TSO is back, SL style

Electronic Arts introduced 'EA-Land' (http://ea-land.ea.com) today.

After a 4 year hiatus in development, EA-Land will be the (new) host for the new/revived 'The Sims Online'.

And it seems EA/TSO took some ideas from Second Life:

1. TSO is now a free download and signup
2. The new TSO will be primarily user content driven
3. A new 'land'/'estate' based economy model
4. A new continuous update/patch/development procedure (even including patch-wednesdays

So, what do people think? Will the new 'SL based' TSO become a success?

Not sure, but the thought of being able to look forward to patch-Wednesdays again made the hair stand up on the back of my neck...

To use Flipper's two critical questions:

Can you get naked?

Can you be something other than human?


Unless both answers are "yes" then it isn't an SL competitor.

Neither of those questions give any indicator no matter how they are answered as to whether it will be a success, which is what the OP actually asked.

I suspect it will do okay, for what it's intended to be. I am not motivated to try it out personally, though

just looks like the sims online with free accounts forever now
i never really cared for the sims actually

my games dating back to 1983 look even better (if they`d run...)

From what I read they will be able to buy and sell Simolians just like Lindens and will be able to upload items. Not sure how far the bitmap uploads will go but seems to me they are trying to mirror SL the best they can.. it is in Beta now.

I spent almost year in TSO before coming here in beta in 2003.
I got pretty well known for building and developing things there.
There is some good to TSO but the lack of creativity, it took lot of hardcore work just to develop your plot it just became too much.
I left because of lack of creative control and it just became to repetitive and boring.
I don't know I may check it out but I am uncertain.
I gave my account away to friend and threw away the CD.
Free users don't seem to be able to do much...hmm maybe not.
I have given to much money to EA games already to be beta tester and pay them
9.99 a month.
It is only free for 14 days. To make content and upload it you need to be subscriber
to get into one of the money houses.
Okay I did get my first virtual inspiration from them. First virtual friends, dances,etc.
So I broke down went to site checked it out, figure why not for few weeks.
Created TSO version of FD Spark.
I couldn't get past login page wouldn't update properly
five tries, searching for error message on their confusing site.
Said heck with it and promptly un-installed everything.

Here is a post I made to the thread on SLUniverse about exactly the same topic:



Does or will TSO ever compare with SL?
Nope.
Which may be why a lot of people will like it. DO like it. And have stayed within the game for the stagnant YEARS of absolutely NO new content, updates or improvements.

Amusingly, I've heard chat conversations there that tend to prove that many people consider SL to be a place of pornography and debauchery (**sings**....these are a few of my fav-o-rite things...... ), so it also appeals greatly to the family oriented middle class of america.

Do I want to spend a lot of time in EA-Land? No, I do not. Do I think I can make a little money there? Yes, I do.

Are they going to allow people to sell Simoleons for real money, then?

The advert on the page says that Maxis will be selling them, but not that users will be allowed to, as well.

If they are going to allow them to be sold, I fear this won't work. One thing that SL has sadly demonstrated is that when you allow real money to be made, the days of real user content creation are numbered, because once the professionals move in 90% of the users will be rendered irrelevant.

Yep, you can cash out.

But free players can only cash out what they put in.

To cash out profits, you have to be a paying member...9.99 a month.

Un uh! No way! I'm not going back there. I beta'd that program way back when it was first created. As soon as the beta was over, they started charging. I wasn't impressed then and I don't think I'll be impressed now.

Is it geared for adults this time around? Do you have to be at least 18? Probably not so that in itself is enough to keep me away. TSO will be nothing more than a Webkinz site. And you think we have griefers in SL? Pffft....

You can have a free account now

No matter how many times you repeat that, Yumi, it still won't make it true. There have been professional artists in SL from it's earliest days, long before it was possible to make real money. It didn't render 90% of the users irrelevant then, and it still hasn't. Many of SL's profitable content creators started out as unskilled as anyone else and learned their craft after coming to SL. It might be more accurate to say that when you allow real money to be made some people will work very hard at feeling sorry for themselves instead of working hard to learn the skills necessary to compete.

As a 'for instance'... the person I originally went ga-ga for in TSO followed me here to SL with hardly the skill to resize a photo in Microsoft Paint. She is now an extremely talented creator working for one of those evil corporations ruining SL. Her talent blossomed in the presence of possibilites. TSO now has opened the door on those sorts of possibilities.

So far the sorts of things you can create are pretty pedestrian. But look at some of the stuff made here in SL that first year or so. O, and remember the escort who figured out how to sell real estate? I don't think she came with much skill to begin with either.

It isn't as simple as "many content creators started unskilled" though - I know that is true, but it isn't enough on its own.

First of all, the psychology _does_ matter. If SL (and by that, I mean the entire SL experience, including all of the user content - not just the technical product that the Lindens make) _is_ having the effect that it makes people feel sorry for themselves then it is failing as an entertainment medium - and, for the paying consumers, that's what it is. And it is much, much harder to start unskilled nowadays than it was then - all the lower-level achievements that could be the start of a progressive achievement narrative (the psychologically most motivating way to develop) are pretty much done with. A new clothes maker has to deal with the much-improved freebie clothing selections. A new scripter has to deal with the cheap multi-gadget HUDs that already do 90% of the things they'll learn early on - they didn't always have to.

Secondly, you talk about "the skills necessary to compete" but it isn't as simple as that. What about "the time necessary to compete?" Many people say that anyone who would not wish to put in the time must be lazy, but that isn't necessarily it. Many people I've spoken to have observed that the days in SL where you could create things in order to support yourself in playing and enjoying the things you wanted to may soon be gone. If a professional (who doesn't care about playing) moves into your market, you either have to devote all your time to working in order to compete with them, or accept the loss of your market and fund your play out of your own purse. If you don't like either of those options, all you can do is leave. There are many people I know who've been unwillingly forced one way or the other, some of whom are successful as content creators because they picked the work route - but are now burning out.

Now yes, in capitalist economic terms, these do represent the successful evolution of an economy but is that automatically a good thing? It does represent a good deal for consumers. But, if you recall, there was recently a user here saying that they were put off SL because they could buy a hot tub but there was nothing to do but sit in it - in other words, pure consumerism in SL just doesn't work anywhere near as well as it does in RL.

What I suppose I'm trying to say is that the creative difference between RL and SL was always about tradeoffs. In RL you can paint or sculpt or you can even design a house, it will just cost lots of money and time, but it is possible - it's just that most people don't want to do it because in financial and likely outcome terms it's a bad idea. And that's the tricky thing, it might still be _possible_ for many people to succeed in SL, but that's not enough to be better than RL - for that, trying it has to be a good idea as opposed to a bad one. Unfortunately being able to buy a prefab for L$100 that will be better than a house you'll take 3 weeks to learn to build, does result in spending those 3 weeks becoming a bad idea for most people.

Um, you're talking about the relatively undeveloped SL economy of 2002-2003 there, though..

Just because it's possible to make money in SL and some people make a living at it doesn't alter the basic nature of content creation in any way. It isn't about profit, or who makes money and who doesn't. It's about individual desire and the entertainment value of the act of creating or learning to create. That fundamental dynamic is the same now as it was when SL started. Some people will get into it because they find it enjoyable and some people won't, preferring to just enjoy the creations of others.

If some people's psychology renders them unable to enjoy learning to create things because they may not be as talented or skilled as other people, there's nothing about SL now compared to SL's early days that changes that dynamic. Attempts to address that sort of psychology through software design results in things like Microsoft Office's "Clippy" the patronizing paper clip.

If many people prefer not to get their feet wet in creating things in SL and just make use of the wealth of existing content, that isn't a negative. The wealth of available content makes SL far more accessable to them than it would have been when there was no choice but to create what you wanted. That makes SL more relevant to them, not less. And those that are compelled to tinker and learn to use the tools to express themselves should enjoy it just as much now as they would have four years ago, and they'll have an easier time getting into it because of the wealth of information and tools available to them that wasn't available to SL's early adopters. SL has more to offer both kinds of people now than it did in those mythical golden days or yore.

at first I thought... Finally EA is acting on promises. Not so, after reading thru all the EA Land pages I find its just words, Everything but a few small changes have been done. The rest are the same old promises.

It's not quite as simple as that, though. I'm not so much talking about over-competitive people who don't enjoy learning to create things because they know they can't be the best. I'm more talking about people who don't enjoy the overall experience they get from creating things because there is no reward, or place in the world, or general encouraging stimulus for the things they are creating early on - because this has become competitive, whether the person likes it or not. It's the difference between "So you built a house? That's great, how did you do that?" and "So you built a house? Why on earth did you bother?"

I mean, even the attendance at Show and Tell events - which were specifically intended to provide that kind of positive "kick" for new creators - has declined dramatically recently.

Yes, there are some people who will soldier on building and creating even though there's no social interest in what they are doing, but I don't think they're the majority - nor is that how the unskilled people become skilled in the past. And if that really is all they care about, creating for the pure joy of doing so with no external validation needed, they could get the same experience by just drawing or modelling on their local machines and saving the results on their own hard disks.

As for the "software design" issue - a dramatic effect can be had by not allowing cashing out. If you don't allow cashing out, nobody can turn pro, because all you'll do by creating is to get more and more simoleons (or whatever the virtual currency is) which are worthless if you aren't playing too. It also reduces competitiveness because most people will, someday, just decide they have "enough" simoleons so they don't need to compete any more, and thus will leave opportunities open and probably help others more - but most people will never decide they have enough US$. And remember, cashing out was not part of SL's original design.



That depends if their preference is a genuine preference, or has only appeared as a result of them adapting to a world where everything is already done far better than they could. I am not saying that it is never a genuine preference but it is not always that either.



There is extra information and tools available to them, it's true (although an awful lot of it is hidden away from a true first-timer, but I know many places are trying to rectify that) but the problem is motivation and validation.

Everything has already been done better by someone else compared to a novice at anything, everywhere, in the real world or the virtual world. That's not unique to SL and has nothing to do with the ability to make money at things. If people let that be a deterrant to learning, no one would ever learn anything. Why bother? You give people too little credit by assuming that everyone needs to be coddled in order to enjoy creating. People either enjoy it or they don't, and that's no different today than it's always been. New people are constantly entering SL, learning new things, finding an audience, and making a name for themselves. It was true in 2003, and it's just as true in 2008, but back in the beginning there wasn't much going on other than people creating stuff. That's now a far more minor aspect of SL, not because of competition or the ability to make money at it, but because SL has grown, become far more mainstream, and offers far more entertainment to people who have no interest in creating, and wouldn't no matter what the environment was like. There used to be no incentive for those people to stick around. Now there's so much incentive that as a percentage of the population they dwarf the creative types.

I haven't been here nearly as long as you, but I agree with this. I love creating clothes, and to be honest, I don't expect to compete with someone who has amassed more skill and been here longer than I have. Making RL money IS an incentive to some, but it's not to a lot of people who are just like me. I have a store, and I really like being creative and making clothes to sell. And it's definitely a *kick* when someone buys something I made, and it's even better when I get an IM saying they received compliments (thanks, LittleMe). Heck, just reading that made my whole week that week, even if I never make an actual real cent out of my creations.

SL is entertainment as far as my financial investment in it is concerned. I spend what I feel I'm able to spend. But emotionally, it's far more than entertainment. It's a world that lets me be creative and use my imagination. I'm much more constained in RL, and am mostly unable to do that. In fact, I didn't think I had a creative bone in my body until I started on SL. Knowing that I do, and that it's something that helps me unwind and destress, is actually enough. I can't possibly be the only person inworld who feels that way.

I've never played TOS and don't really intend to. I'm pretty happy with my own little SL, even with the bugs.

There were content makers for the original sims who were selling content pre-SL.
That how The Sims Resource was back then around and numerous other places started except they were free in the late 90s but around year 2000 people began selling their content saying it was to pay for hosting fees,etc.
I am not sure if any of them became a successful business.
I assume The Sims Resource was making money off of other content creators for while there because you had to subscribe to get content or post content if I remember right in when sims game content sellers started selling things.

I played TSO for well over 2 years.. I personally feel the ONLY way i t stands a chance of becoming anything huge is if the players no longer have to "green" lol.. man I hated greening... and working alone at the bot factory..getting killed.. my yard full of headstone...oh bleh.. think I will log into SL now

I admit it I was a TSO refugee!

there are things I still miss aboout it. But far more that I don't. I might play with a free account for awhile just for the heck of it but I doubt I will go back.

I was also one of those that did custom content for the sims and had a website with downloads. I did not charge for my content but I can honestly say probably most of the sites that did charge were NOT making a profit. My very small site cost me several hundred dollars a month in hosting fees.