So I've been thinking about SL lately and its viability. Honestly, while I think it will limp along for another 2-5 years -- I think its days are definitely numbered. It is being hit on all sides -- the companies are pulling out and realizing there is no corporate need or usefulness; new social networking technologies that allow people to meet each other and keep in touch over a wide range of platforms are easier to use and require less computing resources; the creators are, as we all know, under attack daily by content thieves and this is not a problem that will go away or, I think, is actually solvable other than by extreme measure; LL itself seems to be wanting to 'punish' content creators by making them pay to list on SLX; and then there's the poor worldwide economy -- Second Life is a luxury item that hits the chopping block first.
Quite frankly, I don't see what LL can do to stop the stream of theft other than throw human resources at the problem to constantly police or to make a special group of people who are allowed to be merchants and revoke that functionality from anyone not belonging to that special group. The only way they will address the problem at all is if they settle or lose the lawsuit. If they do make a group of special merchant type people, the residual hard feelings from those who are not special enough will, I think, create quite the backlash. And LL "sanctioning" a bestiality item shop would be completely entertaining -- for us but not so much for LL or the righteous-filled who might go after them. That hits the news and no one is going to understand that "its only a game."
Speaking of games, as far as a social networking platform, it is beginning to be the big fail. Social networking is going mobile and people are plugged in 24-7. You can't do that with SL. So then it becomes a game or an education tool and I cannot see the expense and learning curve justifying it being an education tool over the long term.
As far as games go, it needs as much computing power as the most state of the art games and it continues to have basic functionality problems almost every single day. Today there is a group search error, yesterday there was a different problem. Their infrastructure and code are shit and from what I understand, it cannot be rebuilt without taking down the entire thing and starting from scratch.
Furthermore, the lack of any place to go to find out about events that isn't also filled with 101 scams and best in black/ponytails/evening gowns/pussycats/whatever has always been an issue and as other social networking avenues become way more viable, LL's failure to address tools that facilitate basic communication between groups and those seeking to find something to do becomes more and more poignant.
I really think we are seeing the beginning of the end here. SL will, undoubtedly, go out with a whimper instead of a bang, but I think the long slow decline is beginning.
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Despoiler of Fashionistas, and Seductress of the Innocent and Not So Innocent, Seeker of Virgins and Honest Politicians
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God, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Allah, Confusion, Buddah, Scientology, Aliens, that lion from Narnia, whatever is out there
I need your help now."
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It was never a social networking thing, though it was made such, and augments itself via our behavior by including ourselves in other social networks, with SL as our common point.
The whole RL economy is in a downtown, hence things like SL would be in more of a downturn. SL's attempts to recruit the participation of RL businesses into SL have faded in their effect because of that downturn: a dollar invested in SL is much less likely ever to produce a return than a dollar invested in an RL employee or factory equipment. SL fades in such a comparison.
So, it survives on the grounds that it did originally: that it was our made-to-order avatars in our made-to-order environment. You don't have to list on XLStreet or whatever its right name is. You don't have to buy adverts in SL. Word of mouth, Picks, buyer groups, reviews, customer announcements, etc. work more effectively for good designers.
LL have to deal with the copy problem. I can't imagine how they'll do it, but they will create some sort of temporary counterstroke, but not before copybots become even easier to use than today. That part makes me nervous, but the problem of copying will be a constant. Whatever counterstroke LL imposes will eventually become circumvented. That part is inevitable.
So, I don't see it dying, but it's not as hip in the journalism world as it once was, undeniably. SL is yesterday's news. For now.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trout Recreant Princess Govi The Confuser of Language, The Curse of The Tower of Babel, Who Brought Entire Nations To a Standstill As Their Residents Froze in Fear, Unable to Communicate, Unable to Speak, Unable to Order Quadruple Tall Non-Fat Double Splenda Carmel Macchiatos With a Sprig of Mint and a Sprinkle of Cinnamon, Hold the Foam, and Ensuring the Downfall of Society Which Inevitably Follows a Shortage of Caffeine.
5 users agreed. You should agree too, c'mon, you know you want to. (click it, click it now!)
Maybe I'm missing the whole nature of what virtual worlds are? I've never seen anything like Second Life as a social networking place, certainly not in the sense that Facebook, Twitter, Plurk etc are. Maybe it's the labelling by the media as a social networking place that confuses and misleads people into what they think there going to get out of it.
I guess I should never have read Snow Crash or William Gibson's books that dealt with virtual worlds, it gave me the understanding of this is what virtual worlds are and thats how I percieve them to be.
Yeah, it is fading. Far from over by a few years but it has been the victim of it's owner (LL) trying to turn it into everything but what it is commonly used for. The percentage of Corporate users and Education users is a tiny minority to the everyday users. The fact LL has done all it can to push the everyday users away to go after what it thought would be the big bucks and "serious" use was and continues to be it's big issue. We have seen one decision after the other that keeps eroding the everyday user experience.
Copying could be cut way down if LL released a new viewer with closed source code and changed it's log in protocol to kill all the others. Copybot was born from the code LL gave to Libsl and let them play with. Now it is a all too common feature in rogue viewers. You will never remove copying totally (from what "they" say) but you can damn sure slow it down and put it back under a rock. Before open source viewers we saw most complaints being freebie resellers. Now it is mega boxes of ripped stuff. Exploits will happen, but can be reined in some. I am sure that view will be seen as naive and short sighted by the open sourcers out there, but I know what I remember from before the days of rogue viewers. I can only base my thoughts on that.
The opensim hopping from SL to other grids has not been mentioned much that I have seen (though I lost all interest in alternate grids when I realized it was much better to reside on a grid that was ran by a big company like LL then by some guy playing grid god that can close shop overnight and take your stuff with them).
Nah, SL is not a killer app. It is a game environment no matter what LL wants to believe. If they ever stop taking themselves so seriously and believing they have a 3-D web (where it is a chore to log in, TP and browse a companies "store") and get back to the idea of a user created world they may milk it a bit longer. The damage and jaded feelings to the early founders of SL are already deep rooted though. When your user base laughs at you for your joy in adding a voice app you should realize you may be looking the wrong way.
/rant. My 2 cents and not worth more then that really.
Last edited by Macphisto Angelus; 11-21-2009 at 08:36 PM.
It was never a social networking thing, though it was made such, and augments itself via our behavior by including ourselves in other social networks, with SL as our common point.
The whole RL economy is in a downtown, hence things like SL would be in more of a downturn. SL's attempts to recruit the participation of RL businesses into SL have faded in their effect because of that downturn: a dollar invested in SL is much less likely ever to produce a return than a dollar invested in an RL employee or factory equipment. SL fades in such a comparison.
So, it survives on the grounds that it did originally: that it was our made-to-order avatars in our made-to-order environment. You don't have to list on XLStreet or whatever its right name is. You don't have to buy adverts in SL. Word of mouth, Picks, buyer groups, reviews, customer announcements, etc. work more effectively for good designers.
LL have to deal with the copy problem. I can't imagine how they'll do it, but they will create some sort of temporary counterstroke, but not before copybots become even easier to use than today. That part makes me nervous, but the problem of copying will be a constant. Whatever counterstroke LL imposes will eventually become circumvented. That part is inevitable.
So, I don't see it dying, but it's not as hip in the journalism world as it once was, undeniably. SL is yesterday's news. For now.
The fading happened long before the downturn Govi. I think it had much more to do with the way SL is structured. Mainly the fact that you cannot reach very many people at a time with your message and because of the sim limits on avatars.
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"Generally speaking, a NICE person would put tubgirl behind a link." Cocoanut Koala
"With this thread it's not even time to start melting the butter yet." Allana D
Second Life will continue to grow and become a part of more people’s daily lives. We’ll accomplish this in a number of ways, including making it easier for new users to get started in Second Life and developing a multitude of ways to connect with the virtual world. In the near term, we’ll be launching a redesigned version of the Second Life Viewer (the software you use to connect to the virtual world) that’s much more user-friendly and intuitive, and we’ll be continuing with our localization efforts to further support our users outside of the US, who make up more than 60% of our customers.
Speaking of figures can I get figures for number of members as well?
On average, about a million unique users log into Second Life each month, spending an average of 40 hours each. In October, about 75,000 users logged in from the UK, spending more than 2.5 million hours. Europe is an important market for us – and the UK specifically. We have an office in Brighton which houses customer support and development resources and we are opening an office in Amsterdam shortly so that we can bring talent and infrastructure closer to our end-user markets.
You gotta trust the guy that says there will be a "multitude" of ways to connect to "the virtual world", right?
(cricket sounds)
So I've been thinking about SL lately and its viability. Honestly, while I think it will limp along for another 2-5 years -- I think its days are definitely numbered. It is being hit on all sides -- the companies are pulling out and realizing there is no corporate need or usefulness; new social networking technologies that allow people to meet each other and keep in touch over a wide range of platforms are easier to use and require less computing resources; the creators are, as we all know, under attack daily by content thieves and this is not a problem that will go away or, I think, is actually solvable other than by extreme measure; LL itself seems to be wanting to 'punish' content creators by making them pay to list on SLX; and then there's the poor worldwide economy -- Second Life is a luxury item that hits the chopping block first.
You said it. All of it. I just caught onto the XStreet listing thing, which I posted about before seeing this thread.
I think they want to make SLX be the particular playground of the creators they plan to cultivate and stamp approval on in their official creators thing they've got going on.
In other words, they are going the way other things started out (such as There, to a degree) - where they have their own creators and the creators have their own place to sell. (Though others can sell, and even sell there - it just won't be as easy as it will be for the Anointed Creators.)
My clue that SL was going down the tubes was the lack of people walking past. Used to be, people were always walking past. Now, I hardly ever see anyone. We had one guy walk past a few weeks ago, and that's been it for months and months. It's dead, baby, dead.
Interestingly, sales fell about the time the economy did. (And that WOULD be right after I expanded my land!) Then - I know people will find this hard to believe, but it's true! - a few months back, Obama got on TV - maybe it was in March or so, I don't remember - and told everyone the economy was going to go pretty well. After that speech, sales bumped up for a few days!
I thought, "Oh great, now I've got Obama running my GAME." (Not that I was complaining.) But sadly, that was brief, then everyone went back into gloomy mode, I guess.
The rest of your post I agree with as well.
Also, I think Macphisto put it very succinctly:
". . . it has been the victim of it's owner (LL) trying to turn it into everything but what it is commonly used for."
Oddly enough, I was thinking about this very topic yesterday. It seems to me that Linden Lab has made a transition from being like the cool SysOp that ran the BBS you used to hang out on to being the corporate GMs at Prodigy or CompuServe who just toe the corporate line.
I remember when Torley used to be sociable, even after he went from being Torley Torgeson to Torley Linden. I remember when I was having an issue with a griefer and I IMed a Linden who I had met at SLCC 2006 and she TPed right over and took care of the issue.
LL has become a faceless corporation, and I no longer have the affection for them, nor, by extension, for SL that I once had.
My Linden cheerleader outfit has been permanently mothballed.
Y'know in Snow Crash and in the Gibson books -- the metasphere was something that evolved, that was heavily funded by the corporate and the machine. the story evolved around the loner, the plugged in but not corporate, the outlaw trying to right some wrong and fighting the machine.
that's not what is happening here.
In many ways, it is the opposite. SL is not the outlaw, not the machine. The corporate isn't interested and LL is trying to become the machine. The plugged in and outlawlishly popular are not fighting the machine because of reason, they are fighting it because of profit -- or loss thereof. They aren't crawling up virtual circuits and using their friend's illegal jack to fight the system -- they are using courts.
This isn't Gibson, this isn't Snow Crash -- its just a fucked up piece of shit that never did run well and is visibly and perhaps even measurably dying.
Considering Philip seemed to announce whatever super secret sauce project they are working on before he told Taco and Siggy he was going to... I would not put high hopes in anything just yet. They all need to get on the same page first. lol
I used to really look forward to Saturday where Madame Maracas would do 6-9 and TriNala would play from 9-12. What great fun and wild hilarity.
We would crash sims sometimes it would be so popular and the chat was lively and music was always good.
FIC usually attended and we were all a big family
I sure miss it. It is what SL meant to me
I also taught Golf and played a lot in the Golf/Sailing community of Hollywood. it still is a vibrant community and i think that is where SL was for me, for casual experiences with friends and friendly competitions.
We just dont do enough stuff together anymore, it seems fractured now
Considering Philip seemed to announce whatever super secret sauce project they are working on before he told Taco and Siggy he was going to... I would not put high hopes in anything just yet. They all need to get on the same page first. lol
<---- feigns shock and surprise
Not organized? No way!
This user laughed so hard that they peed a little:
Y'know in Snow Crash and in the Gibson books -- the metasphere was something that evolved, that was heavily funded by the corporate and the machine. the story evolved around the loner, the plugged in but not corporate, the outlaw trying to right some wrong and fighting the machine.
...
This isn't Gibson, this isn't Snow Crash -- its just a fucked up piece of shit that never did run well and is visibly and perhaps even measurably dying.
My thoughts too. LL clearly used (a very few) aspects of Snow Crash as reference points when developing SL, but the real and virtual worlds in that book were very closely intertwined. You only have to flip down your visor (while on roller skates holding onto the back of car IRL :P) to enter Snow Crash's virtual world - a world that is visually analagous to RL - whereas we have to type a username and password and say prayers to the grid gods to enter our very cartoony, slow-loading, low frame-rate equivalent.
Snow Crash's virtual world didn't have sim borders either. That high-speed vehicle chase towards the end would have ended in decapitated engine and body parts within seconds if it was anything like SL.
SL is simply a 3D game using outdated technology that people can access from remote locations, and the most amazing thing about it is that nothing better came along and stole a significant chunk of its userbase years ago.
3 users agreed. You should agree too, c'mon, you know you want to. (click it, click it now!)
Granted Second Life is no Snow Crash or Gibson novel, and as you say Retro and Vivianne the technology and infrastructure behnd Second Life couldn't possibly support what happened in those books.
I think the problem we have at this moment in time is that anything that is percieved to be cool and trendy by the media is jumped on and pushed so far up into the stratosphere that the fall is a long way down. Twitter, facebook, second life they've all had their rise in the media and then months later they've been demonised by the very same people who've praised them while moving onto the next cool thing.
If this chart represents what I think it does, it' supports everything Vivi says. SL reached it's peak and is, at least in the case of every other online game/environment, beginning to tail off.
The things they're doing to extract more revenue from their existing customer base is such a huge mistake. We're going to see a drop in users from the people who are pissed off about the policy changes and that's going to generate stories about SL user count declining and will just speed up the process.
I hope it lands softly. I'd really hate to try and log in one day and find out the plug got pulled by the datacenters because SL couldn't pay their hosting bills.
Yes, get an off-line backup system.
__________________
"I believe that sex is one the most beautiful, wholesome and natural things money can buy." -Steve Martin
I dunno, I certainly see alot of silly and bad things happening, and the Lab's public face does seem to be a sort of chirpy screwup machine, and I hear lots of malaise from people in weblogs an' forums an' all, but!
From the point of view of myself and the people I actually hang out with in SL inworld, it's still pretty great.
There's lots of stuff to do (clubs, live music, RP of all kinds, amusement parks, gallery openings, shopping, building, making Windlight settings, exploring etc, etc, etc), there's tons of interesting people to meet, the grid is down or totally borked 'way less than it was three years ago when I joined, and so on. Some things do work markedly less well (group IM, high-speed region-boundary crossings), but one copes; it's well worth coping to get all the good stuff.
(What the media says about SL is, as it always has been, pretty much entirely made-up, and unrelated to the actual state of the world. Maybe some day they'll actually get it and start reporting meaningfully, but they haven't yet.)
SL is definitely at the top of a curve. I think three things can happen:
(1) The Lab can Get It Right, and start climbing again, by preserving most of what the current Resi's like and making the learning curve shallower enough to get more people in, or
(2) The Lab can drop the ball, drive out enough current Resis that they can't get new signups to compensate, and some OpenSim world or something, or some Blue Mars world that gets user content creation right, will take over from them, or
(3) Things can sort of limp along as they are, with SL more or less stangant but no one else getting it right enough to take over, until something so far undreamed of happens.
Whichever of those happen in the future, though, as far as right now is concerned I'm still having great fun in SL.
I dunno, I certainly see alot of silly and bad things happening, and the Lab's public face does seem to be a sort of chirpy screwup machine, and I hear lots of malaise from people in weblogs an' forums an' all, but!
From the point of view of myself and the people I actually hang out with in SL inworld, it's still pretty great.
There's lots of stuff to do (clubs, live music, RP of all kinds, amusement parks, gallery openings, shopping, building, making Windlight settings, exploring etc, etc, etc), there's tons of interesting people to meet, the grid is down or totally borked 'way less than it was three years ago when I joined, and so on. Some things do work markedly less well (group IM, high-speed region-boundary crossings), but one copes; it's well worth coping to get all the good stuff.
(What the media says about SL is, as it always has been, pretty much entirely made-up, and unrelated to the actual state of the world. Maybe some day they'll actually get it and start reporting meaningfully, but they haven't yet.)
SL is definitely at the top of a curve. I think three things can happen:
(1) The Lab can Get It Right, and start climbing again, by preserving most of what the current Resi's like and making the learning curve shallower enough to get more people in, or
(2) The Lab can drop the ball, drive out enough current Resis that they can't get new signups to compensate, and some OpenSim world or something, or some Blue Mars world that gets user content creation right, will take over from them, or
(3) Things can sort of limp along as they are, with SL more or less stangant but no one else getting it right enough to take over, until something so far undreamed of happens.
Whichever of those happen in the future, though, as far as right now is concerned I'm still having great fun in SL.
Its not a matter of it being great. Its a matter of their cash flow, new *paying* customers, and viability over the long term. Its obvious to me, if to no one else, that they are aggressively and, perhaps, even desperately, looking for new ways to generate income. Lets look at some of the stuff they are doing:
* The "Enterprise" arena -- I predict this will fall flat on its face because most enterprise-size companies have no use for SL. They do their conferencing using Webex, Microsoft and/or ATT Conferencing , their standard operating environment probably does not include video high-end enough to run SL well, if at all, and frankly they don't want their employees "playing games." I'm not sure if their employees even want to play games. I work for an enterprise-size company and using SL's enterprise arena would mean an upgrade for every computer that would use it and with a price tag of 50K+, it better be for the entire company. On top of that, most companies are trying to cutback and streamline now and SL is an experiment I don't see as being viewed necessary or even affordable. Last but not least they have a proven record of not being reliable. Go look at the threads the bot has started over the last month. Problems with something or another almost every day.
*SLX. Trying to siphon extra money out of creators who are already seeing a massive drop in sales due to the poor economy and PERHAPS theft (although I think that theft is affecting their sales far less than they believe) is a mistake. I think this will backfire on them.
*That Nebraska thing. See Enterprise solutions above.
Then there's the social networking thing. Look most of us use it as a social networking thing. This entire board was started because of wanting to be social. And it was started by people who met in SL and found it inadequate. I'll be willing to bet that most of us spend more time here than we do in world. And why not? Its easier to use, free, we are uncensored (for the most part), we can access it from our shitty computers, some of us from work, from phones, libraries, etc. And this is the way the world is going. People DO want to connect but they don't want to be limited by video cards and accessibility issues -- so they are turning to Plurk, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I'm not even talking about media darlings here. OK Cupid has been around for years and is a RESOUNDING success. Its seen as a dating site for teens though so more people use Facebook. I cannot even believe the amount of stuff that goes on via Facebook. Second Life can't compete and yes it is trying to.
I have some friends who are leaders in the Pagan community and are trying to devise classes that can be delivered online. What are they looking at? Second Life? NO. They are looking at Skype, Ventrillo, Facebook, Google apps, and Netmeeting. And the thing is that SL would be perfect for this sort of thing -- if only it worked. If only it didn't need the video it does. If only there wasn't a high learning curve. If only it didn't lag as much. If only it was reliable. If only you could have more than 40 in a sim. If only there was actual customer service. The barriers to entry are much smaller for other apps, information is easier to contain, the likelihood of being griefed is much lower, and there are fewer distractions.
I, too, have laughed at those who thought SL was on the demise but I think now we really are seeing the beginning of the end and I think, unless LL pulls something out of their ass, that 2010 will see it become marked and measurable.
I used to raise Doxies. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have run into stuff like this. Pillows shredded, carpet ripped up from one of them getting shut up in a bedroom by mistake when we left the house...
Is the demise of SL near?
just yet, though. 
Linear Mode
