Can SL survive this?

go deeper, they've said exactly that in interviews. more specifically they even gave the reason... to prevent I-P & DCMA problems that plague OTHER virtual worlds as well as to ensure 'consistency' they are limiting creation to 3rd party developers...

which might not be as bad as it sounds... it could simply mean that anyone wishing to develop content might have to register with them, jump through a few hoops, and make sure things 'fit' with their overall theme, thus giving them a way to effectively pursue I-P theft and related copyright infringment....

or it could be exactly that bad, or worse, with required renewable lisencing (effectively killing any hope of hobbyist level creation, possibly even small business level), and overbearing rules on what content is allowable and or how it must look, even down to how it must be made.

I sincerely doubt the first, and while I don't believe the second would be feasible in the long run, their courting of branded commercial outlets certainly puts it closer to that.

I'tll have attraction, expecially to the non-creative crowd, but i'm guessing it will be a much more casual experience than most SL users... in fact if they overdo the corporate branding sceme they are likely to drive off a large portion of their user base.... who believe in spam/popup/ad blocking

I'll check it out..but again..the various videos i looked at..seemed to show (eerily) the same avatar..but with different hair. IMHO SLs avatars look better with approrpriate skin clothing and dimensions and there's a much larger range for personalization.(from what the videos showed)

What impressed me most was the ambient lighting.. dynamic AI sealife.. and rendered shadows....but....all that is worhless to me if all I can do is go buy some exalted creators product to make my toon "look better" so I can socialize with other "like avatars" with a coke and Maccy Ds logo blinking behind me.

When I introduce Second Life to friends from all over the world(I play alot of MMOs) the BIG selling factor that I describe is that the world is "all player made". "Be what you want".. "do" what you please.

This blue mars looks extremely controlled and focused mainly on the consumer..."Yay...lets go play virtual golf and buy really geat clothing today...and tomorrow?..uhm..Yay..let's go buy more stuff and play Golf again".


Second Life has always been a social experiment on many different levels..and its changed and transformed and morphed into platforms for big buisnesses..the small buisness person..groups ....clubs...mature content...even a teaching tool for those interested in learning how create virtual content themselves!!..It offers room for growth and expansion and enlightenment on so many various plateaus it makes my head spin....and as 'pretty" as this Blue Mars seems to be..Those things..that "magic'...simply wasnt touched upon in any of the videos I saw.

Personally..if some odd 30 K consumers who recently graduated from the teen grid would like to go there and stay and socialise their arse off..I think Second Life will be better for it ....((my two cents))

~Lana

I don't think they have got the avatar generators up yet (they are promising 'next generation'), so I guess what we are seeing is simply the backdrop.

I am going to keep an eye on this outfit and look out for the next teaser trailer, which hopefully will include samples of 'next generation' avatars.

Having delved a bit deeper, it does appear that they will allow 'controlled' content creation (to avoid IPR theft, amongst other things), but this need not necesarily be a bad thing. I often find a trip around the mainland sims to be quite depressing with all the tacky attempts at 'building', with their garish colours, twirling signs, and particles emanating out of every crevice (yuk).

If the best creative geniuses out there are going to create the settings for me, then that is fine by me, as long as there is plenty to choose from, and I can just get on with the socialising, which I enjoy the most.

Front

A world where only the "geniuses" can create . Sounds lovely. No thanks.

Haven't read back through all of the thread so sorry if I am repeating someone else.

Blue Mars is a non-issue and in no way could be considered a threat to ANY MMO. It is using CryEngine which gives unbelievable graphics. CryEngine is also a computer killer unless you are running at least a mid level gaming machine. In other words, the vast majority (who already complain that SL is too resource intensive) couldn't even run it on their computer.

Looks and sounds like a movie.Just for fun ,try to imagine the video with a narration by our own Torley Linden. "Friendly Greetings" Oopps! fell of my chair.The lack of content creation will just make it a mindless video game.Like sport is the opiate of the masses,not for me I think.

No impact whatsoever!. To be specific they are using CryEngine 2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine_2

CryEngine 2 was used in Crysis and wouldn't run on anything less then a mid range gaming machine. There was still a lot of stuff that was disabled unless you were running the latest/greatest hardware. There is no way that anyone who has ever complained about SL post Windlight would be able to run it.

If there's the possibility of sexy times in it then SL is in trouble ...

Must check it out when I get home!

OK, you win this one.

Um, no, _I'm_ not keen to win it at all. I just offer the argument win as a bonus to people who help.

That's no more than what There and ActiveWorlds do, and that's already enough to make There and Activeworlds completely uninteresting to the likes of me. Well, that and the fact that you have to go outside the world to build stuff.

So even the "best case" eliminates the artist's colony.

Land seems to be.... finite. Good news to land market. (you buy land that can actually sell (?))

Businesses won't probably be copied so easily due to more control over creation and selling ( licenses and content creation restrictive?).

OMG shadows!

They say it's the job of the future. You might be able to apply to a job there as content creator for an existing business and move up in virtual as in real life (or so I assume from what I see)

We'll have to see how it handles large amounts of people doing ... what they do but

Never say never, looks promising...

That's what I do in RL. That's what a lot of creative people do in RL, it's bloody hard to go it on your own, and either way running a real business or following some suit's instructions is about as much fun as shoving bundles of toothpicks up your nose.

Why do I want to do that in VR as well?

[Edit: no offense to dentifascophiles intended, what you do with your toothpicks in the privacy of your own home is your own business]

I once shoved a french fry up my nose, but I was about 2 years old. And I don't remember doing it. Does that count?

The whole notion of "approved art" sets my skin skeevy and so does the idea of paying a corporation for the 'honor'. No, thankyavahmuch.

TSO didn't listen to the clamoring of its testers that lack of creative input for users would be a serious downfall. Where is TSO now?

Sounds like this one's TSO without the smex, without the pizza making, with lots of logos. Oh, but you can make a T shirt - if they approve the design and if you pay extra. Where is the fun in that?

They may stay afloat with their corporate 'sponsors' but if I were a corporate chief (heh) I'd say no way...this is gonna be a whistling ghost town in nothing flat.

I sincerely hope SL does not give in to the temptation to go along these lines. "Artists colony" is what keeps me intrigued by it - hearing ideas seeing creativity without (or with few) limitations, and meeting people I'd never have met before. Queueing up in a virtual McD's does not offer that same possibility. Not even if it offers Happy Meal toys.

i've given it some good thought as to if it would pull me away from SL or not and what i came up with after looking back at why i left other things like WoW or FPS type games..Nothing new has really ever pulled me from something i love to be in unless it hooks me..

if they are offering something that is a new experience that is going to make me want to be in there because it blows away say SL or whatever takes my time .i'm sure they will get it..
but if they are offering better eye candy and less freedom to do things they fall dead in the water to me like all the rest of the Frame hogs that think it's all about what you see rather than what you can do.

so far nothing has had the freedom that SL has given to me..
when i first came to sl i was like..holy crap this engine is old and blocky and wow these controls suck..but it wasn't long before the goodies started to show up like dancing on a pose ball or the great music which was everywhere..

as soon as doors started to open and i learned about the limitless things i could do here i was captivated..

SL really lets you open up the doors in your mind that you have been wanting to open but did not have a key..

if all this other place is doing is trying to pull me in with eye candy and less freedoms it won't happen.
eye candy lasts until i get bored of it which most times is a blink of an eye compared to the time freedom and expression holds..

so if they are trying to do the same thing with really what i see as less then i know i'm not going anywhere unless it is just for a look..

i think a lot of people from sl will take a look and as soon as one of those freedoms are missing that they love..they will be back..

they need something different that can wow people and freedom is a hard one to top if you ask me.

The only thing I fear SL can't survive is its own management staff.

Do bear in mind that there are many users who have relatively little freedom on SL.

if you are speaking in terms of computer and lag chances are they would have even less in something with more strain on a system..
otherwise i am not sure what you mean..can you be more specific?

I have to agree with Ceka Cianci above, Freedom is the key to enjoyment and creativity in virtual worlds and on that basis I am sure many will live or die.

Blue Mars looks good, fantastic even and I have the kind of graphics card that can handle that and Entropia but having to buy stuff from the management just looks like another captive market to me and I have protested loud enough elsewhere about LL's monopoly.

If Blue Mars can give us the freedom to be creative then it will win over Second Life for it is way out ahead from what I am seeing.

But I am still watching Open Simulator Projects and the idea that I could even run a sim on my own computer and connect to the grid is the ultimate freedom I think.

May need Windows 2000 for that.

Should be able to get a copy of Windows 3.1 pretty cheaply nowdays

Yumi seems to be using a fairly idiosyncratic meaning of "freedom". She has had little success, in her terms, with creating content in SL... and blames SL for that. I understand her frustration but I wish she would be more up front about what she really means and wants.

Yeah, what Pie said.

Well, not quite. "Freedom" is a very difficult word to use in a virtual world. In the real world we do not say, "we are not free to fly" because it's just a law of the universe that we can't. It would only infringe on our freedom if we could otherwise do it, but someone is stopping us.

That works fine in the real world.. but in a virtual world which is BUILT by people it becomes very awkward. For example, in WoW you cannot build because the programmers did not include that feature in the virtual world. Is that just a "law of (their) universe", and thus no limit on freedom? Or is it a limit on freedom because the programmers are people, and by choosing not to implement that feature have stopped you? If you choose the former then WoW is just as free as SL, in both worlds you can do all that their universes allow. But if you choose the latter then the developers of a virtual world - Blizzard or the Lindens, whoever you choose - are restricting freedom any time they don't implement any feature that anyone could ever think of. Neither of these really seems very satisfactory.

There's other issues too, like for example the claim that you can "be anything" on SL. But usually this means, you can make an avatar appropriate to the thing you want to be, and possibly role-play it if you can find other people who want to play along. The difficulty with that - in many cases, you could do that in real life, too! (Ie, SL adds no extra freedom!) Now of course some people couldn't - SL's benefits in helping the disabled or the shy are fantastic - and it would be a big risk and harder to do in RL, because you'd be flouting social convention. But, you aren't about to say that other people can restrict your freedom by having particular social conventions, are you? There's a girl's name starting with P written on the other side of that box.. (And remember, if you're going for the second one of the definitions above - that the developers restrict your freedom by not implementing things - then by that logic, the Lindens "restricted your freedom" by not implementing NPCs who would play along with you. I'm sure you see the problem with that!)

And Argent, it's not to do with not having not had business success creating content - the business I had actually did quite well (and just turned up again this month, in fact). It's not even really to do with "freedom" but to do with "meaning". Yes, you have the "freedom" to build your own castle but who will visit? And once they are there, how will it be different from chatting in a club, or even in an empty field? This is kind of tied to the point above, where SL's social conventions are looser, it's usually only by removal of meaning. In the real world you would be flouting social conventions by wearing (let's say) a ninja suit while walking down the street, in SL you are not - but only because people ignore it. Does that count as "freedom of self-expression"? Is a self-expression that's ignored still a self-expression?

picture a person sitting at a computer looking into a world and finding it to be more than they have found in any other virtual world or game and that will be my version of freedom and expression and the ability to do things that i myself could not do in RL or any other place..
anything having to do with anyone other than myself was merely assumption or playing the odds of how much this new blue mars would affect sl itself.

Most people cannot connect their opensim to any grid and have a normal SL-like experience. The main problem is the upload speed your ISP provides. Most ISPs do not even quote it, quoting only the download speed, and the upload speed is usually a fraction of the download speed. You can test your upload and download speeds here:

http://www.speedtest.net/

If you wish to move away from a standalone region on your own PC, then it will almost certainly mean paying for a VPS service or even a dedicated server.

However, with the current successful teleports between the LL Beta and Preview Grids, and Opensims, it cannot be far off now before it is rolled out on the main grid. That will be a whole new ballgame.

Rock