retroengeneering and idea stealing

Doesn't change anything. Really. There are more unique, different, previously unwritten, interesting, and useful programs than can possibly be written within the projected lifetime of SL, even without any new features being implemented by Linden Labs.

Really.
Adding new features to Windows won't change that, which is why I can still use Windows 2000, and why Windows Vista and Windows 7 *don't matter*. It's not *new features* in a platform that drive innovative products on the platform, it's *new ideas*.

Not that new features might not make them more efficient to implement, but it's rare that they create new categories of product. It's the other way around. People write new programs and the Microsoft clones them in Windows or buys them out.

I just visited your sim and saw your waves and I have to say the lag was horrid. Now don't tell me my system is tuned incorrectly because it's hard to lag a 25mbps download, 1000MB video card and so on. And that brings me to resource hogging.. You're sim is on an opespace sim and probably taking way more then it's share of resources from the server hosting yours and other peoples openspace sim and you could be reported. You have 1700+ scripted items and over 4700 object and my guess it's from temp on rez items because openspace is limited to 3750 prims.

Now your wave system is beautiful no doubt about that but as it being your idea I don't think so, there have been wave systems for longer than you've been in SL and whining here because someone said that's pretty cool and made a one better, less laggy and cheaper won't get you much sympathy either.

Now for the final part:
Your price is just to high and I bet the main reason someone did one better on you. It has been price that makes me go and say "I need something like that in my build but I can't afford it" I'll just make my own. I don't sell these things but I can make my own and have done so because of price. You say you spent a long time developing your product. Great, so did Linden Lab and they could ask everyone to cough up 29 dollars to download the viewers and charge everyone to connect but they don't. And what if someone new who doesn't know how to build texture or script spent several months making an item, Should they charge 2000L for ity because of the work? And should they get pissed because someone make something like it but it took them a week and are charging far less? I don't think so. Hey Make you items better cheaper and with less lag and people will beat a path to your door.

Right, but most new ideas in SL face the unbeatable problem of social lethargy and self selection. Users who didn't find what they wanted have already left, so if you manage to make the thing they were looking for, there's no way to tell them to come back - a fairly major problem, actually.

Yumi i disagree....if you successfully market your new item that the person wanted, then if they are still looking they have the chance of finding you through your marketing channels, such as all search. Also, if the creator is constantly adding new items, new features etc, customers come back often just in case their is something new they might want. They come to expect the new items and have a reason to return.

This works very well for me in my biz and some of my customers tell me they check my store daily just to see what ive done or possibly added. It is not possible to make things and then do nothing to promote them and never change or add to your offerings and expect people to beat down your door.

Sure, but this isn't about individual new items but about new types of items. Scripters don't have the leeway artists have, they can't make a house but still have it be different from all the other houses; if they make a wave or a pad or a teleporter if will be by some measure the same as every other wave or pad or teleporter. Even advertising can't change the fundamental list of things people want to to in SL. Even the Lindens couldn't do that.



If the products are good, this is a flaw in the system that should be rectified. It can't be in the real world, but in the real world the government didn't design people's eyes.

I must say Yumi, having read your posts for a few months now, I'm baffled by your undending pessimism regarding creativity, business potential, and economics in SL. You aren't even really damning the software or LL, but the people in SL. Because SL is just a tool, and it's clearly open ended enough to allow people's creativity to shine. So all that leaves is the people themselves...

Even going back to the RP thread, you seem to have drawn a blank with SL, and in turn assumed that everyone else has too. Because if they aren't inspiring you, how could they be inspired themselves? Right?

Well, partly it _is_ the fact that when I do look for inspiration there seems to be a lot of hostility to it, which seems to be at least partly because I'm an oldbie. If I mention having difficulty building then people will spend hours arguing about why I don't need to build in order to enjoy SL or why it's a talent that not everyone has, rather than just helping, or even saying they can't or don't want to help if that's true. They'll even argue themselves to exhaustion and then blame me for exhausting them. I mean, I remember quite early I had someone do the same with regard to "having a good-looking av" and it took four hours before they even suggested using Edit Appearance.

Secondly, it is wanting to found things on the truth. I know that SL does inspire many people, and I even run an event to try to help inspire people, but I still want things to be founded on the truth, and that truth is that the range of activities that a person can expect to participate in in SL has remained pretty much static since 2005 and shows little sign of changing because they're the ones that people accept. And this isn't a criticism of "SL people", it's "people". Yes, maybe you can be all kinds of things in your own RP group with 5 of your friends, but that doesn't mean that should be part of SL's advertising.

And thirdly, I'm interested in these things for the future of SL. I mean, maybe this is cynical, but when we as a species still haven't worked out a way to make sure everyone who wants dessert in a restaurant gets it, maybe free social choice isn't the best way to determine what should exist in a new world. From mentoring, I know all about the retention rate complaints about SL, and mentors and the new user experince tend to get blamed, but my concern is that SL is using a social model which guarantees that only a small percentage of residents have a fulfulling experience or one which makes SL (as opposed to, say, IMVU) the optimal choice for that experience. Now, the usual response is that it's just evolved that way, but even evolution needs the odd saber-toothed tiger to send it off in the right direction.

I'll concede one thing to you: people can be anything in SL. I mean, *anything*. Yet the majority choose to use that power to be Ken and Barbie dolls, with perfect bodies and beautiful clothes. They live in houses and mansions, which often also mimic the well to do in RL. Why do you suppose that is? Why is one of LL's most shining moves in recent history been Bay City, which is pretty well as close to RL as SL is going to come?

Perhaps what you view as commonplace, derivative, and lacking inspiration, is exactly what people want most? So why deny, or even criticize them?

But do you know that it is what they want? Or are they just doing it because everyone else is, and because doing anything else would make them a stand-out weirdo? After all, you can walk down your local high street wearing a long black cloak and vampire teeth if you want to. Maybe if you can find some like-minded friends you can stage a vampire meeting in your living room. But still, most people would not consider the statement "you can be a vampire" to be true about real life; and thus, that experience - walking down the road in a cloak and teeth, or arranging that with your friends - is not sufficient to make it true, in most people's language. So unless SL can give a greater experience than that, it's a false statement about SL, also.

That's the point. If everyone really is happy buying regular houses and mansions and playing beautiful people then that's great but stop saying that they can do and be anything. If the world feels the need to promulgate that false statement as much as it does then that says to me that there is something wrong, or someone is unhappy somewhere.

No, I'm pretty sure it's what they want. I'm certainly not going to assume they *aren't* doing what they want without some evidence. Because people, you know, do what they want in their leisure.

Um, do they? You've never been at a restaurant where 60% of the people present wanted dessert, but didn't get it, because when the host asked, none of them wanted to be first to speak up when they might be the only one?

You've never been to a nightclub with a whole group who didn't like clubbing, but had to go, because it's how to meet people when you're young?

You haven't noticed how most people in the USA spend hours and hours of their leisure time watching TV even though every survey on the topic has shown that doing so makes most of them unhappy?

And last of all.. if all these people are getting so much of what they want in SL.. why aren't they staying?

Edit: And ditto.. if it's what everyone wants in SL.. why isn't LL advertising SL as the place where you can look like a model and live in a mansion, instead of "your world, your imagination"? Why are so many SL supporters dismissive of places like IMVU and PS3 Home when that's exactly the experience they're tailored around? Why do they constantly cite content variety as SL's key advantage if it's true that only a few types of content would be wanted?

Yeah yeah. Peer pressure. Not the same in SL.



It isn't for everyone. That doesn't mean it's not for anyone. Retention numbers don't prove anything, unless you have zero retention.

What about people who appear to hate SL, yet stay? Like you?

It _is_ the same in SL, I assure you. Not least because most people are going to treat socialisation in SL the same way they would treat it in RL - even if it isn't the same, they don't instantly know that.



Right, but the point is, even the people with beautiful avatars and mansions, who set those up entirely based on their own desires, are leaving. In fact the vast majority other than business owners leave.

I don't hate SL, although I wonder why it appears to hate me.

But people would think you weird unless you did it in an approved way (for example, at a convention, costume party, or as a uniform for a themed entertainment). You will experience negative reinforcement if you do it on a regular basis.

If you do it in SL, people don't think you're weird. You can do it all the time. No problem.
Everyone isn't "happy doing that". Many people are happy doing other things... I know people who "live in" caves, steampunk zeppelins, abandoned warehouses, sandboxes, giant trees, space stations, and holes under bridges. Generalizing from "many people enjoy building regular houses and mansions" to "everyone does that, therefore you can't do other things" is unreasonable.
No, and I don't believe in your other examples either.

It's not. Look, I've been known to go out shopping wearing horns, tail, a silks style thong, and nothing else. Sometimes even less. I can be an exhibitionist in SL without fear of losing my friends (they'd just say, "TP please!" or my job. Or having to face my RL neighbour the next day. In SL, none of that can happen. This isn't high school here, you know. Hell, even if I wanted to maintain some sort of perception on "Love Hastings", I can create an alt. There's zero social pressure for a throw away alt. Only your own misgivings. Which is what's happening here. You have your own misgivings, and you are projecting them onto the general population at large.

I know of one person who should live there, if he doesn't already.

Right. So there must be _approval_ for it to work. Approval is not available to large numbers of people in SL. Yes, it's true that "people don't think you're weird" but that's not the same as approval, that's just.. being ignored. And the truth is, when most RL adults _do_ think you're weird, "ignoring the weird bits" is basically how they treat you.



That was Love's example, not mine. If it's not unreasonable then when do I get to?



Interesting, it's happened to me several times over the last few months with the rounds of Christmas dinners, and an equivalent happened at a New Year's party. Perhaps it's a UK thing.

People come, people go. SL is a hobby, right? And it's rare for somebody to stick to a hobby for years and years. The fact that there are more people online concurrently now than a year ago is very promising. Especially since LL's infrastructure has been struggling on and off throughout that entire year.

Take me for example. I'm the sort who gets interested in something, and obsesses and learns it inside out, grows bored, and moves on. The process usually takes about a year. Quite often much less. Yet I'm still in wide-eyed wonder at SL. My personal view of SL is entirely the opposite of yours, it would seem.

I did not claim that everybody was the same.

No, you won't get sacked or lose friends. But you can get ignored. And if you get ignored in SL then all those things you've spent money on, and maybe that monthly fee you paid, just got you ignored. "Being ignored" creates the peer pressure effect you're talking about.



That only means that SL has failed to defeat my misgivings, and I doubt I'm the only one that's had them.

Are you serious? Why would I care if somebody ignores me?? It's their loss - believe me!

No, but you said "if people do just want to look like models and live in mansions, why would you criticise that?" as a rejoinder to my argument about people's behaviour limiting the open-endedness of SL. If you aren't implicitly claiming that "the fact that people want to look like models, etc, does limit SL's open-endedness, but that's just what people want" then your earlier argument would just have been a non sequitur.

Sure. And they have probably already left for something else. Ya know?

What, you wouldn't care if you didn't get to speak to anyone, or when you did it was only in response to howling, and didn't get any sales, and the house (or other build) you spent money and tier on stood empty..?

Right, because it's much easier to tell me to leave than, ya know, actually defeating my misgivings. But I'm hoping that someday I'll find someone who doesn't think that.