Above is my current avatar standing in one of the patches of land that I rent.  At the time it was taken, this SL visit was just like any other day.  Little did I know that a few days later I, and other SL players, would discover that Second Life is basically over.  And not over by any other company than its parent company Linden Lab.  Due to a planned or unplanned leak, Linden Lab has confirmed that it is building another virtual world.

At first I was excited.  Second Life needs a great many quality of life upgrades which are mostly out of reach due to the age of the platform.  A new place with better avatar tools would be great.  But as I came down from my high, other more logical questions started to surface.

Mainly about land. The land market is now essentially dead and that is a little frightening.  Because Second Life's revenue stream is land.  Prokofy Neva wrote a great post about it from the rental business viewpoint.  This could potentially be a fiasco that could be a bigger than the Zindra shakeup a few years back.  Ebbe Linden answered a few basic questions on Sluniverse.com regarding the new world.  He mentioned that they were thinking about lowering land costs in favor of item taxation.  A concept which I thought was strange.  Does the lab think that they can make more from adding fees to creators and buyers?  Did they have an accountant look into this?  Or is this another pie in the sky idea from some insane ideology that Silicon Valley people love to worship?

How will LL plan to deal with all the landholders, including myself, who are now holding the bag for worthless land that costs a monthly fee?  Granted I only hold almost a quarter of mainland.  Not a lot compared to people like Anshe Chung, Prokofy Neva, etc.  but it is still a big investment compared to most single users in the world.  This isn't including the land I rent from themed estates that I love such as Winterfell and 1920's Berlin.  I admit I spend much more on land in Second Life than I should.  But I look at it as an entertainment expense on par with going to the movies.  When all is said and done, I would spend the same amount attending the local movie house.  But I get more joy from Second Life than I've ever received from passive film watching.

Will there even be land, as we know it, in the new place?  Already people on sluniverse are screaming for no setup fees or tier fees.  They are campaigning for bubbles (like the failed Cloud Party) that will disappear when their users are not logged into the world.  So there will be no world, no places to visit, and no homes or landscaping to admire.  That would be a deal breaker for me.  I simply would not move over but stay in old SL until the lights go out.

According to Ciaran Laval's site, he pointed out a Linden post on sluniverse that Second Life isn't on par with World of Warcraft but more like the old Everquest.  Which just flabbergasts me.  Why is an employee of the company downplaying the success of the company's core product?  What possibly good could that do in the public image?  This indicates to me that LL, as well as the rest of the VR tech community, are still beguiled by the Snowcrash/Ready Player One fantasies.  Fantasies that have been shown time and time again to be just fantasies.  WoW didn't get made with fantasies that there were about 10 million people out there waiting to play its game.  They were hoping for old Everquest success of a few hundred thousand to a million people.  That they attracted more was an outlier.  So developing the next VR with the idea that millions of people will pile on is laughable.  Especially when it has been proved that only a small number of people feel comfortable with the avatar experience and an even smaller who are capable of self directed play time.

Recently there was a news story which stated that children who don't learn their letters through penmenship (just by typing or tracing letters on a computer pad) are not forming the same neural connections as people who did learn their alphabet by writing.  Technology is literally changing the human brain.  And I'm beginning to suspect that this has a large bearing on Virtual Worlds.  Mainly because the audience for a free form virtual world that only LL offers (SL) has an audience that skews older.  The known, guaranteed audience for virtual worlds are old as in old enough to have gone through the schooling system before new technology.  This is something that must be taken into account and in fact should worry virtual world creators.  If this is the case (as it appears to be)  their audience is old and getting older with no one to replace their numbers.  I speak from experience.  I'm in middle age and getting older than that soon, I love SL but my young niece was wary of it.  All the people who grew up in new technology either gravitate to on the rail games or just hang out in Facebook like interfaces but mainly text message/twitter.  Twittering, by its very nature, doesn't encourage exploration, it doesn't encourage deep thinking.  What it does encourage is burp like exclamations about lunch and bathroom habits.  That is not the kind of thinking that takes well to virtual world experiences.

Despite warning signs, I really hope that it will be Linden Lab that creates the next popular platform.  Mainly because I'm more comfortable with the devil you know over the devil you don't idea.  Linden Lab does like doing things its own way but it also has consistently changed its direction due to public feedback.  Granted many changes were due to outcry but at least things got changed.  Worlds don't get made without protest or the ability to protest.  Unfortunately the fascistic turn that real world and the tech world are experiencing actively discourages protest.  Where will that leave us?

Right now, we are left in a holding pattern.  Land will become a lot cheaper as people dump their holdings in preparation for the new place.  But I don't see much of this land being purchased.  Who would want to buy something that will not carry over to the new place?  I'm at the max of the tier I can pay, I should probably dump what I have but I can't do it.  Not yet.  I already came to the conclusion that I will not recoup my expenditures.  Not only will the land market suffer but I see people holding back on home purchases such as housing and landscaping.  Maybe fashion will be able to hold up.  But really why spend loads of money on things that will not transfer.  This is worrying because by all accounts the new place will not even be ready for another two years.

Whatever the case someone's goose is being cooked.  Just whose it is, is not clear.

All for Love

For quite some time, I've noticed a smallness of character inside Philip Rosedale.  A flaw, if you will, in the great work.  This does not negate my past opinion that the man has real genius.  He does, but like all of us, he is at the mercy of the subconscious.  Each of us labors under the aspirations of who we hope to be and just as surely hampered in these aspirations by desires that work against them.

Rosedale wants so much to be an influential cultural pundit.  He sincerely wants to make the world a better place through technology.  But each time he creates, he plants a seed of destruction.  In Rosedale's case, he has a need to set opposing forces in motion.  Which doesn't have to be as catastrophic as it sounds, but Rosedale sets them up in such a way that there must be a victor.  And the more bloody the victory, the more legitimate the winner.  He presided over these blood battles at Linden Lab when he set up the policy of the JIRA(Malaby - Making Virtual Worlds - Ch 2, pg. 76)

The JIRA had a horrific effect on the company and employee spirit.  It encouraged the formation of employee gangs that would kill or vote up specific issues that these gangs favored.  Not only that, it completely marginalized departments that were not glamorous.  Frankly it was ridiculous that a department such as accounting should have to compete against the technology division in a JIRA policy war.  Did Rosedale even notice this deformation in the company character created by the JIRA?

Apparently not, because he then instituted the JIRA for residents as well.  So the warfare metastasized outside company walls into Second Life itself.  It pitted resident against resident and resident versus Linden Lab employee.  The gangs enlarged creating a cutthroat atmosphere that completely disenfranchised minority voices.  Simply because they did not have the numbers to combat the gangs.  Linden Lab employees so used to working the JIRA inequities in house, used the public JIRA to force their own interests or bury ones they did not favor.  Some residents who voted consistently against popularity were banned from the JIRA boards.

But none of this ruffled Rosedale's feathers because he was under the impression that, ultimately, crowds would vote for their best interests.

He is once again working on a project that uses psychological warfare, a company called Love Machine.  In essence it works on the JIRA type of spirit.  A company with the Lovemachine in place enables employees to send "love" to other employees.  These "love messages" (commendations) are then posted on computer screens around the office for all to see.  At the end of each quarter, management can then count how many love messages an employee received or did not receive and base promotions upon this horrific system.  It doesn't take even a dunderhead to realize the problems in this system.  The fact that it would once again inspire employees to form gangs in order to give a thumbs up to certain employees or lynch mob employees they would like to jettison.  What is even worse is that it doesn't factor in malfeasance from management that could skew the love results.  Just as it did with the JIRA at Linden Lab.  Like the JIRA, the Love Machine would and will create balkanized groups voting for their own interests, their own people.

Somewhere along the line, Philip Rosedale conceived the notion that he could change people psychologically for the better.  That through his technology he could institute cultural experiments that would inspire people to be more communal or selfless.  That he would be able to short circuit the motivation for individuals to be self serving.  But each time he attempts this grand experiment it blows up in his face.  I don't understand why he keeps banging his head against this particular wall.  It only leads me to believe that he enjoys the wars he causes and legitimizing the notion of might makes right.  Despite his genius, he doesn't recognize the fascistic motivations swimming deep down inside his own mind.  He uses these policies to convince himself that he is selfless in his love for his fellow man but works in such a way that is anything but selfless.  I don't believe that he respects people outside of the technology business.  Because if he did, he wouldn't have the need to change us.  The sooner he recognizes this fault in himself, the sooner he will create something truly groundbreaking.  Unless he truly enjoys being a Marquise de Merteuil, then all bets are off or more likely voting up love messages.

New Directions

When I started my time in SL, Linden Lab was rather lax in the area of leadership for it's residents.  I was at the tail end of the "your world, your imagination" zeitgeist.  An idea that allowed it's customers large leeway into shaping their grid.  A lot of wonderous sims were created for exploration and interesting avatars roamed.  However many used that opportunity to create a very wild red light district, which Second Life has come to be known.  For years our grid was labeled the place where people come to cheat on spouses and engage in virtual orgies.  The permissiveness also led to underhanded tactics of griefer harassment and land blight.

It wasn't the best of all worlds, but I sometimes wonder if it will now be looked upon as a golden age.  Because the Lab is far from lax in it's leadership now.  And the new direction is far less permissive and far more involved in it's brand name IP.

You see, it was the brand name IP where Linden Lab fudged from the beginning.  It began as an experimental community between company and customers.  Philip Linden, the visionary behind it all, wanted to create a world that ran on personal transformation and enlightenment.  Second Life wanted to be a place that welcomed the creative efforts of professional media artists and the motivated amateur.  The fact that some of these amateurs turned to making prim genitals, I suppose was considered a sign of passing immaturity.  Philip Linden's Lab took a rather Montessori approach to the venture.  Perhaps he and the Lab thought the residents were just experiencing "Planes of Development" which would lead to more enlightened activity.  Even when the red light district was well in control of the grid as a whole, causing various social problems as blight, obsessive borderline activities and harassment, the Lab still took a hands off approach.  I suppose they didn't want to get in the way of our developmental learning.  But they forgot one important point...they were dealing with adults who already finished their development.  By and large it takes a motivated human being to undertake a journey of continual education.  Most are happy just to be.  We aren't all from the same cloth as Philip Linden.

Outside of the Linden Montessori Finishing School for Wayward Adults, Blizzard Entertainment was enormously successful with it's World of Warcraft MMO.  Most residents poo poo my continual habit of comparing WoW to SL.  By the mere fact that SL is not a game.  But they are missing the point entirely because they are too entrenched in the old SL Montessori approach.

Warcraft is like SL in that it allows cooperative play and socialization.  In fact it's rudimentary quest structure establishes a social learning experience that some have lauded as a prototype of basic corporate management training.  However the developers of WoW never had such lofty ideas in mind.  They just wanted to create a fun world and an easy introduction experience into their world.  However, unlike SL, WoW exerts tight control over it's brand name IP.  It's few concessions to customer creation are extended to screenshots of their world and game machinima.  They are not totally successful in keeping out the outre behaviors.  But they certainly managed to not be known for their ERP (Erotic Roleplay).

It is also important to point out that WoW was released in the same timeframe as SL.  The Second Life grid came to life in 2003 with a small community of Beta residents but started to hit big in 2004.  Warcraft was released with large fanfare in 2004, the anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.  Granted Blizzard already had an established brand when they released their world.  But it was nowhere near the popularity it has today.  Both companies were essentially on the same footing.

I don't believe anyone in the virtual platform business knew that Warcraft would achieve the success it has today.

But what has Warcraft to do with Second Life?  Everything.  Warcraft by it's very juggernaut success has changed the world of VRs.  Second Life was created pre-WoW and it's venture capitalists allowed it's groovy "Your World, Your Imagination" in a search to discover the BIG VR success.  There will never be another Second Life nor would money men back it.  Because it's game over...it is now clear what the public wants, what it craves is the Warcraft experience.  Indeed, SL thought it would be a success among the hardcore gamers that loved Warcraft and other MMO games.  Because in their world, it would allow the hardcores to create their own fantasy worlds.  That didn't happen, in fact Second Life only frightened the demographic they thought they would attract.

As Second Life failed in it's hands off approach to their customers, they watched Warcraft grow and grow and grow.  And anyone with a clear business approach would realize the key difference between the two.

A hands on and tightly controlled brand name IP.  Blizzard had it and rode to Daddy Warbucks' mansion with a big buyout.  Second Life on the other hand allowed it's brand name IP to be hijacked by the amateur sex community.

So that brings us to now and all the teeth gnashing as Linden Lab seeks to undo all the damage that has been wrought.  Each new development is created with a view to take back their IP.

The sex industry?  Sent to their own adult verified continent and banned from the old mainland areas.

Land Blight?  They have now created the program Linden Homes which is a controlled community with controlled landscaping themes.  No more wacky, tacky houses to blight the view or slow down a sim with bad scripting.

Premium Users?  Its obvious that Warcraft doesn't give away it's world free.  Their customers subscribe. The Lab dropped the ball in this area by allowing everyone in.  Their servers and infrastructure are not free, so I don't know how the Lab thought they would support everyone.  They now know they cannot.  Hence the subtle and growing push to premium.

In the process of this change around, the Lab realized that it could make more money catering to the dreams of Corporations.  The Corporations piled onto the SL bandwagon enthusiastically at first but failed due to the previous problems listed and their misunderstanding of VR.  But now the Lab is positioning themselves as a consulting company that will help Corporate customers make the leap into VR.  Time is short for this endeavor because another fledging company, Blue Mars, has started down this path.  And the Lab doesn't want to see another Warcraft pass by.

Now most residents would not deny that the Lab needs to make money to survive.  What the majority resent is the fact that the Lab has seemingly thrown us overboard in it's mission change.  Yes, we did louse up the grid but we also created some of the most fascinating customer created worlds that are found nowhere else.  I sympathize with them.  But I've long pointed out that...yes there are lovely additions to the SL world.  But those places aren't a part of the main brand IP.  Linden Lab can not point to them, like Blizzard can point toward it's imaginary Northrend, and say that they created it.  They can not promote it as their world.  And they need to.  Because no Corporate partner wants to invest in a platform that is not controlled by it's owner.

As I look around my own small piece of land, I enjoy it for the time given.  I know it won't be mine for long.  Individuals owning micro parcels cause immense load on the Lab servers.  It would be much easier if the Lab can control and direct resident spread.  So that means Linden Homes in various preplanned designs and sizes or to take a plot with one of the various Landlords that the Lab deems fit.  Its saddening to be at the end of a lovely but a failed experiment.  I wish protesting would at least slow down the changes or create concessions that would be more favorable to us oldies.  But I don't think it will.  So now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Linden Home Project

There is a controversial new project being tested by Linden Lab called Linden Home.

Linden Home is a series of themed communities with strict zoning policies.  This is something that the Lab has never attempted.  Up until this project, themes and zoning were handled by small business rental agencies in-world.  Which is why it is so controversial.  Many are worried and justifiably so, that the Lab is using their upper hand by herding new users straight to this new housing community.  The preview page for this new project showed considerably larger plots so the plan is all encompassing.  Not only that, but these housing projects are located on a whole new mainland continent.  Which begs the question, what will happen to historic mainland?

One answer to that question could have been revealed in the notes for this community in the Linden blog.  The communities were placed by a scripted bot in under 15 minutes.  Which explains why some of the areas look rather too symmetrical.  But it is a perfect shake and bake virtual neighborhood with an ability to placed anywhere on Linden mainland new and historic.

After a one day preview this week, the beta project was opened to the public and invitations were emailed.  I was one of the chosen Beta testers to my surprise.  The invitation contained a direct link to the new Linden Home signup page.  On that page I was able to view house and theme previews.  The themes now contain four choices, California Modern, A-Frame Mountain Cabins, Japanese Traditional and Fantasy.  Notes on the Linden blog stated that they have more designs on the planning board but these four were chosen for Beta based on their popularity across the grid.

The beta project is, at this point, strictly plots of 512 sqm.  All the themed housing are one floor plans except for a few offered in Modern styles.  Potential residents are only able to choose house theme styles, the location of their future home is randomly generated.

Once house theme is selected and the plot is named, the user is immediately given a landmark link to his/her new home.  The assigned house takes up every inch of the assigned plot with little room for landscaping.  In fact landscaping is discouraged since the planners are worried that it won't be in theme.  However all this depends on how strictly the zoning policy is enforced.  Will the Lindens crack down on people placing crazy object on top of these houses?

I chose the Japanese Traditional theme since it seemed the best planned of all the choices.

The plot is double primmed so a resident can place more objects in it than regular plots.  Also the houses do not count toward plot prim allotment.  The texture work is rudimentary inside the house, nothing fancy.  There are a few drawbacks to the house.  There is no second floor which is possible in the floor plans but not included.  The windows can not be opened.  The house walls are set to glow which means they stay the same during all times of the day cycle especially at night.

As a test of zoning restrictions, I placed objects outside the house.

They are in theme but still a subversion of the theming plan.  They have been outside for almost a day, but they haven't been returned to my lost and found folder nor have a I received any take down IM notice.

The one element the Lab has not tested is sim load for these projects.  As of now these themed communities are set upon 64 sims quite a bit away from old mainland.  Their blog states that only an initial 500 people received Beta invites.  Which means an average of 7 to 10 Beta testers per sim.  However the communities hold an average of 30 to 40 houses per sim.  And in regular conditions, sims work fine until population climbs over 25 then it lags down.  Unless population is strictly controlled these communities could turn into lag hell if there are upwards of 40 people on them along with their guests.

But these problems are mere bumps in the road, because it is obvious that they are mostly ready to go live.  And they will be death knell for small rental agencies who make their bread and butter on small, cheap temporary living quarters.