Doom and Gloom: For Drama

Oooh, ooh! Let's call it...

GAC.

Here, here! Competition for SL would be awesome. But who's gonna do it? It would take a long time to ramp-up production for an SL-killer and it's not clear if the business model is profitable for the service provider at the moment. Who's taking those risks?

Nah, we're stuck with Linden Lab for our colllaborative online 3D spaces at the moment until the business end of this picks up a bit more.

I keep telling my bosses: In ten years, a virtual-world presence for our business will be non-negotiable. We're not there, yet, though.

Huh. This comment is unexpected. My take on it is that it's more of an embarassment as it tries to attract serious businesses to its platform. I always kind of felt they were utilizing gamers and chat room cybering to proof out the system because, well, our society doesn't take these groups very seriously. I mean, consider the snickering comments about going to court to sue for lost sex balls.

Let's make everything PINK....then the whole SL world would be rosy.


AFter LL banned everyone that bitched about the pinkness...


>

The freedom of sexuality in SL has been a big driving factor in its success. People like to snicker and make fun of it and act like it is all beneath them, but it is a big part of the draw. Yet, Linden Lab has always kept it at arms length and downplayed it. Other companies are moving in to fill that niche, and that will put pressure on LL if they become successful - they will lose a lot of the more casual social members who are just here to make a hot looking av and pixel bump for awhile if they don't find ways to continue to cater to them in more compelling ways.

People generally tend to have the sexxors in environments they are comfortable with. Considering the breadth of customization that SL gives you for your av and the space surrounding your av, it would take a hell of a "new game in town" for it to properly de-throne SL.

I agree that LL has sort of been handling the sexual nature of SL at arm's length, but that's to be expected; you can't command an interview with the Wall Street Journal if the main draw of your world is virtual prostitution and not commerce. It's common throughout American society. In public, we're a bunch of prudes. SL has proven that behind "closed doors" (even if they are permeable by cameras), a lot of the population has kinks that defy descriptions in fifteen words or less.

LF

I was thinking more in terms of companies like Wells Fargo, the Democracy Island people and educational institutions. How do you think they juggle marketing to ends of the spectrum?

The reality is that sex sells - and ignoring that segment, which is actually one SL's biggest strengths (and why it has so many diverse subcultures, many of them quite sexual) would be to its detriment. It is a balancing act. How do you market to the Fortune 500 set and the Girls Gone Wild set and the Ladies Who Lunch set and the Hot Bareback Gay action set and all kinds of other diverse groups, all at the same time? You dont' - you tailor your message and your approach for different markets. The message out of SL has been all about making money MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY. That remains their solitary message to all segments. There is a lot more to SL than that.

Well, it is the universal constant....


Seriously, it may just be the short road to legitimizing SL. People don't take a game seriously. They take money seriously. Luckily I was hit with the "create whatever you want" sales pitch and that's what I came for - I don't think I would have done the same if the promise of cash was all they offered.

Well, I figure they market the private island angle. Which is what people go for when they tire of the mainland blues (if they dont tier down). It's not hard to see the demise of the mainland unless it stays lucrative. Sex sells. Good; then the future of the mainland is secure is what you're telling me.

I'm I really going to be cavorting on the main grid with just me and a bunch of sex-crazy zombies soon? I can't wait.

...unless they acknowledge that the private island is the only place where privacy is a possibility. Then they'll go the private isalnd route too.

I can tell!! You've got a serious stutter or something going on here, hehe. Slow down, brotha, it's better that way.

I'm going to elaborate a bit on what I mentioned to you on IRC about this.

I don't think SL's future is indefinite. The future for 3D virtual worlds is in business. Ford, Jaguar, Apple, Target and others are, one day, going to be spending billions of dollars to let you walk through their sales floors at 2 AM in your underpants. I don't think that this is something that can be disputed: the power of virtual presence is amazing and it's something that the web absolutely fails at delivering. The technology is going to become more reliable and more powerful and businesses will swoop in.

Where does SL fit into this? If Linden Lab is lucky, they'll play a very influential role in the open standards that are going to be necessary to make this future happen. If LL doesn't do this, someone else will. We will have an open 3D streaming protocal sooner or later.

What happens to Second Life in this case? My crystal ball tells me that SL fills the role that AOL played for the WWW. Make it easy for newcomers to access the new medium, provide enhanced social spaces and provide fun tools that improve the user experience.

Where do I go? There will always be a market for customizing virtual appearances. Big software houses will show up and make really polished avatar stuff in huge varieties and at low prices. They won't necessarily wipe out single-man operations like me, but they'll easily reign as kings. But the money won't be in avatar customization anymore.

The money will be in talking to Target about migrating its latest physical store concept to a 3D virtual world. Talking with them about how to get the manufacturer's CAD drawings turned into gorgeous 3D models that the customer's avatar can pick up and examine. The money will be in maintaining virtual storefronts, providing hosting and support.

There will be real jobs, as hosts and representatives are needed to elaborate on all the benefits of the latest Ford automobiles, as well as point out the cool features on the fully-animated and reproduced model of the F-150's cab.

Second Life is the glimmer of this future. It's not going to die, but it will have to evolve to embrace the amazing social and commercial apparatus that is on the horizon.

And yes, there will be plenty of porn.

Well, as for "lamenting" and "killing SL" we really may not be talking about the same things when we use those terms.

1. I think Travis has it most right when he puts it in terms of, "killing our own personal vision of SL."

Obviously, I have always been here for the fun. Fortunately, making things and selling them IS fun - oodles of fun! But I can see a day could easily come when there aren't enough customers left, due to the forces I named in the other thread and have talked about a long time. (Even as concerns the revolving-door free basics, we have probably already seen the biggest rush of them, though things like MTV will hopefully always provide a new batch.)

Already, I have found less fun to be had of the kind that I had when I first joined. And throughout my time in game and on the forums, I can't help but notice that a lot of the things *I* consider to be fun - the -ingoes and yard sales, for instance - are clearly viewed by many influential posters to be total wastes of time that should be blotted out immediately, or at least hidden. Clubs aren't my thing, but they are a LOT of people's thing, including a lot of my customers. Nobody cries when the people providing entertainment are hurt. People just say, "Well, if it was really worth it, you could charge." Which as yet I have not seen work very well, in any online game, for numerous reasons I won't go into again here.

So my personal vision is not just a place for content creators, or various lofty goals, but also a place where people come by the thousands, to have fun and - not unimportantly from my viewpoint - buy content. I fear that when there is no way for the casual player to make a few bucks - or even get a stipend - this will be less easy. And some people on the forums seem bound and determined that there WILL be no easy way to ever earn a dime, much less be given a stipend.

If entertainment and service venues - which provide the places people enjoy congregating at while they wear the clothes we make, pick up their date, and retreat to their houses we make to show off their new sunbathing mat or whatever we make - lose their various means of profitibility, then people will have fewer places to go, and less reason to stay in the game and buy our goods.

Contrary to how you paint it, I think that is an entirely reasonable fear. Thus, as Travis says, if things continue the way they have been going since I got here, that would probably eventually be the death of "my" vision of SL.

If what we are coming to is a sort of "tough love" philosophy, where no player gets any money from anything other than (a) making and selling content, (b) dealing in land, or (c) charging admission to attractions and clubs - then I don't think that is going to work, see.

(As for killing the Linden - well, eventually if we get rid of enough of the game-like aspects of SL, there will be no need for any SL in the first place. We DO have the web already, for doing rl business, and it's a great deal better suited to it, by virtue of the fact that people use their real-life names and recourse can be had in case of fraud, if nothing else.)

If we are coming to a place where everyone is uber-serious - "either buy the stuff and pay your way or get out" - and only lofty projects get serious attention - or only real world businesses maybe - then that fun element, that casual element, will be lost, and so will the thousands of casual players who are here to have fun. (And buy our stuff.)

If we are coming to a place where this is some "platform" - for what the heck reason, I don't know - and people trying to have fun on it can go jump in the lake, well, that will be fine. But then you would have a world that won't be much fun for me, so you would have "killed" the world I want.

And why shouldn't what I want matter? As much as what you want does? Why should my predictions about moves I think are bad ones and moves I think are good ones be stifled? None of us knows how any of this is going to turn out, and my guess is as good as yours (better, in my opinion ).

If we stifle everybody's opinions, none of us ever gets anywhere, all of us are powerless, and the whole endeavor - of being involved in SL - becomes sort of pointless and dead. After all, if it IS our world and our imagination, then surely people can have a say in how it is going without being labeled something like "anti-cheerleaders."

2. As for "lamenting," I'm too pragmatic to do much lamenting, especially not over a game. Like everyone else, I go with the flow, and the truth is, NOTHING has really hurt me personally thus far. If and when it does - if there comes a time when it became too difficult to either sell things or to have fun - then I would stop playing SL.

Just like when TSO stopped having enough people and fun in it, I stopped playing that. Obviously, I consider SL to be on the upswing, not the downslide, or I wouldn't invest all the time and energy in it that I very much enjoy investing now. I would just quit - and move on to something else.

You don't find me "lamenting" much over TSO; it was fun while it was fun, that is all. (And this co-exists along with the fact that there are bunches of us who felt and still feel that if they had just done a few key things - and not done a few key other things - it wouldn't have met its decline so soon. Maybe we were wrong, but we still feel that way. Then again, maybe - quite possibly - we were right.)

Meanwhile, I just sit and wait like everybody else to see how these things play out. For all I know, it could turn out better than if it were always done the way I think it should be. But that possibility doesn't stop me from still thinking and talking about mistakes I think are being made, does it?

One doesn't invest one's efforts in discourse on these forums in order to "lament." One invests them in order to try - as we all do - to state our opinions, and our desires about how the world should go - in this which is supposedly our world and our imagination.

Take any issue, and there are people passionate on both (or several) sides of it. For whatever reason, they care enough to put forth their views and opinions. This is a good thing - it beats the hell out of apathy. It means people are engaged.

It doesn't mean arrogance on the part of those engaged people. It means they care. If one would truly wish everyone would stop caring, and then got that wish, then yes, you would have much calmer forums. But you also wouldn't have much of a game/platform/okra, because no one would be caring about it.

Now if someone IS so wrapped up in it that they are truly going to lament what comes to pass, whatever it might be, in some way disproportional even to their favorite game/hobby/platform, then I would agree that they should step a few paces back and stop caring so much.

[Sorry to go on at such length. This really was way too long and self-indulgent. I should be building a house.]

coco

Yeah.



As for the rest of your point, you're free to think small. But entertainment is just a small subset of what an SL-like medium is capable of delivering given sufficiently advanced technology. The implications for major business are staggering.

Exactly.

And it really hasn't been for a long time largely because LL has a beta grade product running way past its design limits that they are promoting as suitable for the masses. It isn't, and perhaps worst of all, the more popular it becomes, the worse the experience becomes for all. This property sets up the conditions for abrupt collapse.

From my recent personal experience, I've received three very neighborly offers of "first refusal" by players ditching their land adjoining mine. Where I cannot say that my singular experience is indicative of anything, I also have no reason to believe that my experience is exceptional. Are we seeing the start of a frustration born exodus? From my vantage it seems we may be.

I read an anouncement for a new in-game game and went to check it out immediately. The design was good, the game novel, but the hosting sim was oscillating between a time dilation of 0.8 and 0.02; quoth the builder "Simname is ill today". So we've got compelling new content that would be "really cool shit" if only the platform worked.

Exodus suggests there's somewhere to go. Sadly, there is not. That's part of the problem.

After I wrote my post, I read yours, posted while I was writing, and yes, it would seem that Travis is absolutely and totally right - we do have totally different ideas of SL.

And I would say that yes, in your way of looking at it, you are definitely thinking big, while I am free to think small. (And you, in turn, may feel free to be as arrogant as you can get away with anonymously on the internet.)

But rather than big v.s. small, I would say we are thinking DIFFERENTLY. What I want, I want very big, indeed. You want what you want very big as well.

What you want seems to be: I come onto SL and go shopping at Target. Yes, that would be neat, and I agree, that sort of thing will come to pass one day, for certain. (Just as I have been certain for 15 years that full-body suits and headgear and gloves will one day be available for the be-all and end-all game of full-immersion safe virtual sex.)

I would like that Target thing, too. I wouldn't like it HERE. Let someone else do the Target thing. Or if it comes here, let it be just a part of here.

When I joined SL, it was on the basis that this was a place where I could make whatever I wanted. And while doing so, interact with other people in fun ways. As a game, as it were.

I didn't join it in the hopes of making it into Target, and it was never presented to me as a Target, and indeed, it shows few signs of ever being even very amenable to being Target.

You, on the other hand, envision SL as a super-duper real life businesses virtual mall.

Cool. Just don't have it here. Cause when that is here, I will be going elsewhere to make my things, sell them to players, buy from other players, and have fun with other players.

I'll come here to shop at Target.

coco

Huh? Did you even read my post?

I did. Pick me up some Mt. Dew from Target, please. I have to go to Cory Edo's Extra Large Mt. Dew with Ice group meeting. kthnxbye.

omg sex anomations on aisle 5

That's funny, cause I've gotten the impression that you don't read mine! (And at the length of the recent ones, I would hardly blame you.)

Yes, I did read the part about how you considered that entertainment would still be a function of SL, but is only a small part of the possibilities of SL, if that is what you are referring to.

But if you make all the adjustments in favor of the Target part of the dream (which I would guess is your main part of the dream), then the rest will wither.

coco

I don't think the rest will wither - in RL we coexist with commercial interests all the time. I think there is room for both visions in SL ultimately, along with a variety of others. Introvert is the closest I think in that the main issue is not the vision, it's the delivery - great stuff is being harmed by a platform that can't live up to its promise from a technical standpoint.

If all these cutbacks continue...stippends....ratings...developement bonuses. I would be hard pressed to find that a "positive" thing.

Gloom and doom...sky falling....drama...

funny all these words are used by the cheerleaders. Yup I guess I am anti cheerleader then.

As for the future of SL well LL isn't helping it's self these days. I would rethink taking everything good away from SL and expecting it to a sunshine and roses type of place.

Is it something for nothing or is it an incentive to be in their world. If I had all the answers I would not be a resident I would be running the Co. by now. LOL

I don't care for threads that lash out at the thoughts of others. If we all thought alike would we all still be here? I think not.

MarCat