What Philip Said At the Oil Rig Tonight

Philip Linden came to the protest at the oil rig tonight. Somebody was manufacturing prims on a kind of UPS-style conveyor belt, holding a big protest, and threatening to lag the sim I guess (yes, I managed to fly out there after numerous relogs, doglegs, stalls, freezes, etc.)

We struck up a conversation about preserving land in SL and about the fate of these Linden builds in the new sims. I mentioned that some players were already complaining in the forums that newbies or others would buy this land and blow off the Linden builds.

I asked specifically if the oil rig would stay, if it wouldn't be some kind of landmark. Another player said a Linden had told him it wasn't going anywhere. Philip said to my surprise "Hmmm...I'm not sure P." and "Perhaps" to these questions.

There are a number of landmark-type items out there -- my favorite is Xenon Linden's crashed airplane and the railroad side cars. They appear to be on red Linden land not marked for auction. The oil rig is out in the water.

The question is whether they will preserve these or auction them.

Philip asked what rule we suggest for preserving land. I said players should organize it. We talked about the "friends of the forest" concept that didn't succeed here because players couldn't get their act together to donate tier and couldn't get themselvse into a position to coherently bid as a group represented by one person at auction. He said "ooh what a good idea" as if he had never heard of the "forest" idea, but who knows, it is a big game. Next, he conceded that yes, it could be hard for people to get together for the big purchases and he said "maybe we should be auctioning off big pieces" and "put some pieces together".

Well, of course, they already do that on the Linden auctions. And it won't necessarily induce player cooperation to preserve land, but it will encourage barons to help themselves to big chunks to chop up for quick sale, or to set aside for zoned sims they control. Not sure everybody is gong to be liking this on the new continent, but maybe it might work.

I'm afraid I mounted my hobby horse about all the problems in groups and how they need to be fixed in order to help players pool tier and funds to get land to preserve, manage, or do joint projects.

The fact is, unlike player sentimentality and even self-righteous anger about pretty Linden wilderness, there is no Linden sentimentality or even slightest inclination to "preserve" land they make tons of -- even pretty new land with their own people's funny and cool builds like in the new continent. They'll likely preserve some of that, but then later might wonder how it's going to look to have all those cool things next to Club Lagg with its Black Box of Doom and White Cube of Death and all those dumb prefabs with the hearts particles spewing out of them and the hot tubs on the roof LOL. Whatever.

My take-home from the oil rig impromptu convo with Philip is that the Lindens will listen to players making recommendations how to preserve something if it makes sense financially for them and isn't hard to implement and requires no administration from them. Philip's first reaction was "let's put out bigger chunks on the auction" which is a plus and a minus, given the propensity of such chunks not really to go to earnest tree-hugging types. We all discussed the need to get the tier paid. I suggested they keep the rig and charge to use it for events. I dunno, it really doesn't take up THAT much of the server space, they should just let it be a hangout and a landmark.

The question is whether they can keep things like Tiki houses and boardwalks, but why not? They can be like Linden roads.

If people are serious about "preserving Linden land" they need to form a group, pool their tier quickly, and buy at the auction. Such a group has to be devoid of time-wasting meetings, arguments, long drawn-out charters, and general socialist paralysis. They need to just pool their tier and go. It's like the way you can pick up an entire heavy human being if 12 people get around and each lift a part of their body from underneath. Let's just do it. IM me in game and we'll do it without any tree-hugging, I promise, but the end result will be some trees that somebody might hug now and then.

i love the idea of land groups if they don't have liars pretending to be starting them for the good of the community

Excuse me, but you need to justify your false claim, because you are making a false and slanderous claim.

I have not lied about anything in my communities. You get what it says on the box.

Nobody can figure out who you are, since you do not appear to have rented or owned on Ravenglass the sim. If you have rented in some other sim from Ravenglass Rentals, well, maybe you had some individual bad experience. But we can't figure out what the hell it is that leads you to make these false charges. Present your specific facts for this slanderous charge, in the game or in the forums, so that people can examine them impartially free of the griefing that you are presenting here.

I continue to maintain that what I do is for the good of the community for many reasons. I can list them, but I don't need to. Those who live in them get it. They don't waste their time on the forums, mainly. So go on the game, right-click on the land in Ravenglass or on rental boxes, and ask them if they are having a good experience or if they were "lied to".

You have some personal grief that I can't figure out, but it must be some internal bitterness unrelated to anything I've done.

I take losses on these communities, I work hard on them, and the results are benficial because the people in them remain in them, and when they leave, they leave happy, usually to buy land, sometimes land I sell to them. So I don't argue with happy customers, and I don't waste time figuring out what made one customer who won't identify herself and where she lived stop her slander campaign : )

Enough... People who become increasingly more militant arguing for preservation of everything the Lindens build, and all their landscapes, or anything that passes their standard of pretty, are killing secondlife.

People come to second life for the freedom to build whatever is in their heads. Yes the Linden builds and landscapes are nice, but this is not an art gallery.

If you continually cut back on freedoms (limited terraforming, no terraforming, recommended theme sims, compulsory themed sims, compulsory Linden housing) Second Life will drain away and the Linden art gallery will be in it's place. Will it be 'pretty'? yes. Will it be fun, engaging, challenging? No. Will I be in it? No. Will my money? No.

You can have a future where Second Life is made up of griefers, gamblers and a few chatters, but no thinkers and builders. Maybe that second life would be prettier and still make a profit. It's one future. Another one is a future where we have the freedom to create and terraform even though not everyone agrees.

You pick which future you want.

Let the primtide engulf it all...not like we can stop it, anyway.

I see five sims north of sandra up for auction - take your pictures now, its about to be 'lived in'. (ie, scrubbed clean and pounded flat.)

Check out meins, boardman, n-berg, and darkwood.

Intelligent and useful things can be done, just requires a little organisation and care.

Wait a sec, people were protesting because they wanted the oil rig to stay in their backyard???

Having seen some screenshots of the nice stuff in the new continent I'd like to say I wholeheartedly support the rights of people to build what they want, but I think certain landmarks should be kept, like the oil rig and some others. I think these should be linden land.

*** Edit ***

But I still disagree with people who say "Isn't this grass nice and clean, we should make it no terraform, we should stop people building what they like unless it's a white picket fence cottage, in fact, only Linden approved prefab builds..."

Second Life is a wiiild place to be. *grins lazily*

Simple Resolution to Land Preservation Problem.


Answer) Band together into a Trust and buy up all the land you want to save.


Because the alternative is Development.

this implies an insult to prok, yet is written in a way that you can dance away from that accusation if needed.

I may disagree with prok on a vast list of things, but these kinds of posts are unnecessary and uncalled for

Gotta agree with Jsecure on this; the movement for the preservation of SL's "natural beauty" has always puzzled me. The landscape of the new continent (for instance) is every bit as artificial as anything W-hat has built.

On the separate subject of preserving cool builds...I think making stuff like the oilrig permanent (besides preserving examples of creativity) gives us touchstones throughout the world. I like having "permanent" landmarks around me, like the mall in Luna, or Abbotts Aerodrome, or the streets of my home sim of Barcola. A world in constant flux, with a sprinkle of certainty here and there, is kind of nice.

as i noted in Shin's thread, if SL keeps one or two "getting ready for sale" sims up at any point in time (or every once in a while if that is more financially pragmatic) and open for exploration, then 1. people can get their wide-open-spaces fix and 2. Linden Lab can preserve their business model and respect owners rights all at the same time

Yep! This is SL afterall.

So Prokofy... you had a conversation wih Phillip Linden? That's very feted of you. Can I start bashing you for fetedness now?

Now that's what I call fuck-you hedonism!

*shrug*

I have spent a bit of time tooling around the new continent. While I love the feel of the wide open spaces, frankly I'm not that impressed by the Linden builds. In fact, I'm pretty bored by the "must look just like something from RL" style of most of their work. Some of it isn't even technically good and sucks for manuvering your av or camera, or lags even high-performance systems unnecessarily. I think the best building in SL is done by skilled and creative residents who show imagination in design and concern for performance. What makes the the continent so cool is the size of it. Give me and some of my friends 20 sims to work with and we'll show you something that makes the new continent look like the work of amateurs.

It would be nice to have sims that look great and provide a uniform theme, with no garish or non-conforming builds or terraforming, and I think that too is best left in resident hands. Taber is a good example of a themed/zoned sim that works well. Yes we could use better group/land management tools to help that effort, and maybe a way to enforce zoning rules more effectively. But we don't need to keep everything the way the Lindens made it to achieve that goal.

Welcome to the FIC Profky, having a convo with Philip officaially makes you a member .

Back on subject though, There are plenty of group builds out there that are beautiful and organized, you just have to go out and find them. As others said, Darkwood, Boardman, Luskwood, and even us over in Slate, have some really nice builds that people don't visit very often. That's why it seems like the Myrid of clubs and malls are all that seems to be out there. Getting another group organized won't help out too much, we mostly just have to keep creating, that's what we are all here for anyways, isn't it. Let those who want to hang out in clubs, hang out in clubs. I didn't come here for notoritiy, and if I can keep my little parcel neat and looking nice, then I think i've been doing what I came here to do.

As far as the Lindens keeping parcels for themselves, I think it's a good idea, to a point. The sims are each their own server, their own computer, using up their whole power to run the one sim. And each sim can hold a limited number of prims, without being downtrodden into a pile of goo. The lindens sell as much of that land as possible to pay for upkeep, bandwidth, and buying new sims. If they keep quite a bit of that land for either their builds, or to keep the land "pristine", then they are paying for that bit of the upkeep themselves, and that's not smart buisness practice. Selling as much of that land as possible though, that allows the residents to pay for that server, and gives us more land. And possibly more prims for future sims, because of development.

Overall, SL is meant for what's going on right now. Giving people freedom to develop what they want. Removing land for keeping the area beautiful won't help, because then all it would be doing is removing possible money for future developments. And besides, seeing as how most of the builds that keep the land tied in with their builds aren't very popular, and after a few days, that "pristine" land and sims will probably end up being unused, and nobody would go there anymore. As much as I love seeing sims when they first pop up, because the area is beautiful, I don't think that they are of any good staying that way.

SL Parks and Recs have the idea though. Small parks that keep the idea of pristineness alive, and are paid for by the individual owners, whenever I need my "nature" fix within SL, I visit one of the Parks.

Correction Brad - having an inWorld convo with Philip doesn't do it.

Only phone conversations of 30+ minutes qualifies one as FIC.

Sorry Pro - you're still not it!

Doh sorry, those were the old rules. Got dig out and dust off my FIC rulebook again. Hey Mer..can you send me that memo again

How about chatting with Andrew Linden for like an hour in the 1.5.13 preview when no one else showed up at all? A whole hour.. alone... with Andrew... c.c

I still have nightmares.

/nods

There is something to be said about seeing something familier from a year or more ago, in SL. With the world evolving at a mind bending speed on a dalily basis, I would like to know that some LL builds will still be around a year from now. I'm nostalgic what can I say

LL can afford to just let some builds be without thinking about the resale valve of the land those builds sit on. Luna mall may not be what it used to be, but it's still a very nice place to visit.

So what's the big deal about just letting these builds be? I don't see a need to do anything about LL builds, just enjoy them.

Resale value may be of importance to some but, content makes SL what it is.
Let's not forget that.

Cat

I told you he was a member!!! Not only has he had a conversation with Phillip, but other Lindens as well!! And he has their cards, and their teddy bears. . . . i dont have them. . . he is feted!

*rolls eyes*

I was just standing there on the oil rig trying to see what all the fuss was about when the guy parachuted in *shrugs*.

Everybody was falling all over themselves to get his card, get him in their impromptu group, impress him with their wacky antics, etc. etc. The difference with me is that I pointedly complained about his game tools in public to his face. Most people would be in "worship mode," not me. That's why I'm not FIC. I later tried to summarize my points on a notecard, but Philip Linden's account doesn't take inventory when you send it (at least not from me because I'm not wired like Merwan says lol). Well...Philip is just a guy...is he really all that different than the man in the red short jacket with gold piping on the shoulder who takes my $10.00 at the Loew's? Isn't he more in the tradition of Barnum and Bailey, and "a fool and his money are soon parted" and "a sucker is born every minute" than, I dunno, Martin Luther King? He's selling pixels for millions of dollars LOL, the guy is a huckster genius. It's just that for the "Bobos in Paradise," this particular entertainment package is dressed up as an earnest tekki wiki where everybody wears Birkenstocks and wire-rim glasses. I just ran and spent $15 RL dollars on a 512 patch of colored sand -- a picture of California that I can move around and talk in and make junk in. It's a 3-D postcard. Do you know any other things in life that are 3-D moveable postcards from California that cost $15? No. But someday, there will be lots of them.

I know he is supposed to be revolutionary and electronic and stuff, but at the end of the day, he's running an entertainment company, and part of the entertainment is occasionally to descend from Mount Olympus into the god-world and talk to the mortals LOL. The blase way in which he got everybody riled by implying that the Lindens would just eliminate their builds and leave them to the dogs who blew them off the lots was part of the cachet. Of course, he has a copy in his inventory like all such arrogant architects lol. The consumers are helpless lol.

I'm glad to see that some of the posters here aren't falling in that usual adulatory fanboyz mode that so often you see in this kind of game. The new sims have some very nice features, like the cobblestones, or the strange builds. But I agree that they are riddled with American cultural cliches often involving the hilarious appropriation of some 'exotic' culture (the crash in the desert -- I believe The Sims II has the same thing at the neighbourhood screen), the "temple" that looks like a cross between Tinker Toys and somebody's dope-filled summer vacation in Thailand, the Tiki Village, the oil rig in a sim that sounds like it was named for Anwar Sadat (ugh), etc.

I flew around the new sims trying to give them an honest chance. But I had this creeping suspicion that they were all created to be marketable first and foremost, and that had a bit of a creepy feeling to it. I'm the first to agree that sentimentality about "nature" (um, some guy named Eric Linden's idea of "nature" ROFL) has little place for those who just won't pay for what "nature" costs. But like some of the new zoned sims, there is this artificiality about it that makes SL feel more like the Truman Show or the Stepford Wives. Somebody in marketing pointed out that the kids like waterfront more and sandy beaches -- everybody wants to live in California or Florida LOL. Nobody much buys mountains and slopes unless they are doing exotic builds -- so let's keep it flat, flat, flat -- Kansas meets California! All the inlets are designed to make even MORE waterfront space to sell MORE. It's all awfully flat, at least what I could see, and lacks those dramatic mountains that make the old SL continent have so much character. I'm not sure why Linden art always looks better than the next guy's, but maybe it's because they designed the game tools and therefore can easily work all the specs for it. They made their fantasy, whereas what everyone else is doing is trying to make theirs, and it clashes.

I think it's worth examining why "Friends of the Forest" failed. It isn't due to the lack of dedication and selflessness of a few organizers. But they didn't get their act together, they lost attention, and they lost opportunity. First, they refused to work with developers to get some wilderness in exchange for helping developers manage sims. The inability to understand what land really costs is the biggest obstacle for the "preservationists". I proposed to them that they simply immediately take 10000 meters of my tier in Ravenglass in order to give me paid tier and 30 days to develop, in exchange for 5000 meters of wilderness given them outright as a gift, so they didn't have to purchase it. Spare me, those of you who are trying to portray this as some kind of exploit of tree-huggers, because all I get is lost land I paid for, so please.


But a girl stomped out of the meeting at the mere hint of such a "sellout to landbarons". It was just an idea, and an effort to find a formula where pooled tier could help developers relieve the tier burden during planning and building in exchange for gifts of land. Because somebody has to pay for it. Next, it seemed they had too many meetings and too many long hours drafting the charter, and nobody seemed to get a collective purchase on the auction organized -- that was what is required. Surely there's a long drawn-out story about this that is far more complicated but it involves people not getting their act together. The Lindens shrugged. They didn't hold the FIC hands on this one, it cost them too much.

Phil is suggesting meeting players half way by "big pieces" on the auction but they already do that (remember my suggestions about Midge). But players squabble, people are wary and suspicious of pooling tier (they lose nothing by it but they don't get it), accusing those who do it of being hucksters and charlatans, and it doesn't happen -- no Friends of the Forest. A few individuals who are stubborn and wealthy then get large tracts and keep them as wilderness on their own, or with one trusted friend or something. That's all we ever get in SL because people don't get the value of cooperation.

I continue to be surprised why enterprising Friends couldn't harvest every dewey-eyed Sierra Club newbie's 512 in the game, at least for 30 days. Somebody who is wealthy enough and patient enough to ride out all the usual game idiocy might try this public interest philanthropy but the idea result is if they really have 10 people donating 512 to get 5120 plus 10 percent land, in save-the-land cooperatives. It should be as easy as pie.