Who in Second Life has a clue?

Hamlet posted an odd one… Mid-Week Open Forum: Say Anything About VR, AR or SL. The post is obviously to encourage input from readers and see what’s on people minds, which isn’t odd. At least that’s what I infer from it. The odd part is in the comments. But what are people thinking and saying? And are these people exemplary of who is reading Hamlet?

Jan 2012-Oct 2015 Concurrent Users

Jan 2012-Oct 2015 Concurrent Users

First the comments then I have some push back.

To summarize the comments:

Linda Evans thinks the decline in SL regions is due to Ebbe Altberg… really!?! 

Ben & Jerrys Bagel Shops LLC. (This isn’t THE Ben & Jerry) they think SL users may not want Project Sansar. He… they… suggest the Lab keep all the success factors from SL, fix the bugs, update the [render] engine, and the Havok physics engine. He/they think residents only want to extend the game, improve it, and continue as is. Basically Sansar is the problem causing loss of regions.

Shaun thinks the Lab doesn’t care about SL and that SL sucks, that the lab will screw up Sansar, High Fidelity has a high a high barrier to entry, VR won’t go mainstream because it has no use case, Snowcrash portrayed a stupid idea,

A.J. thinks the Lab should save its ship… presumably SL, compares Altberg to Fiorina – I have to assume A.J. is poorly informed about politics too – doubts they have anything productive from Sansar and if they do it should be applied to SL, thinks SL is the place for “ imagination and dreaming, the LL profit & loss statements aren’t.”

Clean Him Up thinks public sentiment is known and not with VR, thinks VR will take 5 years to make money and by then competition will be fierce, thinks Ebbe’s way of doing things is not profitable, thinks Anshe Chung is losing money by renting regions for L$12,000 (US$203) while the Lab charges $300, that all staff at the Lab needs to be replaced,

Angery Resident is incoherent… or English is not their language. But, the idea they son’t like the Lab comes through.

Humperton DiAngelo is reading Prokofy Neva’s post (I think I have the right one) in the forum asking about rumors that the Lab is going to close one of the mainland continents. I suppose this is the basis for Humperton thinking more and more people see what the Lab is doing and calling them liars. Humperton thinks Ebbe has reversed himself on whether SL will continue and thinks Ebbe is making the Lab’s profits vanish.

Wolkenreiter is the only positive post so far and Wolkenreiter thinks there won’t be any prims and everything will be Maya/Blender made mesh. Wolkenreiter thinks there is nothing that could be done to improve SL building and as I take what Wolkenreiter  wrote to mean all SL changes to date have not make a difference in user retention.

Next, my blow back. Page link below.

6 thoughts on “Who in Second Life has a clue?

  1. I might be wrong, but since some weeks I have the impression, that LL is faking SL’s landmass by keeping those regions and mainland parcels up and running, even if tier wasn’t paid since months or account of the owner got disabled. Whatever, just my current impression.

    About SL and Sansar, I fear LL will fail with both, just by being too weak and slow for two huge projects. I’m dreaming of one open, affordable and easy-to-access virtual world following open standards – pretty much like the WWW but in 3D – but LL is the exact opposite.
    The current situation is pretty discouraging, because SL’s groups/communities are shrinking. Most of my close friends gave up SL already. I would prefer a world without Sansar, but with all my friends. Any world without my friends is nothing.

    p.s.: is it possible to implement a Human Verification without Flash? I just notice, it works also by clicking on the ‘New Puzzle’ button… all ok 🙂

    • I am not sure why you think faking or not faking land mass makes a difference. Prospective new users have no idea what land mass is. Existing users either want land or they don’t. So, what difference does it make?

      Linden Lab is over 200 employees. Minecraft was developed by 3 people and they now have 54 employees (per Wikipedia). Well known game development companies tend to have over a thousand employees, but they have to build ALL the content in the game. SL and Sansar content will be built by users, so shouldn’t we add in the 900,000 SL users to the employee count? Or at least some portion of them? If we do that makes the Lab one of the largest game developers going…

      You say they should have open standards. SL has an open source viewer and in general the Lab is pro open source. We can build anythng we want in SL. For the rapid development needed for Sansar open source is too cumbersome. But, Ebbe uses a comparison with Sansar to describe what they are developing toward. Those of us working with developing WordPress driven web sites understand his meaning to make Sansar an Apache-like app. So, it could well become a standard like you are describing. Web sites aren’t free, but they are cheap. Ebbe says they are planning to do the same. Few people customize Apache or WordPress (WP theme builders and web developers). It doesn’t make much difference to the majority, almost all that use Apache and WP, that they are open source. Users are interested in building their content. So, I don’t see how you hold the idea Sansar is the opposite of the current Apache/Unix driven web?

      Even with all the stated and supposed similarities to Apache and WordPress, we can’t be sure they will succeed. There is no guarantee this will be THE BIG THING hoped for. Only time will tell. But, the Lab has the most experience running a virtual world and managing a virtual economy of any company in the world. Those years give the Lab a very strong competitive edge. Also, they are not starting from scratch. The Lab has made its mistakes in SL. They know way more than did when starting SL almost 10 years ago.

      If virtual worlds with user created content are to be as popular as web sites, the best bet is the Lab will do it.

  2. One thing I don’t see addressed here (maybe it has been elsewhere) is people like me: I’m not a builder and most likely never will be. I’m happy to have a little parcel in Eden, where a friend built me a house, and I landscaped and decorated. If I didn’t have a builder friend, I could have installed a prefab house and been happy with that. I’m fairly certain many SL residents are just like me. I pay my tier, I tip venues and performers, I buy stuff from brilliant designers, I enjoy to the fullest the world SL users have built. But I don’t quite see how Sansar would accommodate people like me. Is it going to be a collection of exclusive worlds where you have to already know someone inside in order to gain access? Walled communities like those red hearts on the SL world map? If so, i say bah!

    • I think you misunderstand. In SL the Lab did not target developers. That was the plan but it didn’t work out that way. Over the years they have learned more about why it didn’t workout as planned. With Sansar they are correcting some mistakes.

      Sansar is targeting builders. But, they are also figuring out how to make 3D building within Sansar far easier than it is in SL. At first it will be for Blender and Maya builders. But, as time passes they will have more tools for the hobby builder.

      With SL there is no way to build a place/experience and get people to it from the web. Many think this is the primary reason SL has never taken off. That is being corrected in Sansar. The result is Sansar will be more like an easy to use Unreal or Unity game developement platform, which is what SL was designed to be. While many do not use it that way, many do.

      The result will be a number of games/experiences that one may not even realize is part of Sansar. But, there will also be those experiences that are tied into others. It is hard to imagine what will be built. What I am very sure of is that there won’t be just one type of experience but many ranging from stand alone to multi-region-like worlds with multiple owners.

      Deciding that Sansar is not for you is a bit premature. You don’t actually know what it is going to be. I can understand that what you are imagining is not for you… but that is what YOU are imagining, not what it is going to be.

  3. I love how Natales writes as if she knows absolutely all the answers about LL.

    Self-delusion in action ladies and gentlemen.

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