One Year In SL – Why the Wild West is Failing
by Alphaville Herald on 18/03/08 at 8:38 am
by Soul4sale Ferraris
I turned one year old this weekend.
I first rezzed into SL on March 15, 2007 for the same reason most everyone else has in the last year – I was bored, and it was free. After a year of traipsing around its digital landscape, I’ve formed several hard opinions, and they aren’t very positive.
But first, a few positive observations: SL is unique in that it gives an unprecedented amount of power to its virtual world inhabitants; from the way they appear to how they conduct business. Watching SL grow has been a fascinating study in laissez faire governance, unbridled creativity and unhampered ingenuity.
SL is absolutely the most interesting virtual world to observe from a journalistic standpoint, because it’s barely scripted and always changing.
It’s the Wild West, and that is why it is failing.
SL had the opportunity to become the world’s first 3D web browsing standard, a revolution in how people communicate, shop and collaborate. It could have been Web 3.0’s Netscape.
Instead, SL became too wrapped up in itself – its own cultural experience, drama, bugs, quirks, culture and economy – to be a neutral platform. As a result, we are now watching SL attempt to market a web business platform that is crippled by terrible controls, a non-intuitive interface, and an overspecialized rendering engine.
The interface is the biggest problem. I have utterly failed to interest anyone else in SL this past year, because they are immediately frustrated that their character controls like Parkinson’s disease on a champagne/benzo cocktail. They struggle with the messy inventory system, laborious chat controls and simply looking around. I don’t know if LL is trying to avoid patent licenses, but their control system seems aimed to frustrate, rather than entice.
SL also has a real problem with drama, and not just the he said/she said kind. People do not want to wait for 10 minutes for a building, complete with interior walls and furniture, to rez 40 meters across the sim while they stand in mid-air watching the water undulate beneath their feet. I have no idea what the technical problem is that underlies this idiocy, but it needs to be fixed. It’s hard to employ fundamental architectural design elements, like limiting line of sight, when SL busily previews the entire sim to visitors at a distance before the lobby can even load.
I would complain about the unfettered camera, and how it negates any sense of boundary, but that’s for another rant.
SL’s problems with controlling perspective and line of sight make it a difficult sell for the kind of clients that would use a 3D web platform – companies who sell RL products. Every inch of RL retail space is designed to draw the eye, focus attention and influence purchasing decisions. Many SL residents get bored and punch out of a sim, because such elements take too long to rez around them.
Also, the idea of SL having an “economy” is ludicrous at best. Buying and selling lines of code that only exist on the company’s server (which what land and objects really are) is a fragile way of doing business in the age of ubiquitous hacking. Why SL even has a currency has always boggled me. It seems like such a misplaced gaming element for something purporting to be an Internet platform. LL has obviously stuck with its hermetically sealed funny e-money system and land sales as an easy source of trickling cash, going so far as to tax image transfers. In doing so, it has created a banana republic full of cheap, uninhabited land and worthless currency.
Instead of selling SL’s server software and development tools to companies for real cash from the outset, LL tried to make businesses into surfs of its own little world and then tax them. This is a very stupid business model. Imagine if Netscape had tried to make all of its business clients host their web sites on its servers. Business island servers should have been privately operated from the start, and the mainland growth should have been severely limited and managed by partner companies, such as the Electric Sheep, to keep the mainland from turning into abandoned sign farms.
The SL fauxconomy has left few ways for businesses to directly interface with RL economies or other Web data standards
When I go to a SL business sim, I, and many people I know, would like to see virtual representations of RL products and then slap down a credit card number to buy said product. If LL would be willing to get out of the central banking business, tighten up their purchasing interface and let Visa and MasterCard handle the currency exchange issues, they would find that there is a lot of RL money to be made in their software sales.
No, believe me, I get it. I get that LL was trying to create some kind of digital libertarian utopia here. There’s just not enough people who care enough to “get it” to keep this mass hallucination afloat without somehow anchoring it in the meatbag realm.
While we’re at it, add the whole core conceit of a “second life” to LL’s list of dumbass ideas. It’s all fine and good to call your product “Second Life,” but LL has really bought too far into the concept, going out of their way to attract a demographic that gets mired too much into the alternate identity aspect of the platform. The dual-identity sales pitch has attracted far too many starry-eyed roll-players, creepy anons and thrill seekers, resulting in a world permeated with recycled RPG themes, asshat griefers and gratuitous sex playgrounds.
SL is not a world apart from RL, and it is subject to the rules and regulations of RL jurisdictions. As a result of trying to ignore this truism, LL has had way more legal problems and bad press this past year than it needed to. And it has damaged its reputation. The alternate identity idea has become an easy target for RL scorn. The grid is now shorthand among my 30-something generation as an online game for losers, geeks and shut-ins, not a revolutionary preview of Web 3.0.
I’ll keep visiting SL periodically to see how it evolves. I think it would be foolhardy to ignore it. But I’ll visit it less frequently until it LL starts to act its rez age.
The writer is an RL journalist living on the American East Coast.
anon
Mar 18th, 2008
*golfclap*
really when you try to make a “3D internet” with subpar-to-the-Dreamcast graphics it doesn’t help: something you missed.
overall a good assessment.
I Disagree
Mar 18th, 2008
This economy is real, even if the platform didn’t become what you expected it to be. Get lost hater.
Jenny
Mar 18th, 2008
SL can either be “our world, our imagination” or it can be the next generation internet. You can’t have both simultaneously IMO. The one is mutating badly into the other and failing. Get back to basics Linden Labs. If you want to use the SL engine as the basis of a 3D next gen interweb, then fine but stop trying to combine the two because you’re screwing it up on all fronts.
Effete DIction Robot
Mar 18th, 2008
Why is it that none of the self-proclaimed “journalists” who contribute to SLH can actually write?
“I first rezzed into SL on March 15, 2007 for the same reason most everyone else has in the last year – I was bored, and it was free.”
With a second sentence that awkward, I glossed over the rest – and I don’t think I missed much.
Pie Psaltery
Mar 18th, 2008
…but…but… what happened to the idea that it could be a floor wax AND a dessert topping???
Sigmund Leominster
Mar 18th, 2008
The notion of a “Second Life economy” has two perspectives to take into account: A “Exclusive SL-focused” (E-SL) model and a “Global SL” (G-SL) vision. In the former, the business is based on the notion that Second Life is a domestic economy where the Linden is the unit of exchange and that there are no “international” operations or any foreign exchange. This contrasts with the “Global SL” where entrepreneurs factor in the in-flow and conversion of dollars into SL and the opposite transfer of SL profits into real life dollars.
There is, I suggest, a very active E-SL economy where people earn L$, spend L$, and never think of how those numbers translate to the Real World. Some of us – myself included – don’t even “prime” the economy by turning real dollars into Lindens but use only what they earn in-world to sustain their in-world lifestyles. (An upcoming article by yours truly looks at this in SLentrepreneur magazine).
However, I’m OK with the notion that a G-SL model is still very weak. Sure, some folks earn enough in-world to sustain their off-world life, but that’s relatively few. Land owners are effectivly buying/renting/selling server space, and that costs real world dollars.
Like all economies, the SL financial landscape is all about the transfer of goods and services – even if the goods are “pieces of code,” they are still goods; value is a function of perception, not physical reality. If we talk about an internal economy, most folks are OK with SL Economics – but if we talk about the exchange rate with the real world, I believe there’s a long way to go before there are significant money-making opportunities to be available to the masses.
California Condor
Mar 18th, 2008
The anticipation is for Metaverse, the one global 3-D Internet platform. Everything else that has been sought for is but a part of that.
Without the goal of Metaverse effecitively worked toward to be actualized, then Second Life fades into obscurity with yet the next greater virtual world software to rise to the challenge.
If another virtual world platform were to demonstrate itself truly ahead of the curve and take the lead toward Metaverse, how many of us would stay in Second Life? Linden Lab holding our content will only bind us so long because the community will have changed.
For Second Life, it is either step up to Metaverse or become a quaint cybercliqué in fond rememberance.
Near
Mar 18th, 2008
Basically, TL;DR – When you let your game turn into a giant sex simulator, you are already doomed to fail, especially when the furfags start pouring in, like a pool overflowing with AIDS.
If LL would b&hammer all of the furfags, they might have a chance at redeeming the game, but whoops, you’ve also got all of the srs bsns faggots that wage e-war against each other and spur drama everywhere.
Okay, if LL would b&hammer everybody from SL, they might be able to salvage their game.
shockwave yareach
Mar 18th, 2008
I don’t know what you mean. I can put down a credit card and buy the space bucks I need to buy the space suit inside the space game from a fellow spacer. Doesn’t cost much usually either – I have an out and out blast for the price of two pizzas a month (which my waistline can do without anyways) by putting down ye olde Card of the Master.
Then again, you condemn people who pay real money for anything having to do with SL. Paying True Dollars for Playstuff seems to be a sore point with you. Yet here you are, saying that one of the problems in SL is that people can’t directly purchase things ingame with their credit card.
Would you like your spotlight back to shine on a few of your own issues awhile?
Anon
Mar 18th, 2008
LOL…. Get a life, Soul4Sale. SL is a game. If I want to buy a computer, I go to Apple’s or Dell’s or Toshiba’s etc. websites and get one there. Or if I want a gallon of milk, I go to the nearby grocery store. Who cares about corporate intrusions into SL? And if it all ends… “thanks for all the fish.”
Ann Otoole
Mar 18th, 2008
yea well the “virtual world” economies for WoW and EQII amd the Sims have been going on for a long time and nobody is calling for the end of the world. There is a metaverse in japan done on cell phones that appeals to teenage girls. very popular. nobody is calling doom and gloom there.
if you don’t like SL then why not leave it behind. go back to counterstrike, call of duty, and battlefield clan matching. there is never any drama in CAL is there? *smirk*
Hiro Pendragon
Mar 18th, 2008
zomg the internet is the wild west and will fail, too! oh, wait a second…
Angel
Mar 18th, 2008
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
KeepinItReal
Mar 18th, 2008
“The grid is now shorthand among my 30-something generation as an online game for losers, geeks and shut-ins, not a revolutionary preview of Web 3.0.”
Damn! This is truly an astounding assessment. I couldn’t agree more. Nice to see a thoughful and perceptive response in such a short period of time – inworld. That’s the best time to get (realize) this kind of stuff; as either the addiction wipes that part of the frontal lobe after 30 days or it never existed to begin with from most sign-ups.
Ask most these folks to behave (not the fantasy parts mind you – that’s to be expected and should be tolerated) in RL like they do in SL and you’ll get a “deer in the headlights” stare. But then again, most these shut-ins barely live a 1st Life anyhow.
This was some of the best writing presented on this site. Clear, concise, revealing and exuding massive amounts of TRUTH.
When you step back and look at the big picture, the Lab is staffed by a big group of virtual babysitters for a service that creates income at the expense of mindless debauchery. Immersion as a 1st Life distraction has officially become a sickness…
Ranking just below Cartoon Manifest, Latex Covered BDSM!
And the Yiffers are wedged in there too…
Sickness creating income. Hmmm. New concept? Nope.
LULZY
whisper2u
Mar 18th, 2008
The West is the Best…
Prokofy Neva
Mar 18th, 2008
Go away.
MarkB
Mar 18th, 2008
Oh, you started this article so well! Like you, I’ve tried to get others onto SL but have been frequently blocked by difficult UI and slow/poor graphics.
However, from here we diverge. The economy is one of the best ideas in SL. It keeps people coming to build and provide services. Lindens might not be worth much but it shows people the value of what they build and do.
I don’t think SL is attracting weird people. Oh, I agree there are some strange avatars there and its a bit easier to seem strange in SL given the capabilities and anonymity. If you want RL familiarity, go outside.
As for business, SL does have some problems. The small SL businesses are a big part of SL success but RL businesses (and private sims) are a big part of the future. I don’t know it was possible to just start right from the beginning. I think evolution was (is) required. This is not a negative, just a natural growing pain.
ichabod Antfarm
Mar 18th, 2008
This just in: Jaded hipster can’t buy Franz Ferdinand CD in Second Life – Takes his trucks and goes home. Next!!!
Just Reading...
Mar 18th, 2008
@Effete DIction Robot
Hey ChumpF&ck
You left a customer standing at the counter; they want a McMuffin and a coffee.
Get the F&ck Out There!
Diction Robot…
Emphasis on DIC(k)
Get the F&ck Outt Here!
DinkyHockerShootsSmack!
Mar 18th, 2008
What do you know? Another noob who think he has it all figured out after a year.
I’ll bet you just couldn’t wait for your rez date to roll around so you could get up on here and be the “old timer” and bloviate about how SL is failing.
I have been listening to kids claim this for five years now. Hasn’t happened. No, I’m not a fanboi; I can’t stand most of the lindens – prolly because many of them masquerade as sages, like this “rl journo” here does, a bit too much for my tastes.
Just Me
Mar 18th, 2008
Lindens may not be worth much, but they fund all my in-world fun, plus my profits get converted to US$ and go to my PayPal account. I earn enough to pay the annual taxes on my (RL) house and still have some left to spend on Ebay.
I, too, have never moved a penny into SL from RL .. and never will. But, I’m sure enjoying taking the money OUT of SL !
cro
Mar 18th, 2008
Sure, the interface has a slight learning curve, but I manage, and I’m an old fart in RL. The more I’m inworld, the easier/more fluid it all becomes. As for the lag/slow rez problem, well, we all have different video cards, processor speeds, connection speeds, etc. This is a hardware problem that only time and engineers can solve. I’m sure LL would be happy to have everything in plain sight for kilometers in all directions all the time, but the technology is not quite there yet. Be patient. It’s ok to bitch too, though. Glad you’ll drop in now and again to see the future unfold.
Cockhoenut Koala
Mar 18th, 2008
“People do not want to wait for 10 minutes for a building, complete with interior walls and furniture, to rez 40 meters across the sim while they stand in mid-air watching the water undulate beneath their feet. I have no idea what the technical problem is that underlies this idiocy, but it needs to be fixed.”
Problem is on YOUR END if you are having issues that bad. I’ve never waited more then a few seconds. (except those asset server issue times)
SL works GREAT on my end. I find 90% of the problems people have in SL are either due to their IQ being below 100 or their computers are just not up to the task.
Casius Masala
Mar 18th, 2008
Most of your observations are accurate. Second Life started out working like a game and it is transitioning to a broader platform. It still has a way to go before it is useful as a tool of the corporate world. As I read the comments, most people are fine with that fact and are not looking forward to ordering Gap Jeans in second life.
Second Life can be slow and buggy and make you want to pull your hair out. However, I remember bringing a magazine with me when I tried to surf the web on my first dial up modem. Things will improve.
The World Wide Web has domains that section off localized markets and within those domains a business can use different currencies in pricing and payment methods. Within Second Life the Linden acts as a currency that works for all users. In the future if you want to purchase a real item after seeing it in Second Life you will be able to interact with the companies web site from within Second Life to complete a secure transaction.
So, yes, check back in a bit – but the end it not near.
Razrcut Brooks
Mar 18th, 2008
“The interface is the biggest problem…avatar movement” Really? I think using arrow keys are pretty easy. If you are referring to the jerky newbie walk, then I will send you an AO.
“..10 minutes for a building to rez” who waits 10 minutes for a building to rez? I have never waited 10 minutes for any building to rez in SL.. Also, check out Preferences/Graphics/Draw Distance.
Your article seems to insult LL’s idea of a resident created universe. Some of the problems you speak of occurred through no fault of LL.
While I agree that SL wants to evolve into a 3-d browser and to become the industry standard in that regard, please remember that we are in the infancy stages and it may be a decade away. As I have said here before, LL is striving for virtual internet surfing . Interaction with eBay, Amazon, YouTube etc in-world will become commonplace.
Ric Mollor
Mar 18th, 2008
Very truthful writing. Linden Labs has failed horribly by not licensing the server code or providing tools to censor user behavior.
This became very apparent when I witnessed a nude griefer with over a dozen animated penis attachments rez a self replicating object that crashed the Dell Computers sim. His partner in crime (also nude) was locked into a continuous marathon of autofellatio as he flew through the air surveying the scene.
Absolutely hilarious, unless you were Dell and cared about the impression that potential customers would carry away from that scene. Dell may still be in Second Life but until events such as that can be prevented they certainly won’t gain many sales by their presence.
LL needs to work at proving that they can provide something of value to “real business” if they want to have any chance at becoming the “Web 3.0″. Until they do businesses will only flirt with SL then move to something more predictable as Coke, Wells Fargo, AOL, and others have done.
Eventually only the weirdos will remain. The question is, will they pay enough to keep the lights on?
Effete Diction Robot
Mar 18th, 2008
@Just Reading…
“Emphasis on DIC(k)”? Really? If that’s how you like it, good for you. Enjoy!
MilosZ MilosZ
Mar 18th, 2008
Son, you say you rezzed one year ago?
Sorry, you’re still a clueless newb @ 1 year.
Try again in two more years.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 18th, 2008
I have no idea what the technical problem is that underlies this idiocy, but it needs to be fixed.
You’re looking at a fix. This *is* the fix. It’s the fix for grey squares. Grey squares are a direct result of adding p2p. Want to go everywhere instantly? Well, sorry, then the world has to load.
Before, you never saw this idiocy, because as you slowly flew around 1,000 meters or 3,000 meters, the world rolled out underneath you, fully rezzed. It had time to rez. You teleported home or to a telehub, then flew. The world had all the time it needed to rez to meet you. Now it doesn’t.
The idiocy is a direct result of the obsession with p2p, which isn’t even used in the way the Lindens imagined it would be. Nobody opens the map and teleports. They get their friends to teleport them — and they could do that before p2p was put in. Sure, they get ads now with teleportation, but a lot of them lead to islands where there is…a telehub, where you still have to fly from the hub through the mall or stores. Progress.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 18th, 2008
>Also, the idea of SL having an “economy” is ludicrous at best. Buying and selling lines of code that only exist on the company’s server (which what land and objects really are) is a fragile way of doing business in the age of ubiquitous hacking. Why SL even has a currency has always boggled me. It seems like such a misplaced gaming element for something purporting to be an Internet platform. LL has obviously stuck with its hermetically sealed funny e-money system and land sales as an easy source of trickling cash, going so far as to tax image transfers. In doing so, it has created a banana republic full of cheap, uninhabited land and worthless currency.
>Instead of selling SL’s server software and development tools to companies for real cash from the outset, LL tried to make businesses into surfs of its own little world and then tax them. This is a very stupid business model. Imagine if Netscape had tried to make all of its business clients host their web sites on its servers. Business island servers should have been privately operated from the start, and the mainland growth should have been severely limited and managed by partner companies, such as the Electric Sheep, to keep the mainland from turning into abandoned sign farms.
This is all interesting to debate, and the only worthwhile thing said in this screed. But it’s simply all wrong at root, because it posits that there would be all these RL businesses out there in 2002 or 2003 just dying to sit and play with 3-D software and resell server space or developed content to legions of their customers. That’s just not realistic. The world has to have a learning curve and adaptation period. We’re in it.
The currency isn’t worthless. It’s $264/$1.00 US now. Visa wouldn’t take on micropayments like that, the administration cost is too high. And people aren’t going to start on day one of something like this paying $125 US for a half sim.
I think what at’s root with your rant here is that Second Life unseats you. It makes you irrelevant. It’s media that people make without you. They don’t need old journalists or Web 2.0 gurus and geeks to make their entertainment anymore or even their news. It *is* disruptive media, and first and foremost, disruptive of you.
Every single piece of snark said here is easily refuted by a simple principle: if the code is open-source and the grids separated, so that, say, a university hosted its own sim, or a business created an entire grid that had no dubious cultural or sexual drawbacks, as you see them, then…what would your complaint be about? You’re against a 3-D interactive streaming world where people can save money on meetings, collaborate, and prototype? Why? That’s like being against the Internet, that does the same thing in 2-D, but with less presence, serendipity, and interaction.
Strip away the mass taste and cultural aspects of SL, which you sneer at like a good Bozo in Paradise, and there’s nothing for you to bitch about. Everything that you say you want SL to be it is and can be. There is nothing to stop a corporation from buying the sims and taking Mastercard payments for whatever. They’re free to make whatever they want, just like a webpage.
Then…here’s the problem. Everybody has less time and attention to read you.
MilosZMilosZ
Mar 18th, 2008
***
The writer is an RL journalist living on the American East Coast.
***
You have the worst grammar I’ve ever seen for a journalist.
Rusalka Writer
Mar 18th, 2008
Well, I’ve been in SL for nine months, and I’m earning $20-$30 (US) every day. I’d say that’s a pretty functional economy. Sure, SL has plenty of problems. I’d vote that #1 is a rush to the new before the old has been fixed, but not all of it is broken.
Ha
Mar 18th, 2008
“Son, you say you rezzed one year ago?
Sorry, you’re still a clueless newb @ 1 year.
Try again in two more years.”
Ha. When 98% of the 12 million sign-ups last on average a week, you have this idea that newbishness lasts over an entire year? SL itself has only been around and open for about five years, so this guy has lasted for 20% of the life of the grid so far.
Just because you don’t agree with him and he’s the ‘clueless newb’. Ha.
jumpman lane
Mar 18th, 2008
This tard is just another one of those RL w/e’s too fastidous to get their hands dirty by PLAYING sl. They log in and tard about (lookin tardy) never finding a niche (no building, no sex, no buying, no selling) just trying to be the RL EXPERT to corporate noobs. I read this trash. (the parts I could unnastan) “they coulda been the next nextscape!” “they coulda been the next nextscape!” (er didn’t Microsoft put a foot in Netscape’s crack?- er nvm. The tard had no piont to begin with!) In second life you create everything. Even ur own entertainment. If SL aint livin up to ur delight. PLAY TIDDLYTWINKS!
Infocyde
Mar 18th, 2008
Yawn…
You have said nothing that has not already been said by thousands.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Mar 19th, 2008
SL is not a viable RL business platform, and virtual worlds of the future won’t be either, atleast not for a long time.
It should be of no interest atall to real world corporations.
Misty McConachie
Mar 19th, 2008
[It’s all fine and good to call your product “Second Life,” but LL has really bought too far into the concept, going out of their way to attract a demographic that gets mired too much into the alternate identity aspect of the platform. The dual-identity sales pitch has attracted far too many starry-eyed roll-players, creepy anons and thrill seekers, resulting in a world permeated with recycled RPG themes, asshat griefers and gratuitous sex playgrounds.]
Very, very well said.
I think LL’s problem started with the very naming of the product “Second Life”. It invites scorn and attracted a bunch of people seeking an out from reality.
Hopefully, at the very least, it will turn out to have been a necessary first step along the road to something better.
anon
Mar 19th, 2008
lol @ the slfags being threatened by reality, just like they get butthurt when the rest of the Internet looks at them as losers
MilosZ MilosZ
Mar 19th, 2008
****8″Son, you say you rezzed one year ago?
Sorry, you’re still a clueless newb @ 1 year.
Try again in two more years.”
Ha. When 98% of the 12 million sign-ups last on average a week, you have this idea that newbishness lasts over an entire year? SL itself has only been around and open for about five years, so this guy has lasted for 20% of the life of the grid so far.
Just because you don’t agree with him and he’s the ‘clueless newb’. Ha******
Sorry, but yes, he is.
Marc Woebegone
Mar 19th, 2008
SL is an addictive eye-candy cartoon.
http://secondlife.typepad.com
M
EB!
Mar 19th, 2008
I think of SL as being where the internet was in 1992 or so (when I first started using the worldwide Internet; see http://w3.itso.ibm.com/abstracts/sg242597.html for an interesting view of the world back then). And in the 18 months I’ve been in SL I’ve seen how the universities and librarians are really using SL successfully, and how businesses are dabbling in SL then pulling out when they can’t make millions of dollars–just like 1995.
SL is in the trough of the Hype Cycle, and slowly moving out of it. Whether it grows to become more significant than it was a year ago or becomes an interesting footnote is still too early to say. The “3-D internet” is coming; whether it is SL or something else is too early to tell. Linden Lab would like it to be SL; they are seriously looking to open their servers; but the metaverse community has to work out trust issues (I figure that we will eventually have external “virtual currency traders” mediating these transactions, but I digress).
An interesting parallel may be AOL: 25 years ago it was a dial-up ISP with a interface into their own world running on their own servers. When the Internet came along, they kept control of the user experience, and it worked until the rest of the world caught up, then surpassed them. Today, AOL is still around, but not the company it once was.
I’m still sticking with SL. WoW and other environments work for gamers. But nothing is like SL for the ability to manipulate the environment; “There” is close but needs the user/builder base that SL has.
And someone told me last week that people have more intense spiritual experiences in SL than sexual experiences. And I think that might be true; avatar sex only goes so far, but the virtual environment fits better with the transcending sense of wonder you can experience in RL.
Just Me
Mar 19th, 2008
@eb! I agree with that …. SL may be perceived to be in a slump, but there is still nothing that compares to it on the Internet. A quick search will show up everything from a New Orleans experience to a Chinese junk with Olympics information. There are mountains and beaches, clubs to dance in, people to meet from all over the world, and so many other things.
When I feel like it, I can skydive, go hot air ballooning, talk to someone from China, take classes, be a mentor, build interesting things, and so much more. SL can be whatever you want it to be … whether you want to replicate your RL existance or be a furrie. You can experiment with different lifestyles (gay, BDSM, Gorean, etc). You can roleplay Star Trek or a fantasy medieval experience.
Cockhoenut Koala
Mar 19th, 2008
OMFG! What do some people expect?
Why people think they can just leave their land having open build/scripting/object creation rights and no one is going to abuse that, it is insanity!
Could you imaging if CNN.com had a spot on their page anyone could edit freely, think of the hell.
Heck, look at Wikipedia and the constant edit battle.
Stop being idiots coming on the internet thinking somehow it will change for them.
soul4sale
Mar 19th, 2008
@Proky
Yer goat, I haz it.
Cathy, I am so glad to see you respond to this. I have never had the pleasure of having my work warped and twisted through the torqued wormhole that is your view of the world. As for the rest of these fawners, haters and self-appointed grammar cops posting here, they mean nothing to me. It’s you, hon. It’s you who I wanted to nail between the eyeballs and watch as the bile and weirdness flowed out. Your response was gorgeous, vintage Neva – acrobatic logic, smothering superiority, rampant speculation and shrill paranoia. Just classic.
I’m gonna miss you, girl.
Dr. Internet
Mar 19th, 2008
The article raises a valid point.
SL is a closed system. you cant really call it a 3d internet. a 3d intranet, yes. but not a 3d internet. 3rd parties need to be involved, and the payment system shouldnt be in linden labs’ hands, otherwise, it’s another mmo, without anything fun.
The game (yes, a game, LL refers to it as an entertainment platform, aka, a game) is severely broken, laggy, and outdated. A modern bleeding edge gaming rig is barely enough to make the damn thing run at a decent framerate. The building tools are insufficient in many areas (forcing you to use more prims than necessary, or to upload sculpted textures for a fee.) and the people make it very boring as well, If you do something that happens to offend someone else, you’ll end up banned, there are people who look for trouble often, there are people who will go into weapons sandboxes and intentionally get in the crossfire and see if they get orbitted or pushed, so they can collect names and get people banned.
Hopefully, A serious competitor to SL will open up one day soon. It’ll be an open platform if the creator is smart.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 19th, 2008
Score!
ichiro Kiama
Mar 20th, 2008
Second Life will never be a 3D world wide web, its not an open platform, and unless there are some fairly fundamental new ideas, having a 3D web is a bad idea anyway. The whole 3D paradigm is just too much overhead for the things the web does perfectly well already.
But despite its many flaws and ways it could be better, it is a pretty good platform for what it does, and its still exponentially ahead of any alternative. Many of the complaints in this article (interface, currency & economy, its freedom), i find to be strengths and are the very reason that kept me in here.
The major point i take from this article and comments though is that Second Life needs a better introductory experience. For newer people, its a lot to take on. The beginner experience and second life client should be more restrictive, managed, and simpler for newer people and provide better instant rewards, before the rather overwhelming freedom of the entire second life grid and capability becomes available. The avarage person who comes to Second Life does not stay unless they already have friends to keep them here. I hate comparing SL to a game, but World of Warcraft does this really well and its the reason it retains its players. Linden have created a great technical platform, and i love it, but its still fails as a consumer product to the masses.
Just Me
Mar 20th, 2008
@MilosZMilosZ
Same here .. I move about $200 US to Paypal each month ..after all costs and discretionary spending in world. Sure feels like a functioning economy to me, no matter what Prok thinks
Sciamachy Moran
Mar 20th, 2008
If SL is a game, how do you win? What are the rules? Who are your allies, and who your opponents?
If SL is a game, so is email, IRC, telephone communication, radio etc.
I disagree with Soul4Sale’s idea that it could have become the 3D web. I don’t think the web wants or needs to be 3d. SL provides an entirely different experience to the web, complemented by it and complementary to it. Just because you have another mode of communication, another medium, doesn’t mean you should drop the others.
Sciamachy Moran
Mar 20th, 2008
BTW an entertainment platform isn’t a game. TV is an entertainment platform, as is cinema. Do you play TV?