A more structured world?

I've been watching with interest, all the new developments that have been announced lately.

Specifically these three:

a) 195/mo regions getting free upgrade soonish

b) mentor program ending

c) slexchange freebies now bearing a minimum cost.



What I see here, is a sort of 'hand of management' and general direction in all this. Toward a more structured world.

Look at each in turn:

a) free upgrades ~ this will stabilise the existing land barons to a degree.

b) mentor program ending ~ this will swing those who still want to be involved, behind existing groups and community gateways; I daresay mostly the gateways.

c) slexchange freebie charges ~ this I personally see as perhaps unwise, but undoubtedly along with all other implications it will remove a lot of material from that service, leaving mainly the strong.


All of these are also, at root, efficiency moves as best I can tell. Not dealing with class 4 servers anymore. Not dealing directly with mentors. Not expending energy on freebies without compensation. Agree with these moves or not, regardless of the success or not, this seems to be a major goal: efficiency.

Also, and this may be a bit controversial ~ every single one of these moves, to first order, benefits oldbie landbarons like myself. Free upgrades are obvious. Ending the mentor program will swing much of the remaining enthusiasm behind our gateways. And anything that diminishes catalog shopping boosts the value of commercial land. The only exception I see is that a few merchants may get hit for a lack of catalog demo products for $L 0, or just be turned off by it, and it may endanger their business (and thus, me).


These are just three decisions, but in them I think we can triangulate a direction, or perhaps see which way the wind is blowing. And it's blowing toward more efficiency and structure. Won't suprise me to see more decisions like this, in whatever area they may come from.

The open question is what the returns will be for all this streamlining. No, I don't actually think anyone at Linden Research is simply trying to skim harder, especially in the case of decision a). Sure, all businesses are for maximising profits but I think they intend to *do* something with their recovered efficiency. The question is: what, and how will it change our world? Perhaps more engineering like mesh, shadows and suchlike; or maybe a new viewer.

* * * * *

As ecologies mature and evolve, we see 'shakeouts' even without a managing hand. An untended yard will overrun with all sorts of weeds and wildflowers, then tall grass will take over nearly completely. Then a few pine seedlings. Eventually the pines shade out the grass, but find themselves in competition with oak. Six hundred years later, there's nary a wildflower to be found, just a bunch of hoary, tough old oaks soaking up all sunlight way up off the ground.

I suppose the question is, in a way: what is proper care of this forest?

Even an old oak might see some reason for a bit more stray sunlight to hit the ground.

"A More Predictable Experience". (tm)

Which will lead to a "Business Friendly Mainland". (tm)

I agree with the "more structured world" conclusion but for different reasons.

I'm looking at LL's decisions to:-

buy XSL and OnRez, the two main off-world shopping places. They kept one open and closed the other. Then they pushed, and continue to push, the open one because they get a commission on every sale. It means they are in the market with us and literally competing for sales.

and...

Survey the idea of charging for various things to do with selling goods in SL, and literally competing outright in a couple of markets. LL surveys mean they are going to do it - the surveys just mean that they will say the users asked for it, regardless of the users' responses.

Looking further ahead, those things point to a "more structured world", in which users can sell things as long as they do it via LL's systems from which LL gets a percentage, or a fee, or a commission. Perhaps they won't actually ban the independant selling of things, but trying to do it outside the system will be a fruitless task.

Since LL sent that survey out, I've wondered what trading will be like in SL 5 years from now, and that's how I envisaged it.

I don't think there will be a SL in 5 years. If they finally don't piss off everyoe to where it does just collapse to a flaming heap, they will Gordon Gekko it, suck everything the can get out of it then either sell it off or close it down themselves. And blame it on the users, just like they did with open spaces.

I don't know - I think the world has to be tweaked a little here and there, otherwise the old growth forests wither from attrition leaving the new seedlings with nothing but lag. Or to quote Spinal Tap, "The more it stays the same, the less it changes!"

I'd say LL is just tilling the soil a little. At least I hope that's all. I wouldn't want to log in and find a pair of golden arches on one side of me and a Charbucks on the other.



.

Alright, let's say that 3 years from now you will be able to ...

Open a store to sell your creations as long as you have a trading license which will cost L$nnnn per month. If you want to make a success of it you can pay for LL's premium advertising systems (as per survey), perhaps on a monthly basis, and pay commissions on sales to LL. If you don't wish to do that, you're likely to make very few sales because everything about SL - the website and in-world - will point people to the stores that are in LL's premium systems.

I envisage Linden World, where LL is the hands-on government, and trying to succeed in business without the government's licences and pay-for systems has little hope of success. Definitely a more structured world The one market that they won't ease their way into in the same sort of ways is the landlord/lady market, but that's because they are already in it - it's their biggest earner.

They aren't tilling the soil. They are strp mining the landscape and burning the crops as they go.

I've been thinking along the same lines as Phil has lately, and I suspect the current path may be a horrible mistake in that it draws an increasingly sharp line between Creators and Consumers (Landlords aside for the moment, that's a different issue) and doesn't allow one to easily morph from one to the other.

I started in SL specifically to Create things, and it's been a lot of fun at times and mostly pays my tier - even though I've been awfully lazy in terms of actual output the last couple of years. But plenty of folks enter SL for other reasons, and time and time again I've seen friends who felt they had no aptitude or desire to make stuff try it out, enjoy it, take pride in what they've created and finally decide to set it for sale and see if anybody else thinks said stuff is worth having. They dip their toes in, progress to "dabbling", and sometimes move on from there to making and selling all manner of neat stuff.

Now we seem to be on the cusp of a world with lots of barriers to enter the Bizness of creating, and not only might that sharply reduce the variety of fun, whimsical, new things in the world but it also obliterates a major answer to the question "what do I do now that I've tired of shopping and cybersex?" Lacking a way to ease gently into making-and-selling-stuff without a strong commitment and some risk beyond to one's ego, it seems to me a lot more people are going to simply get bored and leave. Perhaps glancing wistfully at the folks who got in early and wishing the same opportunities still existed.

A more structured world is only more efficient, or better, if Linden Lab can manage the structure. Time and time again, Linden Lab has been unwilling to spend money to hire people manage various aspects of policing Second Life, instead relying on automation.

In particular, mentoring and freebies provided two services that Linden Lab is unable to provide. Without mentors to help newbies through a difficult learning curve, and without free content so newbies can actually enjoy Second Life when they arrive and are deciding whether to commit time and money, there are going to be far less newbies actually deciding to stay. Does Linden Lab have a plan to fill the void left by kiling off the mentoring program and freebies through XStreetSL? Probably not.

Mentoring and freebies are two devices for Linden Lab to have volunteers (mentors, content creators) doing valuable work that in the long run converts newbies to regulars and, it would seem, increase Linden Lab's bottom line (assuming that having regular residents helps the bottom line- maybe the common resident is now considered a leech rather than a valued customer).

At the rate our government is going, I'm beginning to be doubtful the United States will exist in its present form in 5 years, much less SL.

Like everything else complex, it needs balance.

Do I care that LL is upgrading your old class 4s? Nope. Not even a little - I'm actually quite happy for you. Do I care that they want more businesses in SL? Nope. Couldn't care less; I actually just spent a month in opensim prototyping a product for my company, though I have to be honest with them and tell them I think LL is run by a bunch of monkies.

The mentor thing was a huge mistake, IMO - for what they got in return, it didn't cost them anything to run it. I think it will cost them more in good will than it will save them in $.

I'm not happy with the xstreetsl move. In my particular case, as somebody who ONLY has freebies of stuff she made there, it discourages me from using xstreetsl. I think it will also make it harder for new people to get into the market. Not the big builders who are trying to make real money but the thousands of others who are just trying to get back a little of what they put into SL.

/me gets to the part in her post where she goes on and on about how the best move LL could make is to stop pissing people off. If "everybody knows SL is a mess" it will not grow. This is where they're missing the balance - too many slaps, no pats.

That and they need to stop *saying* "trust us," something I've seen two Lindens say today, and actually start *doing* things to rebuild that trust.

If they did not have a monopoly right now, all these moves would be much more painful to LL.

Trust is good. As an entity, Linden Lab is a serial liar. (I don't know whether individual Lindens really intend to lie, but get caught in relaying what they have been told at the time only to have it changed on them later.)

As Amy Wong (Futurama) said: "Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me."

SL is changing. Whether we like it or not, a direction has been chosen. I think this is true not just of SL, but of people everywhere. There is change in the winds of humanity and change is frightening -- you can see it in the news headlines as people who fight to preserve the status quo while others fight on the opposing side in hopes of change. I think you'll see this reflected here in the US in the 2010 elections. These are turbulent times that will become chapters in history books.

That turbulence extends to SL. With the kind of turbulence we are experiencing, you either change and adapt or you whither on the vine. Companies that fail to change won't be here in 5 years, and that includes LL. SL up to this point has been a niche product, with limited mass appeal.

Luckily, there are smaller options waiting in the wings for those who yearn for the simpler times and don't want to share space with the unwashed masses of Facebook users and Twitteraholics. SL is not going to be the same place a year from now. That will be both good and bad. Some of the magic is going to be lost, the possibilities for some middle aged housewife to start a clothing empire late at night while hubby is passed out in front of the TV. It's going to be a lot harder for those little miracles to occur. SL will be a little less creative and open.

The great egalitarian promise of SL has failed. Every opportunity SL presented has been ultimately corrupted by scammers and opportunists. Plenty of that can be laid directly at the feet of LL -- the rules were always there, but LL failed to enforce the rules until long after the primary damage had been done. In my opinion, what is making so many people uncomfortable right now is that government is finally coming to SL. "Be the Change You Wish to See in the World" has failed. There are just too many predators to allow your people to go without protection. Either we can have a governed world or we can have chaos. Chaos has its merits and it was chaos that built SL, but people want order. They want rules and structure, and LL is finally providing those. I know those aren't happy words to people who don't agree with the methods LL is choosing, but we have the same choices we have always had: adapt or find someplace else to play.

I think if you were to ask a Linden exec about it, the watchword would be "scalability". I suspect LL believes they will add large numbers of residents next year. But, they cannot massively grow their employee base while they do it.

So, they need to make the grid more uniform and self-healing. They need to get out of one-on-one support and marketing encounters with residents. They need to get out of selling individual parcels, and get big estate owners like Des to do it. They need to clean out XStreet, and make sure the big merchants are successful. They need to get a specialist to handle XStreet's micropayments. They want to get out of handling the new resident experience, and outsource that to community gateways.

They want to enable other people to deal with individual residents ... not deal with individual residents themselves.

What will LL be doing to induce this massive influx? A partnership with Facebook? I have no idea. But they are putting the scaffolding in place ... they know where they're planning to get these new ... I won't call them residents. Customers. Yes, customers.

That's a very good summary of the way I feel about it.

Most of the creative chaos can survive, but not as the mainstream. Live with it. The platform still allows the creation of all sorts of zany stuff. Zany might not scale however apart from the occasional bit of folk heroism - as happens in RL.

Sl facilitates a very easy shift from pure creative into merchant. Changes such as the new Xstreet charges put up a barrier to that, but the barrier is very low in RL terms. Even with the charges, SL still easily beats RL for low cost of entry.
I don't use Xstreet a lot, but I always find the pages after pages of the same stuff in different shades, or pages of minor variations, to be a huge turn-off. Facilities that are free tend to get abused.

I can see Des's points about LL looking for efficiency.
I think that LL want this in order to prepare for an increase in user numbers.
My reservations about the whole thing would be related to the ability of the grid to support a significant increase in numbers and to take up the increasing load in a smooth manner.

Q: What's the greatest single cause of change?

A: Breaking a twenty.

Pep (is enjoying the observations more than the impotent whinges in this thread.)

We'll probably all be learning Chinese by then, as they will have bought us out. They are halfway there already.

I need a damn Agree button!

Here's the thing:

Structured world = BORING.

Boring boring boring boring.

What's the point of Second Life if it's the same damn boring structured sort of shite as First Life??



They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Phil's nailed it, I think.

LL is looking at their own quarterly "in world economy" statistics and feeling jealous of its residents. "It's our platform, why are THEY making all this money? Let's take a bigger cut."

So they are trimming their expenses. They're imposing new fees. They're getting more and more into competing with their customers, in land (themed mainland builds) and now in content ("The Mall of Second Life" proposal by Pink Linden). Of course, since they make the rules, they can rig the game so that they always win.

Pink's wistful comment that "Apple takes 30% of all iPhone app sales" is very telling. LL wants to grab a big share of the profit from user created content.

Haha! Don't worry Brenda - you'll all be part of the Greater EU - think of all that lovely VAT!

Considering Des's post...

I think we will all adapt to this. I'm certainly concerned about the changes on XStreet, because I am very aware that I should never have got started under the proposed new rules. Even now, the two "freebies" I have a concern with are free associate vendors, selling some of my products and which pay 20% to the re-seller. Again, this is hitting the new people, starting up in SL business - so I shall seek alternative ways of reaching them.

I'm certainly going to have to do some serious XStreet sales analysis to determine what is worth keeping listed there - and if I find that none of it is, so be it. I shall also be looking for alternative ways of bringing products to market. I don't know what they might be - but I am sure that where there's a will there's a way.

Interesting you used that analogy. I kept picturing a forest with some old trees slowly dying off because there was no new growth, no sapling plantings allowed. I couldn't figure out a way to use that analogy without sounding corny.

Your post is really well worded and it shed some light on some possible reasoning behind the recent LL decisions.

The message I get from it is that I am not a major SL corporation, that I missed my chance to be a pioneer in the free startup days, so I do not matter. The ranks have tightened and now it's all for benefit of a few.

If that is the case I will return to RL a bit wiser, hopefully, and a lot richer (for lack of pouring my money into LL any more. Lol)

With an industrial sized plow.

This is exactly how I see it.

And I only just started liking building things and started thinking about learning to make clothing.

*heavy sigh*

/me points upward and sighs as well.