The end of Second Life.

It was pretty clear in yesterday's speech from Philip that his goal is to turn SL into an open source/open standards/open grid kind of 3D web platform with millions of concurrent users.

Companies would hosts sims, just like they host web servers now. The whole SL protocol will be provided as an open source Web service or similar. The content and access to that content will be controlled by the content providers themselves.

To me, this seems like the end of SL as a "game". SL is, and probably never will be, profitable as a MMORPG. With a max of 7000 concurrent users, the real population of active users is probably more like 50000. The number of paying premium accounts is probably much lower. The rest of the 250000 accounts being dead accounts and alts. Consider the investment in hardware required for only 50000 and compare with the other MMORPGs around. There is no way SL will be profitable soon.

I think Philip has realized that SL is a dead end as a game and this is why he wants to focus on developing the technology and aim for being acquired by Cisco or Google or some other network provider. He no longer beleives on making a profit from subscribers, but making a profit by selling off the technology to a big name. Increasing the account numbers can only help in this.

It is incredibly ambituous, but this is not the first attempt to create a 3D web platform. All previous attempts have failed, for one main reason: it requires a lot of resources (hardware, bandwidth, software download) for very little added value. Visiting a website in 3D is actually much slower and more difficult to navigate than 2D HTML.

Imagine a 3D iTunes or Amazon. You would have to walk around it like a department store, when the 2D version provides everything by just clicking or typing a word in the search bar. The level of detail provided is just not enough for major clothing brands or brands like IKEA or Walmart to use SL as a showcase. This has been tried before, and it has always failed. And then, will IKEA or Walmart accept the idea of people running around their 3D shops exposing prim genitals or with guns blazing or insulting customers?

I hope I'm wrong, but it looks like SL is going to slowly shift from supporting players to supporting commercial content providers. For me this means the end of SL as we know it.

This stupid 'vision' is why SL is failing. It is entirely unrealistic, totally unnecessary, and will never happen because the technology is not available, neither is the need.

The over emphasis on the commercialism of SL is why we have so many problems, and why so many people get bored and leave (hence the vast turnover of accounts but hardly any increase in in-world numbers).

Unless you have some way of making money, there's very little left to do, especially if you don't like clubbing.

Yet without 'consumers', very few enterprises in SL will succeed. You can't sell anything if you have nobody around to buy it.

The reason so much of the grid is underdeveloped and an ugly mess? Emphasis on commercialism instead of creativity.

The reason the value of the L$ crashed? Emphasis on commercialism instead of creativity.

The reason people don't stay? Emphasis on commercialism instead of creativity.

The reason people don't bother to pay to go premium? Emphasis on commercialism instead of creativity.

The reason that SL is not profitable? Emphasis on commercialism instead of creativity.

There has to be a fundamental shift in the thinking of Linden Labs. The only way I can see that happening is for a new CEO who actually understands the problems that players face, listens to them, and acts on them.

Lewis

I hope, you were not to surprised Miel. Because this has been Philip's vision for quite some time now - maybe from the day he founden Linden Lab.

It is a great vision.

I am not sure, Second Life has what it takes, but I certainly wish them well!

Lewis I understand and agree with your comments, but realistically speaking I don't think the above is gonna happen.

Out of the thousands upon thousands of proposals and forum posts, complaints and suggestions - how many have Linden ACTUALLY listened to ?

Those that have been listened to - examine them - and you will find they were actioned because it suited Lindens interest ( commercially speaking ) not the players ( contextually ).

Linden wants money - plain and simple - going the way they are going they ain't getting it.
So they are looking at alternate routes to squeeze out the dollars.

Google had a pretty silly and over-reaching vision when they started. And then they kind of reached it. I think it's absolutely awesome that for once a game developer actually wants to accomplish something meaningful instead of just trying to find a way to keep money flowing into their accounts.

Is the ultimate goal of SL over-reaching? Hell yes, and I think they know that. But that's sort of the point. Ever heard the old adage, 'Shoot for the stars - even if you miss, you still might land on the moon.' (paraphrased)

If LL didn't have an over-reaching vision SL likely wouldn't be anywhere near as advanced as it is today. You have to give them credit for not giving up and suffering for the greater cause. LL gets a lot of crap from people about a lot of issues, but ultimately they're just a little company with a huge list of responsibilities and barely enough money to even make it happen. And yet they push on. Still updating the game, still trying pretty damn hard to make it better and better all the time. I challenge you to find a single game or virtual environment out there that goes through versions anywhere near as fast as SL does.

The original post paints a pretty hypothetical vision of SL's future. I disagree with it, basically a lot. While it wouldn't surprise me if companies did one day start buying sims, I don't see how LL is supposed to fight that anyway. Coca Cola could have bought a sim years ago if they wanted to, nothing has changed from then to now, and it's silly to suggest that it has. You'll note that Linden Labs really has no clause in their TOS that suggest that LL would gain any particular benefit to having a Coca Cola sim. They'd get just as much money from Coca Cola as they would from the owner of any sim. So... why bother actually shooting for that? What benefit is it going to offer them?

No, they want community, community is the only thing keeping SL alive, and they know it.

I think so too.

I will ”love” ) that day for as an example when http://www.ge.com/en/product/home/lighting.htm open an own sim or sims and mass produce lamps by using cheap China manpower to produce lamp prims... and let that brand be well know by using Second Life...

They have the money they have the power to do it.. They can also pay the bills by the marketing budget.. they have... I dont... And I am sure many more than me cant pay SL tier or sim bills by a marketing budget..

It can become our Second Life future.,. and not only lamps.. next out are... look around and fantasy..

Yes it have already happened.. not GE.. but others. No names mentioned..

/Tina - No i dont like customs. No i dont like threats from Governments that tel if you dont stop that or that we stop your export.. to our country,,

Out of all the revisions we endure - 1 or two a week - how many are new fatures and how many are bug fixes to existing features released the week before ?

Releasing 2 thousand bug releases a year doesn't say "quality" - it ( to me at least ) says "development and testing problems".

Other games release less frequently because they make sure it works before they put it in.

One cookie goes to you to find me the perfect, flawless, bug-free MMORPG. Go on, I'll wait.

Actually you need to find one that does all that whilst adding "real" new features the greatly expand the platform, rather than adding a new character type or a new mount or some such, which is pretty much the sum total of most updates to MMORPGs (apart from expansion packs but then it's really just more of the same, with a little bit extra).

Linden Lab haven't kept up with their promises on development, I think we all realise that and they realise that. They promised much, thinking they could do it, and they haven't been able to. Having said that, what has been implemented has been largely fantastic and they're learning as they go along, as we all do. It took me a while to appreciate that, but I feel my attitude towards Second Life is much more realistic now I have. I wanted everything right away and it couldn't be done. The difference is now that Linden Lab pretty much admit that as well, which they didn't really do before

Oh and no, Philip's never thought of this as a game. Philip's always shot much higher than that.

Spoken like a true visionary.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product.
- Joe Keenan, President of Atari, in 1976 responding to Steve Jobs' offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak developed

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson (President of Digital Equipment Corporation) at the Convention of the World Future Society in Boston in 1977

I think this should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying much attention to the way things are done with regards to SL. I have felt for some time that SL is "not just a product in transition, it is a transitional product." LL's goal never seems to have been to make a successful, smoothly running game called Second Life. The company has always had a larger goal, and now finally we are starting to see where Philip is going with all this.

In the past when I pursued this line of thinking, there have been other posters who have accused me of taking some undefined--but certainly excessive--quantity of recreational pharmaceuticals. That may or may not be so, but it is irrelvant to the discussion.

Everything has a life span--including games and "platforms"--even a well tested, highly structured, smoothly running game shows signs of change and evolves as the players themselves learn and change and adopt new priorities. If SL has changed in directions that are different from what one enjoyed previously, the wise thing to do probably is to be thankful that you were fortunate enough to have experienced that postivie moment--then look carefully where things are going and see how you can take part in what is developing--or perhaps even more importantly, how you can shape what is happeneing, even if it is on the micro level that your impact is felt.

You may choose to move on--people do, that is what life is like--a "series of meetings and partings" as Jim Henson used to say. But for many--perhaps the majority--there is no reason why we shouldn't "hang on to the rope and see where this whale takes us--or we can take it."

Kermit the Frog playing Bob Cratchett, Muppet Christmas Carol

PS. Always been a Muppet fan since I was a kid. I even have a cat called Gonzo.

You missed one...

640kb ought to be enough for anyone.
-Bill Gates

Seriously though, anybody who was surprised by Phillip's comments has not been paying attention. All along for as long as I have been around this 'burb, he's been trying to push this thing as if it were the Internet, circa 90's dot-com era, but with poseballs.

Honestly, I joined this game for two reasons.

1. At least three of my friends were into it, (Dood, you gotta try this Second Life!), and I figured that they couldn't be all wrong, could they?
   
2. Someone told me there was money in it.
   

Granted I'm smarter now, but still...

I think the commercial applications are limited.

Virtual 3d training is one application. IF you're teaching something with a physical component where walking through, interacting would be value-added. In other words, you wouldn't be taking a class on Photoshop in SL. SL is overkill for that and effective means already exist for most CBT (computer based training).

One serious draw back is SL's learning curve. If it takes you as long to teach someone how to use the interface as it does to teach the material, then it's cost prohibitive.

I don't see any clothing designer using it. Although being able to upload my exact measurements and see clothing modeled on them - maybe even with my digital face would be very, very nice - and something that I've seen the beginnings of. SL is overkill for this too.

Business conferences... hmmm, nope. Video and audio and net conferencing tools are very good now, very robust.. and much more affordable than SL.

Really only one industry comes to mind. Porn. If looking at naked pictures or phone sex gets you off, then there is a fortune to be made combining audio feed and 3d avatars.

I can easily see professionally-run brothel sims succeeding. Log into FuckWorld and talk to (and interact with) a Real Live Girl. (or boy, or slave, or furry, etc.) A professional setup, with venture capital, hiring professional quality (and paid) builders, graphic artists, animators, and scripters. Then paying for professional quality staff. And not charging 35 cents for a "lap dance." Hmmm.... *thinks about where I could dig up some venture capital*.

If you think I'm crazy, google interactive sex, or start with this link:
http://www.sexrobot.com/virtualfem-your-real-virtual-girlfriend
http://www.3d-sexgames.com/index.php?ccb=1211914

What I think is eventually going to die is the kind of world we have in SL now, where all kinds of people come to do all kinds of things.

This works the other way round too. NASA said we would have folks living on the moon by the 80's. People were working in the 60's on flying cars. Others said we would have a cure for cancer by the end of the 20th century.

Sure this is nothing new, although I'm still convinced that there is no demand for a 3D web and the this project is doomed for the reasons stated above.

What IS clear now, is the LL's goal is to be bought up by one of the bigger companies for its technology and that SL was just an application showcase. The lack of real development roadmap, other than shiny features and bugfixes, confirms this.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that LL's business plan is to be acquired by Google like Picasa or Keyhole: offer a cool technology for free and make it pay by in-world targetted advertising.

So you have an opinion about the profitability of SL. So does everyone.

Why should I credit what you think? Any reason?

No Miel. Sorry, that was harsh. What I meant to say was NOOOOOOO!

Second Life is Philip's dream of a what a virtual world should be. It's his playtoy, his kingdom (reamd country), his experiment. LL will make enough money licensing the server software and offering paid technical support to support SL as a loss leader sample of compelling contiguous sandbox space.

That's not the end of Second Life; that's the contiuation of what it is now.

BTW, if they open source anything it'll be the client and then probably not completely, but enough for us to write our own clients for our own grids. They've no reason to open source the server code, especially the compression routines. That can be sufficiently APId to add streaming services to our clients.

You know it really chaps my butt when people scream oh that innovation will REQUIRE the ending and closing and destruction of this thing that I like. Bullfeathers!

This doesn't sound to me like he's willing to license the code for us to build and operate our own grids. It sounds to me like he intends to let people host servers but only if they attach to the Second Life asset, space and user systems.

What I think is the important question is not whether or not, or why, SL is going to become a web platform, but how it's going to affect the SL community when it does.

The essential non-technical change that will be involved is that people will no longer come into SL for the sake of the experience of SL itself, but for something else that's part of SL. This is an essential step in evolving any platform. Yes, there was a time when people put up web pages just because it was neato to be using the web but now, most people use the web for the sake of what's on it.

So, next question: what can be created in SL that would make people want to take part in it, who would not want to take part in SL-for-the-sake-of-SL? The community, building, avatar construction, etc. are all part of SL-for-SL's sake, and remember, we're talking here about people who aren't part of SL yet. Unless you're a) joining a friend in SL, or b) you've decided you want to be part of something like SL, those won't tempt you in, thus not satisfying the conditions for a platform. So what will?

The answer is "RL", and it's potentially very dangerous.

You'll be brought it because you can walk around a Sony store in SL, see the products and how they fit, and then click to be taken to a credit card ordering page. Or you can sit and listen to an avatar giving a seminar about their RL experiences. Or you can gather with a bunch of other avatars and watch an RL rock concert on a big screen.

Why is this bad? Because it tears the heart of imagination out of SL. You still don't need capital and raw materials to build in SL, but in order to capture anyone's attention you need something in RL to get them in and that does require capital and raw materials.

If that's the case Khamon, LL better beef up the asset server because it's grinding to a halt when there's only 6,000 users connected at any given time. Increase that to 6 million users and you'll be waiting days for your inventory to update, let alone watching textures load.

Hmmm ... All in all I would say "it sounds not very specific" to me, Khamon.

What he describes is a "vision" and this by nature is somewhat vague. While he may have ideas about how to get there, I am sure he is experienced enough to know that "no battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy" (in this case: the market/customers/competition). If the first step really would be a model, where I can run my "own" servers in the LL Colo - with my own "customers", billed by me - that would be an imported step in this direction.

Next step? Who knows?

But Philip is hardly so naive - while talking about "open source, open protocols and standard" - to expect, that all of these "millions of servers" will be owned by or even operated in a LL owned data center. To succeed with this vision, the Metaverse -- or call it web 3.d -- has to be as "open" as the web. I am sure, Phil expects LL to play a large role in this future web but he much to intelligent to expect, to "own" it.

I have imagined such a thing in the past. It would be intuitive, if it were setup correctly. {Using a joystick to navigate comes readily to mind.}

What I had in mind was more of a three dimensional OS. Your avatar runs around, and that avatar represents you. You have a bunch of things following you, those are your apps. You click on one, and, as needed, they take you to their app windows. You minimize them, they follow you around.

Your computer would be a building. Each tier in you directory would be a "floor," and files would have been kept in "cabinets," with a trash can, a shredder, and a copy machine right there.

I was, however, told this was completely unintuitive.

Maybe SL can come up with something better? You know. I mean, already, I've been confused by half the controls because they do not conform to what was supposed to be standardized controls years ago. And a lot of the editing functions are all loused up because they overlooked the non-confusing controls dreamed up ten years ago to replace the confusing [Ctrl]+[Letter] combinations.

You think it's simple?

To exit: Press one of the following:
[Alt]+[F4]
[Esc]
[Q]
[X]
[Ctrl]+[Q]
[Ctrl]+[X]
[Alt]+[Q]
[Alt]+[X]

And that doesn't include some of the *really* strange ones.

Windows standard? [Alt]+[F4].

Why would I, a firm unbeliever and unsupporter of MicroSoft, strongly suggest using Windows Standards?

Because MicroSoft is the Big Cahuna, right now. If you want to make an app, it must conform to their standards. If it does not, then you lose pretty much *ALL* of your customer base.

Love & Friendship & Blessed Be!
Lynn Kukulcan