If you actually read what I wrote, as opposed to skimming while prematurely preparing your rebuttle, you would have seen that I used my main avatar for the Intel gig because I WANTED TO HAVE MY INVENTORY available. Inventory lag is a non-issue for me; I have long since gotten used to waiting for it to load and I do other things while I wait. Not a problem. No sense in repeating more of what I already wrote once- I don’t expect you to read this anymore closely than you read my first post.

And yes, I am very secure in my identity- how I put together prims in virtual reality is only a small part of that. Who and what I am does not revolve solely around SL. If you understood that for yourself, perhaps it would be clearer to you why a last name in virtual reality is not the concern you think it should be for those of us who also have a first life. Sorry, Prok, but there it is.

Retaining more recoznizable identity isn’t just a nice add-on, it’s the essence of worldism. I’m very much for worlds and for immersion. Augmentation dilutes and even destroys worlds. The whole reason the augmentors even bother coming is because the immersionists already created something for them to latch on to and suck from. It wouldn’t be interesting to the media or their potential customers if SL wasn’t a cool, 3-d streaming world where people made their own content. This Golden Age may not last, as corporations begin to make bland set-ups like company towns in which they will get a team of high-end content creators to make the Pontiacs and road races to entertain others, or they figure out whatever cheap formula is needed to provide lots of Barbie dollhouses or whatever. The Golden Era will remain as an age inspiring the basic values of the world, however, just as in RL. That’s why I think it’s worth defending.

And not only did I see it coming, I was the first to complain systematically 2 years ago about the heavy influence over the forums, the access to the Lindens, the contests, the economy, the feature set, and the whole world by the monopolist companies in SL — the very same that went on to become sherpa consulting companies like ESC. I was permanently banned from the forums. So, please, no little homilies there.

>And being upset about a surname in virtual reality and setting THAT as the rage against the machine because you don’t like the influx of RL on your SL, is like arguing about the color of the carpet in the White House because you disagree with the the war in Iraq. Stomping about the superficial in lieu of biting into the meat of it.

This is a kind of condescending and unnecessary remark. It implies that I live in a happy little bubble with my friends and my little SL-created dollhouse world, raging at the rude interruption of big companies whose aspirations for many eyeballs is driving the hunger of LL to fill up the numbers and lag the entire thing, as well as abandon certain earlier precepts in defense of the world.

But I don’t have any little immersed life — I’ve always lived the meta-life in SL, making different experiments, commenting conceptually on the world. My writings about this are from a position of principle, not from being somebody whose dollhouse suddenly either got broken into or made hugely expensive.

This issue of names is not trivial — not at all. If it were trivial, you’d be able to close the account Versu Richelieu in a heartbeat, merely because her laggy inventory and her IMs were driving you nuts, and open up a fersh Versu Tapioca. But you will never do that because of her age and credibility and association with landmarks in SL. So don’t be silly.

Of course the issue of identity and artistic recognition matters greatly. Your anology of the carpet in the White House and the war Iraq is preposterous.

What would be more believable is an analogy that would say something like, my protest over the war in Iraq must begin with a demonstration in front of the White House, the symbol of the center of power responsible for the war in Iraq, and you coming along and saying, oh, no, don’t demonstrate near that big white building, it has no meaning.

I simply find all your argumentation completely self-serving — you need to justify the use of these names and the work for these corporations, and so you do. I don’t need to justify your taking of the names and your work for them, so I don’t.

I do understand completely that for you and Neil Protagonist, it’s not an issue. You simply feel secure in your identity. I don’t at all feel your identity is as secure, and point that out to you. I see this definitely as a “put up a parking lot” kind of situation.

First, buildings in RL are not welded fenders. A building with style and architectural character is a landmark. Of course people know the building by the name of its commissioner more often than the architect — it’s the Chrysler building, for example. But that doesn’t mean the architect is forced to take the last name Chrysler.

Buildings are really distinctive works of art, especially in Second Life. The texture design and baking alone is art, let along all the other aspects of it. Works of art aren’t named for mass-marketing companies, they are named by their designer, who wishes to keep their design name intact and not have it be diluted by having a clone-drone name.

What’s truly sad about this situation is this whole shtick and both you and Neil Protagonist foist on us as an argument about this situation: Linden Lab’s poorly working central-asset service, badly organized inventory, and nasty lag and nearly-crippled search.

So merely to do your art, you are only to grateful to ditch your inventory-laded main character in SL, and take on the clone-drone’s name merely to have a clean and crisp working avatar not laden by your huge inventories.

That’s just sad. And I hope that eventually with all the cloning and CopyBot, that one thing the Lindens make is the ability to take an account like Versu Richelieu and suspend its inventory somewhere and have its “clean workslate instance” for a job retaining the original name.

Trying to build an entire argumentation around the limitations of SL strikes me as just plain unpersuasive.

If the inventory did NOT lag and you had the ability to make “clean work slate” or merely be able to search in a snap, you’d be far less likely to pick up that fresh, unused avatar.

Versu, perhaps you’re busy in your own workshop; not seeing it, sorry, as a collective phenom. Taken as a whole, the class of the several dozen most talented and recognized architects and designers of SL have been completely coopted, and are all busy working for the Man. Their own art is languishing. If there’s a hypervent coming that will persuade us otherwise, I’ll withold the adulation until I see it, and still ask pointedly whether your own content-creation business has been junked. Because, I understand perfectly well that you have no motivation, abstractly speaking, to make something by yourself and for the world anymore — the pay is just too lame in micropayment amounts.

“The fear is that SL’s finest indigenous builders and designers may never return to their workshops for the world, as they will be kept busy working for big corporations making lifeless company towns.”

I still make stuff for my own in-world company and I know that other MoU folks do as well. It may take us a little longer to get it out there, but it is still coming.

And there ARE corporate builds with lots of life- keep your eyes peeled for the launch of the Leo Burnett sim (among many others in the works) at the end of this month or so. We had a blast building this enchanted island- a great example of a corporation that sees and appreciates what SL is about. At least I think so.

“Thoughts on using an Alt for corporate work?”- Satchmo

oh, yah…

Firstly, everyone that creates content working with MoU is well aware that MoU owns it. If you work for the RL Toyota, and say, build Scions, does it belong to you, the guy that welded the fender on or to Toyota? And do you, the consumer, even know the name of the guy that welded your fender, or are you just glad it looks shiny and doesn’t fall off as you pull away from the dealership?
No matter what our name is, that is the agreement and that is why they pay us.

No one put a gun to my head to take the MoU name to build for them. Yes, i did the crayon gig under my main av because, as Reuben said, we get the new account after our first build; crayon was my MoU cherry.

I also did the Intel gig with Versu R. rather than MoU- solely because of the severe time constraint of the 72 hours and Versu MoU was fresh out of the oven with nary a texture or a sit anim to call her own. I wanted the vault of my inventory- textures and dojobbies- to snag if i needed them in a pinch and was simply not up to the task (read: there was no fekking way i was going to spend DAYS staring at my texture folder)of sorting and transferring them over to the new MoU AV prior to the build.

Now, however, I prefer to build with the MoU AV. Do I feel cloned? Lawdy, no. Unless you consider it a clone of Versu R. – I now look like the original recipe Versu (my choice); anyone that knows me knows it’s me. But my calling card list is microscopic compared to my main -kept to coworkers and clients only. Why? Because I am not paid to chitty chat in IM. And on my main av, i get tackled on entry with IM’s and remain face down in the IM turf for the duration of each log in. And that’s ok, because it is on MY time. Can i ignore them or go to Busy mode while working? Sure, but i prefer not to. The ppl that IM Versu R. are my friends as well as my SL customers. It is just a good idea to respond.

Can people search me under the MoU name, yep- but my friends know when Versu MoU is on line, she is there to work. Period. And they respect that.

Do I have to wear the blue boilersuit? Nope- no one is making me do that either. I choose to wear it because if a client pops in on a build in progress, i am immediately identifiable to them. And since they are paying for the build, this is also a good idea for many reasons I am sure you can imagine. I did, however, alter the suit quite a bit in PS to suit my taste a little more . Besides, if i dressed normally (for Versu R.) I would have to beat the noobs off with a stick and i just don’t have time for that- heh heh.

Seriously though, I understand the outcry to maintain our original SL identities on a single level- the consumer side (quick product identity) – but honestly, if you build, script, create something, YOU did it, no matter what your SL name is. Your flesh and blood hands on the mouse and keyboard, your throbbing gray matter. And contrary to what some posters in this thread seem to believe, we as content creators of MoU, despite the same last name, are not not blindly thrown at projects simply because we work for the company and have a few spare days on our hands. We are assigned gigs based on our strengths, skills and styles, i.e. no one is going to tell me my next project is to build a car- I stink on ice at cars. Seasoned creators that are KNOWN to build the best cars in SL will get that job.

Unless you are just hoping to add to your original AV’s portfolio (to what purpose, I don’t know- since you are still free to say to anyone that cares, “I made that,too”)the moniker on the linked lump of prims doesn’t matter. I realize that not all worker bee alts kept their same first name, so yes, it is harder to know who their so-called “famous AV” is, but so what? If you called a dog a cat, will it stop barking and sniffing crotches to then hack a hairball?

If I did a good job as Versu MoU, should i, the human behind it, not feel glad about it? If i make something that is crap, wouldn’t i feel disappointment (or whatever gamut of self deprecating emotions we flagellate ourselves with) in myself? If someone says to Versu MoU, “hey, that is cool” should I stifle my RL smile? Or is all that reserved for when Versu R. is up on my monitor?
Shit, i made her up too! If a name matters so much in artistic recognition, why have we not balked about using our RL names from the very first time we rezzed a box and turned it into something else?? Because we didn’t want to. We all wanted the promise of something different – our look, our species, our gender or yes, our names- using our RL names would negate that. Ok, so think of the company name as a step beyond that. It is simply (and it really is simple) a way to ease into a new way of utilizing the metaverse. This isn’t RL folks, and using RL comparisons is like comparing apples and hedgehogs.

While I appreciate the sentiment behind the defense of maintaining our more recognizable identity, i sense this argument is about something larger. If you want to howl about the entry of RL corporations into SL, so be it, i can dig that. But isn’t that something else altogether, with it’s own can of worms? But you saw it coming, i know you did, Prok. You also know that stopping RL corporations from entering virtual space is not going to happen. If you build it, they will come.

And being upset about a surname in virtual reality and setting THAT as the rage against the machine because you don’t like the influx of RL on your SL, is like arguing about the color of the carpet in the White House because you disagree with the the war in Iraq. Stomping about the superficial in lieu of biting into the meat of it.

If those of us with the surnames of the company don’t care what our names are when we work for the company, isn’t that in and of itself representative of no one feeling robbed of their artistic integrity?

Bottom line…
Quality is quality, shit is shit. And whichever one you create, you get to take the credit or the blame. Personally, i always shoot for the former- no matter what i call myself.

Ok, that was my 25 cents…

It would seem to me that if I was an developer in SL, I might wish to keep my professional developer personas and personal artist personas separate.

I do not see why anyone would say the sim he made has no life. Of course when a corporation commissions something, they don’t always expect “life”. How many RL cookie cutter retail stores have an artistic creative side, or “life”. I think of Wal-Mart, Target, MacDonalds. For that matter, how many Scion dealerships probably have “life”. The purpose of the sim is to promote and raise awareness for a product, not show a creative artistic masterpiece. Their not really marketing to a crowd that cares.

I just don’t recall this kind of subsuming of the persona in the company name, however, in any historical period or modern RL equivalent situation, and I couldn’t accept it. It’s strange to me that *you* accept it, but I guess you probably just do your thing, secure in the knowledge that the Scions of the world pay the bills, so to speak, but the Nakamas are down more for as creative works. Of course, you are trying to make Nakama a commercial sim with shops and such.

And that’s why I think to myself, hmmm, you as an artist *and* an entrepreneur make this great set of sims like a city with different things happening in it — and it has one effect and look and life. And then there’s what a company like Toyota or Nissan commissions, and that seems to have less life. Of course, it’s on another deadline, for another purpose, blah blah. All understood.

But what does it mean if our world fills up with these corporate launch stagesets that have no intrinsic purpose? perhaps in time they’ll commission better cities or add to them or simply wipe them and leave, who knows.

I know that great feeling having the fresh, clean avatar.

I’m afraid I don’t accept that fully as an argument about your choice of Neil Millionsofus. You could have chosen Neil Tapioca or some brand new name completely that would become your “corporate workhorse avatar”. Instead, you branded in with Millionsofus. And that process, and your thinking and your decision-making about it, seems an important process to chronicle, to me.

If you’re pissed off that someone has written publicly about this process, well, be pissed, that’s fine. But the public who consumers the view of buildings and the launches of corporations and the entrepreneurship of inworld artists might have feelings about this and something to say, it seems to me, that is beyond you personally.

Reuben Millionsofus seems to have a problem to me, now. To make the name really mean something, he’ll have to get some builds out there that are really compelling using these same people. Of course, he’ll have no time for that — there’s a kind of great hollow place all through SL now as builders — even some not that stellar — are rushing off to build the grand pyramids of our day, subsuming their names into those of our latter-day Pharoahs.