of its Residents, however a few use it for other purposes. LL's plan is to add functionality to make SL more of a platform for those who want to use it as a tool and those who want to use for business.

Word.

O

When will Fred get off his a$$ and give us object-to-object communication?

I think SL is "just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there..." Wait,no, that's a Greatful Dead song. Damn, I always get penultimate virtual reality and penultimate hippie music confused...

I have fantasies too, although as of late they don't feature SL as much as they do Natalie Portman and handcuffs. Different strokes and all, I suppose.

So would it then be fair to say that for the majority of us posting here on these forums, it is, indeed, a game. And that the platform can also be used differently.

No. It's fair to say that SL is a game to most people and that it is being used for other things. It's not fair to say that it's a platform. A game, such as City of Heroes, can be used to conduct online garden club meetings, demonstrate 3D graphics to a class, or make money by charging people externally for the use of taxibots. These are different uses of the software similar to things people do with SL. But they don't demonstrate that CoH is a platform.

A platform provides libraries that are used to develop and customize programs. SL would be a platform if we could write plugins for the client or if it included an effective communication protocol. We've been told for two years that such things are great ideas and being worked on. To date, I've seen no evidence of such work.

The problem with providing the functionality needed to transform SL into a platform is that it affects the world and the community. The general concensus is that because most people play SL as a game and highly value the illusion of a single world and a single community. We are told, in no uncertain terms, that this is the upper management's vision of SL and they are very happy that the typical resident fits their mold.

Releasing platform tools would ruin that immersion. It would become painfully apparent to people that the world is a collective of disconnected machines feeding data to their PC so that the client can render a flat view of a nonexisting 3D scenario. We'd be able to plug in code that would tell our clients to render server data differently from everyone else's view. We'd even be able to use plugins to see each others' views, perhaps four at once on a split screen. It's understandable that people panic over such ideas and scream en masse for LL to leave things as they are.

I was referring to Andrew Linden's quote which said "LL's plan is to add functionality to make SL more of a platform for those who want to use it as a tool and those who want to use for business."

So they have plans to turn it into what you consider a platform to be. Further, that's apparently the language they wish to use to describe the part of SL that is not a game.

Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah game blah blah blah blah platform.

Blah blah tastes great blah blah less filling.

Blah blah blah Macintosh blah blah blah PC blah blah.

Blah blah blah Java blah blah blah LAMP blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah waste blah blah blah of blah blah blah time blah blah.

-Flip

What's Flash? A Hobby Platform? Isn't Stagecoach Island a customized application? Mostly though... I think Flip said it best.