If SL isn't a game....

SL is not a game reasons?

no quests
no farming for gold, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange, red, (thank god)
no stats on avatars : agility, stamina, hitpoints,ectect
no goals (ok so you can make your own ;p)
no classes

sure you can make a game in SL, with the above,but its more of a platform,
good luck having over 40 avatars in sim tho

SL always reminded me of 3dstudio online something, just with lego blocks (prims), its more of a freethinking chatroom where you can actually make things or do things while you chat, change your avatar/look however you want it, no game has the ability to be so free as SL is on avatars, be tiny as a mouse, or huge as a skyscraper.

Though my biggest "want" in sl is a decent chat options, highlighted word/text/phrases, ect like they you can use in irc, 1 color text all over screen is horrible ~.~

Most important?, its always changing!, or else we would be consumed with boredom seeing the same every day, and most interesting online thing i ever tried.

I'm all for that. My sales have been a bit off lately

I have to agree with Flip on this one.

I view SL more as an open-ended platform than a game. The fact that it is used primarily for entertainment does not make it a game TO ME.

But I accept that others think of it as a game, and that khamon thinks of it as ... something in between? lol not totally sure.

as flip said, waste of time to argue over it


(but I will say this: LL's moves are not being done to prop up existing content creators, they are being done to create an environment where the content becomes a LOT better, whether that comes from new residents/teams or pre-existing ones)

Welp....
Bartle (see MUD I, MUD II -- first muds) breaks down gamer types into four categories: achiever, explorer, socializer and killer. The reason I mention this is that games do not have to have the features listed in order to be a game. Indeed one could say that those features appeal mainly to the achiever type -- leaving out the other three categories. One could also say that SL appeals mainly to the explorer and socializer categories although I would have to posit that there's enough here for the achiever too if one accepts creation as acheivement (as opposed to, say, being on the stat treadmill and getting up to level gazillion) .

Now most games these days do have the levelling treadmill and thats one of the reasons I swore of gaming for a few years -- I tend to top out on the explorer and socializer levels and not on the achiever or killer categories at all. But just because that's the way it is, does not mean its the way it has to be.

Frankly, I think LL has come up with a new and exciting way of making games. But I also think that, at many levels and for many people (I'd say most but really I have no idea how big their educational and corporate client base is), it is a game.

http://news.com.com/Name+that+metaverse/2100-1043_3-5890497.html

Interesting article which refers to this topic being discussed at the SOP conference.

Check out Torley's comment at the bottom!

(My apologies if this was posted elsewhere, however it seems appropos for this thread).

Yea, it can be a waste of time, but as a new player I'm especially interested because it seems to be paradoxical, and I'm wondering if even the distinction is dangerous.

But the dynamic of SL throws that into a loop. Right now, I'm trying to learn to make stuff in SL, not because I want to make money per se, but because a) I like doing it, and b) I want to enjoy the content others in the world have made and I need to be earning Lindens to do that. So am I using SL as a game or a platform? I don't know. I'm building, but I'm only doing it because I enjoy it and/or because I enjoy other stuff in the game.

The danger that I'm sure many people see is a hard distinction emerging between producers and consumers, just as a result of the 80:20 Pareto rule and the rising skill of the old hands. (Stuff like DI's and the horrible 'everyone around before the Ratings cost change gets a higher stipend' effect don't help much either.) The game/platform split embodies that: the "game" aspect is for consumers and the "platform" aspect is for producers. And as far as I can tell, Linden Lab's logic is: hey, let's favour the producers because they produce stuff, which adds value to our game; let's favour the existing big producers because they produce lots of good stuff and are likely to carry on doing so.

The problem is that for me, SL wouldn't be much fun if it wasn't for having my shot at being a producer. The main other source of fun in SL is socialisation (since most of the really successful in-built games, like Tringo, have a social element). I can then make a guess that the reason for free Basic memberships was an attempt by Linden to increase the amount of social potential in the game to compensate for the loss of building/selling fun to Pareto. The problem is that I for one would be very unwilling to become a pure consumer - exchanging real money for L$ in exchange for avatars, clothes, toys and runs of social games - and plenty of others seem to be that way too. It's far more efficient to just seek out those who feel the same way and socialise with them "in spite" of the SL interface. I've been sitting relaxing on a beach chatting with some friends while my av was actually standing with them in an otherwise-empty shop because everything was being conveyed in multi-line /me's. Sure, it'd have been better with the graphics, but neither of us had access to the L$ to set up anything like that, and had little reason to spend real money for it because at the end of the day imaginary is imaginary no matter how sophisticated and graphical it is.

I'll give a real world example - IMVU.com. IMVU seems to be quite close to a "platform" model, although it has some other big differences from SL, so it's not such a great example but it's the best I've found. It doesn't have a continuous world - but on the other hand, you can build your own social backdrop without needing to fork out megabucks for a private island, and you just teleported everywhere anyway right? There's no stipend; all your currency must be bought for real money. Content development has to be done offline, in 3DS MAX and Photoshop. Most things in these packages are supported, removing the levelling effect of the limitations of the SL platform. There's an upload fee. Everything you upload must go on sale (you can't just make something for yourself - although this could be a benefical change for consumers, I suppose) and there is a single web-based shop operated by the game hosts. You can try and make stuff if you want, but the usual expectation is that you'll sign up, use it to chat and hang out, and buy all your funky avatar bits indirectly with real money. That sounds very close what a "platform" SL would be like.

I don't have a population stat for IMVU but their average login at the times I've checked is around 900 compared to SL's 2000+. I think that'd be sad. Of course, they might argue that that's a good thing because it consumes less bandwidth to avoid serving the people who aren't prepared to pay US$...

Basically, I wish they were trying to maintain the paradox instead of resolving it in one direction

Flash is an engine that serves as a development platform complete with API, associated libraries, and the ability to open bidirectional communication sockets. Are we comparing this to SL?

Flipper is correct in saying out that aruging these points is a waste of time. Silly Khamon thought that interested people were having a discussion. I apologize for pissing on everyone's day by interupting your seriously constructive forum experiences.

SL is in fact something in between. It's not really fair to call it anything other than a truly unique and innovative experience that is in such early stages of development and growth that noone can possibly imagine what it will be like, or what it'll be used for, over the next decade.

geez

That was what I was trying to say in a sense, Khamon - that it would be nice if it could be kept as something "in between" - instead of definatively deciding that it should be developed as a "platform', which is what Linden appear to be doing.

SL isn't a game. SL isn't a platform.

It's a thingie.

t-shirts available upon request.

Lf

That's interesting. SL is a game to me, because it is sold and advertised on gaming forums and game sites.

I figure if you are selling Dove soap on soap sites, you don't get to then say, "But of course, Dove isn't soap." Pretention.

But given that achiever/explorer/socializer/killer array, I think most of us could place ourselves pretty firmly in one camp compared with the others. A quiz could be made about it!

I am definitely of the achiever camp. With socializing coming in second. If achieving in a game requires socializing, I will be a better socializer. If achieving requires killing, I'll kill as best as I can.

I don't know what they mean by "platform" or where they expect to go with becoming or being a "platform" or what the heck "metaverse" is or why it even MATTERS; seems to me we already have the metaverse with the internet. I do not think it works very well, though, to start off with what is mainly a game and then try to turn it INTO a platform. Seems to me that whatever hybrid it began as is the best thing to keep it as.

But what do I know? I don't even know what platform and metaverse mean.

I do know, though, that whatever they are aiming for contains way more sticks than carrots, at least lately. When I first got here there were lots of neat things happening, like being able to show movies in the game. A lot of people pooh-poohed that, but I thought it was fabulous!

Then the idea of the SLTV was terrific, too. With my group, I came up with a show idea that I would still like to do. All the talk about it, though, while it was being tried out for, centered on the technical aspects of making the TV and of making the website for it. There wasn't much interest in the actual content of the shows, or the talent that would put it on. Our group didn't win, and I haven't heard much about any of it since. I should contact Jesse Linden about my show idea, I realize; I think I'm waiting to see what happened to it all. (What did happen to it all?)

Anyway, that was another fun and exciting thing, or seemed to be at the time. And I love the little things like being able to drag things out from inventory by more than one at a time, when we get that.

But . . . still, things seem different to me now. I think maybe the world is getting too big for the Lindens, like they've got a tiger by the tail, and they really don't want to deal with all us unwashed masses, and the sooner they can stop trying to, the happier they will be.

Plus I think there are way too many sticks and not enough carrots. Maybe they only want real businesses, established businesses with deep pockets. They hope to somehow get these (though with inventory disappearing and no recourse, it's hard to see how real businesses will want to do business here much), and if people here to have fun lose out, well, no big deal; and if there are people here they like who are willing to work with them, who can help provide what those REAL businesses need, well, that's okay, too.

But I don't think they have actually BONDED with the unwashed masses as their playing population. They look at them maybe as people who happen to be around, and hope some of them become their REAL customers, which would be the deep-pocketed businesses, or those who can do things FOR the deep-pocketed businesses.

By saying it is not a game, they have no obligation to please the players. They can take away the classified forums and the posters who see the whole game as a dog-eat-dog way of separating other players from their Lindens will say to suck it up, cause that's the way "business" works.

If it's not a game, they have no obligation to police the participants and make sure they are abiding by the terms of service. They can just wall off anything that gets to be too problematic.

If it's not a game, or a society, or a world, but their own private business they are letting us pay to exist in, then they don't need to worry about favoritism, either.

As it stands now, they are occupying a position somewhere in between, I think, which makes their messages and actions somewhat inconsistant. It also makes them vulnerable to criticisms both from those claiming they are taking away all the fun and catering to "business" players, and from those claiming they are coddling the "fun" players too much.

I personally think they would do better to pay less attention to the pie-in-the-sky metaverse stuff and pay more attention to all the people currently flocking here with the idea that they are going to play a fun game. And make it FUN for them, dammit!

I also suspect far fewer decisions are made with these philosophical ideas in mind than are made with financial decisions in mind. When the financial interests coincide with some kind of "metaverse" justification, so much the better. The accountants are the ones with the REAL decision-making power.

But this is a delicate balance to try to maintain, because though they can do these things and justify them philosophically, they risk having too many players leave for more fun elsewhere, and be left with just a few people willing to use the platform. Then we will see the most dreaded of things no one in SL has yet had to face - the peak, and then the decline, of subscription numbers. That's something none of us - and no Linden - wants to see.

In any case, I think most decisions come from one main consideration: Profit for LL. Getting into the money exchange business is one way to increase LL profits. I'm quite certain they are getting some margin of profit off of that. The getting rid of the classified forums - that I believe is a prelude to going into the SLExchange/SLBoutique/Second Server business, and getting a profit margin off that, too. I'll be happy to be convinced that I'm wrong, and there is no profit made whatever in these ventures.

Everybody can talk about platform this and platform that all they want, but I'm here for a game - or, as Khamon astutely phrased the way people like me tend to look at it, a "hobby platform." The issue is - how many of these 65k people are here for a platform? How many are here for a game, or a hobby platform? How many sticks can you give all those people - while taking away their carrots - and have enough of them stay around to make LL a viable business?

In the quest for becoming the metaverse platform, are they, even as we speak, in the process of throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Will all this tough love justified by talk of metaverse and platforms end up driving away the very subscribers who could have made SL a viable ANYTHING? Only time will tell.

coco

Does it say:

I played Second Life and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!

Coco there's a test you can take:

http://www.andreasen.org/bartle/test.cgi

Its called, surprisingly enough, The Bartle Test!

Been around forever.

We already went down this road

/120/3e/32962/1.html

Let's say my real-world company, which we'll call Tankco, wants to take some military hardware, the tank, and scale it down to consumer usability and market to people who like tough cars like Jeeps or Land Rovers.

The Tankco tanks are a little like cars in that you sit in the tanks and they take you places, but they're obviously not cars because they have tracks and can climb interesting surfaces that no car could ever tackle. Like cars, they require fuel, but unlike cars, they don't have tires. They can also take a direct impact from another vehicle and even be rolled over without doing much more than scuffing the paint work.

Tankco's target audience, as I mentioned, already owns cars, but they've never had a tank before and we're willing to bet that if they just gave tanks a chance, we're feeling pretty confident they'd like the experience a whole lot.

Tancko knows tanks damn well, but there's a big industry that's been around for a few years selling cars that knows a thing or two about the user experience car drivers enjoy. As president of Tankco, I'm going to send a few emissaries to different car shows and conferences to learn more about how people like their cabins laid out and what sort of comfort they like in their seats. This doesn't mean I'm making cars -- I'm still making tanks. But I can learn a whole lot from the background already established by the auto industry.

As I make tanks. Which are different than cars (see above).

When the time comes to bring my tanks to market, I'm going to remember that many of my customers are people who like cars. I think my tank is better than a car, though, so I'm going to place advertisements in places where people like to look for cars and hope the intrigue of the Tankco experience is sufficient to the task of luring them away from cars.

Just because I am sending my tanks to car shows and buying ads in car magazines doesn't mean I'm making a car. I'm making a tank. But the audience who buys the tank will be very similar to the audience buying the car.

touchy touchy khamon

I guess waste of time is the wrong expression. "Futile discussion" might be a better term because even though you never can find resolution on such an inherantly subjective topic, the discussion itself can be interesting and even entertaining.

It's like arguing over whether a painting is any good. Both sides can roll out plenty of defenses, but fundamentally the criteria by which we choose to judge art is completely subjective.

does that mean no one should ever argue over the merits of an artwork? hell no. But it does mean that neither side should get dogmatic in claiming their position is universally correct.

but of course they will anyway

Aye Aye... this is a good position. No one ever knows what really disruptive technology is, until it matures. Bill Gates once said "The Internet is a fad"

To be pedantic though, I will point out that SL does haveAPI's.
It doesn't have sockets communication yet (droool) but I hardly think that's a requirement for a platform(a good idea for sure). With that being said, the email/xml-rpc loop has never failed me yet, but I have yet to do something that was truely real-time.

I certainly subscribe to the "best tool for the job" theory, and SL is definately not the best tool for every job. Rather, I keep a collection of programming languages and game engines in my toolkit.

A constructive questions I'd like to pose though is, "What makes Second Life a fun game?" Is it the fun stuff other people created, the fun aspect of creating stuff yourself (hehe think about gcc as a game) or is it something inherent in the client/virtual world that makes it fun?

Good point - Tanks Enabran!

One thing I see that I believe is incorrectly being projected, and someone correct me if I am wrong (and please provide links) - LL does not advertise on game sites. Game sites sometimes do articles on SL though. Free advertising never hurts.

I am reasonably sure, however, that companies who fabricate assembly line equipment for the production of automobiles advertise in automobile trade magazines (and probably websites). It only makes sense, they are, after all, building platforms for the production of automobiles.

So, even if SL did, does, or will advertise on game sites, it is not very strong case argument for those who think that if they did, that it would be proof that SL is indeed a game.

In the end, I just wish people wouldn't get so indignant about this, on both sides. It's really not very productive.

It would be proof for someone who loves sophistry the way junkies love their crack vials.



You're off my Christmas card list, buddy. Keep it up.

Both the fun stuff others have created and - especially, as I think this is the real hook - the fun aspect of creating stuff yourself.

I don't know what "gcc" is.

I don't know what something inherent in the client/virtual world is, either - but if it means something like the landscape, or the way you click on or do things - no, that's not a particular draw.

coco

Sorry bout that. You know programming is fun. Fire up your favorite code editor, use your favorite programming language, and compile your favorite code and you can make fun stuff. I remember the great joy I had when I created "Hello World", and then again when I created my first useful app (console based address book). Download the stuff other people are making and using it can be fun to!

Programming is fun. Photoshop is fun. 3DStudio Max is fun.

Can I request here? Or must I message you IW? (*asks for the hordes of others wondering the same thing*)

Coco,

1) It sounds like you don't enjoy Linden Labs as a company or Second Life as a game. It makes me wonder, honestly, what keeps you here then?

2) I am one of the "unwashed masses", one of the "social", one of the "club people", (to use most of the terms I've heard), one of the "tourists", yet I've never had a negative experience with a Linden. EVER. The experiences i have had are very positive and lead me to believe that the Lindens are part of the world of Second Life.

3) I'm sorry that you feel that people are not having "fun" coming into SL and that Linden isn't doing enough to make it "fun" for them. The "fun" part of SL for me? It's creating my own "fun", without the strictures of other universes on what is "fun". In TSO, in order to have "fun", you also had to ensure that your simmy was taken care of. In games like WoW, EQ etc. before you can have "fun", you have to grind or build skills etc etc. Sooo, in terms of TSO, I'd like to point out the amounts of ex TSO players there are in the world. Because it stops being fun after awhile to continuously have to click on a toilet, to have to watch a simmy play chess and look around and realize no one else is actually there? If someone does not find their own brand of "fun" within SL, I would lay more blame upon the individual than I would upon any part of LL.

4) Second Life started out as a platform, not a "game", in all actuality. I know that you don't like to look backwards before you enter a universe, but go read the history wikis etc. In the beginning? SL was all about creating and designing.

5) You seem very puffed up and indignant about the whole favoritism thing. However, not to bring up the whole debacle again, weren't you a part of a group that got Lindens attention? That had personalized meeting with Lindens? Just because you weren't a part of those Linden meetings, it was your friends and people with likeminded ideas.

6) It seems to me, honestly, that you will not consider LL and Second Life, friendly fun places until they have submitted themselves to the ideals and values that YOU, Cocoanut Koala, hold near and dear. The universe always needs to line up the way that YOU want it to. And when it doesn't, it's an unfair, bad bad place to live. You cry foul etc. Well, the thing that keeps me in Second Life? The fact that I truly do make it what I want to make it. The day it adopts even 1/2 of the things that you think that it so desparately needs, is the day I'd begin to look for a different environment to play in.

I would just like to state that, for the record, I am having fun.

Well played. It's as if I have minions who say the things I'm too lazy to write myself.

omg we really do say the same things over and over about every three months don't we. and omg i've been saying and listening to them for two years now. omg that is a colossal waste of time isn't it. omg.