Comments on: One Year In SL – Why the Wild West is Failing

By: NoneOfTheAbove

NoneOfTheAbove — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:28:55 +0000

We’re in the process of exploring SL as a collaboration platform for software development teams we have globally. I can do more on a bad day in SL for about 1/3 the cost of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) conference calls. I wouldn’t call SL a failure.

That being said, I want to take a 2×4 to some of the people responsible for some of the issues were experiencing in lag, asset server muck ups, Rolling Restarts that occur randomly and seem to cause more harm than good, etc.

Is SL perfect? Heck !!N!O!! But it IS a viable means of bringing disparate persons together to work on a common problem in the currently most effective/efficient manner. Sun’s Wonderland is NOT Michael Jackson’s estate, it is a means to do in a proprietary fashion that which SL does on a far vaster scale. Metaverse Inc will bring a purported business model to bear that MAY become attractive to us, once they actually are operational and deliver on their promises. And SL has already lost some businesses to THERE.com, so again SL is NOT perfect. So SL has and will continue to have alternative providers for similar services. It will be a matter of business demographics which platform(s) will prove to be best for business. But SL is HERE and available NOW, while others are still being considered or are still-born.

Businesses that are open to new solutions (like ours) are moving into SL because it offers an incremental improvement to our operations. And if you say that SL doesn’t have the reliability or servicability of say the cable or phone companies, try calling Asian or Africa, and then say that they are more reliable/more servicable than SL with a straight face!

By: Archer

Archer — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:31:43 +0000

An excellent article. I agree wholeheartedly with your views on the “economy” of Second Life. Anyone deciding to do “business” on this platform is playing a game of russian roulette. The currency is explicitly unguaranteed, the platform was created to encourage content sharing (otherwise known as content theft), the customer service is pathetic, the mainland remains a spam-littered wasteland in most places, and the attitude of SL’s rabid fanboi supporters is one of patent snobbery. We “just don’t GET it”…because we’re obviously too stupid or unskilled to make a go of it in SL.
My experience as an educator has been one rife with embarrassment in SL. At two expositions for faculty, the platform crashed a minimum of five times PER exposition. The interface is too unintuitive, and the framerate too sporadic to use as a dependable tool for any decent machinima.
I’ve spent more than a year in-world. Created a massive inventory of content, opened a business…and then lost it all in one of SL’s infamous “asset-server” glitches.
Second Life is NOT the future of the internet. It’s not a place to do business. It’s not even a place you can use for reliable socialization, thanks to problems with griefers.
It’s a curiosity. A novelty. And one that continues to dig itself deeper and deeper into obscurity.
Second Life’s failure will be due solely to the hubris of its creators and owners…and its fan base, blinded by the promise of a fortune to be had in make-believe land.

By: Plot Tracer

Plot Tracer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:17:38 +0000

Well done this author. Shame on the grammar fascists.

This was a good article, with a different perspective from those here who snipe in other places, but as soon as someone says something they are actually thinking, they have to knock ‘im back.

Strange thing here is that some knocked this poor geezer for being a young’un. I fear if young ‘uns are finding diffs on SL ™, then the world is doomed, DOOMED I TELL YA!

I agree with him re asking friends onto SL – I have asked people to try it out and they are flummoxed by the rezzing/ the controls and the porn.

There are other alternatives – free ones… where you can actually create your own world and not have to pay tier etc. AND can link up with other sims.

Oh – and my gammar was feckin’ terrible, but are you clever enough to read stuff without a semicolon or a comma? I beg you – don’t read Irvine Welsh (or Shakespear who never even spelt his own name the same way – ever)- it will only make your head explode.

By: James

James — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:51:04 +0000

the author couldn’t find anything worthwhile to do in his year in sl? wow..I taught myself to build a house that I now live in, most of the furniture I sit on, and a cool spaceship that I blew up, and a few other things. people who sl are rejects or loners…to some extent that may be true of some, but for others, its not true at all. I have a decent real life, and still find the time to log in and see how my friends from England and Asia are. its connected me to people who I am sad to say are a bit more interesting than my class mates in school. the interface is easy to learn if you take the time to learn it, so is inventory if you can take the time to learn where things go. the economy is a cool aspect of second life….some people I know make a real life wage doing something they enjoy here. yes, it may be broken and creaky sometimes, but I am glad I joined up over 2 years ago.

By: shawn harker

shawn harker — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:24:46 +0000

i discovered something that might impact sl for people. i quit sl for a time over disgust at the poor rendering of textures. i could tp to a site and spend 10 min waiting for it to load and then most of the avs were grey and much of the surroundings for my entire stay there.
i do other things on the web and purchased a new computer, since my old one was getting rather dated. i got one with sli technology that allows for 2 nvidia 8800 gt cards to work in tandem. when i got it set up i visited sl as the acid test. no lag, even in a crowd, all textures load in a minute.
all the problems i had with rendering were solved. so, in conclusion, linden labs has a baby here that requires an expensive graphics set up to render well. whether or not that is good or bad i dont know.
the rendering and lag were a major reason i left sl, and i notice the author lists it first in complaints. it can be fixed, you just have to throw money at it.

By: Me

Me — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:14:56 +0000

If the economy weren’t real, I wouldn’t be paying for my tier and membership everything month with income from in-world store. I wouldn’t be paying real life bills with it either. But I do. How is that not a real economy? I create, I sell, I convert to USD and I have cash.

By: DF

DF — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:40:44 +0000

Does a game need to have a goal?

What about LineRider?

And does SL need to become Web 3.0?

Says who?

It’s The Sims. With the possibility to customize EVERYTHING as opposed to The Sims.

I like it just the way it is

And when the day comes that ‘The Metaverse’ is born, and everyone who wants a more real 3d interweb idea leaves, perhaps SL will die out, and force the ones who are left to also begin anew in this Metaverse…
Or SL will evolve to become part of it…
Or it will stay just the way it is now, only with less coorporations and adfarming etc as there are better chances to make RL $ in the Metaverse instead. Who knows what’s next. I’m personally hoping for the last.

But I’ll be sure to enjoy the ride as much as I can. To me, SL is still a fun game, and despite it’s limitations, bugs and shortcomings (fix SL Lindens, please!) it’s still fun for me.

YAY building while idly chatting and laughing with friends about whatever!

By: Sciamachy Moran

Sciamachy Moran — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:01:40 +0000

BTW an entertainment platform isn’t a game. TV is an entertainment platform, as is cinema. Do you play TV?

By: Sciamachy Moran

Sciamachy Moran — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:59:32 +0000

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.

By: Just Me

Just Me — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:02:18 +0000

@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