MetaReality Week 38

Another Metareality podcast is out, named: Less is More? This is my outline of the timeline, summary, and comments. It is not a transcript. At best I paraphrase and at worse miss the point entirely. So, if you react strongly to something, listen to the original audio.

0:00 – Introductions – Kimberly Winnington = Gianna Borgnine, Karl Stiefvater = Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden, and Bernhard Drax = Draxtor Despres.

The first part of the audio was recorded before the introductory videos or IGN article were out. At about 29:00 they see the video and article release pops up. They stop to watch it and then the conversation changes a bit. So, take that into account as you read.

01:10 – Coming Soon from Linden Lab: Creatorverse and Patterns – 2 of the four coming products; CreatorVerse (CV) and Patterns, are announced.

CreatorVerse: Karl says it looks cute, interesting, and step backwards. Could be a gateway to SL. Drax is excited, thinks kids will be interested and better than what schools are giving kids in 3D space now.

3:45 – Crayon Physics comparison. Drax, sees CreatorVerse targeting a different audience. Drax knows his child will be interested in CreatorVerse. But, the market place is crowded, so it will require some marketing to get any traction.

Karl wants to know what can be uploaded and how the building process is shared, shared as in collaborative building. Or if it is even shared at all.

According to Drax, Little Bird Tales is often used in schools and is way lame by comparison. So, the Lab could win this game space.

08:00 – Scratch – Drax is reminded of Scratch. Speculation is whether the Lab will put in something like Scratch for programming. – Scratch is an MIT graphic programming tool (S4SL) for learning programming that generates LSL scripts. I haven’t used it for some time. I suspect it is horribly out of date and for anything other than very basic LSL scripting. I doubt it has the LSL features which were added this year.

09:00 – Gianna talks about Dizzy Banjo mentioning the idea of having an upgrade path from SL to CV or maybe that is CV to SL.

10:00 – Shockwave points out a company that offers poor support in one game will give poor support in other games and feels this will keep CreatorVerse and Patterns from succeeding.

12:20 – New Linden Lab Product: Day-Glo Minecraft with Physics? – Discussion of Patterns starts. Gianna finds it more interesting than CV. Drax says it makes one think of Minecraft. Karl likes the looks of Patterns, it’s… bright.

Drax goes into a thing about simplicity (think Minecraft) making games more mass-compatible resulting in more people being interested.

As Drax and a language teacher talked to their kids about Minecraft and Garry’s Mod and what could be done with them with then verses what can be done with SL, the kids were wow’d. They simply did not know what could be done with SL.

16:00 – So… are simple games better? Gianna asks, aren’t we thinking we can do with SL what is done in these games, but better and with more fun? Drax and Karl say yes. Karl guesses maybe at some point in Patterns you throw a switch and your Patterns stuff transfers to Second Life. I think while it is an interesting idea it is also a long reach.

18:30 – Second Life redux? Simplicity. Would a remake, cosmetic, of Second Life with a new name be more acceptable to the masses?

21:15 – Uniformity in all these games. I got lost in here and I’m not at all certain if they were talking about genre of Minecraft, Little Bird Tales, Terraria and Patterns or the three Linden products.

22:30 – Will or should Patterns subsume Second Life? Why is the Lab moving away from SL? Or is the Lab moving away from SL? May be making something like these games out of SL, but with a new front face might make SL more acceptable by getting away from any stigma.

SL Enterprise and other idea discussed.

25:30 – Is Second Life embarrassing? Are people thinking it is for escapists and losers? Sometimes Drax avoid using the name Second Life when telling people about it. That gets him around the initial resistance some people have to the name.

28:30 – Everything in SL until now has been short fixed… how does one fix the stigma?

29:15 – The Patterns video was released during the audio recording session. They stopped and watched it, which changed the tone of conversation. More on point questions asked.

32:15 – There is discuss of the IGN article about Patterns. Patterns Could Be the Next Minecraft. They point out there is no hint of the collaborative aspects of Patterns. So, we are left to speculate on that point.

34:30 – New Second Life Promo Video – This video came out too. As usual this type of video draws lots of critique from those that know Second Life.

Taking away from SL no… separate teams… not abandoning. Drax is seeing the new stuff in SL. Drax still sees the promo failing short. Things Drax sees wrong; the horrible default walking animation is used in the video. A lame zombie shooter is shown to attract gamers… which Drax and I think is JUST DUMB… if not a disaster. There are great zombie shooters in SL. The concept for capturing gamers is good. But, gamers are spoiled with fantastic graphics. The promo is just not going to work to capture them. They’ll have the idea SL is way more lame than it is.

38:00 – Gianna thinks this one is way up… like ten steps up from the last one. Gianna would not be embarrassed to show this video.

Linden Lab Must Stop Underselling Second Life

39:00 – There are the people that will say SL never looks this good. But, promos show a world or any product in the best possible way. This is a long time old discussion on whether promos should show SL in its best light possible or at some median level for those with $400 dollar computers. I’ll go with best possible.

41:00 – Insilico is shown in the new SL video – no shadows –  There are some way better clips of Insilico in other videos. It would be nice if the Lab could put some more time on these videos. Drax is trying to avoid slamming the video’s author, but there are just so many possibilities for what could have been done. I have to agree. The open scenes suck… sorry whoever.

43:00 The number of viewers seeing videos at YouTube is discussed. The numbers are really low.

Drax is thinking this new video is the video we will see on Steam.

45:30 – The panel checks out the comments section of the IGN article. The response and comments are good.

50:00 – Rod Humble very clearly heavily involved in the new projects. That may explain why we have heard so little from him lately.

52:00 – Qarl breaks down the deformer bug – Karl has apparently looked at the problem and bug reports. There is a little pipeline problem that needs to be fixed. His joking is sure to piss some off. But, then what would he say that wouldn’t?

53:30 – Closing and sponsors.

Summary

Lots of this discussion is interesting, but I’m skipping many of the details. Too much to try and capture and I have other things to write up. You can use the time marks to find the parts that interest you.

 

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