Bring on the competition - REALLY?

So - what was THAT all about then?

I have to say it sounded a little hollow to me... At the present point I'd have thought competition - in the form of another persistent virtual world with all SL's features (and possibly more) was the LAST thing LL needed.

I mean, look at the current situation:

Development of a 'new' SL seems stalled. Phil clearly stated that development of Havok 1 in SL is continuing - Havok2/3 are very much on the backburner. We know already from other Linden posts that a great deal of time and effort have been wasted discovering that it's not possible (or at least is beyond the capabilities of the present developers) to incorporate Havok2/3 into the existing SL software.

A whole raft of oft promised enhancements have failed to materialise - Speedtree, inworld HTML, enhanced AVs... There's a long list of more or less desirable goodies that have been dangled before us, even had adoption timescales published, and then dropped off the screen.

Basically much of SL appears to be vapourware. The shiny goodie is dangled before us, generating big grins and cries of 'Ooh - Shiny! Coooool!', and then is quietly moved to the 'too difficult' pile.


NOW...

Suppose a competitor does appear?
Shall we at least give them credit for looking very carefully at SL before even starting?
Should we allow they are smart enough to learn from LL's experience developing SL?

I think so... after all, setting up a competitor will require a substantial investment, and the investors are going to check out the established competition even if the new guys aren't smart enough to.

So... A competitor arrives. What is... um... shall we call it Third Life? What is Third Life going to look like?
Actually that's a little difficult to say, as what TL certainly WILL do is attempt to avoid what THEY see as LL's mistakes with SL.

But, here's a wild stab:

TL will have highly structured modular code, both server side and client side, designed specifically for easy scalability and subsequent expansion.

TL will certainly use Havok 3

TL would be foolish not to steal a march on LL by using Speedtree

What else might TL use? Poser 6 compatible AVs? More advanced 3D modeling capabilities? A faster, more flexible scripting language?

As far as the rest goes - take your pick. It's by no means certain that they would include everything you, or I, might like to see, but certainly some new and interesting features would emerge.


And Phil is saying 'Bring on the competition'? Frankly I'm puzzled. I really don't think that it would be helpful, at least not to LL, at present.
Was that just a case of pure drum beating bravado?
IS Third Life out there lurking just below the horizon?
Or was it just a momentary lapse?

Who knows, time will tell... One thing that MIGHT make a difference though is Phil and LL's rather odd culture.
I don't expect TL will be run by a firm where important decisions are made by staff vote... They probably won't have a system for sending each other 'Love' either...
In all probability there won't be SL's climate of cheerful anarchy and unstructured non-conformity either - something I for one would miss!

Oddly the thing that might yet allow SL to prevail over TL is not so much the virtual vision of Phil, but the culture, maddening though aspects of it are, that has arisen within the resulting virtual world and the people who run it - warts and all!

In the not too distant future it might come down to whether you want to be ruled by hippies or suits...

I STILL think it was a strange thing to say though...

I think that what Phill means is that without competition there is no yardstick to measure LLs performance by.

We're all very quick to critisise whenever a server crashes, or our FPS drops or yet another bug goes unfixed in yet another point update, but can we truely say LL is doing a "bad job" without anything to compair against?

Here's a yeardstick, lots of games out there have successfully implemented Havok2, and SL hasn't, and isn't actively trying to.

We can compare what they say to what they actually mean, which we eventually know based on what they actually do. We have three years worth of such comparisons that have nothing to do with a competing company.

Actually, there are plenty of yardsticks with which to measure their development speed by - this is software development, after all, not some new type of rocket science. Their own announcements, for a start, speak volumes.

The fact is though, that I can no longer be bothered to and will just slink back into being the silent majority and accept whatever the client provides. I've realised (probably belatedly) that it achieves nothing getting worked up about it.

If the competition arrives I will certainly use it and make a decision at that time as to whether it is worth sticking with Second Life, moving wholesale to the competition or keeping accounts on both. There's no inherent reason for it to be an either/or arrangement and if I can leave my setup here going and I can continue to cream money from the economy then I'd be foolish not to.

Yes, I think we can. At the end of the day, we are the customer and it is against our expectations that LL must perform - whether our expectations are realistic or not may be another thing. While it is obvious that they are growing and thus people are relatively happy (their product, with all it's flaws, still is amazing) or else they would not be paying for the product. The question though is: how many people are paying just due to the fact it is a great concept that currently is enjoying a monopoly status and that if there was competition and thus LL no long enjoyed this status, would they still be paying?

A lot of people have left, even without competition. A lot of the people, for lack of better terms, that I grew up with as SL grew are gone - many due to broken promises. On one hand, Philip is stating that they work fast but we have nothing to compare them against it so we don't realize this. On the other hand, they are setting their own metric to be compared against - what they say they will accomplish and what they have. Perhaps if they have not been promising Havok 2, HTML, two way RPC, and the kitchen sink, etc. in 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 etc.. we would not be judging them poorly when they don't deliver. I think, while Philip's townhall meeting was not as "All these new things will be out in eminent future" as ones in the past, he spoke more truthfully than past meetings. Unfortunately, the truth stings.

That is a great way to put it. It is not about lack of competition (though certainly perhaps that would cause them to focus), it's about a fundamental disconnect between what they have repeatedly promised and what they have delivered. It's like having a friend who constantly invites you out to dinner, and then cancels on you at the last minute every time - sometimes they don't even call, they just don't show up. Ultimately, even if they finally are available for dinner, you just aren't hungry anymore.

B-but, Ano --that's what YOU do! ::niff::: YOU BASTARD!!!!

Well Surina, I think the ultimate 'yardstick of performance', if indeed that WAS what he was on about, is customer satisfaction.

And by that yardstick I don't think SL/LL is doing very well these days. Agreed it is something special. Sadly it has deep seated problems. Even more sadly LL has repeatedly raised and dashed expectations.

Under the circumstances, standing up and crying 'Bring on the competition!' was a spectacularly stupid thing to do, if only because of the issues arising from that boastful outburst.

Still, Phil at a Townhall, I guess it's expected...

I use a very basic yardstick of performance.

LL's performance two years ago, versus LL's performance now. Add in a little factor for the expectation that in this type of business, their performance should be increasing on a steady basis.


Who needs to compare against competition, when they're losing out even against themselves?


- Newfie

To be fair, two years ago I don't think 70% of their manpower was going on solving scalability problems.

It's easy to say "other games have upgraded to Havok 3", and ignore that these games have higher budgets and fresh assets each time (ie there's no need to preserve compatibility with existing content and scripts). They're attempting to perform brain surgery on a live patient, somehow, I'm not surprised it's hard.

Given that Philip admitted the biggest immediate benefit would be fewer sim crashes (in theory) and they need to phase out joints first (which still work in world) who is honestly surprised that FPS improvements get a higher priority?

It's also easy to say that any new competitor would "obviously" use SpeedTree, Havok 3 etc. Yeah they probably would. But SL is a truly massive piece of code and infrastructure, even if they made no mistakes at all in its execution it would still take several years to catch up with LL when you take into account the UI work, the currency exchange, running on every platform etc.

I've seen far simpler software engineer projects crater far worse and far sooner than SL is doing, and having worked on a very 'unique' software project before I guess I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.

Seconded. I took a vacation before the promised 1.7/Havok2 was supposed to have occured (this was due to RL). I came back half hoping that maybe the game was going to be.. I dunno, I think I will use this word, since it's the best I can come up with.. better in the engine and other lesser functions.

I came back to the highly unsurprising, but also unsatisfactory, same-old. It wouldn't be a problem, but I was stupid and just straight logged in rather than reading the forums. Only thing that seemed to have changed was that they had added HUDS. Okay, at least I wouldn't have to type ao off anymore. Great. Nothing else had changed noticably (sure it ran a bit faster, but that could easily be chalked up to the fact that I bought a faster/stronger computer during my vacation.) And that now, basic accounts were free, no inital money to start one.

I came to the forums to find out what had happened to all the promised shiny things.. to find out that they are still only promised.

If some competition did spring up, with Havok 3 already implemented and the same features as SL, SL would have to step up it's efforts, because they'd lose as things stand. The competition would more than likely have done their research, gotten accounts here, and would build their game around the "SL's promised goods." After that, it would depend on the competition's customer service and their ability to roll out updates that would either make people come back to SL or stay with them.

On second thought, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if SL had some competition. At least then it would boil down to "Shut up or put up."

Well said and I agree.

I'm still pretty new to SL, almost four months, but I've been having a great time! Sure, with some patches it has seemed like two steps forward one step back but, coming from experience with most other MMO's, I think they're at least as good as most other providers.

When you look at the likes of SOE and their inconsistent performance you begin to think that LL is actually pretty damn good!

ymmv

I'm curious. Who here has had friends leave SL because of its technical 'inferiorities'?

I've had people I know leave because of finances, lack of time and running out of interesting things to do. The other complaint was that no matter which land you choose on the mainland, you'd eventually have to face the sight of something that you don't totally agree with.

I have. I know of at least one that left because of a bug LL hasn't fixed, despite knowing about it since beta, and another I know left because the 1.7 upgrade totally wrecked her screen's frame rate.

- Newfie

"Bring on the competition!" is easy to say when you have failed to demonstrate that there is profit to be made which sort of dampens the enthusiasm of potential competitors. Newfie's assertion of using themselves of the past as their own yardstick was spot on. And they are failing miserably by that metric.

Here's some real arrogance for you: I have overseen the development of software projects far more novel, with far greater complexity, far greater data storage needs, far greater node counts, far greater survivability to arbitrary failure thus requiring fully distributed "asset" storage, recovery times of less than 500ms to any act of god where 99.999% uptime wasn't a desiderata but a contractual obligation needing proof prior to purchase. It can be done, really.

So the natural question is why am I not the competition? Because the experiences of SecondLife, There, and even Friendster have shown me that it would be only a money pit.

50% of my tenants vanished within 10 days of 1.7 - and checking group membership, haven't returned...

So you are arguing that LL can't make SL succeed? Not because they don't have the technology/organisational abilities/competence/funding, but because it simply can't be done?
I'm not sure I can agree with that.

I have to agree. Errr, with Doc on that one. I've worked on a number of projects myself that dwarf LL in size, scalability and dollars, and I'm of the opinion that it can be done. I'm just of the opinion that LL made strides towards it, and then dropped the ball. If I had the financial independence and/or funding to start a competitor to LL, I'd have even done it myself. I am not so fortunate though, so I have my hat tossed in LL's ring, with the hope they can get their act back together.

- Newfie

I fully agree to these points. Stating that SL hasn't upgraded to Havok 3 yet is like saying Quake hasn't upgraded to Havok AT ALL. It's a foolish statement, you wouldn't expect software to change on that level. The fact that they have any plans at all for SL to be upgraded in that respect is encouraging. I fully endorse Phil's statement that Havok 3 is less of a priority than the more severe bugs that can and do crash clients and sims alike. Physics issues that bring down a sim don't happen all that often (unless griefers are involved. Or joints, but the ability to make new joints has been removed now). Bringing a sim to its knees with dataserver, XML-RPC, and texture calls or updates (in otherwords, network vendors and shoddy programming) is a far more immediate and common issue that needs to be dealt with.

If they didn't have to support SL's current data though and just made a new version of SL, they COULD use Havok 3, speedtree, a better scripting engine (perhaps Java or Python, both of which are great for mid-program class loading)... But how many people in the current user base would be lost because their businesses were ruined by incompatabilities that prevent their stuff from crossing into the new system? Or maybe even as simply as not being able to keep stuff you've already made or bought in game even if you aren't selling it.

But we've gotten off topic on the subject. The original intention of Phil's statement was, indeed, to invite another online game to come along so they could use it as a measuring stick in terms of progress. And if at times that stick seemed shorter than normal, it would also give them more reason to step up improvements. Competition isn't just for saying, "We're better than them" or being killed by a newer, younger predator. Competition is about the pressure to KEEP being the top of the food chain.

Certainly it can be done, nobody will argue that. The question is a) can it be done economically for an online world with a few thousand active (paying) members? and b) can it be done without throwing out the entire world as we know it? (I mean that literally, AVs, builds, etc...) It's not nearly so simple as saying "it can be done, thus LL should be able to do it".

Active Worlds (AW) and There are SL's closest competitors. I have years of experience with AW (since 1997) but practically none with There (except for being frustrated trying to login and the client freezing). AW's development has stagnated greatly in the last few years but, before then, for a good 5+ years it developed pretty fast. I recently added AW's release notes to its wiki (not all there yet but 1st half is). It is interesting to see all the builds and progress: 246 builds between 1995-1998. Anyway, comparing AW's development to SL's development could be a good "metric". After being in AW for the past few years and having it NOT develop (or at least in secrecy--but not being able to experience it until AW 4.1 was in Wells Fargo's Stagecoach Island), it's nice to see SL develop at all.

LL could learn some things from AW's development history and, hopefully, not repeat the same mistakes...

Very true Eep. I built in AW in 1996-7. When I returned a year ago, I was surprised at how little it had changed, at least in Alpha World. There were some new models, masked textures, and expanded coding, but for the most part, it looked very similar to how it did in the beginning. That is something like 7-8 years of stagnation. It's surprising that AW is still around following so many years of non-developement.

Many here in SL piss and moan about the lack of developement. They have no idea how good they've got it compared to the competition. Frankly, it took me a full 5 weeks just to catch up with how quickly things progress here in SL.

Well, to be fair, AlphaWorld isn't a good example of how AW HAS developed. Check out AWGate for a better, more updated AW world (which hasn't been updated in years, itself). There are many other worlds that better show off AW's improvements, however.

I was going to mention that in my post, but thought is was a bit off topic. Yeah, the work done in other worlds with modelling and texturing is amazing, Shenn's work for example. As I recall, in the beginning, all worlds drew off the same object and texture paths. Fortunately, this is no longer the case. But, this doesn't affect me much. I build only in alpha world. Too many complications when building on other worlds and no guarantees those worlds will be online a year from now. Perhaps, AWTeen and Mars being the exceptions.

On another note, it's rumored that the original gate (the black box with the ports, remember?) still exists somewhere. I've found a succeeding gate, but not the original.