Your ideal SL?

Imagine you were some eccentric billionaire who decided to buy LL, and could afford to make them redo the whole thing from scratch if you so desired. What would your ideal SL be like?

No ponies.


Well....and maybe a giant throne I could sit on.

And cake, definitely cake. Let them eat cake!



- Marie AntoinNewfie

I thought this had happened already. If not, where are all these changes that are shifting responsibilty for building and maintaining the world to the residents, and turning LL into a software development and service hosting company, coming from?

If SL were mine..

1. Kick everyone off the grid.

2. Close the grid.

3. Delete all content.

5. Delete all inventory

6. Reset all land terraforming and ownership.

7. Implement LSL 3 which is completely incompatible with LSL 1 and 2.

8. Throw away ratings and abolish the system.

9. Open the grid.

I would close it off to everyone except me and Anna Nicole Smith.

Eee-Yup.

Khamon and Seth - you mean to tell me that SL is now being run by an eccentric billionaire?

I believe Eggy was using the singular form of the word "you".

I actually meant that it's no longer being run by an eccentric millionaire but by serious investors. What would I do?

I would up L$, bring back mixers that used to be Linden hosted, bring back prim taxes (so when i was broke I could put objects away in my inventory and my tax dollars would appear back in my bankroll). If all this failed to appease the masses, I would shut down sl and only let in my partner Reve and all my friends back in.


Well... it's not like this will ever happen. ahahahaha

Eee-yup. Additionally, for me, I wonder if it's an interesting variant on deflagging the flagship product in favor of more potentially lucrative and easily developed/controlled initiatives based on a similar platform.

Just off the top of my head....

1) Get rid of *any* way that anyone could make any *real* money (US dollars or whatever) in Second Life.

2) Remove *all* censorship of any kind (PG, M or "offensive" content)

3) You have to be over 25 to join.

4) You have to pass an IQ test and/or a creativity test to join.

5) Make stuff or die! (you get booted if you are only a consumer and nothing else)

6) (optional) Random chucking out of anyone I think is an idiot (all those homophobic mafia guys and griefers)

All of this woud reduce the population to the point where we all get basically our own sim, so the resources would be tremendously increased for each of us that remain.

I'd take the client, scrap the current streaming and asset code entirely, and build a sister application called "Second Lite" to allow for content creation both offline and in a peer-to-peer environment.

Then I'd use it to advertise the main grid and build the standards we've been promised without the threat of bringing the entire current grid to a standstill.

And ultimately, connect the sister application with the main grid.


Alas.

All avatars would be either a sheep or a female human. (Except for mine)

now theres a SL I can get behind(literally)!

I would put one (1) Porny in the WA, then give it all back.

Since this is a fantasy, and I don't have to be responsible for my actions.

I'd break up the mainland pangea style. Into about 10~20 Sim sized continents. Void sims would connect them. Teleporters would still be in place. Bridges might even still wind between some of them.

I'm curious if people with similar design & build goals would eventually migrate toward each other on the same continents. Would we have mall-land, club-land, suburbia, art colonies, etc? The world feels really big, I think this might make it more cozy.

I'm fairly certain I'd end up making SL one big haphazardly guided social experiment.

Also people would probably leave in droves.

Heh heh heh..

I wish I had your subtle nature.

There are eight things I would implement before settling back to watch:

- Sim Zoning; retail, residential, entertainment, arts, and academic.

- Boost maximum number of avatars per sim to a minimum of 10% of total world population.

- Create a segregation of account types: Creator and Consumer. If you're a creator, you only earn from what you build (no stipend), but you have unlimited prim allotment for things YOU create yourself and do not pay upload fees so long as the items being uploaded are used in content that exists outside your inventory. If you're a consumer, you cannot build and must purchase prim allotment (account fees, etc), but have a regular and sizeable stipend to spend in the world.... a stipend that is directly contingent upon how much content exists in the world (this ties purchasing power directly to creation and bridges the gap between the two types -- creators are incented to build to boost the amount of stipend in the world which in turn raises the chance that stipend will come to their stores/pockets).

- Create an in-world employment agency that funds new creator accounts by bidding out all LL based content creation; perhaps even in assembly line format (e.g., one person gets paid to create textures, another gets paid to apply them to specific items, another to place and link prims to form units, another to create plants and landscaping, etc.). Creators are permitted to bid upon any project, but failure to deliver according to standards for quality or timeliness result in disqualification for a period of time that lengthens each time a failure is encountered up to the point of exclusion. Consumers are not permitted to bid, as they cannot build.

- Create an encrypted offline storage vault for all creators, to include tools for texture management, inventory caching and archiving, and offline building (within a 'barebones' construct that includes male and female avatar models) for later import to SL. This would provide basic prim manipulation as well as texturing and possibly even some level of animation tool.

- Completely overhaul the existing permissions system to allow for assignment of permissions on a temporary basis as well as by date -- this would permit a variety of business models and interactions in the world that are not currently possible.... up to and including contract-based building and modification services.

- Implement e-book technology or some form of pdf services to support and build the publishing market that has been trying to get off the ground in SL forever.

- License the SL product and allow people to build their own worlds. Create a hosting environment for transport between those worlds and instead of trying to oversee the worlds themselves, make money on connecting them to one another.

I'd include more ideas... but it's almost Sci-Fi Channel time.

What the hell? This sucks.

Fabulous thread!

1. I would give more support to event creators. Much more.

2. I would make it impossible for people to grief other people while actually banned from their land, and standing outside of it.

3. I would fix prim drift.

As for other people's ideas, I llike the idea of Sim zoning. I really think that is going to be the wave of the future. But I would like still enough chaotic areas, for those who prefer them.

I love the idea of boosting the maximum number of AVs per Sim, though I'm not sure it would or could ever be technically possible to get 4k AVs in one Sim.

I also like it whenever they bid out jobs.

The segregation of account types - I'd be forced to choose creator, and that wouldn't be any skin off my nose. But I don't think it would be good to prevent others from building at all. Plus, some people go in spurts - creating for a fair period of time, then running out and socializing or winning money or shopping for a fair period of time.

Taxes on prims? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO My worst nightmare! I would quit, I would, I would. For a fact. I use up a LOT of prims, putting them out and deleting them, just (a) in the creative process and (b) trying to get everything perfect.

That would be to me like allowing me to be a writer, but limiting each article I write in terms of the number of sheets of paper I can use up and throw away doing rewrites and getting the product as top-notch as I can. The whole thing would become about saving PAPER instead of writing a great article. And unlike paper, prims aren't even real, don't cost anything, and are an infinite resource.

coco

Hahaha, Lo.

It does suck, though.

/me is 20

The creator/consumer idea is one I'm refining and intend to post as its own idea in the not-too-distant future. For the moment, understand that in order to effectively link creators and consumers, each has to have some advantage the other does not, and each must also contribute something the other cannot and which is desirable to the other.

In this scenario, creators contribute content and consumers contribute cash. Prim limits upon consumers would be required -- both to boost the value OF prims within the world (benefit to creators) as well as to balance proliferation (and indirectly, quality) of prims within the world (benefit to consumers and the quality of the world at large).

Creators receiving unlimited prims supports the act of creation. The only limitation is that prims must remain within the world -- either as items for sale, items given to the world for use, or placed as part of a community effort.

Consumer, on the other hand, would not be required to place anything, and if they desire to, they would have to pay for the priviledge. Currently, this is expressed through the land and tier system. In the model I'm suggesting, it would be more a la carte. If you're willing to pay for the prims as a consumer, you could have them... this would cover things like housing, decor, etc.

More importantly, in this scenario, land itself is FREE. Since prims and inventory resources vastly outnumber land resources, it makes sense that the model should place value on these things rather than land itself. It is also more likely that LL could actually turn a profit by transitioning value from land to prims, though a radical transition it would be, without question.

A new system would allow one to apply for and be allotted land, and that system would vary depending upon your selected 'lifestyle' in the world (creator vs. consumer). Creators would have access to more land, but only if they maintain a level of content creation that makes reserving that land for their use feasible. Consumers would, by definition, require less land (consumers hold housing, not retail zoned land -- see thoughts on zoning, and understand that this is an area I cannot say too much on until I can post the suggestion in its entirity)... however, if they are willing to pay for prim allotment, the amount of land they could own would increase on scale to accomodate.

Add to this that one could conceivably own land zoned for 'entertainment' even if they were themselves a consumer... but much of being able to hold onto that land would depend upon contracting with creators to build/populate it with prims... the underscoring here being upon creating a strong support system for two-way interaction (creators need consumers just as consumers need creators).

I'll stop there. More to come in its own thread when I've time to get it streamlined and put the various aspects, challenges, and objections/rebuttals in place.

I would just double or triple the staff. So updates would come in rapid succesion.

1) I'd open source it (GPL-style) and add a mechanism for exporting assets you made from the grid and importing it back in another grid, another for exchanging currencies securely between each of these grids, and wish everyone a good day.

2) I'd get 24 sims for my own usage, of course

I would just like to point out that not all 'creators' in SL are creating that which can or will be commodified. Your model, as you have outlined it here, appears to offer only monetary incentive for creation (by extension, creativity).

This assumption, I think, will stultify much of what is beautiful in SL as the current creative 'art for art's sake' or 'build it cause I can' culture will be buried in the commercial avalanche.