Virtual Worlds, Report No. 3: Half Time Score: There, 10; SL 3

by prokofy on 29/03/07 at 12:30 pm

Well, alright, maybe it’s 6-4, as one MTV guy conceded. The ad people in the room, the suits, respond to control. And Viacom/MTV/There offer them control. There won’t be any “flying objects,” as Colin Parris, the IBM VP, delicately called the Anshe Chung flying penises problem. He’s staying with SL because it’s on balance a “value-add” for his company, and most important for the work force is the open-ended social networking for his employees. I asked him if he feared loss of worker productivity, distractability, and undermining of management authority by open-ended platforms. He reflected and said, no, on balance it’s a value-add — it’s a plus. If he can bring people in India and England and the United States together to talk to each other with the innovation, creativity, directness — and cost savings in airfares — that he can in SL, that works. It works because he can keep parts of his islands hidden and locked down, however…and not every business is going to have the longevity, the technical skills, the endurance power and the pocketbook to hit the sweet spot of Second Life. Many aren’t going to stick around if any one of those areas like “broadly offensive” and “undermining management authority” or “worker productivity” breaks down too many ways for them.

If you haven’t been to There lately, maybe you’ll be downloading it sooner rather than later. So far, at half-time here on the morning of day two at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference, it’s the winner for the platform that can ensure advertising companies and media planners the space and the environment and the product placement they require. SL is for fun, for the intrepid, the experimental, the geeky. But if you want a quicker fix and a safer ride, There and everything associated with it is more likely to give it to you. That makes the intelligentsia angry. Spin Martin is Twittering that he doesn’t like the virtual world platform makers and developers like MTV and There that say “we’ll control the users”. But as panelists are saying — you make stuff open-ended, you get people making good and bad stuff. You can tell people to ignore the bad, but frankly, the customers don’t want to have to keep stepping over the pile of penises to get to the good (which even in SL terms might mean *one* properly-placed penis, not a sim of them flying into your hair). It doesn’t mean that experimentation and innovation won’t keep on keeping on in platforms like SL…but it will not become the mass-use platform Philip Rosedale talks about when he says “I wanted to make it for everybody.”

Oh, you say? There doesn’t have real estate? How can they do it? The new “MTV crib” concept, however, evidently will involve the ability for residents to sell their tricked-out cribs to other residents seeking the cooler cribs. Jeffrey Yapp told the Herald that he expects residents will be selling the cribs, but he didn’t specify how that will be done, whether in the client or on E-bay. The point is, they may not need real estate or resident sales inworld of real estate to do what the people with the money to spend on media want of them: product placement and immersive, interactive experiences with the brand.

I found the MTV/There demos scary. Humdog was frightenly predictive, five years ago, when she warned us in the Herald they’d be tracking our every move. They will have everything about what avatars click on, where they move, what they like, who they talk to. Of course, we know that from SL, from the SL Data scandal, and from the power of chat log reproduction on third-party blogs. But these trackers will be professionals — they have vast capacity and vast data bases to scrape and scrape, and we don’t know where we will hide — because they also assume they will access the real person behind the avatar as part of their usage of the platforms. Lindens decline to offer email lists of customers, but they don’t decline to offer aggregate data. Will There keep their customers’ lists away from ad agencies?

Demos that work are instant successes. It wasn’t that Joe Miller, the LL guy demo’ing SL after Philip and His Hair left the conference to go hob-nob with Bill Clinton at Hilton Head, wasn’t good at making Power Points sing. It’s that, damn, it’s just too damn geeky. There were plenty of geeks in the room looking for all that geek porn like stuff about the architecture — but other people were heading for the exits. They wanted more simplified pictures of female avatars buying and talking about brands. Contrast that with the kinds of demos of There provided — you want product placement? Here’s a brand manager’s wet dream: all on her own, a girl in There decides that the Levi jacket is “cool” and it winds up selling for the equivalent of US $83 — a price a RL new Levi jacket doesn’t even have. Yes, the salivating was audible in the room.

So that geekiness cost some points in the first few innings, but how did SL end up with 3? Well, LL says they don’t do deals. Their CEO doesn’t remain to collect cards, and their people claim they don’t directly sign up companies. There isn’t squeamish like that. They sign them up right before your eyes and they’re proud of it.

And don’t think that the people on Terra Nova are defining what a virtual world is. We might say we want them to be open-ended, open-sourced, open-minded. But that’s not the definition being evolved by others in other worlds on other platforms who are REALLY going to make the concept of virtual worlds massive. They’ve identified the criteria they need:

o Professional Content
o Governance
o Ease of Use

And whoops…Second Life is trailing far behind on the field, waiting to be called “out” before they get to second base. MTV and There make the content because 80-90 percent of the users WANT the content to be laid out — and they want it to be good and easy to use. Remember, they’re dealing with a REAL mass audience, not a fake one. They want governance that THEY manage; Joe Miller fed me the mantra once again that LL wants to get out of the governance business — of course, as I would add, not before they weld their own political views into the tools.

The blog-o-gentsia might hate this — but then, nobody is looking to them to manage the big ad account for the old media. I figured the old media were dinosaurs; but I should have had more faith in my old MTV (I go back to Martha Quinn days). They’ve had 25 years to do this stuff, and they get it right and will go on getting it right for the mass audiences, calibrated to an inch of their demographics.

But aren’t the kids going to deconstruct the content and mess it up? The Virtual Laguna Beach experience is showing that they don’t. Ren Reynolds gets my vote for quote of the conference with what he blurted out on one panel: “But if you place My Little Pony, you’ll have the problem of My Little Pony Butt Plug,” I spare him a Herald headline with that priceless gem, but you had to be here to see the look on the face of Jeska Linden, who came sporting blue-streaked hair (“But this is what we have in San Francisco). The fact is, there are constituencies that want to deconstruct My Little Pony and use My Little Pony as a butt plug. They aren’t going to fuel the next stage of the Metaverse, however.

So why does the MTV guy score them at a more equal 6 to 4? Because so far, everybody only REACTS to Second Life, they don’t ignore it. Every single panelist feels called upon to genuflect first, and say “Sorry, Second Life” or “I won’t just talk about Second Life, because they get all the news” or “of course aside from Second Life”. Just like the issue of when Canadians can stop talking about America, then they’ll have the coolest country, so everybody here, when they can stop talking about Second Life and really make their own thing cool, they’ll have it.

Logged into SL, you don’t realize that at a gathering like this, a lot of people DON’T log into SL because they can’t get the right graphics card; they can’t get enough broad-band; they can’t figure out how to get past the penises. So that’s why a guy with a game in Luxembourg who is offering his customers a web-based game with Java, or Multiverse’s Corey Bridges, who says he has 9,000 geek indy groups making worlds now, don’t care about SL, but the guy from the State Department is figuring out more how to use it. A lot of people here are all looking at or representing or making OTHER stuff than SL — while keeping their SL avatars, some of them, to stay au courant.

It’s just gotten a lot harder to be the loyal opposition. Everybody sneers at the stuff that isn’t SL because it doesn’t have user-generated content; they don’t realize these other platforms will have *enough* of it to matter to the masses, but not TOO much. If people go over to them, the story will be there. The Second Life Herald needs to re-name itself once again, to remain relevant.

We’re at the cusp of a point where a lot of people are going to be skipping over SL and just cutting their teeth on other stuff. In fact SL’s press will help them get interested, but when they find, like the 90 percent of people who don’t retain in SL after they try it, that they can’t get it to work, they’ll have whetted their appetites enough to try something else.

An interesting game is Whyville. It’s for kids, mainly girls learning a game and learning math and social skills at the same time, but it’s a game and a world simply running on a different concept. They don’t put the platform first. Their CEO says 3 people out of the 50 are programmers; the rest are involved in *process*,. And by process, they mean how people play the game, what they do, how the world will develop. The Lindens always tell us they want hands off the world, even though their stamp is in every tree. They don’t do ENOUGH process though to help the average person feel safe and more importantly, reach the comfort level they need in the world.

Whyville claims they’re better than SL because they can get 6,000 people at one concert — but I drilled down a little on this and found out what they mean. Sure, they have multiple shards in which everyone can hear and see the same event. But it’s only 35 people in the room or “on the sim”. In that sense it is WORSE than SL where we get at least 40 if not 160 at four corners on the mainland, and even many hundreds more on island four corners on class 5 sims. So those 35 people can’t reach out and touch any of the other 6000. No platform has the ability to instantly put 6000 people in a room with pictures and sound except the old ones called “radio” and “television” and “real life stadiums”.

The platforms who can ensure the uniformity of experience of the 6,000 — and SL can’t do that reliably — will be what the experts in uniformity of experience — the old media — will want from the new media. It’s not over yet.

36 Responses to “Virtual Worlds, Report No. 3: Half Time Score: There, 10; SL 3”

Espresso Saarinen

Mar 29th, 2007

how droll to see you, prok, advising from the viewpoint of the commercial entries into the second life and other virtual worlds. amusing that you would stoop to such a flip merely to do your usual best to sabotage the nest in which you love to poop.

while i too share many of the dissatisfactions of sl, and get very annoyed at the bugs and lack of professional operations, i don’t turn coat to get my way.
Lordfly Digeridoo

Mar 29th, 2007

People hate living in a commercial. If all they want to do is shove a brand in your face, just put up a billboard and be done with it.

Businesses will succeed in virtual worlds where they can create a community around their product. Laguna Beach. The L Word. Pontiac. Regardless of the platform, the companies that make it compelling to hang around there will succeed. If people want commercials they’ll just watch tv.
Lordfly Digeridoo

Mar 29th, 2007

Does this mean you’ll be moving to There.com now, princess?
Doubledown Tandino

Mar 29th, 2007

Thanks for the part 3 post. Everything you’ve said just makes me feel even more confident that learning SL and being in SL is the way to go… and that I shouldn’t worry that I’m missing out on the other virtual worlds taking shape.
Phillip’s vision is the one that will supercede all other worlds. SL is open to anything… and in the end, that’s what everyone will want. Sure… the masses may play with There or whatever other metaverse, but once they learn that their world has limits and he or she wants to expand and learn more, SL is the only platform that allows that.

I’m done with internet socializing… that is not the reason I use a virtual world. And once that fad of an avatar talking to another avatar has faded, people will examine the purpose of each virtual world.. and right now, SL is the only world that has all purposes available.
Trevor F. Smith

Mar 29th, 2007

> It’s not over yet.

Not by a long shot.
shockwave yareach

Mar 29th, 2007

Oh. So MTV, Viacom, and all these other advertisers think that just because they build something in 3d space, everyone will flock to their system. I’m really going to abandon my land, my home, my friends, the stuff I built and the scripts I wrote which do things I want to do, all to be restricted to what MTV wants me to do, see and hear. I’m supposed to give up the wild west (its good and bad) for “Jackass”.

These people don’t get it either – people play games when they are fun. Watching commercials all evening isn’t fun. Neither are all the crashes and greifer raids in SL, both supported by the revolving door admission. But at least in SL, my butt is mine and not Viacom’s.
Nacon

Mar 29th, 2007

“The Second Life Herald needs to re-name itself once again, to remain relevant.”

I vote for “The Second Fake Herald” or “The Half-Assed Herald”.
Inigo Chamerberlin

Mar 29th, 2007

So, what we want from virtual media is something just like a RL media event?

Do we? Really? I recall someone recently asking, ‘Why? When I can do it easier and better in RL?’

I agreed. And still do. Virtual worlds must either be very much better, or very different – maybe both. But being ‘just like RL’? Nope, sorry, it doesn’t fly.
marilyn murphy

Mar 29th, 2007

well, ok then. i for one would be pleased if There became the place for the corporate mindset. clear out the advertisements and stuff and wave goodbye. let them have there. maybe LL would then want to spend some energy fixing sl instead of offering new things.
Opinion Ate It

Mar 29th, 2007

Most of us in SL are trying to eliminate, or atleast control, the commercialization of SL and you argue that other virtual worlds are better than SL because they invite it with open arms and are friendlier toward it?

What a waste of an Op Ed.

And trust me, SL is becoming just as guilty of this, only to a lesser extent at this point. But its not for lack of trying.

If it werent for this newfound “corporate commercialization presence” in SL, we the unwashed masses would still have a say as to the future evolution of SL. As it stands, SL has totally written the little guy off and are trudging forward with little regard for what we say or want.

Case in point? Voice.
Very few want it, but is LL listening? NO! Why? Because the venture capitalist and corporations demand it. Game Over.

If you have been around long enough, you will vouch that there was a time when LL used to accept and welcome our input to the extent that they would participate in our forum discussions before arriving at a decision. Nowadays, all venues to communications with LL have been virtually obliterated.

So, yeah. Let There.com keep their “ten” and may they succeed in their efforts to recruit the “3″ currently in SL.

Maybe then, well be able to have a semblance of the friendly and functional SL of days gone by.
Urizenus

Mar 29th, 2007

I don’t think that’s Prok’s opinion, that is just the dominant message of the conference. “SL is fine for geeks and pervs, but when you are serious about making money come to our nice safe wholesome world.” Bettsy Book is the new Snow White.

It makes me want to open a Herald Bureau to report on what is really going on in There, because we DO know what really happens in those allegedly squeeky clean worlds.
NigrasOnMyLawn

Mar 29th, 2007

@Nacon

I vote for “Second Life Faggery Daggery Doo”
Macphisto Angelus

Mar 29th, 2007

I am glad to see There getting a little due. People need to not be so off put that another virtual world *may* have some success as well.
I beta tested There and bought the lifetime package. I still have some unspent “Therebucks” and tons of objects. It is true you cannot custom create your own items like in SL, but the pre-made content is hardly crud. I love racing my buggy in There and hoverboarding. That is something you are hard pressed to do in SL without the lag and region crossing issues.
It makes sense that businesses and even users will look around for something more stable. Besides, who said we have to live in only one virtual world? Putting all your apples in one basket comes to my mind.
Misty McConachie

Mar 29th, 2007

Good read Prokofy. I have long held the opinion that in terms of the people that stick around, Second Life is the domain of ubergeeks and serious miscreants. It has very high barriers to entry, both in terms of the technology you need to run it and the general level of tech savviness you need to be a participant, particularly a producer. To your average Joe it’s just too complicated, you can’t pick it up in the limited attention spans most people run with these days.

Permitting user created content has also had the effect of making Second Life – the program – hopelessly inefficient too, as SL programmers are always one step behind, always playing catch up. They can’t always (usually even) predict the ways in which the system is going to be bent out of shape. So too much time is spent plugging holes rather than developing the software holistically.

I’m not sure that There will be the answer for the fortune 500 either, mind you. Their response sounds like a case of new technologies, old habits. In a few years I imagine a situation where we all have a generic client that we can use to login to a particular company’s 3D interface, perhaps it will be built into our browsers. Analogous in many ways to how the L Word functions in SL. People come in through Showtime’s website, straight into L Word Island. Same goes for the Australian Telco Telstra, people login via their website and most aren’t aware there’s more to Second Life then the Telstra space. And I wonder, how many people care?

As Lordfly says those companies that will be successful with 3D platforms will be those seeking to further develop an already existing online community. I’m not convinced that participants in those particular 3D communities will give a damn about being directly linked to the other 3D communities out there. And if Philip thinks that the Lindex will be the glue that keeps these disparate groups together he’s kidding himself, it is disarmingly simple to integrate something other payment systems into a 3D interface.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 29th, 2007

Does MOU pay you to write tripe on blog comments, too, Lordfly? Are you on the clock when you do fake infomercials for “the commmuuuunity” which you don’t represent — like…there’s only one “communnnnity”? Like…you aren’t anything but a hired hand now? Like…your tastes as a little metaversal minion *matters*? Hello?

Oh, and you too, Espresso. Can we spell “payola”?

I don’t get paid by any game company or world company to write my reports for the Herald. The Herald’s advertisers, such as they are, can’t sway us, at $1000 Lindens per story — hardly.

I personally am not decamping to There — that’s silly — but I’m reporting on what happened at a 2-day conference on virtual worlds. And there it was abundantly clear that There was winning. That’s really hard to hear — for me, too, but you’d have to be stupid not to get it. Companies with brands want predictability.

The L-word is a niche show for lesbians. Since SL’s demographic is f33 and it has lots of lesbians, it works. Make a world where lesbians could be absolutely certain never to see a flying penis or crash off a sim or lag like hell but still be lesbians, they’ll move. Don’t be so sure of yourself. And the L-word — which I heavily praised — is a niche group for adults. It’s not a mass audience. How many people in this community now? A thousand? And Pontiac? A hundred? Let’s not extrapolate from these very nichified experiments — which are only that at this point, experiments — what will work for mass media and mass audiences.

Virtual Laguna Beach succeeds to the point that it doesn’t emulate the usual SL culture — not because it embraces it.

So…does Reuben Steiger instruct you little asstard fanboyz on the MOU payroll to go around and dis other companies and people who *accurately report* that *media buyers* are pleased with There and that There is putting on a very compelling show? I hardly think so, but as always when someone is *paid for* you have to ask that question. Media buyers don’t rule the world. SL is there for many, many others — including clients who will still pay to develop in SL. Will this be on a mass basis governing the industry? I certainly have my doubts now.

Lordfly thinks that he controls how advertising companies and their clients are going to enter worlds. NOT! They don’t all want some dorky thing like “car culture” where a handful of people sit around with their high-end builds and free land. That’s going to work for a very specialized kind of person, but it is not a recipe for MASS repeat MASS media.

Just like he used to think he was an expert on the economy, business, and real estate merely because he sold a few houses and hung out in SL, College Boy “Pay for Me” Lordfly think that he’s now an expert on “what works” and what the community — as defined by Pol Tabla and Lecktor Hannibal on Second Citizen — likes or doesn’t like. ROLLS EYES.

Nobody has really done any serious marketing studies about SL. This lame-ass study by “Hate America First” types in Europe that claims 70 percent of the SL population (!) hates advertising and is dismayed at branding bears the utmost of scrutiny. What’s the sample size? How on earth can you make claims about “the population” when we don’t even know what it’s real numbers are?! If you take 30 or even 3000 Germans and Dutch tekkies and dopers who hung on in SL for awhile, sure, they’ll say they hate American brands in SL. Der? That’s not information, that’s a public opinion poll — and a skewed one. Until we can see more about that study — and frankly 20 others or 100 others, we don’t have real information about what people like and don’t like in SL.

Furthermore, the reality is that everbody has brands and tolerates them. What, you don’t have the Budweiser case in inventory? The Coke machine? The free Nokia handout? Not even the Scion? Oh, please, spare me with your lame-ass stories about how you hate branding and don’t interact with brands.

I don’t like these corporations in SL for many reasons, given the way they displace the economy, the labour force, the press coverage — but it has to be covered honestly. If AOL can get thousands of visitors, clicks, interactions, sales, then they have it, whether Lordfly thinks AOL is cool or not. I don’t like the AOL island at all but the tastes of the intelligentsia, or the FIC, or the tekkiewikis, don’t matter. They aren’t the buyers of AOL. But guess what…there ARE more buyers of AOL services in SL — and users of things like AIM –than there are people on Lordfly’s friendship list.

The inability to sort your demographic and your taste niche out, and not extrapolate from your own tastes, is shocking. And the inability to realize that the delivery of advertising is going to take different forms in different platforms is also shocking. Just because Pontiac or L-word got one certain formula to work in SL *for now* doesn’t mean you can extrapolate for the whole industry.

Uri is absolutely right. When this conference ended and everybody was breaking up into smaller groups to go out to dinner or drinks, there were people swooning and talking about going “where Betsy is”. Definitely, she’s the new Snow White. Since Betsy Book is related to my permabanning from Second Life, I’m a little more sanguine about Betsy Book than most (get me to tell the story of the connection if you haven’t heard it).

This isn’t an op-ed so much as a report of what the zeitgeist is at this conference. I personally wage holy war against sign ads of crappy inworld businesses and write critically of the corporation flat-footing and mess-ups inworld (Coldwell Banker — hello?) The reality is, this geeky, beta-era FICy sort of taste group is in a minority — and is not monied enough for anybody to bother with these days — at least not exclusively. They aren’t about the next stage of the Metaverse.

That hurts, especially for those among them who didn’t level up far enough to go work with the Palinden Himself, Reuben Steiger. Too bad for you. You aren’t a 14-year-old girl who watches MTV. Media planners want to reach her, and not you. We wish the Metaverse would be about something more interesting. It won’t be.

If the Herald claims it covers all worlds where there’s news about the never-ending saga of the war between the game-gods and the mortals in games and worlds, then if There is going to grow, and have corporate presence and other kinds of presence like government and education, we should be covering it. I fled There ages ago screaming, as it seemed like being cooped up inside a sixth-grade girls’ clique even more than SL — if that’s possible. I couldn’t see how I could reasonably make cash to sustain my time online. I’ll definitely be back when I have the time. All the worlds have to be covered. I was put off by some of things There said at this conference — but guess what, do you think these advertising companies and big business *care*?

How long will Lordfly be able to go on getting paid by big businesses willing to risk “creative chaos” in SL? Place your bets. Lordfly should go back to working at the electronics store to be on the safe side.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 29th, 2007

If it werent for this newfound “corporate commercialization presence” in SL, we the unwashed masses would still have a say as to the future evolution of SL. As it stands, SL has totally written the little guy off and are trudging forward with little regard for what we say or want.

Case in point? Voice.
Very few want it, but is LL listening? NO! Why? Because the venture capitalist and corporations demand it. Game Over

The problem with the unwashed masses is that they can’t pay for the platform. Making and keeping platforms is expensive stuff. Starting out, start-ups subsidize a lot of the communities that emerge on them. But they can’t do it forever. At some point, they have to figure out how to make a profit.

I totally agree about Voice, and have written about this and go everywhere with my No Voice sign card. I even bent Philip’s ear about it at this conference. It’s a perfect example of Ll going with what business wanted and not ordinary people. Business is more likely to pay the bills for them than we are, I guess.
Cocoanut Koala

Mar 30th, 2007

Lookie, the way I figure it, SL is not listening to corporations because the corporations are paying the bill.

WE are paying the bill, Prok! WE pay for the platform! Absolutely.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

>I have long held the opinion that in terms of the people that stick around, Second Life is the domain of ubergeeks and serious miscreants. It has very high barriers to entry, both in terms of the technology you need to run it and the general level of tech savviness you need to be a participant, particularly a producer. To your average Joe it’s just too complicated, you can’t pick it up in the limited attention spans most people run with these days.

Well, yes and no. There are ubergeeks — tekkie-wikis — and serious miscreants (and they are sometimes the same person). But you are forgetting that there are many, many people who are thought of as “casual social users” and not taken seriously by the FIC and the geeks and such — even called “blingtards” — but in fact they aren’t so stupid that they can’t figure out the platform.

There are lots of female entrepreneurs operating at a small-medium level. It’s indicative of this platform that it was a woman, Anshe Chung, who made the first million — people think householding and shopping and decorating make it a girls’ game, and they don’t take it seriously, and the geeks sneer at it culturally, but it makes for experts who are kind of “amateur developers” if you will. They don’t build spectacularly — just good enough to make their store. They aren’t at the top of the fashionista list and may never get noticed, but they build social circles around themselves of people who buy from them. In fact, a lot of the business of SL consists of these social circles that are like Tupperware parties — people in a little village of sorts selling to each other just to make the game interesting for themselves. People like playing store, it fulfills a deeply satisfying urge to do something for someone else, show off something — and get paid.

I watch tenants who spend hours and hours building, decorating, and outfitting their store. It’s almost as if the selling of stuff from it then is secondary. Their friends come over and gab and fool around, and maybe some of them get a corner in that store. They mess about and make traffic, somebody buys something from somebody. Sometimes I’ll buy something from a tenant. The circles are concentric, but don’t spread out hugely far, but if people have enough traffic on their land, then I notice other tenants from that sim or other sims will start wandering over to shop too, etc. None of these people are geeks in the sense of being able to code, script, or build out a sim. But they aren’t just mindless pole-dancers, they are engaging in something more complex and interesting and they deserve respect. For that matter, a pole-dancer deserves respect too, because they’re a human being, they are making money and providing a service, and who are you to judge them?

Most people never come anything close to the level of skill and money-making of an ESC or an Anshe, of course, but what makes SL interesting and fun and compelling for people that it has been a world that enables all these activities, so that people generate content and aren’t dependent on game gods for it. You don’t have a way of explaining why these people stay and collect a following if you only describe SL as “too hard” with “too steep a learning curve”.

If the people coming in the door at the WA can either be brought in from somewhere else by these householders, as I call them, who are distinct from sandboxers who goof around and script or grief, or can happen upon the householders in a club or store, the friendship networks grow.
jim bower

Mar 30th, 2007

just a comment on the “drill down” on 6,000 in whyville — we can put as many users in a single room as we want to — in other words, there is no server, software side limitation, as is the case for the second life engine as I understand it. Instead, we made a design decision for the rock concert in question that our users would like to be in a coffee house setting with the artist, rather than in a stadium. So, we had 6,000 participants in the concert, who each felt they were in a small venue with the artists and a few of their friends. Perhaps of more interest, we used our tools for community management and discussion to allow kids to ask questions of the artists between songs. so, in fact, they kids were all tied together, although they didn’t have the impression they were. Again, our design decision was not made based on server or pipe limitations of our engine, we instead make design decisions about what would be the most interesting virtual experience for our users.

Jim Bower
CEO Numedeon Inc.
Macphisto Angelus

Mar 30th, 2007

“I’ll definitely be back when I have the time. All the worlds have to be covered.”

After reading this article today I did my first download of There in ages. I was presently surprised by some of the changes. I have much to read but the first things I noticed is that you can own neighborhoods now (to develop into rentals even if you wish) and there were lots of new type builds (castles and even some stores where you click on signs to go to the auction pages). I looked pretty darn outdated with my old clothes and vintage era upgrades, but things have come far from what I remember. I will be in There more often for sure. Not to say I am “leaving” SL, but it is nice to have a virtual world to play in when SL is on the blink.

The economy may have gone up some too. It seems my 17K I had when I left could buy a lot more then it can now.
Ombrone aka Albert Falck

Mar 30th, 2007

Prokofy I think u usually write interesting and intelligent articles and actually this is one of this, what u describe is true, but I guess u are missing one point.

I found quite normal that platform like There and Home could be quite loved by Corporation, they have a ready-to-eat lunch prepared by the company running the game with a nice captive already marketing defined audience.

Dream for a marketer is in any case a lobotomized captive audience with an easy to click BUY button clearing the payment with the client bank and sending the product home, without any other obstacle in the way.

A part of the audience barters its potential creativity and freedom with a easy to use, pleasant environment gently managed by the Official Sponsor of the week, other prefer to test them in the anarchic mess of SL. Different people, for marketing are different target to be addressed in different way, maybe with different products.

That’s mean that There is “better” than “SL”? That’s mean only that they took different ways of development. That they, probably target a different market segment.

Are we geeky or simple creative? That’s simply matter of definition. Nike founds that the SL user base is not getting crazy to buy its virtual shoes, but There’s is? Well that’s not a problem of us, it’s a problem of Nike and of their marketing dept.

Company they have to reach the right target with the right message. If they fail is not the audience wrong it’s their marketing strategy.

Nike prefers the user base of There… well it could be a issue to be resolved in the next LL strategic plan, if they want. It’s not an issue for us.

Are we geeky? Do we prefer different kind of products? We are not wrong, simply is the Nike sending the wrong products, with the wrong message on the wrong target.

Cheers and go ahead with ur good work

Ombrone
In SL Albert Falck
Onder Skall

Mar 30th, 2007

RE: renaming Second Life Herald

I’ve been thinking the same thing about Second Life Games. When it was first put together it seemed like a real good idea to name it after SL, but things move on and there are wider issues. There will be good games in There and Areae and Outback Online, new forms of expression and new ways to look at things… and that’s where I’ll find myself, no doubt.

Funny how we’re back to the size of congregation issue. I have a feeling it will come up again and again until something budges.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

Jim,

Thanks for that elucidation of Whyville, and I appreciate that you are trying to drive the experience from what the users want, and what works for the community, and not get hung up on what a server limitation is, or drive the experience around the server limitations, and that’s great.

Let me give the short form of a very long post first:

When game executives (and our own SL exec is guilty of bragging about thousands of people at a concert too, and being torn to bits by Clay Shirky) say, “I had thousands of people at a concert” we need ask about the following:

o did they all see and hear the same thing simultaneously?
o could any one of those thousands talk to and see any one other of those thousands, or were they divided into shards/instances/sims seeing only 35-50 people?
o could the musicians talk to any one of the thousands in real time and be seen
o could the audiences in any or ever pod then hear and see the interaction the musicians had with any one of the thousands in real time.

So..in fairness to SL, that’s exactly what happens there, too, when users like me managing islands or mainland sims or people managing larger operations with live music, are doing it in Second Life.

They, too, have customers in a cafe-like and not stadium-like experience in Second Life, 40 people on a mainland sim or 100 on a private island sim; put 4 of them together to have the corners meet, and you have 160 people at a single, contiguous, shared, connected event and 400 (or more on class 5 sims) at a single, contiguous, shared, connected event, all of whom can talk to the musicians in real time and to each other in real time.

You have 6000 people, but they are not ALL together in a single, shared, contiguous, connected event. No girl in one cafe of 35 people can see and talk to a girl in another cafe –nor would she want to, people have only so much capacity. So, sure, you can say people want a more intimate cafe-like experience and not a stadium of 6000, but then, it has to be understood what you are creating: the ability for many sets of 35 people to all see one concert and interact within their pods of 35 people, but when any one of the pods interacts with the master pod of musicians, they can hear/see that interaction. So it’s not broadcasting, it’s shoutcasting so to speak, only with streaming video, I guess.

That is, I can make a group of 2000 people in Second Life and have them all talk to each other on the same channel within a group IM. They cannot all get on one server, and they cannot all get on 10 servers where they will see the same thing up on the front of the room, but not be able to interact with that copy of the thing in front of them.

With land groups where you are trying to turn over land information and group titles and permissions, the dbase lags on groups over 600 people, I find. But if I am only trying to get a chat bar and have 1000 or 2000 people talk all at once in some crazy big scroll, they can do that. Perhaps even 6000, someone should load test it in SL. The experience of actually communicating is likely to diminish, however. Most groups of over 200 or so diminish because only some people get to talk and type their scroll; larger groups force many people into passivity.

The live music people can put up a shoutcast server, or whatever kind of their own server they’d use, and they have the IP address to it, and anyone in Second Life can paste that URL in and *hear* the concert but not *see* the avatars or the room chat.

It sounds to me like what you have in Whyville is a cross between television, where you can all watch the rock band but not talk to the rock band and the other watchers, and SL, where you can all watch and talk to the rockband, but only on that 4-corner sim with 400 max people.

I guess SL just replicates that experience another way — there are hundreds of different bands playing all at once, to all their different niche crowds all over the SL grid every night. There isn’t one band trying to reach 6000 people all at once, as they might in RL, there are 300 bands each trying to reach a core audience of 20 people that will stay with them and tip them every Friday night. SL just forced that evolution, I guess, and you could argue: what’s better, having the game-god create the multiple instances so all the girls can see the one rock band? Or the game-gods merely creating the slots for 300 independent and different bands to emerge and each serve 20-400 people. Wild to think of, eh?

In order to share the experience of 6000 or even 600 in SL, they’d have to have instances on multiple sims. The Electric Sheep and others have done that. They might get, say, 25 sims going all at once, each with 40 or 100 people on it, depending on the mainland/private island distinction. I personally have witnessed the Lindens themselves getting a dozen of the instances or shards, if you will, which are just identically copied private islands, going all at once with the same content.

But it’s not a shared experience of avatars, only builds. And here we really need to parse this carefully, so we can both a) criticize SL properly but b) understand whether what other people get on their platforms is any better.

Your 35 kids in Whyville can’t talk to the other 35 kids on the other shard and see their avatars or content rezzed on another shard. They can only see/talk to/rez content where they are. Maybe 35 is about the number people can comfortably interact with anyway. But what you do want is the ability of the rock band to multiple its interactivity capacity.

However…how much can a human rock musician plough through a thousand IMs? He can’t do too much of it unless you are going to create puppeteers and pilots — and we already see a lot of that in SL, where peons in these development companies come on and puppet some famous dude’s avatar, and we’re really not getting the famous dude, it’s like a body double. And if that famous dude then *talks* we can’t be sure we’re getting anything really from him.

It strikes me that in arranging the interactivity of the rock ban with the 6000, managers are going to have to edit out the stream from the individual 35s on their shards, and take one from Tammy and one from Jenny and one from Kimmy on each shard and then relay it to the rock musician, otherwise it’s chaos. I find that any rolling scroll of group IM that gets over about 600-1000 becomes mad chaos myself if 20 percent of them start talking.

So…on Whyville, they might individually feed into one rockband with questions, and then if the rock band feeds back the questions like you would on a radio show, sure, all 6000 people can hear the questions and answers and see the instance of the rock stars as if broadcast on TV. I’d like to know, however whether the formula is that anyone can interact with the RL rockstars in real time, or whether you relay questions.

That is, in SL, as in your Whyville, I can’t see the instance of the rock stars on another sim but I could hear them if they use Internet radio stations or shoutcast servers, and IM them. so it’s staggered in time.

When you say “in fact the kids are all tied together although they didn’t have the impression they were”.

In SL, the same thing is possible. Ten islands could all be listening to a live music act; only 4 at the four corners might *see* them. You’re saying you can have everyone see them because they pop up into the room slot where the 35 are. In SL, you’d have to be physically on that one server where those people have logged on their one account as individuals humans to see their avatars. There have been experiments with logging on Sheep bots on multiple instances but then there’s still the problem of having to replicate the chat into each one of those accounts IMs or room chat to make them simultaneous, I haven’t seen anybody beat that.

When game executives (and our own SL exec is guilty of bragging about thousands of people at a concert too, and being torn to bits by Clay Shirky) say “I had thousands of people at a concert” we need ask about the following:

o did they all see and hear the same thing simultaneously?
o could any one of those thousands talk to and see any one other of those thousands, or were they divided into shards/instances/sims seeing only 35-50 people?
o could the musicians talk to any one of the thousands in real time and be seen and heard by any one of the thousands in real time.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

WE are paying the bill, Prok! WE pay for the platform! Absolutely.

Sure, Cocoanut, we’re paying it *now*. Only 15 percent of the islands are bought by developers. This will change. The equation will flip DRASTICALLY. We singletons owning land will be in the minority. Large corporations will buy most of the islands, and manage people and content on them, themselves, serving the customers we’re serving now, only way better becaue they will have development capital, better, professionally-made content, and paid staff that we can’t dream of — if they go the route of serving individuals with micropayments.

We can remain and be some portion of the economy. It’s like a tourist town that has the Hilton, the Sheraton, the Motel 6, and then somebody’s independent family bed and breakfast.

I don’t say I like this, or that it’s better, I say that judging from the laws of real life and globalization, this is what will happen, only a matter of time.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

Albert,

People who are in a certain demographic have a hugely hard time understanding that they don’t represent the world. They cannot sing “We are the world.” They can only sing, “We are the uber hardcore geeks of SL and we represent a tiny segment of the users of virtual worlds”.

What you can’t grasp, evidently, is that you don’t even represent Second Life, let along the audience of MTV. Second Life is chock full of girls only to happy to click on a brand, trust me. You have no idea. You are stuck on your sim with your ubergeek branding of its own and not seeing what else is out there because you have cultural contempt for it.

And essentially, when you or anybody who is far more rude, like Lordfly, keeps shouting over and over again their cultural contempt for people who aren’t sharing their tastes, who are camp chair queens or blingtards, they aren’t diminishing the fact that those people constitute a marketing demographic, those people have money, too, often more than Lordfly does, those people will be served if Lordly and his snotty developers don’t serve them, and they will likely be better served on another platform if these snarky developers in their ubergeek demographic — which includes Linden Lab’s employees — don’t step out of the way and stop bottlenecking their own platform.

Oh, unless of course they don’t want millions of people. That’s fine. Nobody says they HAVE to have millions! Let them have 250,000 hardcore furry ageplaying creative geeks, and let them survive on the pocketbooks of those people.

“That’s mean that There is “better” than “SL”? That’s mean only that they took different ways of development. That they, probably target a different market segment.”

Yes, it’s about market segments, but I didn’t say “There is better than SL”. That is now a meaningless statement. Better for who? Better how? Better why?

I haven’t been in There in ages, so I’ll find out whether Macphisto’s tour of it indicates it will pleasantly surprise me, too.

There has a PG13 environment, and they are very strict in enforcing it as I found talking to their execs at this conference. They make short work of griefers, too. Many, many people might be very happy in SL given what they have endured in Second Life.

It won’t be better for those who want more than PG13, however.
Lordfly Digeridoo

Mar 30th, 2007

Prokofy Neva said:
(lots of ad nauseum attacks and look at me I’m so edgy because lordfly’s in college and i’m old lulz where’s the free beer lulz RAPEOCIDE)

Oh fer Chrissakes, get off your crusading bandwagon, wench.
——
Prok sez:
“Does MOU pay you to write tripe on blog comments, too, Lordfly? Are you on the clock when you do fake infomercials for “the commmuuuunity” which you don’t represent — like…there’s only one “communnnnity”? Like…you aren’t anything but a hired hand now? Like…your tastes as a little metaversal minion *matters*? Hello?”
—–

I’m a contractor, not their employee. I don’t get paid to write tripe, unlike you and your petty squabbles on the SLH. They are my own opinions.

Sorry, I forgot that anything that doesn’t agree lockstep with your Gestapo-like worldview is fascist and tikki-wikki-rapeocide.

More people listen to me than listen to your insane babblings. And I don’t have to drink their beer and invade their house to do it.

And why does your opinion matter but mine doesn’t? Owning more cats doesn’t mean you have a wider audience.

—
Prok sez:
“So…does Reuben Steiger instruct you little asstard fanboyz on the MOU payroll to go around and dis other companies and people who *accurately report* that *media buyers* are pleased with There and that There is putting on a very compelling show?”
—–

lulz. If I got paid for blog posts and comments, I’d probably be writing at least as much as you do.

BTW, I think you can do better than “asstard fanboyz”. Xbox Live called, they want their 13 year old demographics’ insults back.

This is why you’re a running joke within the community. While I’m a minor player, I’m still respected and occasionally admired for my tenacity and opinions. This is why people pay me, they enjoy my work and my worldview. You couldn’t get a job working in SL if your life depended on it. Your little rentamaphone dog and pony real estate newbie fleecing show is out the window once the servers are open sourced; you don’t have the slightest idea how to host a server, so you’re done.

You’ve poisoned your own well so many times that anybody making any sort of financial decision in SL automatically avoids you like the plague. You don’t have a single nice thing to say about anybody ever, and you cry wolf every time someone calls you on it. People have memories, they aren’t goldfish.

Sheesh.
——-
Prok sez:

”
Lordfly thinks that he controls how advertising companies and their clients are going to enter worlds. NOT! They don’t all want some dorky thing like “car culture” where a handful of people sit around with their high-end builds and free land. That’s going to work for a very specialized kind of person, but it is not a recipe for MASS repeat MASS media.”
——-

TV runs on this mass-produced, shove it down your throat model. TV has been declining in revenue for 10 years. Reason? Internet. It’s interactive, it’s fun, it’s dynamic, it’s everything TV isn’t. Your idea is turning virtual worlds into TV. That’s ridiculous. It’s an outmoded worldlook on things. People no longer want to consume, they want to create.

Any company coming into the virtual worlds market expecting to make a ton of money by restricting creativity within the community and forcing brands at people are going to get burned. Badly.

—–
Prok sez:

“Just like he used to think he was an expert on the economy, business, and real estate merely because he sold a few houses and hung out in SL, College Boy “Pay for Me” Lordfly think that he’s now an expert on “what works” and what the community — as defined by Pol Tabla and Lecktor Hannibal on Second Citizen — likes or doesn’t like. ROLLS EYES.”
——–

Because your scared newbie fiefdom is the end-all, be-all of internet communities. Get a grip, lady.

Prok sez:

“”How long will Lordfly be able to go on getting paid by big businesses willing to risk “creative chaos” in SL? Place your bets. Lordfly should go back to working at the electronics store to be on the safe side.”"

Let’s make a bet. $L1000 says my creative content business survives longer than your newbie fiefdom barony business.
shockwave yareach

Mar 30th, 2007

“Let them have 250,000 hardcore furry ageplaying creative geeks, and let them survive on the pocketbooks of those people.”

Prokofy, one of the very first sims to exist, long before even most Ubergeeks first heard of SL, was Luskwood, a furry-based sim. Big money was spent to pay for it and money continues to flow into LL coffers because of it. Its success brought in others who then went off and created their own sims, again spending thousands of dollars at a crack. Which brought in lots and lots more people who wanted to see what all the excitement was about. (I have to admit I’m in the latter group, but I’ve been building and learning like a fiend in my short time inworld.)

I don’t know how much real US money the average campchair sitter brings into SL. But I bet it’s far less than my monthly premium, the 10$ a month I pay in rent right now for a portion of a land tier, or the 20$ a month I’ll be putting in for my portion of the island we are about to acquire — after paying the thousands for the island itself, of course. That’s not counting the additional “Play around” moneys I spend for furniture and clothing.

Furries supported LL from almost the very beginning with real cash and real programming knowhow. They were active and building the instant their paws hit the virtual ground. I don’t disdain the campsitters — life is too short to be negative. But I can’t call them active and productive people who help SL to grow through their works or their moneys, either.
Nacon

Mar 30th, 2007

Lordfly said: “Let’s make a bet. $L1000 says my creative content business survives longer than your newbie fiefdom barony business.”

1,000 L$? Try aimming a little higher, cause that’s only like… 5 bucks?

(oh right… prok is poor, I guess?)
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

Lordfly, you really are such a raging jackass, I hope that everyone reading this sees that you work for *MILLIONS OF US* A LEADING METAVERSAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY and does the math, to realize that if they want to deal with a company that is professional, and doesn’t have little weenie fanboy jackasses who behave like fucktards on forums and drag their company’s names into disputes, THIS IS NOT THE COMPANY TO DEAL WITH.

I don’t know how else to put it to get SOMEBODY to take OWNERSHIP of these FUCKTARDS created on the platform of Second Life since the Lindens who created these monsters refuse to do so.

Perhaps companies with real bottom lines might take this in hand?

In fact, I’m going to hold Reuben Steiger RESPONSIBLE for your behaviour from now on so that you GET A CLUE to how to behave in the GROWN-UP WORLD which you are NOT PART OF YET, being a juvenile snivelling jackass forums fucktard.

>Prokofy Neva said:
(lots of ad nauseum attacks and look at me I’m so edgy because lordfly’s in college and i’m old lulz where’s the free beer lulz RAPEOCIDE)

Hell, yeah. I’m so glad I finished college more than 25 years ago and no longer require free beer.

You know what’s wrong with you boys? You were undoubtedly not nursed by your mothers, and that all-important ingredient in breast milk responsible for male maturity was MISSING from your early brain formation.

>Oh fer Chrissakes, get off your crusading bandwagon, wench.

This is like, oh, so cool, to harass somebody on a forums by calling them the opposite of the gender they chose in SL. Woot!

>I’m a contractor, not their employee. I don’t get paid to write tripe, unlike you and your petty squabbles on the SLH. They are my own opinions.

Well, let a company be known BY THEIR FUCKTARD JACKASS CONTRACTORS. Here’s a company that can hire some of the worst assholes from the SL forums, people like Aimee Weber and Lordfly Digeridoo, who would say shit like “Prok is a lunch lady with a dent in her head” on the old forums. Fuck you.

>Sorry, I forgot that anything that doesn’t agree lockstep with your Gestapo-like worldview is fascist and tikki-wikki-rapeocide.

No, it’s just my point of you, and your point of view is uninformed, and you manner of expressing it is infantile, so you’re called on it.

>More people listen to me than listen to your insane babblings. And I don’t have to drink their beer and invade their house to do it.

I’m not aware that I’ve drunk anybody’s beer or invaded their house uninvited — but that would be something you’d know about?

>And why does your opinion matter but mine doesn’t? Owning more cats doesn’t mean you have a wider audience.

Um, does owning more motherboards give you a wider audience then or something?

Why does a DISAGREEMENT over someone’s opinion and a note that it is UNINFORMED and SECTARIAN constitute a claim that “their opinion doesn’t matter”. It matters to that little niche branding group that loves um…cars is it? Remind me again. Boys for toys. Whatever. But…there’s no awareness on your part that you’re just a geeky stupid male infantile branding niche that just doesn’t cut if for most media planners.

Perhaps when you replicate yourself and have more money from your life as a metaversal minion, they might be forced to take notice. Not now.

I was amazed at this conference when a very important person with Metaversal street cred of the highest order — and you know who you are! — answered the query of another RL important person about why there were so many Dutch people in SL with a smart-ass, typically SL-cultured fucktarded flippant reply: “Well, maybe because all those pot-smokers in Holland find SL is a lot like smoking pot, I dunno.”.

Um…that’s just not cool. What will it take to make people like that realize it’s JUST NOT COOL. It isn’t cool to ANYONE.

The answer to that legitimate question isn’t about stereotyping the Dutch, who have legalized marijuana in their country. I have quite a few Dutch colleagues who never come near pot. Why would they? They don’t wish to get high and get stupid. They’ve got work to do. The Dutch people came in SL because it was IN THE DUTCH MEDIA. There were some key conferences that took place there, whatever. That’s what you tell people. You don’t describe SL, which you are supposedly trying to sell broadly, as a pot haven. Unless…you think you are appealing to this broad demographic of pot-smokers. Ok, well, um, ok, you do that.

The arrogance of the people talking like this from their lame-assed faux youth culture crap is really breath-taking. I do hope they get the most severest awakening.

>lulz. If I got paid for blog posts and comments, I’d probably be writing at least as much as you do.

Um, I guess I’ll have to assume you’re “between jobs” then fat-boy because your hat graphic is positively clogging Second Citizen these days. Do you have a life?

>BTW, I think you can do better than “asstard fanboyz”. Xbox Live called, they want their 13 year old demographics’ insults back.

Um, “lulz” lets me know I’m dealing with 13-year-old mentality, so asstard fanboy is actually PERFECT for the occasion.

>This is why you’re a running joke within the community. While I’m a minor player, I’m still respected and occasionally admired for my tenacity and opinions. This is why people pay me, they enjoy my work and my worldview. You couldn’t get a job working in SL if your life depended on it.

Um, why would I need to get a job in SL? That’s silly. You’re the running joke. There are a lot more people in Second Life who react to your nasty juvenile postings in the way I do, than you can count on among your old beta buddies, trust me on this.

>Your little rentamaphone dog and pony real estate newbie fleecing show is out the window once the servers are open sourced; you don’t have the slightest idea how to host a server, so you’re done.

I’m glad Reuben Steiger hires people who says things like this to people, and it lets me know the Lindens real opinion of those of us who hold land, too. Trust me, it is not news. I know they think that; I know they are utterly cynical about fleecing us. I know the fancy-assed metaversal developers are cynical and hateful about people like me. It doesn’t matter. Let’s see who laughs last on this one.

I don’t fleece newbies, I help them. I’m smart enough to help them *not* by putting out my copy of your house, however.

I don’t believe that hosting a server can be really all that complicated. I’m sure there will be wholesaler hosting services that will emerge to re-rent to people like me for small niches of customers, or the Lindens themselves may go on renting them, who knows. If I need to buy and host a server and it seems reasonable, I may do that and learn how to do it, it doesn’t phase me.

The Metaverse can’t grow with fucked up superior, assasine attitudes like yours. It won’t grow. At least the parts of it you dominate won’t, they will collapse in on themselves. The growing parts of it will succeed to the degree to which they don’t behave like Web 1.0, and empower a generation of asshole serial-processing HTML “webmasters” and “network administrators” to rule over everybody and bottleneck them into a queue, but to the extent that they empower everybody to parallel process and learn how to host their own, post their own, whatever. That’s been the direction of Web 2.0 and you’re failing to see it. I hope you choke on it : )

>You’ve poisoned your own well so many times that anybody making any sort of financial decision in SL automatically avoids you like the plague. You don’t have a single nice thing to say about anybody ever, and you cry wolf every time someone calls you on it. People have memories, they aren’t goldfish.

I don’t see why anyone making a financial decision in SL would want to ignore the sorts of things I’ve posted very loudly on my blog: that buying land on the Linden servers is going to be a fool’s errand once they open-source the back-end, so plan accordingly. I say lots of nice things about people when they deserve it. And why would people making financial decisions be consulting me, anyway. I’m just an owner of an inworld small business. What has that got to do with something like a Sony? What would that have to do with them?

I think what you mean to say is that I don’t have a single nice thing to say about the Toxic Twenty, the feted FIC, the people the Lindens groomed, the people who BECAME the fucking Lindens, even, and people who went on to become big-time metaversal developer dickheads. Uh…No, I don’t. And…more and more people will simply walk around you.

I’m running a business and holding forth my opinions on the conceptual issues around the Metaverse and have some hearing, even if I’m controversial. You’re just a snotty fanboy who has picked up a gig here and there with a nasty attitude that works in a record store. The levels are very different. You don’t have a future with that attitude. My controversy largely consists of contesting the attitude of people like you and fighting it. That’s all. It will become more and more visible. If it turns out that this kind of nihilist, hedonist fuck-you attitude IS the prevailing attitude of the Snowcrash-like Metaverse, it isn’t a world I and a lot of people will want to live in ANYWAY.

>TV runs on this mass-produced, shove it down your throat model. TV has been declining in revenue for 10 years. Reason? Internet. It’s interactive, it’s fun, it’s dynamic, it’s everything TV isn’t. Your idea is turning virtual worlds into TV. That’s ridiculous. It’s an outmoded worldlook on things. People no longer want to consume, they want to create.

It’s not my idea, asshole. I’m REPORTING ON THE IDEA THAT IS WORKING FOR OTHERS LIKE THERE, BECAUSE SECOND LIFE ISN’T WORKING. I don’t have a TV, I don’t watch it, and I don’t sit still for ads, like a lot of people. But most people do watch TV and do watch ads.

The guy from There summed it up very well: the dirty little secret of virtual worlds is that nothing’s happening in them. Lordfly and his precious little friends may have a “build-off” but if you blinked and missed it and just landed and don’t know them, it may seem like nothing’s happening. So content has to be laid out.

The skillful and mature managers of SL and other platforms who care about customers will find the right mix of professional content creation and amateur content generation that builds communities. They will not accept staid formulas from idiot fanboyz.

The idea that maximum open-ended interactive professional-level content generation is everybody’s wet dream is just stupid. It’s not.

Randy Moss may think he’s being groovy and cutting edge by having griefers like W-hat raise money against cancer, Reuben Steiger may feel like he’s being groovy and cutting edge by having assholes like you around, but it’s a limited demographic, trust me.

The idea that people don’t want to consume any more and want to create is about the biggest form of head-up-ass there is in the Metaverse these days. Yes, there is a niche for SOME developers who reach professional level to create. Perhaps some Medicis will be found to constantly fund these egotistical and skittish prima donna Michaelangelos and pay their bar and rehab bills. Like Hollywood and the starlet machine.

But most media companies can’t get people to stay around for long periods without stickyness. World of Warcraft has a real 8 million in it. Second Life has a fake 4 million in it. It has a real 250,000 in it. Everything in WoW is prefabricated for people to come in and do. They can make content in ways that are non-inventoriable like guilds, names, chat. But the company lays out enough content to make it worthwhile.

>Any company coming into the virtual worlds market expecting to make a ton of money by restricting creativity within the community and forcing brands at people are going to get burned. Badly.

No, just the opposite. Companies that think that they can appeal to mass audiences by having a drugged out vulgar character like Gideon Television sell their car to cynical jaded tekkie assholes, and make a living, are wrong. They will have *a certain demographic niche*. They’ll appeal to people like YOU. Um…did you buy a car yet? Oh? Which brand? That used Ford from your neighbour?

Oh, and if they use this kind of crap to influence the culture? It’s not a world we’ll want to live in ANYWAY. And if the answer is “You’re old so you’ll be dead?” (I love how people like Maxx Monde actually take bets on forums about whether I will die soon) my answer can be: so will you, brain surgeon. And probably a lot sooner for taking all the drugs and alcohol and cigarettes.

I don’t see anybody buying into There getting burned badly.
What’s especially juvenile about your swaggering around with this is your inability to see that it will be a MIXTURE of platforms, styles, demographics with a slider. For some products/demographics/budgets this world or that world will work, the other won’t. This slash-and-burn fanboyz shit of SECOND LIFE UBER ALLES is just plain fucked. Not gonna happen.

>Because your scared newbie fiefdom is the end-all, be-all of internet communities. Get a grip, lady.

I’ve done a lot for newbies and get branded as a newbies-only rentals but I have tenants who have been with me nearly the two years I’ve been in business, and many long-term tenants and older tenants and tenants who pay large amounts for their rentals. You have no actual familiarity with my business.

And these people represent a huge variety of tastes and demographics, it’s interesting. Again, you have no fucking clue, because you wouldn’t know a customer in SL if they bit you on the ass.

>Let’s make a bet. $L1000 says my creative content business survives longer than your newbie fiefdom barony business.

Bet away. I don’t see my involvement in the Metaverse in terms of whether my own personal business succeeds or fails. I will try to keep it going until it becomes too costly in time or money, but then do something else. There’s always something to be done there. Meanwhile, your content creation will face an absolute surge of competition from non-Americans and you will be unable to cope. With that juvenile and arrogant attitude you impose on the public, you will fail.

Normally, an older person doesn’t wish a younger person to suffer the hard knocks in life that teach them the realities of life on this planet. In your case, I can only hope that reality bites hardly and deeply.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 30th, 2007

>Prokofy, one of the very first sims to exist, long before even most Ubergeeks first heard of SL, was Luskwood, a furry-based sim. Big money was spent to pay for it and money continues to flow into LL coffers because of it. Its success brought in others who then went off and created their own sims, again spending thousands of dollars at a crack. Which brought in lots and lots more people who wanted to see what all the excitement was about. (I have to admit I’m in the latter group, but I’ve been building and learning like a fiend in my short time inworld.)

Furries are an important demographic for SL’s early formation and formation to date. It isn’t proven as a source of mass demographics. Most people in the masses want to be humans, and not furries. People don’t understand that virtual worlds have to be for everybody, not just your niche.

>I don’t know how much real US money the average campchair sitter brings into SL. But I bet it’s far less than my monthly premium, the 10$ a month I pay in rent right now for a portion of a land tier, or the 20$ a month I’ll be putting in for my portion of the island we are about to acquire — after paying the thousands for the island itself, of course. That’s not counting the additional “Play around” moneys I spend for furniture and clothing.

You wish the Lindens thought like that, but they don’t. They need numbers, and sign-ups, and that’s what those people do for them. They don’t move against camp-chairs, because that would violate their zealous religious beliefs about the freedom of scripters uber-alles, stopping creativity, and stopping even the most slash-and-burn business. It’s all good, they let it all alone. And so they have nothing to say.

Camp chairs are the temporary phenomenon of a Metaverse in its early stages which is dependent on individuals and small groups to populate it. It will be more and more taken over by big businesses with big pocketbooks and they won’t need to have camp chairs to hold people, they will have a different model.

>Furries supported LL from almost the very beginning with real cash and real programming knowhow. They were active and building the instant their paws hit the virtual ground. I don’t disdain the campsitters — life is too short to be negative. But I can’t call them active and productive people who help SL to grow through their works or their moneys, either

I don’t get this false apposition between furries and campchair sitters. However, it’s partly on target because campchair sitters are 15 year old girls or 25-35 year old women. They don’t tend to be the furries in the masses.
They tend to need money to shop for dresses. IT’s that demographic that There can make happier most likely, I’m not sure.

All the communities that sprang up in SL with RP, whether furries or BDSM or elves or whatever are important to SL’s development and SL owes a lot to them, but they aren’t the masses.
shockwave yareach

Mar 30th, 2007

False opposition:

Um, nobody said anything about anyone being opposed to anybody else. I merely pointed out the fact that 50000 people with free accounts sitting in chairs all day will generate 0$US in revenue to LL. The argument that people sitting in chairs drives people into said business and increase sales is false in that people searching for Y items are already interested in buying or close to it. Chairs don’t create sales — they make the store look more attractive to searchers is all. Campers are, in that view, no different than a nice sign and a coat of paint on a RL building.

I’m not suggesting they be banned; how would you even do that. But don’t equate people who do nothing all day with any of the “niche” groups who pour US$ into the game. Funny thing about RL — they don’t let you pay for servers or electricity with Lindens. Everyone outside of SL expects legal tender for their services.
Lordfly Digeridoo

Mar 30th, 2007

Prokofy Neva said:
“In fact, I’m going to hold Reuben Steiger RESPONSIBLE for your behaviour from now on so that you GET A CLUE to how to behave in the GROWN-UP WORLD which you are NOT PART OF YET, being a juvenile snivelling jackass forums fucktard.”

Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.
Ombrone aka Albert Falck

Mar 30th, 2007

Prokofy,

thank you for your answer. I guess to understand your point, and it makes a lot of sense.

I do agree with you I do not represent nobody than myself, and I was not showing contempt for somebody with different taste and ideas, or at least it was not my intention.

In this specific case it’s not matter of contempt, it’s matter of marketing segments.

For what I have seen till now, the SL structure (with all his damned tech problems, with all the possible stupid mistakes of LL) it’s one of the most open to empower the basic user.

To make him part of the creation of the virtual world. That’s the basic difference.

That’s, linked with wide freedom…(ehhrr let’s call it chaotic anarchy if u prefer), it’s attracting a lot of geeky, strange, perverse and sometimes creative people, that have in their mind a use for this freedom or this chance to create something.

Someway they are not simple end user of pre-build product.

And please that’s not a feeling of superiority or contempt… for the simple reason that everybody of us, myself first, sometimes have the will and the interest to be an active part of something, and sometimes, maybe more often prefer to lie exhausted on a couch watching passively the evening show on TV.

In my personal opinion other platform have choosen a different approach limiting this freedom of expression (from a tech point that a huge smeplification) focusing themselves to fournish pleasant content and a more easy to grasp user experience.

An easier platform it’s an excellent idea for a lot of user and situation, and (I guess we agree on that) for companies wanting a channel for their products and promotions.

They have less problems, more support form the owner of the platform, a easier way in managing the enviroment, and much more visibility ’cause their unique imported content it’s not in competition with the content created by the basic users.

We could discuss about the dimensions of the market segment that could be attracted by SL or by There, we can discuss if the LL strategy is wise or not, you could be easily right.

Maybe SL will be only a niche (actually it is), but maybe could even be possible that LL knows perfectly that, and they choose a niche not to rich to be of interest to some megahuge competitor but enough to have a good life…

In any case I found SL interesting also for it’s wide chance of creating my own experience… I like it (that’s it, simply).

I do agree that maybe that’s could be not the easier enviroment for a consumer brand, and I could be sorry LL big boss will have problems to become filthy rich signing multi-million partnership for an exclusive contract with MTV, but that’s not my problem.

With the limit of all the stupid crash rollback and updates I am quite happy of being able to create my little ubergeek spot, choosing the music I wanna listen.

If I want to play There I always can, but I likes also the chance I have here.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 31st, 2007

>Prokofy Neva said:
“In fact, I’m going to hold Reuben Steiger RESPONSIBLE for your behaviour from now on so that you GET A CLUE to how to behave in the GROWN-UP WORLD which you are NOT PART OF YET, being a juvenile snivelling jackass forums fucktard.”

>Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Hell, yeah. I think Reuben Steiger needs to here from members of the public when his little fucktard fanboy hired help behave like assholes. He may believe that the “insult culture that has gone off the rails” as Mark Wallace very aptly described it is ok, and that it’s fine to maintain an atmosphere of “edgy” and “cool” by having asstards like you around, but it’s pretty old, it’s just about adolescent boys behaving like assholes. I don’t see why it’s acceptable.

>Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

If you continued to work for me and appear all over my rentals — hell, yeah. Reputations matter. I wouldn’t hire someone and keep them hired if they ran around being gratuitously insulting on forums — especially if I were a development company. To take the public position, as a development company, that all other platforms are shit, that all other forms of virtual worlds are shit except the little niche edgy one where you get to be a big deal, is really dangerously short-sighted. I should think these companies would want to project an image of professionalism and neutrality about not only platforms, but features in worlds. If a world is PG-13 and doesn’t have open-ended user content, it may not be your company’s dream environment but it will be someone else’s and you need to respect that.

>Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Yes, I think it’s important that when people use the insult culture on you, you stuff it right back in their face. Others may find some other method works for them, being nice, ignoring, saying something devastating but suble. My method is to get right back atcha. And so I do. Somebody says “Going to There, princess?” they get a slap in the face. Somebody goes out of their way to come swaggering into a thread about a story that they haven’t been mentioned in, that isn’t about them, and behave like an asstard? Pushback, always. I specialize in some pushbacks.

>Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

Because it’s a story that is an entire larger conversation about how the Big Six need to get over the SL forums and feting and celebrating these little fucktards like you who held sway on them being assholes, and who developed only into worse assholes in response when I challenged them. They need to understand that their employees don’t *get* to go on being assholes to other people in SL the way they did on the forums. IT’s a bigger and more professional forums now.

Reuben is maintaining a stable of forums fucktards here and keeping you all in beer money if not full employment and I think Reuben needs to hear that his decision to sustain forums fucktards means he is going to be called on it. Reputation is important. If Aimee Weber uses her huge megaphone of the AOL Insider to claim I’m responsible for the griefing fucktards of W-hat calling me *at home*; if you can’t maintain a civil tongue in your mouth about the facts of a conference that don’t benefit YOU or your employers if they only chose SL as a platform, then those who employ you need to hear about this, big-time. They need to own it. They can’t pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

>But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

You’re welcome to post examples, and I’m welcome to pull out miles of your nasty posts on the LL forums going way back, bullying, harassing, and reviling people whose opinions or culture you didn’t like. Hell yeah. You came into a thread and attacked ME FIRST, asshole. I FIGHT BACK.

>Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

No, it shows that little college fanboyz do not get away with behaving like shits on comments after my articles, that’s all.

>Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

Good! Go for it, tough guy. I’m sure Uri can handle it.
BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.
Prokofy Neva

Mar 31st, 2007

>Prokofy Neva said:
“In fact, I’m going to hold Reuben Steiger RESPONSIBLE for your behaviour from now on so that you GET A CLUE to how to behave in the GROWN-UP WORLD which you are NOT PART OF YET, being a juvenile snivelling jackass forums fucktard.”

>Is this how grownups talk? I’ll have to remember that when I graduate with honors… *rolls eyes*

Hell, yeah. I think Reuben Steiger needs to here from members of the public when his little fucktard fanboy hired help behave like assholes. He may believe that the “insult culture that has gone off the rails” as Mark Wallace very aptly described it is ok, and that it’s fine to maintain an atmosphere of “edgy” and “cool” by having asstards like you around, but it’s pretty old, it’s just about adolescent boys behaving like assholes. I don’t see why it’s acceptable.

>Once, you paid me for services rendered. Does this mean everyone should hold you responsible for what I say? What awesome logic.

If you continued to work for me and appear all over my rentals — hell, yeah. Reputations matter. I wouldn’t hire someone and keep them hired if they ran around being gratuitously insulting on forums — especially if I were a development company. To take the public position, as a development company, that all other platforms are shit, that all other forms of virtual worlds are shit except the little niche edgy one where you get to be a big deal, is really dangerously short-sighted. I should think these companies would want to project an image of professionalism and neutrality about not only platforms, but features in worlds. If a world is PG-13 and doesn’t have open-ended user content, it may not be your company’s dream environment but it will be someone else’s and you need to respect that.

>Seriously. We’re all entitled to opinions. You obviously are, with your “snivelling jackass forums fucktard” vocabulary swaying the audiences here.

Yes, I think it’s important that when people use the insult culture on you, you stuff it right back in their face. Others may find some other method works for them, being nice, ignoring, saying something devastating but suble. My method is to get right back atcha. And so I do. Somebody says “Going to There, princess?” they get a slap in the face. Somebody goes out of their way to come swaggering into a thread about a story that they haven’t been mentioned in, that isn’t about them, and behave like an asstard? Pushback, always. I specialize in some pushbacks.

>Your gigantic whinescraper railing against me is insane. Why hold Reuben responsible? I’m a CONTRACTOR, not an EMPLOYEE. I’m asked to build things, I build them. I don’t run the company, I have no say in the company, I just make stuff. That’s fine by me.

Because it’s a story that is an entire larger conversation about how the Big Six need to get over the SL forums and feting and celebrating these little fucktards like you who held sway on them being assholes, and who developed only into worse assholes in response when I challenged them. They need to understand that their employees don’t *get* to go on being assholes to other people in SL the way they did on the forums. IT’s a bigger and more professional forums now.

Reuben is maintaining a stable of forums fucktards here and keeping you all in beer money if not full employment and I think Reuben needs to hear that his decision to sustain forums fucktards means he is going to be called on it. Reputation is important. If Aimee Weber uses her huge megaphone of the AOL Insider to claim I’m responsible for the griefing fucktards of W-hat calling me *at home*; if you can’t maintain a civil tongue in your mouth about the facts of a conference that don’t benefit YOU or your employers if they only chose SL as a platform, then those who employ you need to hear about this, big-time. They need to own it. They can’t pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

>But you seem to take it as a personal affront to Jesus that someone enjoys my work and my standing in the community, and continue to attack me in the most vile ways possible. Every time. Incessently. I’d post examples, but your post is full of them.

You’re welcome to post examples, and I’m welcome to pull out miles of your nasty posts on the LL forums going way back, bullying, harassing, and reviling people whose opinions or culture you didn’t like. Hell yeah. You came into a thread and attacked ME FIRST, asshole. I FIGHT BACK.

>Get a grip. Your absolutely obscene lashing out against me shows how out of touch you are with reality.

No, it shows that little college fanboyz do not get away with behaving like shits on comments after my articles, that’s all.

>Uri picked a winner with your staff writing. I think I’ll hold him personally responsible for your personal attacks against me. Maybe I should go punch him in the mouth, so he can send it along to you? He works like, 5 minutes away from me.

Good! Go for it, tough guy. I’m sure Uri can handle it.
BTW, when are we getting coffee, Uri?

>PS I’m not really going to punch anyone in the mouth. Especially not Uri, because he has nothing to do with your insanity. Own up to your actions.

Uri is welcome to comment. He can disclaim any responsibility for me *fighting back* against your *assanine juvenile asstard comments*. So can your boss Reuben. There’s a big difference between the Herald and Millions of Us, however. Very big. MOU needs to understand that hiring and sustaining fucktards is going to earn them public challenges.

Um, the Lindens were unable to rein in the precious little pets they created on the forums. Let’s see if the metaversal development company honchos can do it.
Prokofy Neva

Apr 1st, 2007

Ombrone aka Albert Falck, I think you gave a thoughtful reply. What I resent coming from people who are dubbed “the creatives” of Second Life is that they don’t realize that in SL, precisely because it *is* open-ended, there are lots and lots of people who consider themselves creative, who consider themselves even technical, who consider themselves very much for a free and open-ended platform, but who aren’t in the tiny niche of radical pro-open-source builders and scripters.

There’s an unwillingness of extreme sandbox types to understand that even builders and scripters who love SL because it’s open don’t want to live in a world where it’s not only possible to be bashed over the head with flying penises, that sort of rampant griefing is celebrated as art, and copied everywhere triumphantly and gleefully as some kind of bold protest against conformity. That’s bullshit.

I know you aren’t saying that in your post. I’m trying to get across to you that this idea that some people have a bead on SL’s openness and “deserve it” and others don’t is crap. Everybody on SL is an artist. And having it open doesn’t mean it has to be ungovernable and that some tiny percentage of fucktards get to endlessly suppress the freedom of others by filling the public domain with their own freedom — or else force them to quit or go into There if they don’t like getting the tubgirl particle rain on their customers.

I’m sorry, but I don’t like the all or nothing of this discussion. I don’t see why I have to sit and accept tubgirl rain or else be driven to There. I’m creative, too. I think that even in this open-ended world the Lindens are right to have the Big 6. I wish they were as laissez-faire about their forums as they were about the 16 m2 parcel issues. That’s the problem. I’m all for freedom. But Lindens and tekkies are hugely selective about what *is* free. They only want freedom *for what they want to do* which isn’t really freedom.

I’m not free to criticize libsecondlife or Cory Linden’s support of it, am I? I’m banned from the Lindens’ blog for persisting in my LEGITIMATE criticism of this very IFFY proposition and support.

Now does that make sense? To ban me for criticizing the thing that is supposed to be free, the open source movement in SL and its gross excesses? Hello???? WTF???

That’s wrong, and intelligent people know it’s wrong.

What geeky tekkie types often mean by freedom is just freedom for their little gangstas to be free, and step on others. I’m supposed to genuflect to somebody’s superior coding skills and overlook the fact that they are lying griefing fucktards behaving badly in world.

It’s really quite the new horror to have creativity and scientific ability be what can excuse crime.

I truly do see SL as a range or a sliding scale. I think we don’t have to have this absolutist approach — over here, only hugely edgy and wierd products, like some punk record company or something , with insult-happy griefing fucktard scripters, and over there, popping in a Pop-Tart ad for 14-year-old girls in a sanitized PG world.