Respectfully
Tabatha Dagger

Voice is a proof that the designers did not think about what makes a virtual world virtual. Newbie minds, or marketing related ones, no more no less. Well, ok, SL will become a 3D skype and the communities that were here to virtually live a second life will be gone. But certainly it is a big deal for LL, because now the kids can take it over in huge numbers. The ones that really created the virtual world can leave or keep paying for the vanishing shadow of the original idea of second life.

It hurts, but I will leave too, among with many other girls I spoke with. We wanted to have some fun, no stress, no fear, no real harassment. And voice will cause lots of stress and hurts to us, absolutely no doubt about that clear point.

However, most of SL is a world where text is better than voice for the simple reason that voice shatters the fantasy and ruins the oh-so-carefully-crafted illusion we try to make with our avatars, our perfectly coifed hair and our 15th century French Country homes. What point is there is spending the money and time to create a faux English town (Calderon anybody?) if people talk to you in a thick Bronx accent? And how jarring will it be when that cute little lady you’ve been shacking up with on weekends suddenly gets a baritone voice, Turrets syndrome and a very uncute (and unlittle) belch every 15 minutes?

If it’s pay to use voice, I won’t pay and I won’t use it. If it’s optional, I’ll turn it off. If it becomes mandatory and text gets shut down, I’ll probably take my money – several hundred US dollars a year – and play something else instead. The name of the program is “SECOND LIFE”, not “recreate your first life here”. If I want to run around with my real voice and my real face, there’s Yahoo Chat – it’s free and it doesn’t crash 3 times a night.

philly can’t type for shit.

if he COULD – this whole bringing voice to SL would still be on the back burner.

it started with the town halls, so he dint hafta hunt and peck at any type of speed, and now this.

and NO whoever it was that said voice in SL is a necessity. Having a fuckin game that doesn’t fall apart every day is damn necessity.

Tell my deaf SL friends how much audio is a necessity. Oh wait you’ll hafta TYPE to communicate with them, my bad.

I’ll take just about anything else for a reason to have voice in SL – but I aint takin THAT.

gimme a damn break.

It should be realized that Philip, stockhoders and venture capitalists aren’t the only ones who have invested vast sums in Second Life. With private islands going for $5,200+ the first year and $3,600 per year afterard… it has to be understood that the customers have a significant investment as well.

Now if all Linden Lab was charging was $10 a month for a membership and vast $$$ were not involved, then people might not be so vocal about things that go wrong (or they might. Who knows). But I think what a lot of people gripe about is Linden Lab charging so much to use their system and then making arbitrary, self-focused, Linden Lab-benefitting decisions regardless of the opinions of their customers/investors, and regardless of whether such brings good or harm to those people.

Linden Lab has a long record of ignoring the good of its customers and flat well doing whatever Linden Lab wants to do. Imho, people are just plain goofy to pay as much as they do for a piece of virtual land. I mean, back when the first year fees were about $2000 less, I questioned the sensibility of investing in a private island– and I had an entire group sharing the costs. The prices LL charges are just absurd– but people are senseless enough to pay anyway. Some folks seem to just have too much money, too little common sense, and too little RL. (and I say too little common sense, or they surely would not put such money into a system as unstable as Second Life).

Even Ansche Chung amazes me; I mean, the girl is rich and has certainly met her goals beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, but despite having a business head on he shoulders, she has been LUCKY. One single undesirable decision from Linden Lab could have shot her venture down the tubes. It’s amazing such hasn’t already happened. For people to invest such sums in a platform that is almost certain to fail within a reasonably short period of time is just astounding. No matter how much people hide their head in the sand… SL does not have a cheerful outlook. Any decent business analyst would examine the board and shake their head… or burst out laughing and the absurdity of the situation… and that so many people have been taken in by it. Shades of dot.com era.

Myself, if I were Ansche, I’d be investing every dime I had in putting together my own virtual platform and getting out from under the Linden Lab autocratic thumb.

All that aside, when people do pony up and pay such outrageous fees– at least they should have a say in such decisions as to whether or not Linden Lab wastes time and money on something like in-world sound– when the platform foundation falls apart on a regular basis. It’s understandable that people might whine and gripe and complain when LL keeps adding things such as (pardon me bringing up past sins) in-game video and local lighting when people’s inventory is vanishing, asset servers are crashing on a regular basis, they can’t log in or teleport, etc etc etc. Yeah, they might balk at their investment going to add yet another drain on system assets– especially a drain as serious as in-game vocal chat.

That Philip actually thinks this will be implemented without serious problems is almost funny– if it weren’t so self-destructive.

I think the heavy amount of complaining and “whining” and griping that we see going on is in reality a manifestation of what customers on SL truly feel. They’re addicted to the platform, or are so heavily invested in it they don’t feel comfortable in cutting their losses– but they are frustrated at the consistent mismanagement of the platform. Said it before: SL is a good idea gone bad. They need a sighn (misspelling intentional): “Genius at work… DANGER!” Because SL is surely one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of wondrous vision badly implemented.

A response How, to the comment that it would take a few million to compete with Linden Lab. No… actually, I believe it could be done on far less than $20,000. What it would take is a half dozen people who really know their stuff and who were willing to donate their time for a share in the outcome. All they’d have to do is start with a small server-to-client world, and expand as it caught attention. It wouldn’t take a tremendous investment in money at all; it would take time and expertise. And if the expertise were good enough– it would take a surprisingly small amount of time.

I personally have no desire to do so (other major irons in the fire) but if I had that desire, you can bet it would already be done. What amazes me is that no one else has done so. It’s not realy all that hard to create a viable and far more stable Second Life. From a techincal and programming standpoint– the moethodology has been around for years. Despite cries to the contrary– there’s nothing all that “leading edge” about SL technology. The vision (ie format) is somewhat unique, but the tech– nah. Been around for years.

So yeah, it could be done elsewhere, better, more stable, and cheaper. But it would take people who are dedicated– and more level-headed than what we’ve seen come out of Linden Lab.

“I am really tired of hearing from people who want Voice Chat because they dont want to make the effort to learn to type. Why are they online at all if they don’t even have this simple skill?”

“Posted by: Wayfinder Wishbringer”

“So hey, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you might want to realize it’s just your opinion. Doesn’t make it fact– and it doesn’t mean that other people are wrong in voicing their objections. That is after all, what the Herald is all about, isn’t it? ”

Here is a computation that other people seem to leave out of their “opinions”. SL is a business (yes the user base matters….. but much of the user base seems to think they are the only ones that exist), they raised, at least 19 to 20 million in venture capital in addition to the seed money Phil Linden and Mitch Kapor put up initially. And that part is fact (my numbers may be a little off, but I am not privy to all of Linden Labs finances). Having invested that much money, they at a minimum want it back and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect them to want (and rightfully deserve) a nice return. In order to reach their goal they have reasonably assumed SL needs to be accepted more broadly and voice chat is one way to do that. Most people can type, doesnt mean they want to all the time. Voice chat is much more amenable to casual conversation and allows for much quicker exchanges. Very important also for business if you want more “productivity” and better use of your time. Most people can talk much faster than they type.

Its not that I dont respect other people’s opinions, its that some people have their money where their mouth is. If it were just Phil Lindens money it would be one thing but he is in hoc to venture capitalists who one day will want their money back. Therefore when things arn’t perfect, I cut the guy some slack, because he took tremendous personal and business risk. I am not a sound engineer (and i dont think most people here are either) so I dont know how well voice can eventually be implemented. However if done properly I can easily see it bring back many of the users who left SL or gave it only a casual try.

I choose the word whiner’s because that is what I see many times in SL related discussions, whining. This thing isnt perfect or that thing isnt perfect, as if life is ever perfect. Its new territory, a new world, of course things arent going to work well 100% of the time out of the box. Thats the way it is with all innovation. That doesn’t mean critcism is unwarranted, Linden Labs does need feedback, but much of the feedback I see seems to come from people who seem to feel they could be doing a better job right off the bat. If you feel so strongly about certain issues (I am speaking very broadly, not just this discussion) and you are so sure you can do a better job, then go start coding and pony up the 30 or 40 million you are going to need to create a competitor to SL. Then see how long you have to wait for a return, any return. As far as I know, its been 6 years and they are still not profitable.

So yeah, I called people whiners, and thats because that is what I see ( every little thing wrong with SL treated as if it were some huge indignity or personal affront to them), people who dont seem to have an apprecation for the amount of work or cost something like SL takes, very qucikly shooting of their “opinions” about how if they were running the show things would be so different (and perfect the first time around—-). If thats the case, go for it. Lets see what you can come up with. Build a world and maybe other Second Lifers will follow.

My concern was that LL will attempt to charge class 4 owners US$295 per month (which they already tried once for lower spec hardware), which would mean paying US$100 a month just for voice per class 4 island (4 islands per server remember…) which isn’t just expensive – it’s sodding extortionate!
Anyway – as things stand, when you order your island it should come with voice.
IF you can believe LL can get it to work well enough to even bother using… Which I have my doubts about, though His Highness seems totally confident in his company’s ability to get it working, even in the face of their current track record on getting existing technology to function reliably, never mind new stuff!

It was about a conversation from which emerged a number of interesting pointers to Linden Lab’s CEO’s rather strange attitudes. It’s one thing to suspect them from his actions, another to have him lay them on the line for you…

Still, it’s interesting to see how thoroughly the concept of voice in SL is capable of polarising people’s opinions so clearly. I really don’t think I’ve seen anything press people’s buttons quite this way before in SL…

For what it’s worth, voice is something you can use, or not use, it’s up to you. In most places it’ll be there if you want it – but no one’s forcing you to use it. So, why so much fuss?