SL v. World of Kaneva: Compare and Contrast
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SuezanneC Baskerville
Forums Rock!
Join date: 22 Dec 2003
Posts: 14,229
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03-19-2007 06:06
From: Doing Something Why do you feel that in-world building is a good thing? From: Sue Baskerville Wouldn't need to be inworld building, just something that is real simple to get started with like SL's build editor. Perhaps you misread that as saying "It absolutely HAS to be INWORLD BUILDING, because only inworld building is good; OFFLINE BUILDING SUCKS and the people that like it SUCK TOO!!!!". That, however, is not what it said.
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Doing Something
Registered User
Join date: 17 Feb 2007
Posts: 120
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03-19-2007 06:16
From: SuezanneC Baskerville Perhaps you misread that as saying "It absolutely HAS to be INWORLD BUILDING, because only inworld building is good; OFFLINE BUILDING SUCKS and the people that like it SUCK TOO!!!!". That, however, is not what it said. Sorry, Suez! I must've just read the first sentence and the last one. I was in a rush! 
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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03-19-2007 06:18
From: SuezanneC Baskerville I've never seen the Tyra Banks show, didn't know she had one until I read about the virtual world. Is it like the Jerry Springer show? How sad. The platform that runs the Tyra Banks show also runs a thing called The Lounge, which is interesting, and mercifully didn't remind me of the Jerry Springer show at all. There's me and a stranger in The Lounge:  It will be nice when some other place opens up a VR that runs on computers that allows some form of fast easy object creation by users. Wouldn't need to be inworld building, just something that is real simple to get started with like SL's build editor. I am looking forward to seeing Hipihi when I get the chance. A world that would let you do 2D painting on the inworld surfaces might be interesting. was just a joke - Tyra isnt as "bad" as Springer, no - It would be in that genere of Oprah. Springer, Maury , etc. But Tyra would definitely be on a different end from Springer. Im possitive from the way things are going there will definitely be competition for SL. Some users will be drawn by different things. So content creation will not be nearly as important to some people. On the offline vs online building - I think offline building is just as good as online most the time. Better potentionally. Would be great to build your structure offline - "SAVE" it. Than upload it to the virtual world of choice.
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Doing Something
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Join date: 17 Feb 2007
Posts: 120
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03-19-2007 06:21
From: Pie Psaltery And see, this is the very thing that gets me so angry with SL and the direction LL has decided to take it: There are enough crappy VR worlds based solely on COMMERCE. What intrigued me and addicted me to SL was that it seemed, when Phillip the Pusher-Man first got me hooked, to be based solely on CREATIVITY. Shopping Mall hells, Land-Baron coups, and Club-A-Go-Go lag issues aside, SL seemed to want to be different... smarter, quirkier, less concerned with being taken seriously by Sony or Toyota or the producers of the L-Word and more interested in expressing the dreams and fantasies and TALENTS the platform itself gave its residents the power to breath life into. My fear, which is slowly becoming a reality, is that SL will be 'dumbed down' in this manner in LL's attempt to make it more commercially paletable to large corporations in the same way it's been turned from an adult enviroment to an all-ages show just so Phillip could throw the word "Millions" around. IF a VR world really wanted to compete with SL, they ought to spend the time LL doesn't reading this forum and seeing what the long-time users of this platform feel is lacking from SL, what the real issues are with the platform, and how to create something truly competitive to the platform. Why would LL, or any other VR world, want to appeal to a minority?
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Colette Meiji
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Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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03-19-2007 06:22
From: Doing Something Why would LL, or any other VR world, want to appeal to a minority? Niche marketing
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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03-19-2007 06:24
From: Pie Psaltery And see, this is the very thing that gets me so angry with SL and the direction LL has decided to take it: There are enough crappy VR worlds based solely on COMMERCE. What intrigued me and addicted me to SL was that it seemed, when Phillip the Pusher-Man first got me hooked, to be based solely on CREATIVITY. Shopping Mall hells, Land-Baron coups, and Club-A-Go-Go lag issues aside, SL seemed to want to be different... smarter, quirkier, less concerned with being taken seriously by Sony or Toyota or the producers of the L-Word and more interested in expressing the dreams and fantasies and TALENTS the platform itself gave its residents the power to breath life into. My fear, which is slowly becoming a reality, is that SL will be 'dumbed down' in this manner in LL's attempt to make it more commercially paletable to large corporations in the same way it's been turned from an adult enviroment to an all-ages show just so Phillip could throw the word "Millions" around. IF a VR world really wanted to compete with SL, they ought to spend the time LL doesn't reading this forum and seeing what the long-time users of this platform feel is lacking from SL, what the real issues are with the platform, and how to create something truly competitive to the platform. This is interesting actually. Basically LL is making a potential market for competion by ignoring one of its original core concepts. Id actually be pretty supportive of any company that paid attention to what potential customers want, rather than corporate clients. Now where do we find game/platform developers that actually read what users have to say .. ?
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Alazarin Mondrian
Teh Trippy Hippie Dragon
Join date: 4 Apr 2005
Posts: 1,549
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03-19-2007 06:39
From: Colette Meiji I think offline building is just as good as online most the time. Better potentionally. Would be great to build your structure offline - "SAVE" it. Than upload it to the virtual world of choice. Absolutely, Collette! What I'd like to see is offline building that can be 'saved' and then uploaded to any 3D MMORPG. This would be great for content creators. For instance it would enable me to be able to sell my treehouses in Active Worlds or any other 3D MMORPG as well as SL. However that'd prolly need either a common engine between all platforms (highly unlikely) or an offline editor that could save my work in a multiple of different formats (prolly the most likely method). Another useful tool would be one that could convert builds from one proprietary 3D MMO format to another so that if the company hosting the MMO your sim/world/creation goes down the pan, it would be possible to convert it to a format that could be imported into another MMO. Heck, even an offline building environment for SL would keep me happy. That way I could build up bespoke themed sims without bankrupting myself in the process.
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Doing Something
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Join date: 17 Feb 2007
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03-19-2007 06:41
From: Colette Meiji Niche marketing and that's good?
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
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03-19-2007 06:46
From: Doing Something and that's good? Of course.
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Pie Psaltery
runs w/scissors
Join date: 13 Jan 2004
Posts: 987
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03-19-2007 06:47
From: Doing Something Why would LL, or any other VR world, want to appeal to a minority? Green Day - Minority I want to be the minority I don't need your authority Down with the moral majority 'Cause I want to be the minority I pledge allegiance to the underworld One nation under dog There of which I stand alone A face in the crowd Unsung, against the mold Without a doubt Singled out The only way I know I want to be the minority I don't need your authority Down with the moral majority 'Cause I want to be the minority Stepped out of the line Like a sheep runs from the herd Marching out of time To my own beat now The only way I know One light, one mind Flashing in the dark Blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts "For crying out loud" she screamed unto me A free for all Fuck 'em all You are your own sight 'Cause I want to be the minority I don't need your authority Down with the moral majority 'Cause I want to be the minority One light, one mind Flashing in the dark Blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts "For crying out loud" she screamed unto me A free for all Fuck 'em all You are your own sight 'Cause I want to be the minority I don't need your authority Down with the moral majority 'Cause I want to be the minority
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Doing Something
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Join date: 17 Feb 2007
Posts: 120
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03-19-2007 06:51
From: Colette Meiji Of course. Aren't niche markets for the small fish who can't compete with the big fish? Doesn't every company aspire to be a big fish? Don't big fish see bigger profits than the little fish? Would you rather be a goldfish or a shark? Fish smell!
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Doing Something
Registered User
Join date: 17 Feb 2007
Posts: 120
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03-19-2007 06:57
From: Pie Psaltery Green Day - Minority blah blah blah
Green Day - American Idiot blah blah blah...
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Colette Meiji
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Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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03-19-2007 07:01
From: Doing Something Aren't niche markets for the small fish who can't compete with the big fish? Doesn't every company aspire to be a big fish? Don't big fish see bigger profits than the little fish? Would you rather be a goldfish or a shark? Fish smell! Niche market From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector.
By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.
A distinct niche market usually evolves out of a market niche, where potential demand is not met by any supply.
Such ventures are profitable because of disinterest on the part of large businesses and/or lack of awareness on the part of other small companies. The key to capitalizing on a niche market is to find or develop a market niche that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not owned by one established vendor already. Profit is made when your Income from business exceeds your expendatures. While your total revenues will be smaller. Its entirely possible for a Niche Marketed Item to be extremely proffitable. SL was a Niche market product - it is becoming more and more mainstream. If in doing so their original market become disatisfied, the original market for Second Life becomes a market someone can exploit.
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Gaybot Foxley
Input Collector
Join date: 15 Nov 2006
Posts: 584
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03-19-2007 07:02
My 2 favorites from Greenday.....
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
&
When I Come Around

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Pie Psaltery
runs w/scissors
Join date: 13 Jan 2004
Posts: 987
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03-19-2007 08:02
From: Doing Something Green Day - American Idiot blah blah blah... See and here I thought "American Idiot" was a song lamenting the 'dumbing down' of a country by the corporate media machine.
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Robin Laffer
Boogie mans daughter
Join date: 29 Apr 2006
Posts: 75
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03-19-2007 08:08
cos typing in bold makes your opinion more valid
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Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
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03-19-2007 08:19
From: Pie Psaltery There are enough crappy VR worlds based solely on COMMERCE. What intrigued me and addicted me to SL was that it seemed, when Phillip the Pusher-Man first got me hooked, to be based solely on CREATIVITY. Shopping Mall hells, Land-Baron coups, and Club-A-Go-Go lag issues aside, SL seemed to want to be different... smarter, quirkier, less concerned with being taken seriously by Sony or Toyota or the producers of the L-Word and more interested in expressing the dreams and fantasies and TALENTS the platform itself gave its residents the power to breath life into. My fear, which is slowly becoming a reality, is that SL will be 'dumbed down' in this manner in LL's attempt to make it more commercially paletable to large corporations in the same way it's been turned from an adult enviroment to an all-ages show just so Phillip could throw the word "Millions" around. IF a VR world really wanted to compete with SL, they ought to spend the time LL doesn't reading this forum and seeing what the long-time users of this platform feel is lacking from SL, what the real issues are with the platform, and how to create something truly competitive to the platform.
I understand what you feel about SL at the moment, but I get the distinct feeling that it got where it was by evolving there, not by being pushed there by Philip Linden or anyone else. LL realised that the model of "every user can eventually earn an unlimited amount of land, but they still pay $9.99/month" wasn't viable because land is server space, so they introduced tier. After that, L$->USD trading had to be introduced to prevent creators having to pay to create; but it also required the USD value of the L$ to be protected, adding extra concern for commerce. And after that, because USD is a reward that exists outside the world of Second Life, the concept of professional creators - who do nothing but create - came into existance; but in doing so, the amateur creators lost their niche protection. No new VR world that wants to compete with SL is going to start up by basing itself on user content creation. It would be suicide! There would be no content to start with, so no consumers would be interested; and creators also probably wouldn't be interested since there would be no market for what they created. SL didn't have this problem because, since it was the first to offer anything like this, people interested in creating content on an online world didn't have anywhere else to go; but making a new environment as attractive as SL to newly arriving creators will be very difficult. So they're pursing the opposite direction: make it as appealing as possible to consumers. Maybe later they will offer user content creation - or maybe, they'll just hire professional creators, on the grounds (as we saw in SL) they would have eventually emerged anyway. It's only been my observation but it seems that the number of people who fall in between those two stools - professional creators and pure consumers - is gradually waning. (By the way, an odd thing was pointed out to me recently - there is a new game that's come out with content creation at almost the same level as Second Life... but it's a motor racing game (!) called Trackmania United. You can create media for every part of the game (tracks, cars, graphic sets, music, avatars, "mods"..), and it includes a content sharing system and a web-like interface where you can design a store for it, and you buy and sell it with a built-in currency. The only slight difference is that you have to provide your own hosting for your content by hosting .XML files on your webspace; transactions are centrally processed through the internal browser.)
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Doing Something
Registered User
Join date: 17 Feb 2007
Posts: 120
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03-19-2007 08:25
From: Yumi Murakami (By the way, an odd thing was pointed out to me recently - there is a new game that's come out with content creation at almost the same level as Second Life... but it's a motor racing game (!) called Trackmania United. You can create media for every part of the game (tracks, cars, graphic sets, music, avatars, "mods"..), and it includes a content sharing system and a web-like interface where you can design a store for it, and you buy and sell it with a built-in currency. The only slight difference is that you have to provide your own hosting for your content by hosting .XML files on your webspace; transactions are centrally processed through the internal browser.)
Woah! I've got that under my desk, still waiting to be unwrapped!. I had no idea it all had all you've mentioned. I just wanted a fun online racing game.
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Doing Something
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Join date: 17 Feb 2007
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03-19-2007 08:40
From: Robin Laffer cos typing in bold makes your opinion more valid u suck!
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Raudf Fox
(ra-ow-th)
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 5,119
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03-19-2007 08:49
Someone please explain to me how one can share one's passions if there is no real user created content? Oh, wait.. it's all in the profile? *shrugs* MySpace meets the 3D world, apparently. I shall give it a try later, just to see.
Oh, and it's supposed to be kid-friendly. So, when's Neopets getting their own virtual world?
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Chip Midnight
ate my baby!
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 10,231
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03-19-2007 08:54
From: SuezanneC Baskerville I find the look of The Lounge to be quite interesting and pleasing. Nice to see one that doesn't try to look like SL and Cybertown and Active Worlds and umm, all the rest. Definitely agree with you there. I really like the cel shaded look they have for their engine. It's a nice aesthetic. From: someone The Lounge appears to be a sort of music marketing scheme, music plays, and it's obvious the idea is that you will end up buying some of it. If Chip went to The Lounge, and it had 15 or 20 or so different streams of progressive rock music playing, and the occasional appear of an avatar being operated by a member of Spock's Beard or Porcupine Tree, I bet he might not think it was so bad. Not a replacement for SL of course, but better than the Beltway at rush hour. With the recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board under the thumb of the RIAA that's very unlikely to happen. Internet radio will soon be extinct and the only streams anywhere on the web will be major labels pushing only the most popular artists. Niche broadcasting is very unlikely to survive the new royalty rates, and services like Pandora definitely won't survive. If the Lounge streams are owned and operated by the labels or their corporate parent companies it might live. If they're not, and they're subject to the new rates, I suspect they'll be changing their business model or folding. The new ruling increases royalties by as much as 1000% with no exceptions for small commercial webcasters, who were previously allowed to pay a blanket fee or a percentage of revenue under the 2002 Small Webcasters Settlement Act. That act is no more.
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Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
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03-19-2007 09:10
From: Raudf Fox Someone please explain to me how one can share one's passions if there is no real user created content? Oh, wait.. it's all in the profile? *shrugs* MySpace meets the 3D world, apparently. I shall give it a try later, just to see. Or by assembling items from provided content - this is what most SL residents already do, you know! 
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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03-19-2007 12:52
From: Yumi Murakami
No new VR world that wants to compete with SL is going to start up by basing itself on user content creation. It would be suicide!
See thats the thing. If your interested in the content creation customers, rather than competing head to head with Second Life. You could start a virtual world and be proffitable, potentially. The question is how many customers at what rate is required to be proffitable. For example - IF Second Life disenchants 100,000 customers , and your VR world can pick up half of those - thats quite a few people. Creative people would be one potential customer source. Especially if the Virtual world used universally useful file types for 3d environments. Another customer source for a Niche market would be those people who feel their freedom is being limited by SL's need to be kinder and gentler to attract business. A world that caters to the adult business rather than becoming more restrictive over time, etc. I suspect a 3d world based on Gor, for example, would be fairly sucessful if how popular in SL it is says anything.
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Pie Psaltery
runs w/scissors
Join date: 13 Jan 2004
Posts: 987
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03-19-2007 13:06
From: Colette Meiji See thats the thing. If your interested in the content creation customers, rather than competing head to head with Second Life. You could start a virtual world and be proffitable, potentially.
The question is how many customers at what rate is required to be proffitable.
For example - IF Second Life disenchants 100,000 customers , and your VR world can pick up half of those - thats quite a few people.
Creative people would be one potential customer source. Especially if the Virtual world used universally useful file types for 3d environments.
Another customer source for a Niche market would be those people who feel their freedom is being limited by SL's need to be kinder and gentler to attract business.
A world that caters to the adult business rather than becoming more restrictive over time, etc.
I suspect a 3d world based on Gor, for example, would be fairly sucessful if how popular in SL it is says anything. Exactly, Col, and that's my point. I'd rather Phillip finally just sell out and sell off the child he's been whoring around and let other people find more interesting ways to use the platform he, in his ultimately godly way, envisioned, since he has turned to the Dark Side. Perhaps one of the offspring will be the one to bring balance to the Force. You can compare Kaneva or There or The Lounge or any other virtual enviroment and Second Life wins hands down. That's what pisses me off. To 'dumb it down' is criminal. To be broadly acceptable it has to be, but I was hoping, 3 years ago, that it would want to be something more then just broadly acceptable. Maybe I felt that way because the T-Shirt I got for referring so many residents said "Viva Le Revolution" on it, I dunno. I guess I was naive for thinking it was anything more then a marketing revolution Phillip had in mind.
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Beebo Brink
Uppity Alt
Join date: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 574
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03-19-2007 13:26
From: Pie Psaltery I guess I was naive for thinking it was anything more then a marketing revolution Phillip had in mind. It's quite possible to end up at the "marketing revolution" side of this equation without having meant to go that route. At some point, a vision can become a losing financial proposition and the hard realities of survival force unpalatable choices. Part of the problem with visionaries (of all kinds) is that they tend to be piss-poor at managing the resources and business realities that are the underpinnings of a successful financial (rather than creative) venture. Even the original founders of Apple ended up making a hash of things when they became more and more involved with the running of a growing company. Some companies fail at this stage; others survive financially by losing the founder (and even the vision). The Steves were kicked out of Apple and returned many years later when the company was foundering again because it had strayed too far from their original concept. It's quite easy to slip into bitter denunciations of someone else's failures and assume they were intentional "betrayals" of what we loved best in their vision. I'd hate to be judged that harshly myself.
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