Why Linden Lab is Heading In the Right Direction

I'll make this one quick & clean. Here's a list of reasons why Linden Lab is moving in the right direction.

- Goal: Clearly stated "we want to make the metaverse" with metrics set for what is defined as success (million subscribers mark, for example)
- Nature of the goal is unique: In Second Life I've learned that if you want to make money, you have to do something either no one else is doing, or do it better than everyone else. Linden Lab is doing both.
- Interest and money: Technogeeks have money. Technogeeks love SL.
- Steady growth: Trend charts (I wish I had the link) of MMOs show that all MMOs seem to follow the trend of a growth period, a plateau, and a fall. As long as there's growth. SL grows approx 20% per month (as per Philip's stats) virtually without advertising.
- Not too fast growth: too fast and the architecture and the backbone, as well as the human resources will be overwhelmed.
- Dedicated staff: Without exception, every single Linden employee I've dealt with has stated that they love their job and what they are doing.
- Talented staff: High entrance standards, smart, tech-savvy people who all generally have a good amount of personal skills.
- Growing employee base: This year we've gotten a ton of new Lindens, mostly Liasons. This includes new management (Hey Chris!) which is a sign that LL is not afraid of and is very capable of handling restructuring. I think it's clear Linden Lab will continue to need to expand since literally every Linden I talk to is super-busy.
- Power to the people: Perhaps the most important thing of all, SL is a haven for creativity with little limits. In a society when blogging, content creation, and ownership are the king of the internet and MMOs, having SL be the clear leader in freedom of creation takes advantage of what people want.
- Excellent Customer Service: above and beyond any MMO or online company I've ever dealt with. This breeds customer loyalty and satisfaction, as well as a direct conduit to feel out the desires of the customers, which feeds into marketing and future growth.
- Users incorporated into the development process: over and over, we see features suggested by residents being implemented by the development team. We see LL discussing changes with the residents, listening to technical and feature suggestions.
- Willingness to admit mistakes.
- Tireless improvements: we all know SL has a way to go to be the Metaverse that the world uses, but LL keeps making significant progress.

Well said.

i agree with all of hiro's list except this item.

login problem everytime a new update comes out is not a sign of not too fast growth.
inability to login during peak hours is not a sign of not too fast growth

If I've understood you correctly, you've applauded Linden Labs for making a technogeek world, and limited entry to it. Now if only you could make all those TSO refugees stop trying to log in when you're trying!

I agree Linden Labs does a bang-up job, but I respectfully have some disagreements:


I think most HBS type of "Macmillan Matrix" sort of work on identifying goals and mission also have you identifying at least in a sentence HOW you are going to do it. That is, have the goal or aim but then a mission statement that says "To grow a million by...." and then put "bolstering the architecture" or "increasing the subscription base with non-tekkie new players" or "reach out to existing profiles of tekkies"" This is what we need to hear.



Um, actually, from what I can tell, it works differently. You just have to do it in a huge volume, it can be as mediocre as all get-out. Volume, volume, volume.

-



??? This is some kind of unexamined CW. Wait, they want a million subscribers, but not too fast. Well, how fast is too fast? And couldn't they just wind another layer of duck tape around the hack they have going now, and keep it going? Instead of wasting time on stuff like the teen grid? Or is half the million supposed to come from teens???



I agree up to a point. I think some Lindens are frustrated that their ideas don't get heard, or seemingly don't get heard.



Up to a point, but as we saw with the Julianna Pennyfeather case, there are some 20-something technogeeks who lack customer service skills but are put on the front lines of CS without enough supervision.



Drawing liaisons from the oldbie player base is a troublesome ritual. I know it is part of mor-peg game culture. But it is an odd culture to have in the real world. Normally companies don't take summer interns or junior employees and move them up the ranks quite so fast. And they don't take their customers and turn them into staff. This ritual and culture draws puzzled looks from people outside the game geek culture. Because anyone could tell you that drawing employees from a customer base like that sets up odd favouritism and enemy networks.



The People who buy land in larger quanities than 512 don't have their rights protected currently. LL needs to work harder on ownership of other facets of SL than content creation and technological skills.



Generally true, but some users remain dismayed at the failure to get answers to fairly basic problems of simply being unable to log in. My recent examination and use of the AR system found that they don't have an efficience way to collate and track all facets of an AR across all the game's platform and applications, like the instant message, the forums, the chat logs, etc. They need to have a more integrated approach where a second tier of cmoplaints can go to an ombudsman since the first-line AR currently allows for only a small box.



Yes, this is astounding compared to TSO, where even the liaisons assigned to hold the customers' hands were kept in the dark. It does give rise to a revolution of rising expectations, however.



Yes and no. There needs to be simply an overhaul of the liver helper/menter/liaison set up with some more training and guidelines on after-action reporting and follow-up.
No live helper should be doing something like badering a player to sell their land for a lower price or nastily handling a very legitimate player complaint about a fake event to game the system. No liaision should be using old player networks burnished before becoming a liaision. More impartiality and professionalism has to be built int. A tekkie Linden shouldn't be writing the kind of too wordy and too frustrated- and mean-sounding letter such as was received by Julianna.



I tend to agree.

I hope that anyone can see that my stance as a very critical and relatively new player, not among the FIC, might mean more when it is supportive, and might be worthy of attention when it is critical yet understanding.

Linden Labs should not be doing anything to discourage non-techno-geeks in this game. There's too much at stake in their growth plan and aim to reach one million for them to do that. If they mean one million geeks, then they'll achieve that only by letting the first half millloin geeks becomes some of the most fascistic and clearance-oriented Masonic-type guilds on the face of the planet. Please don't do that. It's not necessary to have your world flourish.

Everything else I agree with, but these two worry me. I have worked for a company that was gunning for a million subscribers (& today they are at seven million or something like that, so obviously they made it) and I can tell you that rapid addition of new subscribers is a good way to induce growing pains. Today when I put on one of my avatars, the textures were wrong. Picture of a tree or something, instead of the actual clothing. I have also had trouble teleporting.

If SL is really growing by 20% a month, then I think that my problems are minor compared to what they could be. However, problems like this can be expected to worsen unless LL is very, very clever about resource planning. By all indications, their staff is composed chiefly of Believers rather than people who are merely interested in a paycheck and will jump ship the second anything marginally "better" comes along. If any team can pull off the Herculean task of keeping the grid running under such an exponential growth rate, it's them.

But still, my own experience tells me that I should be cautiously optimistic rather than just optimistic.

Prokofy... this is a sidenote, but have you read Snowcrash yet? If not, you should. Actually, it should be required reading for SL members.

The goal is to create our own Metaverse, the 'hows' of reaching that goal are murky, but will become more and more clear over time. This might be a good subject for Philips next town hall meeting: roadmap.


I think Julianna is a poor example. I worked in customer service for many years for the largest premium brand cosmetics company in the U.S. based out of NYC. I managed the 2nd largest account in the U.S. and won many awards for my outstanding customer service. I have mountains of patience with people, but even Julianna would have tested me to no end. Noone gets paid enough money to take abuse from customers. Period.

I agree that there are 'some' out there, but I don't think they are at LL.


I agree to a point, Prokofy. IRL, I can definately see where taking customers and morphing them into your employees could be a recipe for disaster through favoratism and enemy networks. The main difference, of course, is that in the real world, you don't take on a new persona and a new name, so you are your own constant. Not so in Second Life. If an old player became a Linden, would you ever know? Possibly, but more likely not. It's definately not immune to what you speak of, but I think it is less prone to those pitfalls due to the Linden mask.

I read it.. didn't like it very much.

Some of the ideas about hyper-capitalism and linguistics are neat, but aren't new. However my real bone is in the way it's presented -- shallow, flat, and juvenile. It's more of an action type story rather than an intellectual exploration.

Personally, I don't think SL should emulate the "metaverse" described in Neil Stephenson's, "Snowcrash." However, Philip has been quoted saying that cursed word -- and while it's the bane of my SL existence, it is fair.

Whatever the case may be, reader take caution!



What are you addressing? The fundamental principles of business?

If so, volume is merely one of the holy trinity of business. There is also quality and customer service.

Thus I believe both you and Juro are right to some degree, just that neither of you have the entire picture it seems.

Also, your idea that SL should approach average computer users rather than capable users is interesting. However, I don't think that is the only answer. Attracting the tech-savvy among us is a really good strategy for LL as it will encourage development of the content for the less computer-inclined.

Perhaps a multi-tiered approach to their marketing message would be more effective at this point. Something that would hopefully not skew the community into "pigeon holes," so to speak.


To Hiro -- cheers for reminding many of us of what this SL is all about in the RL.

Thanks for your thought-out reply, Prok.


You lose me with this. Obviously we want volume, but how do you get there? By doing something no one else has done and/or better than everyone else.

Now "better" is obviously subjective, and it does encompass things like "accessability" and "usability".


That certainly is the quesiton, isn't it?
I imagine "too fast" is "the grid is down and/or things function so poorly that even the most basic functions of SL are not working". Of course, that's subjective, too.


Well, considering teens are more paying customers, what's the difference? They are making the Metaverse accessable to a broader user base... isn't that what you've been lobbying?


interesting.


Yeah, I agree that there are technogeek residents that lack the skills, but Linden Lab seems to be good at screening that with its technogeeks.

Which is rare, when you think of it; it's tough to find geeks with social skills.
*ducks to avoid the shoes about to be thrown*


True, this isn't normal, but it is more of a common thing with growing companies. I work for one that is both large and expanding, and I see promotions to, in, and out of my department all the time.


Yeah, it does draw funny looks.

It's also how World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, and Nintendo are successes. In any game development company hiring process, inevitably the interviewee will be asked what games they play. I've seen some postings that require "hard core gamer". Sony Online had time playing Everquest as one of their pre-req's.


Prok, you're on a roll... ever consider just taking these snippets of wisdom and posting them in their own thread without elaboration?



Live Help was fully informed of the issue with the asset server earlier yesterday, there was a post on the forums... how else really can you expect them to get the word out?

As for more chronic issues, there's a variety of sources on how to fix problems, but I agree with you somewhat; from my experience with Live Help, I think there needs to be a more centralized resource for newbies and Live Helpers to diagnose and troubleshoot basic problems. I've lobbied for this within the group, and the Linden staff has been very supportive of us Live Helpers; we've seen changes made, and have discussed a number of issues that we've been told are in process of being worked on.



Agreed.
Why don't you start a seperate thread about this and seek developing a plan of how to do it? Let me know when there's a good solution, and I'll help draw up support via my colleagues in Live Help.


From hope comes expectation, from expectation comes disappointment, from disappointment comes demand for change. No?

If a precedence is set for high quality, people will demand it continue to meet its own example.


Yes, and Live Helpers are instructed not to harass or badger residents or otherwise act as if they have any more power than another resident. I've heard stories of some sour Live Helpers in the past, but right now I see the Live Helpers we have now being a real great bunch of folks.


You're alluding to an FIC? heh.
I think there's 2 issues here, and I only think 1 is a valid concern.

The first issue is that of professionalism and favoritism, and of course, I think this is always a valid concern. I'm not sure what Linden Lab's policies are with conflict of interest, but I'd be curious to find out. Maybe that's one you could post int he Linden Hotline?

The second issue is that of using old player networks. I think this is a completely valid way to do business, as the world revolves around networking.


Absolutely, Prok.


I think the recipe is simple:
1. bring in great content creators
2. bring in people who appreciate the content
3. expand and close the gap.

I think there is too many mediocre video games and online worlds out there, and unless your content is innovative and top-notch, the consumers simply won't come.

Of course I think you're being overly dramatic in your description and scope of a perceived "elitist" problem, but that's besides the point. It's these same techno-geeks that are able to build the tools that make things easier for people to use.

As this seems to be your biggest hot-button issue, prok, I suggest you put a large amount of your lobbying emphasis on an API for the SL GUI - I think that alone will allow creators to make easy-to-use interfaces and innovate more and more ways to make SL accessable.

Yeah, but realize Snow Crash is a decade and a half old.
No one was using cell phones except executives.
No one was using the Internet except uber-geeks.
Even viruses were things that were rare and unknown by the general public.

That's the sheer beauty of Stephenson - much of what he discusses in Snow Crash and Diamond Age have become and are becoming commonplace, and were far from the public eye when he wrote about them.


*grins*
Aw, c'mon! That'd be like criticizing SL for having too much sex and violence. Or TV. Or Movies. Or books. Or real life


LOL

We're forging our own Metaverse. There's some major differences between Stephenson's Metaverse and what Philip has put forward as a goal. But the overal picture is the same - an immersive, interactive, 3-D Internet.



You're welcome, though honestly the reason I did this was because I was sick of hearing the technowikitikicrap posted over and over and over as the sky-is-falling harbinger of death of Linden Lab, so I wanted to provide a base to put all that in perspective and show that those arguments are not only highly debatable, but minor compared to the plethora of things Linden Lab is doing right.

Seeing Prok's mature response, I think I may have hit the mark.

When discussing the "future" of SL, one would be remiss not to bring up:

- Fundamental flaws in SL's implementation. SL is a neat idea, but its implementation leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. You all know the drill. Login problems, teleport problems, ghosting, lag, sim handoff issues, physics issues, client stability, server stability, sim timeouts leading to L$ loss, and so very much more.

- The fact these flaws have gone unaddressed for years. I'm not the first person to complain about any of this, and the vibe I get from a lot of older players is "don't bother bringing any of it up - they won't fix it".

- A cavalier attitude on the part of LL's staff as far as fixing these flaws. Yeah, 1.6 will solve all the login problems! Hey, we're addressing sim handoffs too! Woo, no more ghosting! Then oops, we're having "db issues". Or oops, well that fix was slated for 1.6 but maybe wait for 1.7. The ratio of fix announcements to actual fixes is disturbing. And how many "perfect storms" have we had? Isn't "perfect storm" supposed to imply that something is a rare occurrence?

- When new players learn of all this, it's a major turnoff. I've said it before: SL's biggest draw is user content. That's what makes it different than other MMORPGs. But for a lot of new users, when they learn just how flawed the platform is, and how there's no hope of it getting better... their ambitions for SL become very limited. This loses you that unique edge - every time a content creator loses hope in SL, you dumb down a little. Why is that significant? Because TSO and There will always have you beaten for dumb.

Don't get me wrong. I want SL to succeed, and to grow into Philip's grand vision of an alternate reality. But you guys are going to have to start taking the technology seriously if that's ever going to happen.

That might be an issue with the announcements rather than the actual fixes. Yes, many of the things you've identified are major on going issues and we would all love to see them fixed.

But one of my personal bugbears, the wrong clothes icon issue seems to be fixed now, having been told by support when I reported it (1.5.5 or so) that it was low priority. I don't know, nor care what they did, but thank you whoever did it! But I've not seen it announced anywhere either.

I'm not a wide-eyed optimist. I've been in SL long enough to live through two major new versions and trust me the so-called issues with 1.6 are tiny compared to 1.5. There are still problems, yes absolutely. But things are also getting better, bugs ARE being fixed, quietly, no fanfare, but it is getting better overall IMO.

Maybe we should encourage a 'bugs fixed' forum, so that when things are fixed LL can blow its trumpet a bit.

I'm not talking about minor crap like the 1.6 blank-texture crash or the 1.5 sun problem. Although SL has its share of ongoing, never-fixed minor problems too.

Okay...


To be accurate, you're talking flaws in performance / bugs, not implementation.

There's bugs in any system; it's sort of irelevant in this thread, because no one's saying there aren't bugs.

If you wanted to talk about implementation flaws, you might argue that a centralized asset server is an issue. Which I'd agree. This is probably the major archictecture roadblock that exists between SL and Metaverse.



Unaddressed = something isn't even been discussed on how to fix it. I think you're using simple hyperbole here. Just because there are still problems doesn't mean it hasn't been addressed. And if you consider SL is scores of times larger than it was even in 1.2, I'd say if things really were unaddressed, the system would not be able to handle the growth that has happened.


I'm not sure where you're reading the cavalier attitude. Mind posting some links?

Have you ever worked on a large project that maybe, just maybe the priorities and abilities to add certain features & fixes are delayed or switched around?


Perhaps it's a perception difference... but where are all these "turned off" noobs, considering the growth rate?


Cereal, perhaps you're lost in your own hyperbole. I mean, I doubt you can honestly stand by this last sentence here.

Not to rock the fanboi boat here but I have to agree with Cereal.

Linden Labs have actually managed to make me paranoid to the point where I dont even believe logic anymore

Logic tells me.....EVERY other program or game I run on my pc are smooth as a babies arse and I run games ten times more complex than this one.

Linden Labs tell me there is something I'm doing wrong and that somehow its MY fault this mish mash doesnt run right.

I've even re-formatted a few times lol.

But finally logic has won over and I stopped believing and the only reason I'm still here is because there are other people here that it's quite nice to be around.

Bottom Line? - Some of the servers Linden Labs use are truely appalling and since 1.6 very little has run right in SL - and it's NOT my fault.

If you run something more complicated than SL I'd really like to know about it.

If you want something fixed so badly, perhaps you could consider discussing it seriously?



Cool! Where can I download something with ten times the complexity of a massive multiplayer, online, fully modable custom content including building and avatar customization, real-time content updating, a fully integrated scripting language, in-game currency and economic system including land purchases, 24 hour fast customer support, with streaming video and music and the company letting you keep the license to anything you create?

I suppose the games you run also have 10 times the graphics, allowing resolutions up to 16,000x10,000 pixels, 70 simultaneous real-time rendered light sources.

And it probably has 10 times the sims, too? What's it up to? A quarter of a million users on 4,000 servers?

Surely, I must be living under a rock to have missed this in all the media attention that all your games must be getting.

Can we lose the hyperbole?

Recruiting from your customer base isn't unusual at all. Why would anybody want to work for any company if they weren't at least familiar with and ideally ardent fans of its products? Fabric stores hire people who've bought miles of fabric from them. Music stores hire people who love music. Why shouldn't game companies hire gamers? Not everybody has the time and patience to retrain an MBA into a useful human being.

And in a virtual world that relies heavily on player-created content, the company should make it a priority to recruit and retain creative players. This includes stronger incentives than are offered to players that are interested in commerce (which provides its own rewards) and those that are just here for the party. Subsidizing and spotlighting the arts and sciences (and education, of course) is going to lead to a much more vibrant environment.

ty for reading my mind..

Shadow

Have to agree that consistant log ons and stable operation will hopefully be a priority (which it might be already).

I think this is the biggest problem in SL compared to the other MMO environments im familiar with

Of course the possitives far outway the negative. At least for me. And i dont hesitate to recomend SL.

Yeah, I pretty much echo Cereal's sentiment. Every time there's a point release, half a dozen unrelated things, that have been fixed for months/years, get broken again. Then it takes 6 months for them to get fixed again. Two steps forward, one step back.

I've always had the impression that SL was built on a house of cards... some of the incidental chat I've heard in the IRC channel seems to confirm this. It's a result of a startup company going forward as cheaply as possible. Their asset server doesn't scale. Their backend is a mess. Their bandwidth issues are apparently 90% redundant (ie if they started developing SL over from scratch, it would utilize 10% of your bandwidth rather than 100% all the time). Their Sims architecture is approaching critical mass (hours of downtime every time a server patch is released). Various bugs that should be a thing of the past still exist (teleporting issues, login issues, sim crossing issues... those are basic bugs that affect 99% of your users, guys, PLEASE fix them).

Then again, some hope is on the horizen... the new rendering engine seems to imply that they might have optimized some bandwidth problems... their backend is being bootstrapped from the ground up by the guys in the office (some VERY interesting stuff coming up apparently, makes sims execute scripts allegedly "500 times faster", their sim crossing issue MAY get fixed by havok2 (doubt it), and so on.

They're trying... I just wish they'd fix it sooner rather than later. It's depressing to see the potential of everything being stopped by a bottleneck of login issues.

LF

Yes - and its a BIG rock. Your a nice man Hiro but dont insult my intelligence with condasention please.Second Life is a fine idea but it IS badly implemented.

Cereal is 100% correct in what he says - new updates on top of old bugs just makes things WORSE - and a lot of these bugs have been around for months,if not years.

If there were a monthly fee to pay for Second Life then you'd be whistling another tune.

I dunno.. I got to imagine enven an old game like neverwinter nights is, in many ways more complicated than SL. And remember that on top of rendering, most traditional games have very intricate AI's that suck up a lot of processor power and make the games, from a programmer's stand point far more complex. Also, relatively speaking, the physics engine in SL strikes me as very simple. The flight models in a flight simulater, or in a driving game are very complex too. SL does a lot, but sometimes we do trade mediocrity for variety.
I don't know what the numbers are.. but I should imagine ther are indeed more complex programs out there than SL.

Really LL does a good job, they are pioneering.

Now I loved SnowCrash, but I would hate to have my SL expereince deined by a ten year old novel. SL is in part what we make it, and in part what it grows into.

You know... we may debate this for a long time.

Short and simple -- I did find some facets of Snowcrash fascinating. However, Hiro Pendragon is an adolecent fantasy character. He's a "hacker" that lives in a dump, helped build the content of the early metaverse, delivers pizza in a psuedo-batmobile like a stuntman, is revered like some legendary hero, and is surprisingly modest about the bazillions of dollars he has from being a hacker -- enough to buy the most expensive bike possible right when he needs one... conviently enough.

All the while none of it is explained... yet there are whole chapters of the "librarian" spewing out theory on linguistics and mesopotamia.

Even Gibson's first book, considered juvenile by himself, is more fleshed out and immersive.

However, it's a perspective of opinion and waaay off-topic for this thread.

Perhaps another day or another thread.

Cheers.

I'm not so sure that is a correct assumption. SL is extremely complex because the assets do not exist on the users' machine but are streamed in real-time like streaming audio or video.

Also, to set up the sims in an expansive grid rather than a single fixed-map "shard," has been a technical feat that is quite rare if not unheard of.

Even the building tools alone -- a VM system with it's own programming language (LSL). 3D constuction system streamed in real-time to other present users... they see what you build in real time...

what other game does that?

Sure the physics system is a few years old, but the technology behind SL is nothing to under-appraise. I don't think any developer would compare Neverwinter nights or any other static game to SL -- they're completely different beasts.

It's Hiro Protagonist, actually, and the name should give you some insight into what Stephenson was aiming for. Snowcrash IS more fantasy than science-fiction, but it's meta-fantasy, a simultaneous deconstruction and celebration of the genre, in much the same way that the original Star Wars has mythological resonance far surpassing its space opera trappings.

Pardon the tangent. Carry on.