What's so cool about content creation?

Imagine a time in the future when fancy tools for creation are not standard. The amount of optional tools in the Second Life library has grown too large to ship along with the client for general use. Most of the advanced tools are available as plugins only.

For the normal user, this is not a problem because they are mostly browsers. They bookmark their favorite areas and have a collection of their favorite objects and programs, but they don't ever use the advanced plugins available because they don't have a need for them. Most of the stuff they think they want has already been made, and new stuff shows up every day from hundreds of popular creators.

A user might not have the tools to create a chair, but he had hundreds of available chairs that he could rez at a moment's notice from his inventory. Some of them are provided in free collections he subscribes to and others he has collected or purchased along the way. The same goes for almost any object he could want. Someone else has already made something at least close to an exact match.

The plugins that he has downloaded and installed are those that help him keep track of the objects he has and find new things that he might not have yet. He also has chat plug-ins that integrate his Yahoo messenger account with Second Life.

This is fine for most users because that's all they want from Second Life. They're the same people who are devoted to Myspace and other such sites. Someone else handles the hard part of creation because they just want to hang out with friends and have a bit of fun, share their latest cool gadgets and plan for the next time they will meet up to go out clubbing.

This kind of activity requires thousands of creators working to put out the content people want.

I've heard people complaining about how Second Life focuses so much on business and new technology at the expense of the normal user, but you have to think about it from the other way around. The people who Linden Lab is appealing to now are the people who in the future will be building the experiences of every new user who uses Second Life. Linden Lab is not ignoring you when they focus on those people who are doing business in Second Life; they are building up the support structure for the future when millions of users will be joining up and looking constantly for new content and experiences.

Second Life has to be ready for this influx.



How Many People Will be in Second Life One Year From Today? - Reuben Steiger
The future of VWs over a quarter - Dmitri Williams

What a fascinating post! I have nothing to add except that for this one shining moment, Baba doesn't suck.

Where's the graph of active users, Baba? That is the only true indicator of growth and it is quite stagnant.

I read recently that durring a 3 month period at least 90% of account have some activity.

It's amazing. I've seen the light.

I'd like to see that reference. As someone focused on Second Life's lack of user retention I am online and taking notes throughout the day. Plenty of people still under the old basic account stipend log in weekly to make sure they get their L$50.

Watching the active user count my guess would be at best 25% of the registered accounts are active. And a smaller percentage than that are "actively" active meaning using the system for more than a quick check-in.

If the rapid rise in new accounts was accompanied by even a 50% parallel in active users your graph would be meaningful, but as it is that registered user accounts number is just a marketing figure.

Excellent post Baba.

I look forward to having more advanced tools.
Especially if we could fire up our client app without having to connect in order to create. When I create I often have 3 programs going at once not including a web browser or SL.

Being able to create offline in a natural SL environ with a seamless transition to SL, objects would then just add them selves to inventory once connection occurred.
That way such plugins could be designed to run off the user's
resources rather than just primarily off the server side.
And I believe this would work as long as the creation output
followed the parameters for use in SL.

As far as everything anyone ever needed, having already been made. Maybe in certain areas that could be true but unlike
RL when major technological advances are implemented in a
virtual world they potentially affect the way everything is made.
Clearing the way for better made or better appearing products
to capitalize on the new technology.

I suspect that at some point that avatars will more closely resemble the characters now available at the poser 6 level.
That may take some time however I believe it to be an eventuality. Naturally there will be a need to make all products
having anything to do with an avatar be upgraded to
match the quality of the new AV mesh.

Since the ability to handle that load will be the result of added tech and pure processing power, those changes could cause the products of yesterday to suddenly become somewhat drab
and archaic. Thus perhaps even chairs may have new life in
new market terms for improved appearance if not improved function.

In the Real World a new technological change does not represent a major change in the basic fabric of reality.
Whereas it often does in a Virtual World.

The future of VWs over a quarter

In the first comment.. The the numbers are at least 4-6 months old.

Clearly Baba and Pandastrong are sharing the same weed.

That was a cool thing to say. Thumbs up. Though it still reminds me of that one part in My Cousin Vinny.

Vinny Gambini: "I object to this witness being called at this time. We've been given no prior notice he'd testify. No discovery of any tests he's conducted or reports he's prepared. And as the court is aware, the defense is entitled to advance notice of any witness who will testify; particularly those who will give scientific evidence, so that we may properly prepare for cross-examination. As well as give the defense an opportunity to have the witnesses reports reviewed by a defense expert, who might then be in a position to contradict the verocity ot HIS conclusions."

Judge Chamberlain Haller: "Mr. Gambini?"

Vinny Gambini: "Yes, sir?"

Judge Chamberlain Haller: "Mr. Gambini, that is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection."

Vinny Gambini: "Thank you."

Judge Chamberlain Haller: "OVERRULED."

*weeps* Life's not fair!!!

Thanks Baba. I think the answer lies in how old the numbers are. In today's Second Life people logging in all ten of their ALTs shouldn't count as concurrency. I can believe that six months ago there was a greater portion of active users as they were amazed at the breadth of creativity they were given and uncharted potential. Today's user numbers reflect an almost completely "let's try it, it's free" situation which will never push the active user count.

I know you are a huge proponent of open sourcing Second Life, and Linden Lab is headed in that dirction from their additional web APIs and of course direct statements in Town Halls. I hope the tool you described someday exists. I don't want to discourage anyone from reaching such a delivery platform.

Being free can't really hurt. If someone who wouldn't try it because it cost money sticks around now because it's free and they find they truly love Second Life, then we have gained a regular user.

There are all kinds of metrics for counting the number of users, but if you have enough data you can figure it out to within a pretty good margin. Linden Lab has all the data, and while they do present marketable figures, they're usually pretty honest. Second Life is growing, and I know they are working at getting their concurrency numbers up.

That doesn't seem to be true and it smells like you pulled it out of your ass. I hope Baba shoves the active user graph right in your face, I'd like to the graph of active users from 2003 to present. <makes faces at Clubside> I'd settle for a graphe from last October to present.

Clubside, i can only relate my own limited observation since i first joined, but it seems to me that most every evening i logged on in mid-March of this year, the active user count hovered around 2000-2500 people at any given moment. now, four months later, it frequently reaches 7000-8000 (provided the grid doesn't go down for maintenance again..;-0)

i may not be understanding the question you're asking (and please correct me if i haven't!) but that doesn't seem like a stagnant number of active or concurrent users?

Actually, it was close to 9000 the other night when I looked. If the article was from six months ago and it was approaching 4500 then, that means the concurrent user numbers have about doubled in the last six months. And when you're talking about concurrent users, that tends to exclude most alts. I can register as many alts as I like, but I'm only likely to be logged on with one concurrently (maybe two if I fire up the laptop, but open registration hasn't made that any easier than before).

Clubside Granville, where are you getting your figures from? Your contention seems to fly in the face of every bit of evidence I can see.

Julia, I do believe that his figures come from his butt.

Ah, that would be likely. After all, 90% of statistics are made up.

I never meant to imply that everything ever needed will be available. Only that what the average user perceives as necessary to them at any given time will probably be available. Those users who are drawn to the bleeding edge or those who are activly developing will of course be the firsts to see new trends and new technologies that will start to effect the average user sometime in the future.

I forsee this going in both directions at once - a basic, modular client that allows you options for plugging in mainstream IM and media applications, and much closer integration of the current fancy tools for creation, such as Photoshop, Poser, Maya, etc. which are not plug-ins in any sense right now.

That's how plugins work ;0 you add in what you need and use...

YAY FOR MODULAR DESIGN!

Compiled code has little impact on overall size of application. A single texture for default avatar takes more space than dozens of code functions, so radical change of architecture as space saving measure is rather misguided.... especially when you consider there's lot of work involved in design of robust enough plugin system that could offer enough flexibility, then into implementing it and eventually re-coding current features into new system. This also creates extra steps for user who might want to have a shot at content creating, and potentially acts as detriment -- make it enough hoops for people to jump through and they plain won't bother.

There can be advantage in two-tier client of sort, with simplified interface by default and advanced functions available on user's request .. but i don't think plugin architecture is the silver bullet for this particular issue. This is more of way to ensure the client can remain flexible in long term, a bit different animal from making it 'simple enough' for generic user.

I was talking of the number of available tools which the average user would not use but which still add overhead to the startup process and memory requirements.

Also, refering to menu space. If you don't want it, why should your menu space be cluttered by it?

Then there is support requests. If the client doesn't ship with it normally then only users who use it will have those tools and you have fewer support requests from users who complain about how a tool broke their client.

Posted to my blog

SL client loads in ~3 seconds flat, most of this time is spent in 'detecting hardware' phase. The whole exec file takes ~12 mb.

By converting functions into plugins you'll save maybe fraction of second on load time, and maybe couple mb of memory if you're lucky. Drop in the ocean when the client frequently utilizes hundreds of mb once it actually load the environment and such... and on downside you get time loading hit to analyze, load and link any plugins you might have in more advanced client setup. So seriously, just doesn't seem worth it if that's supposed to be the goal rather than simplicity of base client.

This can be just as well addressed with system similar to what other applications use -- functions not utilized for period of time are automatically trimmed from the menu, plus some of them are by default defined as "advanced" and hidden... like Debug menu is in the current client, for this matter.

Uhmm how would a tool break someone's client? And if anything, i'd think the plugin architecture would add to support issues -- after all, it adds the extra layer of trouble with figuring out what plugins the customer has loaded, do these plugins play nicely with one another or with the base client for that matter, then potential problems with downloading the plugins, ensuring 3rd party plugins aren't written with malicious intent, etc and so on...

Your computer is better than mine..




The tool need not break anything, just the fact that the user may not know how to use it and causes unwanted changes will cause support requests.