Can SL survive this?

That's great, but there are people who want to create even more than you do, but are stopped by the tedium/boredom. And remember, the tedium/boredom is all down to LL, because they decided everything about how building would work, as well as not providing systems that could bypass tedium/boredom (WoW can enable people to engage in tedious and boring behavior and then enjoy the rewards, after all..)

But also, you're actually supporting my point: if the non-creators are completely happy being non-creators, that shows that there's a proportion of the user base who could indeed be completely happy in a world with no creation.



Sure, but SL is moving towards the point where all of those will have to be run as businesses, for profit. And if there's a profit to be made then corporations can and will do it. I mean, at this point a corporation could just visit the most popular or highly valued places in SL and duplicate them - not a literal IP-violating copy, but a reproduction of the same idea.



I'm not saying my view's universal, though - I'm saying that you have to think about everyone's views when judging the value of competing products. And, from what I've seen, the majority of SL users don't seem to be interested in creation; and those who _are_ would not be interested in a world where everyone was a creator.



Except it doesn't. Just ask any of the newbies who create their own clubs or RP regions, find they remain forever empty, and then have no option but to return to the existing ones - while LL takes the fees they paid during the failed attempt. Even if you provide the tools, you can't stop people focusing on what they know to be good, at least not without either the long tail or content expiry.

Outside of dedicated artist communities, a community where 25% of the population actively creates art, where as a result virtually everyone knows someone who does, whether they do or not, and you're dismissing that?
No, he couldn't have made that video in any 3d editor. That video isn't about "look, I made a 3d version of a Van Gogh", it's "I made a 3d Van Gogh *around myself*, from the inside, and here's how you can too".
Ever watch a sidewalk artist at work, or someone like Rolf Harris whose performances create durable art?

Look, it's the best I can do without us actually being in Second Life at this instant, which kind of makes MY point. Besides, you seemed to think it was pretty cool when you visited while I was working on Coonspiracy Central in Noonkkot.

If there is no creation, what would there be for me to enjoy? I understand what you are saying actually, you are referring to user creation of course, but I'll stand by my point. I would not want to spend time in a place where the content was solely in house with corporte stamps of approval *AKA Branding) There is no need to log into a game/platform/virtual whatchamacallit if I am going to see the same Coca Cola, Nike and McDonald's ads I can see in RL.



And if they do, I will avoid those places like any other RL Corporate presence in SL. I will visit Resident created venues of lesser quality over Corporate ones any day. And if it comes to a point where Residents can't compete, than I will no longer play SL.



All anyone can do is provide the tools. The rest is up to you. There is no guarantee of success in ANY life. That's just the way it is. The only safeguard against failure is to not try. It sounds like you are looking for an environment where the player can just come in and get setup with everything right off and be on a level with everyone else. SL isn't it. It can't be if it is going to be the place for creative freedom and expression a lot want it to be. Maybe that other game is more to your liking. Or EverWorldofWarQuest. But in the end, whichever one it is, not everyone will take to it, for many reasons. And that is fine as well. It doesn't mean the are some sort of failiure, or lazy or anything else. And their Real Lives, which should be more importatnt anyway, won't collape becaue of it.

So... I followed that link, and the link in the link. Gotta say the final pictures don't look THAT different. Flat-plane textures, somewhat modified lighting pallette, but no obvious "sculpty" type constructs and no bump-shader. Certainly contains almost nothing I'd associate with all those Crysis fluff demos (which are on youtube et al, never downloadable and reproducible on your machine - smacks of some vast Beowulf cluster that glows in the dark, rendering it all)

Couldn't, or wouldn't? Would corporations create 20 meter long dragon avatars you can ride? Linden Labs didn't. It took the people at Aggro to find and take advantage of bugs in the corporate design and work around missing features (some of which the corporation had removed) to figure out how to create that effect.

And the corporation wouldn't see the need for it. Because corporations, as states, are soviet states, centrally planned, with no internal competition. Someone in Soviet Mars who came up with something like those dragons would get slapped down for it, it would certainly only see the light of day as an easter egg that would be deleted in the next build.

Blue Mars is going to be a planned economy. The worst things Linden Labs has done, even the recent OS tier increase, are nothing compared to what central planning does on a regular basis in the course of business.

I do some content creation for my own use but nothing really fancy. But one of the most attractive things about SL, for me, is the dynamic of what others create and that it can change, at any time, at the whim of the creator.

A canned world may look nice for a while but, for me, would soon become a very boring place to be.

Second Life makes that look like Dragon's Lair.

I was talking with someone who recently attended a Virtual Worlds conference; he had spoken with the presenters of Blue Mars there. According to him, user content WILL be allowed, but it will be severely restricted. For instance, you can make small items, such as shirts and end tables. But you cannot sell them without going through some hoops, and your sales are taxed by the company. If you want to make anything bigger, you must apply for a developers' license, which is allegedly uncheap.

So you cannot build your own castles, houses, large sculptures, or vehicles. You must purchase all of these things.

I will not be switching when Blue Mars is released.

Did they give any credit to Kim Stanley Robinson?

I admit that I can't help but see SL from the point of view of a content creator, as its what I spend the majority of time in SL doing. I just like making things, whether doodling, writing, or playing about with my 3D sculpting programs.

But Second Life offers much more than just a place for a solitary person to make things, because it is most like an "artist's community". There are hundreds and hundreds of different visions strewn about our virtual world. I suppose you either are attracted to that, or not. Perhaps you might prefer the "polish" that large corporations' design teams can offer. But I'd submit that you will not see the diversity without allowing users to create within the program.

Yes, this means that there is a lot of dreck in SecondLife. Someone referred to the "empty boring clubs" that litter the landscape. And I won't argue that, except to say that perhaps that club was exactly what its creator wanted. But no one is making us visit the sim with the boring club. We can go elsewhere, where there is spectacular content, content that changes on a monthly basis.

SL is a strange, anarchistic, creative Stone Soup. Sometimes, it tastes a bit like just a rock and water, and sometimes the onions are a bit too much. But I'll take it over Dinty Moore every day.

Yeh.

Yeh.

In a way I think they miss the point with Burning Life.

Second Life is Burning Man, All Day, Every Day.

Second Life is also Worldcon, All Day, Every Day.

Second Life is ... name your own convention. All Day. Every Day.

Looks cool. On further research, little to no user created content apparently. You're supposed to license third party developers to make stuff for you.
http://gigaom.com/2008/02/19/blue-mars-second-life-with-pro-level-content/
http://dusanwriter.com/?p=782

It's just another 3D chatworld/game. The only ones it will draw off SL is the social networking crowd and some corporate developers (neither or which which I would miss, personally) and a few of the people who want to create but just don't have the patience/talent for it.

Moving on...

I really didn't get that from the video. In fact, the ending effectively has him barricading the viewer off from the build, making it just another gallery picture to look at for them, while he flies inside. Also, let's remember that in order to create that, he had to be loaned a sim - which is an option that certainly isn't available to very many people.



Both of whom are licensed and doing their art as a business. See? It doesn't block creativity.



Nonsense. It's a virtual world. We have flexibility beyond that we've ever had in any life. Want to create a virtual world where everyone who starts a club succeeds, in terms of having visitors? Easy. Change the underlying world so that any avatar who visits a club, visits ALL clubs. The user can choose which "dimension" of their avatar they want to view, but the avatar is always present in them all at once - and so is everyone else's, so chat remains equivalent. Strange? Sure, but, if we can let humans fly and teleport, why can't we break the rule that you are only in one place at a time, too?

But that aside - failure doesn't count as a selling point of the system. If you're counting "failing to build a world", as "building a world", then you can build a world in WoW.



It isn't about the polish of large corporations. As I said, if a corporation worked out that SL's design of multiple strewn visions was popular, it could recreate it. It would be unusual, but it would certainly be possible. It's silly to believe that anything a corporation creates must be McDonalds branded. Fantasia is no less beautiful for having been created by one of the biggest corporations of them all.

The question is about how many people want to - and get to - create content, and whether that's a sufficient number for it to be SL's main selling point. And it's looking increasingly like it isn't.

Now, I admit that I have a bias here, which is that I entered wanting to create content and SL showed that it was impossible, but I've met others who are or were in the same boat and many others who weren't even interested to start with. And certainly, if BM is going to follow the "users can create small things but big things have to be paid for", well, that's probably how 80% of Second Life _lives_. So saying that SL's content creation gives it a permanent edge just seems to be off the rails. (The probable reason why other games won't have content creation is because of the sex/ageplay issues SL's had, actually...)

You see him inside it at multiple places in the video, and he wrote in his blog that he wanted to be able to walk around inside the painting, and before it was demolished he spent a day doing that.

That's simply a matter of scale. I've built small builds, and people have enjoyed them, and been offered whole sims to build in. I turned them down, after one experiment, I simply don't have time to spend building a sim. You don't need a whole sim to build a world around you, but you'll never build a world like that in 3dMax or Maya... because you're on the outside.

Without being "in the world" that wouldn't have been the same video at all.
I'm pretty sure that you've never spent time talking to sidewalk artists, face painters, and other people of that kind. All it takes is a box of paints, and people who want to watch what you're doing. You don't need to be licensed to engage in art in public places.

You may or may not need a license to sell your work, depending on the venue. My wife's done face painting at fairs and the most it took was putting her name on a list. Most of the time the "license" is "would you like me to do face painting at your fair". In Blue Mars that "license" is expensive... and you don't get to even do it in a public place, because it's all done with offline build tools, approved before release.

It's the difference between creating a work of art, and selling it.
I don't want to see 5000 people at once in a club, and I don't understand why you think that's a desirable thing. Really, I don't get what you're getting at here, or what you're getting at with Fantasia. If you're looking for Disneyland instead of the Renaissance Festival, you're welcome to it, but the fact hat Disneyland exists doesn't mean Renfest is dead.
I think you're creating a straw man here. Most people in an artist district, at a fair or renaissance festival, or in a convention dealer's room, are not creating art. They're drawn to being in a place where it's created, whether they're doing it or not. THAT is something that you can't get, if you don't have in-world user-created content.
I also don't understand this. What do you mean by "SL showed that it was impossible"?
It doesn't sound like Blue Mars is going to be "users can create small things" in the same sense that SL users "create small things". It sounds like BM is going to be "user can customize specific small things we create for them". Like a "design your own T-shirt" place in the mall, as opposed to a whole craft store.
Not "a permanent edge", but something more comfortable, "a permanent niche".

That depends a fair bit on your neighbours But, I'm really not sure about the "you're on the outside" issue - I mean, you don't have an avatar in 3DMax, but you can make the same things appear on the screen.



Perhaps my point of view is a bit different then, because in the town I live in IRL, you do have to be licensed to perform in the street - in the central areas anyway. You'd certainly need a license to paint on the sidewalk.



Because that's how it's possible for everyone who wants to open a club, to get to open one, and have people visit. Brenda said it was inevitable that some would fail, but it doesn't have to be.



SL showed that - for me, at least - creating content was impossible or futile. I used to seek out packages with content creation but I no longer do so so much.



That depends if SL can sustain itself without the pure consumers passing through, and the land sales to failures. Sadly, I'm not so sure about that.

No, seriously, watch that video. Now imagine making a similar video about someone building the same kind of scene in 3DMax. It would have no impact at all.
Sidewalk artists aren't all painting (even in chalk) on the street, and even in cities where you need some kind of license to perform some kinds of art you don't need a license to sit down in a public place, pull out paper and pencil and brushes or markers, and sketch away. You're not even likely to be picked up for loitering, let alone carrying on unapproved art.

Most artists don't have any kind of license, except the artistic license that comes with the desire to create.
If people don't see it, they're not visiting it. You can get the same result dropping some bots or prim n00bs in the club.
I'm sorry to read that you've been disappointed, and that you don't see any value in associating with creative people. That may mean that you're not part of the market for what Second Life provides. That doesn't mean that other people have the same values, goals, and experiences.
Most of the people who associate with artists in RL are "pure consumers".

I've watched it. I can understand it would have an impact on someone who did not yet understand SL's limits.



Except that in multipresence, the people would all be humans, moving around and chatting to each other as humans do.



Oh, I do see value in associating with creative people, but they don't particularly associate with me. Especially in doing things like dismissing me as "not the market for SL". (Hint: the idea of the above was that you would want it to be false, and would help me, thus making it false.)

It still has an impact on me, and I've been in SL over three years.
So the club would not just be full of zombies, it'd be full of annoying zombies talking about things you couldn't see, ignoring your build, and walking through your furniture.
I've never suggested that I haven't wanted to associate with you. But I've only run into you once or twice in-world, by accident, so I guess we're not moving in the same circles.
Though if you make a habit of putting words into my mouth, I might. Please, Yumi, you're taking this way too personally. All I'm suggesting is that you might question the generalizations you seem to be making. The world is not divided into superstars and drones with nothing in between,

Such a system would not use raw coordinates, but relative semantic locations based on cues included in the build. An avatar's location would be "on one of the couches" which could map to any dimension.



Sure, but people just want me to question those generalizations when the only reason I'm stating them is in the hope people will disprove them by stopping me being a drone. (And no, that doesn't mean I have to be a superstar!)

I'm not sure I can visualize a mechanism that would do that and retain spatial cues for avatars walking around, for conversations, and so on. And it still wouldn't do anything to make the builder of a club a "success", because "success" would now mean "having people pay attention to you".

You're asking for magic.
The only person who can do that is you.

You're asking for magic.

It should be impossible to tell the difference.



You assume, but it's only an assumption.

Why all the manipulations and machinations? If you want help, just ask!

Because people generally seem to be much more keen to win arguments!

Yes.

Well without user created content, what's the chance I'll have 200 differant shops to chose my latex, cages and private bits from?

/me blushes and thinks I'll stay in SL