Will Steam Help Us?

Madeliefste Oh · August 20, 2012

Rodvik can jump low, or Rodvik can jump high, but the fact is that Rodvic is just one person. And though he is the CEO of the compagny, as a single person he can only have a very little influence on the culture of SL. Because the culture - and the subcultures - are made by the masses.

When nobody is going to use for example pathfinding, because it doesn't fit in what they want from SL, then it's simply a waist of the development time that went into that feature. Pathfinding is not such a good example, because I think it is a feature that is going to be adapted. But take viewer 2, the masses didn't want that viewer so the masses didn't use that viewer, after all there were better alternatives available.

In the SL culture gaming is merely a role-playing thing. People who join and come with a gamers prespective will feel attrackted to the SL culture or one of it´s subcultures, or not at all. They will leave soon when they don´t feel attracked to the culture, or the speed or graphics don´t meet their standards. For these people SL is not the right place anyway, so there is nothing lost when they leave again.

It is us, residents all together, that have made what SL is today. We are the people, we make the culture. No CEO is going to change anything about that. People who like what we made out of it so far, may stay and may become residents who leaves their footprints in the SL culture.

Josh Susanto · August 20, 2012

The culture is constrained by the comparative utilities of the medium.

Right now SL is a good medium for people who like to make stuff and who have a huge amount of patience with technical failures.

I don't assume that can easily change very much, but it's not impossible.

If lag can be mostly eliminated and logins and inventory access can be made more stable, there would automatically be some number of people who would find the continuing limitations acceptable for specific games they want to design and/or play, so the total culture could shift somewhat in the direction of gaming if the technology would allow.

I'm still not really sure what the point of pathfinding was ever supposed to be, but I suppose it is probably necessary in order to make a bunch of other features less pointless, whatever those features might be. To deploy pathfinding first just because it's the easiest new feature does make at least some amount of sense. Getting the bugs out of that would tend to frustrate people less than getting the bugs out of some other new feature they actually care about.

Bittersweet Lime · August 20, 2012

The 40 million are actually given in the article of LL, where this topic is about - so I assumed this to be known. Shouldn't it be known, before even starting to argue about it?

Bittersweet Lime · August 20, 2012

I think the idea behind creating tools to make game-like environments is, to convert SL into a platform which could attract game developers - a bit like facebook provides a platform for them as well.

IMO this is an idea, which (1) comes far too late and (2) would require a platform with better performance and (3) would require a platform, which is capable to host a much higher concurrency, because if you have a bunch of game-like envirionments around, you need a critical mass for each of these games, to be attractive to players. SL is not providing these and so this idea will IMO be a dead born baby, when it will finally be implemented.

Josh Susanto · August 20, 2012

The 40 million figure is not part of the thread proper, but part of a link I didn't read first because I was already aware of Steam.

The figure was not extracted by the person who posted it, and I was responding not to that person, but to you.

If I'm required to read content of links for that which is not extracted, I should point out that the link also contains linked material, and that material includes further links.

How far should I go with this before I am prepared to respond to you?

I occasionally go to libraries or book stores to find sources cited before I continue reading a book, but I have never done so to alleviate the suspicion that the word "them" has been used in place of the word "these" or in place of the word "those".

The argument seems to begin with your claim that your own estimate is more conservative, and I agree that it is more conservative in the way that you have now stated it.

So, really, I initially responded to something that you did not realize that you had said.

Josh Susanto · August 20, 2012

>I think the idea behind creating tools to make game-like environments is, to convert SL into a platform which could attract game developers - a bit like facebook provides a platform for them as well.

It's not necessarily impossible, but it would require LL to do things which we have already been screaming at them for years to do, and which they have already made a point of not doing even as it already costs them untold thousands of new users every day.

>IMO this is an idea, which (1) comes far too late

The idea is as old as Second Life, itself, as is the idea of not doing anything at all to follow up on it, ever, apparently.

It seems like Rodvik's solution to make SL more game-like is not to change anything technologically to make games more viable, but just to invite a bunch of gamers to participate; gamers being exactly the kind of people who already don't want to participate, and specifically because of the technical limitations Rodvik intends to somehow use the gamer presence in order to continue to ignore.

SL has become Rodvik's "Field of Dreams", except he's saying "When they come, THEN I will build it."

>and (2) would require a platform with better performance

Given that it's already only marginally adequate for people at the opposite end of the tolerance spectrum from gamers, I find that I can disagree with your statement only by pointing out that it is profoundly understated (that is, I more than agree).

>and (3) would require a platform, which is capable to host a much higher concurrency,

I don't think the raw concurrency number is the primary challenge. If new users could somehow be magically distributed evenly among all sims, there would be plenty of room for them. But I seriously hope that's not how Rodvik is already looking at the numbers problem. If he's going to somehow socialize lag by causing it to be more evenly distributed across sims regardless of their varied data load, that might not actually be a totally bad idea, but he should really say something about it before the tinkering starts.

>because if you have a bunch of game-like envirionments around, you need a critical mass for each of these games, to be attractive to players.

It's not even the number of game-like environments that really matters. If SL can't support even one of them properly, failure to support others will be more an indictment of the basic level of service than an indication of the inability to handle a large basic concurrency number.

>SL is not providing these and so this idea will IMO be a dead born baby, when it will finally be implemented.

Agreed.

Imagine going to a new Disney park and being told only after entering that construction of none of the rides has actually been completed yet... and that there is not only no deadline to completion, but no existing plan to complete them.

(and, again, I say...)

I don't think the god Shiva, himself, would be adequately equipped to produce the facepalmistry to express where this plan is headed without, numerous, massive and immediate technical implementations that seem not even to be in the works.

Medhue Simoni · August 20, 2012

Personally, I think it is kind of funny that the people saying SL is somehow slow or has bad graphics are sculpty makers.

Let's get some stuff straight here. SL can run at 60 fps, just like any game. With the new materials project, SL is about as graphically intense as any game. Our polygon totals can't match some games, but can be much higher than others and still be very fast and smooth. Depending on what you are comparing SL to, the total number of avatars in a region is somewhat comparable to many games of similar graphics. The only reason any1 sees any lag, is totally because of poorly created content, usually worn content, which ruins every1's experience. The social experience in SL far surpasses any other game ever made. With the ability to import your own items, SL far surpasses any game ever made, as far as customization. SL's animation system is also far superior to any game ever made, if you disreguard the bugs, but we could have a better way to interact with each other with animations.

When you are talking about gamers, 1 thing they all have in common is a good gaming PC. That being the case, they will have much fewer issues than the average SL user. The only real things that will turn away the gamers, is lag created from poorly made objects, and the lack of complicated gaming experiences.

Oh, and making something low prim, doesn't mean it is made well, or graphically efficient.

Toysoldier Thor · August 20, 2012

Medhue Simoni wrote:

Personally, I think it is kind of funny that the people saying SL is somehow slow or has bad graphics are sculpty makers.

Let's get some stuff straight here. SL can run at 60 fps, just like any game. With the new materials project, SL is about as graphically intense as any game. Our polygon totals can't match some games, but can be much higher than others and still be very fast and smooth. Depending on what you are comparing SL to, the total number of avatars in a region is somewhat comparable to many games of similar graphics. The only reason any1 sees any lag, is totally because of poorly created content, usually worn content, which ruins every1's experience. The social experience in SL far surpasses any other game ever made. With the ability to import your own items, SL far surpasses any game ever made, as far as customization. SL's animation system is also far superior to any game ever made, if you disreguard the bugs, but we could have a better way to interact with each other with animations.

When you are talking about gamers, 1 thing they all have in common is a good gaming PC. That being the case, they will have much fewer issues than the average SL user. The only real things that will turn away the gamers, is lag created from poorly made objects, and the lack of complicated gaming experiences.

Oh, and making something low prim, doesn't mean it is made well, or graphically efficient.

OK so to get a few more points straight....

I - "a sculpty creator / mesh creator" - was not dissing the SL platform / technology itself for its lag. It sure would be nice if LL didnt rationalize the number of sim's executing on a single platform (last I remember LL places 8 sims onto 1 physical server - many its improved since but I doubt that as it would increase costs) so that a sim could take on more load.

BUT... what I was trying to say was that as much as current SL customers do not like the lag that exists most days - some worse than others - the unique nature of what SL is - a VIRTUAL WORLD EXPERIECE - and the incredible flexibility that the SL platform provides to all its residents (i.e. to be instant creators) makes it a platform that lag is an accepted part of participating on something so flexible. And for the most part the residents can deal with the 20, 10, 5 FPS lag that we all encounter when we land at a live concert (like last night) with 60 other avatars and we can barely move. A true Gamer would not find this acceptable.

Medhue, you clearly are a Gamer and/or know much more about the gaming technology than I, but the reason the other true GAMING environments can provide a consistent solid predictable 30 or 60 fps is because their enviornment (i.e. the entire scenes they are participating in and even all the content their avatar is and uses and has available to them) is 100% predictable. In those worlds the Gamer can and has to download all the scene into their hard drive prior to participating. This means all the content is local to them. The only interaction over the network and to the servers is positioning and reference pointers to the client. As Darrius said.... HIGH PERFORMANCE / LOW FLEXIBILITY.

In SL, this major performance trick is not feasible since content is created, owned. and placed on the grid by anyone and can change or move at any time. The SL technology has to deal with this extremely scene and content flexibility that almost no GAMING environment does. It actually still fascinates me that we dont have far more lag considering what the SL grid has to deal with. BUT for SL to maintain the unique value-add it does on LL's customer base, SL must sacrifice performance for flexibility.

So its not that SL is inferior to the other gaming platforms... it services a completely different targt market - one that does NOT include the GAMER's need to get a lagless experience.

Again, I will point out, Blue Mars thought they could use this critical GAMER SYSTEM technique to create a SecondLife environment using full sim PRE-LOADING to address performance lag that SL deals with all the time. So far, BM was a major flop because using this pre-loading trick meant that jumping to a new sim (especially ones you have never visited) involves me waiting for a minute or more for the BM server to send me 200-300meg of sim data. Also, because of this technique it all but wiped out a huge critical success of what SL has... the ability for any resident to be an instant builder / creator.

As for your last point about SL residents with big new fast PC not experiencing the same lag as the average... although I agree that if you have the more powerful PC that lag is less an issue, I can tell you and you know yourself that even the most powerful PCs still encounter major lag often. I have a top end PC with a powerful CPU, RAM, Graphics, and a 50mbps internet link. I often experience the same lag at live concerts and other inworld events that the slow PCs feel.

SL actually does not even let me take advantage of my PC's horsepower. I think its so funny that all the SL viewers have a network bandwidth setting that can go up to unlimited yet LL and the TPVs warn everyone "DO NOT SET YOUR BANDWIDTH HIGHER THAN 1.5mbps - doing so might make your experience even worse". Why do they even have the parameter in the viewer then !?!? Just take it away and set the bandwidth to what SL can tolerate.

Anyway... I stick to my position that GAMERS will not like SL because SL is not a GAMING FRIENDLY platform. It was designed for flexibility - not to attain top fps performance.

Czari Zenovka · August 20, 2012

Steam or no Steam, this is what new users experience upon arriving in SL:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/New-to-SL/td-p/1642535

How many times over the years have we seen a similar posts from new residents? Some even saying, "How do you play this game?" By comparison, EQ now has a tutorial when one first plays that shows how to use the UI *while* completing a small quest. After that is completed, the player is then taken to a small area in which they may stay until level 15. *Hints* as to which NPC to approach for more directions pop up on the screen. By the time a new player is actually in the full content of EQ they have a pretty good idea of how the game operates, what quests are, how to buy items, how to bank, etc.

In WoW a new player is plopped pretty much in front of the NPC that starts the player on the first series of small quests where they learn the UI, etc.

We see what happens when one arrives in SL, especially if they do not know anyone already here to help them out a bit. We all went through that - some of us on the old Orientation Island, some coming through one of the portals, ie. Caledon for example, but we still had to figure out what to do or where to go next. The younger male segment of gamers will look around, wonder where the quest NPC is, maybe ask someone and risk being laughed at, depending on where they are, say heck with this and leave.

Now the 43-year-old woman demographic that has been discussed would likely be more apt to look around, perhaps see something that intrigues her (shopping, an interesting build, etc.) so the older gamers might become more long-term in SL.

I'm only familiar with MMORPGs so not sure how SL relates to games like FarmTown or some of the other games shown on the excellent slide show linked further back in this thread.

It will be interesting to see what happens for sure.

Jaylin Wytchwood · August 20, 2012

In not sure you want the people who buy free games at Steam in SL... i daresay, a lot of them arnt 18 either.

Innula Zenovka · August 20, 2012

@thread: I'm not at all sure people divide up neatly into gamers, on the one hand, and people who use SL, on the other.

While I'm not interested in gaming particularly, my impression from when I look at (for example) the Gaming subforum on SLU is that there's plenty of people -- incudling some noted SL content creators -- who enjoy both gaming and the very different attractions SL has to offer. Probably at times they feel like doing neither, and read a book or watch a movie or go to gym.

Based on what I've read here so far, it seems to me that a lot of people from Steam may well look at SL and decide it's not for them because they want an action game with high fps, and they won't come back. Some people, though, may well find they enjoy SL as well as gaming, for different reasons, and some may even find they prefer SL to gaming, and members of these last two groups will probably stick around.

What's wrong with that?

Madeliefste Oh · August 20, 2012

Few days ago I bumped into a newbie. Since I'm not much of a traveller anymore, but stay in my studio or shop, and even more in my 3D program, I don't happen to meet many new residents. Last one must have been more then half a year ago, and was the type of 'what do you wear under you clothes?'-newbie.

But this guy, who was attracted by a sound I was working with and dropped in to explore what this sound was about. That leaded to a conversation. He told me he was new in SL, and when I checked his profile I saw he was 8 days old. He was well dressed for his age. He asked me where he was. I told him we were in my studio. He thought it was very big, he only had a small piece of land. This made me curious about him, just 8 days, well dressed an owning land, not the kind of newbie I used to drop into when I still travelled a lot.

So I started asking how he liked SL so far, and why he had decided to buy land. 'I like it that you can create everything yourself here', was his answer. 'I'm learning Blender and I want to bring my creations here.'
I asked him if he had any experience with other virtual worlds. 'Not really', he told me, he had been playing The Sims and then he discovered SL and wanted to try out. But this is much more interesting, in The Sims you can only build what is programmed for you. But I'm a quick learner, I wil get it this under control. I made my own t-shirt already. I think I'm going to learn scripting as well.

I asked him if he was aware of places and groups where you can learn about creating in SL. He was not. I gave him a few landmarks and group names. 'You are very helpful, he said, 'ýou know, actually you are the first person I speak to here'. I was highly surprised. Eight days old, and never spoke to a single person... still renting land, buying skin,hair, shoes and making his own shirt.

It stayed in my mind for a few days. I asked myself questions like: would I have stayed in SL when I would not have spoken to a single person during my whole first week?, and: does this say something about the psychology of this guy, or does it say something about SL anno 2012? Is this typical 2012, that a newbie can walk around for 8 days without speaking to a another avatar, or did the same thing already happen in 2007?

I don't know The Sims from my own experience, but now and then I see how people play games. Most of what I see are people who don't play games in a social context, but from a cd-rom. The fun is just between them and the game, it is an individual experience.
When that is where you come from, it is not strange that you don't start talking to people as soon as you arrive. There might be enough interesting things for you as individual to discover before you start socializing in SL.

My guess is that it is not the typial "hard core dude kind of gamers" that will find a way to SL or will be open to enjoy SL. 'Gaining power by destroying' is not the only taste we have when it comes to gaming. The Sims is a nice example, but there are many other games based on a 'building your kingdom'-scenario. It is a whole different kind of energy these kind of games appeal to. It is not for the thrill of adrenaline, that people play these games, it is more for the joy of planting a sead and seeing grow day by day.

But what both kind of plays have incommon is that they appeal to human instincts. We sit in a safe office or a warm house all day, we buy our meat and vegetables in a supermarket. We are workers and consumers, but deep inside something in us is still a hunter or a farmer.

I think that a person who is attracted to the 'farmer' kind of games, is a person who might enjoy SL as well. Because the essence of SL appeals more to the farmer is us, then to the hunter. Though hunter kind of people who feel attracked the culture in SL might also have a good hunting time, it is not what the heart of SL is about. It is about planting a seed and taking care of its growth.

We are living in an age of democratization of the media. My opinion is that we also live in an age of democratization of creativity. And I think Rodvik sees this trend as well. The aim of Rodvik's SL is to give people tools to express their creativity. In my opinion it is a smart move to define SL that way, as a world to be creative and express your self.
This does not mean everyone has to become a content creator, you can also be creative in the way you dress, in the way you participate in a role-play, you can write a blog, post pictures on your Flickr page or express yourself in the way you flirt with other avatars.

A whole different question is what the democratization of creativity means for the SL economy? SL is developping to a world where are more producers then consumers. Producers will now and then be consumer for other producers, after all not everybody has the patience and talent to make his own hair, skin or avatar animations.
LL has never ever shown any interest in the character of the SL economy. It seems like they don't realise how this elusive phenomenon is directly related to their tier income. That makes LL a very risky 'business partner'.

Do I have good faith for the future when it comes to the SL economy? No.

Do I have hope? Yes. There are still so many people out there who don't know yet what SL can mean for them. They don't know what they are missing until they have tasted it. It is a pitty when it won't come on their path.
I enourage every step that LL takes to seduce people to give SL a try.

Deja Letov · August 20, 2012

Innula Zenovka wrote:

@thread: I'm not at all sure people divide up neatly into gamers, on the one hand, and people who use SL, on the other.

While I'm not interested in gaming particularly, my impression from when I look at (for example) the Gaming subforum on SLU is that there's plenty of people -- incudling some noted SL content creators -- who enjoy both gaming and the very different attractions SL has to offer. Probably at times they feel like doing neither, and read a book or watch a movie or go to gym.

Based on what I've read here so far, it seems to me that a lot of people from Steam may well look at SL and decide it's not for them because they want an action game with high fps, and they won't come back. Some people, though, may well find they enjoy SL as well as gaming, for different reasons, and some may even find they prefer SL to gaming, and members of these last two groups will probably stick around.

What's wrong with that?

Totally agree! I think people assume that everyone on Steam is a hardcore gamer...totally untrue. I knew about Steam years ago, before I would consider myself a serious gamer. Now I would call myself a much more involved gamer...and I still play SL. But I started way back before that. We may not get serious gamers, but I think there will be quite a few people that this will be right up their alley.

Toysoldier Thor · August 20, 2012

Innula Zenovka wrote:

@thread: I'm not at all sure people divide up neatly into gamers, on the one hand, and people who use SL, on the other.

While I'm not interested in gaming particularly, my impression from when I look at (for example) the Gaming subforum on SLU is that there's plenty of people -- incudling some noted SL content creators -- who enjoy both gaming and the very different attractions SL has to offer. Probably at times they feel like doing neither, and read a book or watch a movie or go to gym.

Based on what I've read here so far, it seems to me that a lot of people from Steam may well look at SL and decide it's not for them because they want an action game with high fps, and they won't come back. Some people, though, may well find they enjoy SL as well as gaming, for different reasons, and some may even find they prefer SL to gaming, and members of these last two groups will probably stick around.

What's wrong with that?

I agree with you that when SL is exposed to the Steam population... many will not even look at SL... some will be gamers and try it and quickly walk away... and maybe some of this large population will stick around and increase the SL community and grasp onto what is unique about SL vs. the normal GAMER world.

Within the scope of this context of this OP question and specifically "Will Steam Help Us?"... there is nothing wrong with that. If Rovik could wave a magic wand and his new strategy magic engages in 1 day with no effort from LL, there would be nothing wrong with this.

BUT (always a but)...

I guess I am looking at the bigger picture and Rodvik's strategy to go after the Steam community and I am asking myself the question that I would hope Rodvik and his sr. staff at LL asked themselves when developing this strategy.... "Is this the best and most effective strategy to stop LL's flagship SL product from continuing to slide in popularity and revenue?"

If the OP is asking the question "WILL STEAM HELP US?" then I am assuming the OP is referring to "us" as the SL residents that love SL and do not want to see it die the slow death we are all witnessing. I am also assuming the OP means that HELPING US refers to LL regaining control of the SL service and righting it and making it popular once more so that SL will somehow return to the glory days when SL was at its peak.

Based on my assumptions of the OP's topic, we all need to look at this from the perspective of LL as a business and SL as currently they #1 cash cow. A cash cow that has been slowing dying of starvation since 2008 due to several generations of poor LL management, hairbrained failed strategies, failed progress on corporate culture and development practices maturation, and an utter lack of understanding and respecting their current customer base.

We need to look at it from the perspective that when ANY company develops and begins to execute on a new and fundamentally shifting enterprise-wide strategy, it involves significant consumption of a company's resources. IF a company is flushed with cash and staff reserves then pursuing a new strategy has a couple major risk factors removed from the impact of a failed strategy.

BUT.... we all know that LL is not one of these companies. Their staff was cut by 1/3 a couple years ago and many of the existing staff now are also relatively new to LL. As little as the vet LL staff understand SL and its residents - these new staff know even less - look at the LL Commerce Team we have now as a perfect example.

The reason I bring all this up is that as much as its a risk for a large well established resources rich company to take on a fundamental shifting strategy, its a potentially business life threatening level of risk for a company like LL.

So..... back to your questions of "WHATS WRONG WITH THAT?"

LOTS! If Rodvik gets this wrong and his strategy fails, he has put a ton of his highly rationed development resources into this strategy. These resources are only further abandoning the current customer base and taken all focus off them so they can go after Rodvik's BRASS RING... the GAMER !

If the Gamers fail to come... LL and SL loses the new infusion of customers that he thought would save SL and he loses the current customers to competing opensim grids that his technology and plans have ostrasized (i.e. a viewer that must do mesh and still no customer service and countless bugs and existing feature fixes ignored).

Thats my thoughts.

Innula Zenovka · August 20, 2012

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

So..... back to your questions of "WHATS WRONG WITH THAT?"

LOTS! If Rodvik gets this wrong and his strategy fails, he has put a ton of his highly rationed development resources into this strategy. These resources are only further abandoning the current customer base and taken all focus off them so they can go after Rodvik's BRASS RING... the GAMER !

If the Gamers fail to come... LL and SL loses the new infusion of customers that he thought would save SL and he loses the current customers to competing opensim grids that his technology and plans have ostrasized (i.e. a viewer that must do mesh and still no customer service and countless bugs and existing feature fixes ignored).

Thats my thoughts.

I don't think mesh was introduced simply to make SL appeal to gamers. I think that was introduced to give us a much better, more efficient and more versatile medium with which to make things. And, while I keep on hearing about people deserting SL for other grids (as I have done for the last 4 or 5 years), I see nothing in the concurrency figures of those grids to persuade me it's actually happening in any noticable quantities.

I don't know about these things, but I can't imagine it required a huge committment of resources to get listed on Steam. Personally, I'm pleased to see LL doing anything to promote SL to people. I certainly don't see this as any great mis-step and waste of resources on the lines of the Nebraska project.

Medhue Simoni · August 21, 2012