Microsoft buys Minecraft

[Deltango Vale]

Slowly, slowly, people are waking up to the potential of virtual worlds. So, who will buy Second Life?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29204518

[Ren Toxx]

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

Slowly, slowly, people are waking up to the potential of virtual worlds. So, who will buy Second Life?

---

Depends. Who bought World Of Warcraft?

[Jandid Harcourt]

Microsoft purchased a developer that has only made a single 8bit building game. I love minecraft but I dont see the point of this, they will end up Rare-ing it and ruining this company too.

[Vivienne Schell]

The lesson taught by Mojang is simple:

1. Create a simple virtual world where everyone can be creative

2. Make it run on any lowest end PC/Laptop on the planet

3. NEVER listen to these 3D idiots and their polygon fetishism

4. Forget about "realism" and avoid any kind of "adult" content

5. Market it in a smart way and keep customers happy

6. Avoid any crappy PR phrases like "next generation" or "better, bigger, faster"

That´s it. If you do this Microsoft or whoever else will pay Gazillions.

Second Life has nothing of the above. That´s why no one ever will pay a single cent for it, except the (stagnating by numbers) Second Life user crowd.

[Deltango Vale]

I sometimes wonder if you are right. And yet, your average cellphone requires an engineering degree to even begin to understand its full functionality. People seem to have no problem programming their phones to launch missile strikes via satellite or curing cancer with new bio-apps or setting up conference calls between every single person in India. So, why can't they figure out how to use Second Life?

I admit that Minecraft is virtual Lego. I also admit that Candy Crush Classic is the biggest earner around, but let's not forget that SL generates about $75 million in earning per year (down from a peak of about $100 million) in spite of terrible management.

I figure the two big contenders for SL are Google and Facebook. SL is a natural extension of the social geography they are trying to establish. Sadly, I think both companies would dumb down SL even more than Linden Lab. Silicon Valley is all about short-term profits rather than long-term strategy. I figure there are only about six people on the planet who see the full potential of virtual worlds. Somewhere out there is a future 'Elon Musk' of virtual space. Let's hope he gets to SL before Google and Facebook.

[Vivienne Schell]

By far not everyone can launch a missile strike by a cellphone, and I think that having such a thing matters much more than actually using it in full flavor to the most. No one really NEEDS all the shinies, but one must HAVE them. It´s a social demand, which is at least equally important as technical demand. No one MUST have Second Life (Exception and example for the importance of social demand: The big hype 2006-2009).

SL and LL still are at least 5-10 years ahead of the mainstream requirements and mainstream demand (technicaly and by conception), while Minecraft just hits it perfectly right here and now.

 

 

[Pamela Galli]

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

The lesson taught by Mojang is simple:

1. Create a simple virtual world where everyone can be creative

2. Make it run on any lowest end PC/Laptop on the planet

3. NEVER listen to these 3D idiots and their polygon fetishism

4. Forget about "realism" and avoid any kind of "adult" content

5. Market it in a smart way and keep customers happy

6. Avoid any crappy PR phrases like "next generation" or "better, bigger, faster"

That´s it. If you do this Microsoft or whoever else will pay Gazillions.

Second Life has nothing of the above. That´s why no one ever will pay a single cent for it, except the (stagnating by numbers) Second Life user crowd.

---

I agree. On my blog I wrote my thoughts about what LL could learn from Minecraft. I think I am not allowed to post a link to it so I will paste the whole thing:

 

Second Life and Minecraft

 

I see that Microsoft is near closing a deal to buy Minecraft's parent company for $2,000,000,000. The New York Times article about it describes Minecraft:

 

It is not flashy graphics or an intricate story line luring these groups to the game, however. Minecraft has become a global phenomenon by breaking with those usual conventions.

The point of the game is building things — and tens of millions of people spend hours constructing elaborate structures with digital pickaxes and other tool — and helping others make their own creations.

Not unlike Second Life was for many -- the old Second Life, in which people took clunky prims and made clunky things that seemed beautiful enough at the time. Well, beautiful to people in Second Life -- people outside of it ridiculed it for not looking like Myst.  It looked more like it was built with Legos. Like Minecraft does.

 

Within weeks of joining Second Life I discovered how fascinating it was to build these clunky things.  It was a challenge to figure out how to make things look organic, but back then (2007) we accepted the limits of prim builds and filled in the rest with our imaginations.  Pretty much like millions of avid Minecraft players do now.

 

Those days are gone from Second Life. I think Linden Lab developers got tired of hearing the same insults about how clunky Second Life looked compared to other games, how dated it was. Some users complained about it too, but honestly, most of us thought Second Life looked just fine, if not downright glorious. I remember trying to see it through detractors' eyes, as ugly -- but could not.

 

Now, of course, I can. Mesh changed how we see content, and much more. My earliest model furniture looks positively ludicrous next to my mesh creations. Even much of the sculpted stuff I was once proud of now looks pretty sad.

 

What is sadder still, to me, is the change in my job description. In the past, when asked about my job, I had to give this too-long explanation of building virtual things I sold in a virtual store for real money, which always drew blank looks -- because it was unique, it didn't correspond to any other job description anyone had ever heard of.  Now, however, I just say I am a 3D artist selling things in a virtual world.  While I assemble things inworld, all of my building now takes place offline in the world's most complicated and inscrutable software, Blender.

 

But even that creation model -- making mesh offline -- is outdated. The smart thing to do now, in terms of efficiency, is to skip over the part about creating and just find things on the internet to import into Second Life, textures and all. Whole stores full of this content have sprung up overnight -- many of them full perm stores supplying retail merchants. And since it takes hardly any time to upload, it is often dirt cheap. The creator has been replaced by the uploader. No surprise there. (Though when I predicted this outcome, many objected, saying, "They said the same about sculpts!", although there were never warehouses full of sculpts available for import into SL.)

 

However, I started out making things for the same reason kids make Minecraft creations. They don't want to just have (or sell) things, they want to make things. And that is what I want, to make things. I never get tired of making things, but I think the same amount of time spent uploading would get very old. More lucrative but so boring.

 

So making things is what I do and will continue to do, although it puts me -- and everyone who makes and sells things -- at a competitive disadvantage.  I am just sorry that for most of Second Life users, creation within Second Life was once within their grasp and no longer is. People are simply not going to run out an learn offline 3D modeling. Yes, everyone can still build clunky, high LI stuff out of prims, but now that we see them through mesh-tinted glasses, those things don't look so good to us anymore. So why bother?

 

The powers that be have decided that it is more important that Second Life look good than for it to be a clunky creation-oriented platform like Minecraft.  I like making mesh, I am glad I was forced into dramatically updating my skills -- but it is not clear to me that what Second Life has gained outweighs what it has lost.  In fact, I suspect it has not.  Certainly there is no evidence that this massive remaking of Second Life (and its creators) has had the slightest effect on user retention.

 

Hopefully if Microsoft does end up buying Minecraft for $2,000,000,000 it will not make the same mistake re: goose and golden egg.

[Vivienne Schell]

Yes.

Another difference is striking: In Minecraft users create and meet other users over creating. In the post-sculpt/mesh Second Life people shop. In Minecraft everyone creates in-world, on the same level with the same toolset, while in SL there are Blender classes where people are dealing with Blender while ignoring Second Life.

:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Add that creativity in SL (even of the most basic kind) has a way too high price compared to Minecraft, measured by the amount of time, skills and money one has to spend on it for a decent result.

 

[Dillon Levenque]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Not unlike Second Life was for many -- the old Second Life, in which people took clunky prims and made clunky things that seemed beautiful enough at the time. Well, beautiful to people in Second Life -- people outside of it ridiculed it for not looking like Myst.  It looked more like it was built with Legos. Like Minecraft does.

 

Within weeks of joining Second Life I discovered how fascinating it was to build these clunky things.  It was a challenge to figure out how to make things look organic, but back then (2007) we accepted the limits of prim builds and filled in the rest with our imaginations.  Pretty much like millions of avid Minecraft players do now.

 

Those days are gone from Second Life. I think Linden Lab developers got tired of hearing the same insults about how clunky Second Life looked compared to other games, how dated it was. Some users complained about it too, but honestly, most of us thought Second Life looked just fine, if not downright glorious. I remember trying to see it through detractors' eyes, as ugly -- but could not.

 

Now, of course, I can. Mesh changed how we see content, and much more. My earliest model furniture looks positively ludicrous next to my mesh creations. Even much of the sculpted stuff I was once proud of now looks pretty sad.

 

What is sadder still, to me, is the change in my job description. In the past, when asked about my job, I had to give this too-long explanation of building virtual things I sold in a virtual store for real money, which always drew blank looks -- because it was unique, it didn't correspond to any other job description anyone had ever heard of.  Now, however, I just say I am a 3D artist selling things in a virtual world.  While I assemble things inworld, all of my building now takes place offline in the world's most complicated and inscrutable software, Blender.

 

But even that creation model -- making mesh offline -- is outdated. The smart thing to do now, in terms of efficiency, is to skip over the part about creating and just find things on the internet to import into Second Life, textures and all. Whole stores full of this content have sprung up overnight -- many of them full perm stores supplying retail merchants. And since it takes hardly any time to upload, it is often dirt cheap. The creator has been replaced by the uploader. No surprise there. (Though when I predicted this outcome, many objected, saying, "They said the same about sculpts!", although there were never warehouses full of sculpts available for import into SL.)

 

However, I started out making things for the same reason kids make Minecraft creations. They don't want to just have (or sell) things, they want to make things. And that is what I want, to make things. I never get tired of making things, but I think the same amount of time spent uploading would get very old. More lucrative but so boring.

 

So making things is what I do and will continue to do, although it puts me -- and everyone who makes and sells things -- at a competitive disadvantage.  I am just sorry that for most of Second Life users, creation within Second Life was once within their grasp and no longer is. People are simply not going to run out an learn offline 3D modeling. Yes, everyone can still build clunky, high LI stuff out of prims, but now that we see them through mesh-tinted glasses, those things don't look so good to us anymore. So why bother?

 

The powers that be have decided that it is more important that Second Life look good than for it to be a clunky creation-oriented platform like Minecraft.

 I like making mesh, I am glad I was forced into dramatically updating my skills -- but it is not clear to me that what Second Life has gained outweighs what it has lost.

 In fact, I suspect it has not.  Certainly there is no evidence that this massive remaking of Second Life (and its creators) has had the slightest effect on user retention.

 

Hopefully if Microsoft does end up buying Minecraft for $2,000,000,000 it will not make the same mistake re: goose and golden egg.

---

 

(replying to your post in general, to the bolded part specifically)

I suspect you're right, and there are plenty on this forum who agree and have said so. It's hard to tell about the population in general. I mean, if you're just a consumer in SL as I mostly am, maybe it's okay to only get cool things by purchasing them. If I hadn't known I could build my own houses, would I have bothered? I don't know.

I just remember how building things here, things that actually came out looking like I wanted them to look, was such a treat. When I finished my first house, an 1880's style frontier house: two rooms, a gabled roof, and a planked front porch that ran end-to-end and had a pillar supported roof of its own that angled slightly from the house's roof, I sent a pic of the yet to be textured build to Naz with an IM saying, "Congratulate me! I've built a house!". She IM'd congratulations and added, "It looks remarkably....houselike." I was undeterred. I  haven't built anything in a long time, but it was part of my second life and still is. For someone who builds for the market it's no doubt a huge part of your second life.

I still like what SL is, and what it's about. I don't know if the fun of creating inworld will disappear but it might. There are people on the blogs and on the forums who will dismiss any creation using prims simply because it uses prims. If a new person happens to hear enough of that garbage it would tend to dissuade that person from even starting to build. I mean, if you get this great idea for a whatever and go to all the trouble to create, shape, and texture it only to have everyone say, "Nah, it's crap. I mean, prims. Really?", you might not bother to even start.

I think that would be SL's loss.

 

[Pamela Galli]

---

Dillon Levenque wrote:

don't know if the fun of creating inworld will disappear but it might. There are people on the blogs and on the forums who will dismiss any creation using prims simply because it uses prims. If a new person happens to hear enough of that garbage it would tend to dissuade that person from even starting to build. I mean, if you get this great idea for a whatever and go to all the trouble to create, shape, and texture it only to have everyone say, "Nah, it's crap. I mean, prims. Really?", you might not bother to even start.

I think that would be SL's loss.

 

---

I dont see how this path SL is on -- the goal of which is to look as good as "other games" -- could possibly not kill off most REAL user generated content. As I say in my blog post, my first chairs were simple things made of prims but I thought they looked pretty good -- after all they looked pretty much like what was for sale in stores. There was not this HUGE gulf between what I could make and what "pros" could make, as there is now.  

I guess we will just wait and see what the long term effects of switching from User Generated to User Uploaded Content will be.  Minecraft's success makes me think they will not be what Ebbe et al think.

[irihapeti]

your post is pretty much perfect. The making of SL was exactly how you describe it

i love what I can get now made of mesh. But is not the same. I am a consumer now and not a builder

and I find I am more a reminiscer now than a player like I used to be. I still play but am introspect and withdrawn more now inworld than I used to me. Like I dont chat or say Hi to total strangers anywhere like I used to

the announcement of the new world I think has had a lot to do with this. Am not 100% sure but I think so

+

below is a piccy I take today. Is me on the left in all my cool mesh outfit and hair. Which I like very much. Is also me on the right. Who I used to be. Who I think of as my Nana. And all the way as far as can see is my Nana's world. A land of linden trees and prims

Prokofy Neva wrote a while back that the biggest loss when the new world comes and SL finally ends will be everything that you see. 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of uniques things made by 1000s and 1000s of unique persons, each with their dreams and aspirations. Shared and cherished with love. And sometimes tears of builder learning frustrations and then happy shouts of builders joy and quiet smiles of satisfaction and contentment

+

is something about this land in the piccy and all the lands around. It calls to me a lot now

 

+

i hope that in the End Time when it comes when is no longer commercial viable for LL then they will preserve this land. That they will set aside some small server space so that will not just get swept away on the tides of time and be lost forever. Nana and Gramps World. The Beginning Time

i hope so. Pray as well

[Deltango Vale]

"SL and LL still are at least 5-10 years ahead of the mainstream requirements and mainstream demand (technicaly and by conception), while Minecraft just hits it perfectly right here and now."

----------------------------------------------

I think this sums it up perfectly.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

---

Not unlike Second Life was for many -- the old Second Life, in which people took clunky prims and made clunky things that seemed beautiful enough at the time. Well, beautiful to people in Second Life -- people outside of it ridiculed it for not looking like Myst.  It looked more like it was built with Legos. Like Minecraft does.

 

Within weeks of joining Second Life I discovered how fascinating it was to build these clunky things.  It was a challenge to figure out how to make things look organic, but back then (2007) we accepted the limits of prim builds and filled in the rest with our imaginations.  Pretty much like millions of avid Minecraft players do now.

 

Those days are gone from Second Life. I think Linden Lab developers got tired of hearing the same insults about how clunky Second Life looked compared to other games, how dated it was. Some users complained about it too, but honestly, most of us thought Second Life looked just fine, if not downright glorious. I remember trying to see it through detractors' eyes, as ugly -- but could not.

 

 

---

What an incredibly well thought through post.

You're right.  We did use our Imaginations to fill in the gaps.  And many of us still do.  We have an ability to do something that I think is being lost by the younger generation.  I had a disagreement  recently with another Forum User over whether the "Avatar" was artistic or not.  My point of view was that even with all it's warts and lumps and other short comings that it was still artistic.  Her point of view was that all the warts and lumps made it anything but artistic.

We have a small but vocal group of what I refer to as the 'real lifers' whos attitude is that if the proportions, etc, aren't correct (arms too short, legs too long, etc, etc) than the content is wrong.  And they are offended by it.

And while I'm not saying I would not want the Ava improved, I'm not going to be vocally unpleasant about it like I see some of the 'real lifers' do.   I just met a girl this past week who complained to me that no one wanted to dance with her because she was 'short.'  Well, if she is going to be so adamant in her position that she can't adapt that is what is going to happen.  She couldn't even conceive of going half way.

And now mesh, for all of its potential beauty has introduced a new problem.  It's sad so much was invested in fixing "Bake Fail" only to find us now confronted with "Mesh Fail."  I don't know how bad it is for people with high end computers but some (many?) of us with mid end computers see it all the time.  Mesh clothes appearing to float in the air or attached to a hand while we wait for it to 'snap' into place.  Or sometimes it doesn't appear at all and all we see is an invisible body until it rezzes.  And inadvertent nudity is happening again if the person is not wearing an Alpha.  So we have traded one set of problems for another.

[Vivienne Schell]

---

You're right.  We did use our Imaginations to fill in the gaps.

---

This touches the basics of what "Virtual Reality" means. Minecraft is a proof for a working idea, which is: "A Virtual Reality must not necessarily be realistic (in the real world sense), but create a unique, microcosmic , truly "virtual" realiism which is shared by the user community and is experienced as "realistic" within this microcosmos in real time.

Basically any online game or "Virtual Reality" is far from being "realistic" The gap you mentioned must always be filled, even if you have high detailed threedimensional visuals. No computer simulation can be as realistic as the real world is, never ever. That´s pure SciFi. The "reality" in VR only and only can be "virtual".

Simplicity never was a bad idea. Minecraft simplifies the idea of "Virtual Reality" successfully down to the bone, and the 2.5 Billion value deal hopefully will have enough impact on Silicon Valley to reconsider the future of VR. It certainly isn´t  more and more high end commerce based on off-world creations and imports, only for adding some kind of fake "realism". While Minecraft manages to create not only the same, but by far more impressive and successful level of "realism" (by user experience) with simple cubes.

 

[Deltango Vale]

While I tend to agree with you, I think the issue might be more complex. I am puzzled by the success of Dr. Who (forgive the abreviation, but this blog software thinks it's porn and won't accept the proper name). It is the most shoddily produced TV show in history: cardboard boxes painted to look like machines, control rooms that are obviously the inside of a BBC broom closet and about the worst dialog imaginable.

At the same time, EVE Online is hugely successful due to the realism of its virtual world - in spite of being universally recognized as the most difficult MMORPG to learn.

CCP Games (makers of EVE Online) has roughly the same revenues as Second Life (about $75 million). King Digital (Candy Crush Saga) has revenues of $2 billion. So, what's going on here?

I think it's important to remember what market is being targeted. Dr. Who, Candy Crush and James Patterson (to name an author) target the full bottom 55% of the social pyramid. CCP Games targets the top 11%, Second Life initially targeted the top 11%, but has since being trying to penetrate the middle 33% (to the chagrin of the top 11%). To be fair, Second Life and EVE Online have done rather well considering the small size of their market within the social pyramid.

Perhaps that's the key. Second Life can't be mass market because of its core design and functionality - though the Firestorm Viewer has gone a long way to make SL more popular. Perhaps Linden Lab, instead of trying to dumb down SL should instead seek to make it comparable to Rolex and Hermes - in other words, to dominate the full top 11%. This will require not only greater realism, but new policies compatible with an educated, intelligent and adult (grown-up) market.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

While I tend to agree with you, I think the issue might be more complex. I am puzzled by the success of Dr. Who (forgive the abreviation, but this blog software thinks it's porn and won't accept the proper name). It is the most shoddily produced TV show in history: cardboard boxes painted to look like machines, control rooms that are obviously the inside of a BBC broom closet and about the worst dialog imaginable.

At the same time, EVE Online is hugely successful due to the realism of its virtual world - in spite of being universally recognized as the most difficult MMORPG to learn.

CCP Games (makers of EVE Online) has roughly the same revenues as Second Life (about $75 million). King Digital (Candy Crush Saga) has revenues of $2 billion. So, what's going on here?

I think it's important to remember what market is being targeted. Dr. Who, Candy Crush and James Patterson (to name an author) target the full bottom 55% of the social pyramid. CCP Games targets the top 11%, Second Life initially targeted the top 11%, but has since being trying to penetrate the middle 33% (to the chagrin of the top 11%). To be fair, Second Life and EVE Online have done rather well considering the small size of their market within the social pyramid.

Perhaps that's the key. Second Life can't be mass market because of its core design and functionality - though the Firestorm Viewer has gone a long way to make SL more popular. Perhaps Linden Lab, instead of trying to dumb down SL should instead seek to make it comparable to Rolex and Hermes - in other words, to dominate the full top 11%. This will require not only greater realism, but new policies compatible with an educated, intelligent and adult (grown-up) market.

---

It's very interesting that you bring up the 'feature rich' Firestorm Viewer. 

I made the comment to Ebbe that the reason I used Firestorm was not because of all its added features per se but because it made my SL simpler.  I think that may have caught him by surprise because he responded by asking me for examples. 

I could have made a very long list and I did give him a few.  Just being able to change draw distance without having to open preferences is worth it's weight in SL Gold alone.

[Vivienne Schell]

"EVE Online"

If something like EVE is fairly successful in it´s niche, then because it actually HAS gaming elements. If there were no basical in-world tasks to build up a fleet or following another path to "social" and personal success (which basically requires any kind of robbery and violence, haha), I doubt that EVE would be online at all. And it´s certainly as much ScFi higjh end gamer niche as it can be by default. EVE never claimed to be mainstream. And user created content seems to be carefully reviewed and restricted by the administrator. So, EVE is a different pair of shoes.

Minecraft is much closer and a lot more comparable to the SL conception. So is IMVU, and even IMVU beats SL f it comes to user retention.

I don´t think that Altberg and the forces behind and inside of the Lab want to dump SL, even if this clumsy leaking of plans for another VR might sound like it. What I think is that the decision makers finally accepted that SL as is will always remain a niche within in a niche (just like EVE, IMVU and whatever else VR around). And the success of Minecraft certainly has not remained unnoticed there - before MS stepped in. My guess is that they favor an alternative, much more mainstream targeted baby there. Not as a replacement for the borked SL niche, but as an expansion of their target market. However this will look and feel like, I doubt that it will be attractive for the dedicated SL user - and this will be intentional.

 

 

[Deltango Vale]

Interesting comments. I was intrigued by CCP Games' intended realism for World of Darkness. There are good reasons for WoD's failure, not least the vampire theme, which is getting rather stale, but what caught my attention was the avatar rendering via CCP's 

. I even imagined CCP Games buying Second Life and appending it to EVE as a protected (HiSec) planet.

As you know, both SL and EVE Online are unscripted and open ended. As with SL, many EVE players complain that there is nothing to do there. The dropout rate is quite high, an issue CCP is trying to address. Their approach so far is tactical - improving core functionality and the user interface. Strategy seems to be on hold, no doubt undermined by the resident revolt over Incarna. LL would be wise to study the autopsy of Incarna, but I doubt LL has ever heard of EVE Online.

The point being that SL and EVE are similar in offering residents the opportunity to build up an enterprise over the long term, be it a fleet (EVE) or a clothing store (SL), as either a legendary badass (EVE) or a socialite (SL). Both offer few rewards to new and short-term players. Both, though, enable the forging of 

.

I believe, therefore, that SL and EVE are closer in spirit than you suggest (notwithstanding the closeness of SL and Minecraft). I still believe that SL could capture a much bigger share of the top 11% space. Incarna taught everyone a valuable lesson. Tactics do matter. LL is trying to improve SL's functionality, but unlike EVE - and here's where I agree with you - SL needs a much clearer long-term strategy. Virtual Disneyland isn't working.

[Vivienne Schell]

I like the "Incarna Rebellion" there, hah. So, basically, the vast majority of the EVE crowd prefers solid gameplay for visual shinies like walking around with an avatar, which is stunning, but supports my overall theory.

[Ceka Cianci]

my nephew uses minecraft.

He started out learning it last year i think.

Now he just whips up these amazing builds  that he has me sit down for the tours of them..

And he is so fast at it!

Wild castles and forts and  tunnle systems and so on..

he used to do the same thing with Halo.they had something in there you could build with and he wore it out..

then came mine craft and he doesn't touch his Halo anymore..

hehehe