Moving away from SL

[Jo Yardley]

It is 1929 in our sim to be exact, still not many Nazi's around, at least not in a way that would change the sim visually.

They were just not as big as some people think, we've chosen 1929 for a reason.

Berlin would be a different place just a year later...

But we DO have Nazism as part of the sim, there are posters, there is roleplay and yes, there is intrique and espionage going on.

But that too is something most people would not notice.

 

[Domitan Redenblack]

---

Czari Zenovka wrote:

---

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

Is SL dying? There is a downward trend on many things, and while I can see how such things as Mesh and Pathfinding can make a difference, they haven't been well done.

It's not quite three years for me, and I admit, Jo, I'm not the same sort of user that you are. With the way things are going, I am more and more inclined to give up my Premium status. I paid, and I hoped for some technical problems to improve. I paid, and they didn't improve. Some of them get worse.

What, I wonder, do I really get for that little patch of land I get? What do I use it for?

What I get from SL are the social interactions, the people I hang out with. I'd be happy without Mesh, without Pathfinding, . I'd be happy if they'd spent time and effort fixing the old problems, which they seem to have not fixed in three years, and which seem worse than I have ever experienced.

We're stuck with decisions that were taken a decade ago. SL may have some advantages still, but somebody else might take the idea, and write their own code, and not be tied down by those old choices.

SL might be the Visicalc of virtual worlds.

 

---

(Emphasis mine)  I've been in SL 5+ years and I can personally say that this past year has been disastrous in many ways as compared to the past 4.  The Merchant Forums, although perhaps not interesting to those who do not have SL businesses, are comprised of people, many of whom make their full-time or good part-time income within SL, and thus stay aware of trends that could impact their businesses.  In a related thread to this one:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Stunned/td-p/1661335

...it is noted, as it has been at various times on those forums, that 1800 sims (I'm assuming estate sims) were abandoned last year and it is reported that 800 more have been given up in the last 2 months.  Anyone can travel around mainland and see that many, if not most, of the individual sims have huge portions for sale, many being sold by LL for 1.0L sqm - previously abandoned land.

I'm not saying this is the death knell of SL, but with people giving up their sims, merchants closing down businesses (and thus giving up sims) which is part of the lifeblood of LL's income (selling land and lindens so people can buy stuff) - SL *is* shrinking.  Two years ago LL laid off 30% of their staff, approximately 100 people.  The issue is how long can LL as a corporation stay profitable.

Rodvik came from a gaming background and it has been very evident that he has been moving SL toward more of a "gaming" type platform - examples being Linden Realms, pathfinding, and offering MMORPG type "exclusive items" for becoming a Premium member.  SL may survive, but it may be a very different SL from when I and many began years ago.

---

I note that Linden Labs stopped issuing quarterly reports a year ago....

 

[161488303349]

---

Deja Letov wrote:

... Total sausage fest ...

---

if you want sausage then Utherverse. they even got NPCs on there that give sausage. lots of sausage

I got stuck in a room on there and had to log out really fast. is what happens when you have no idea what you doing and random click on stuff

 jejejjejejeje (:

[Melita Magic]

---

Tamara Artis wrote:

I am doing what is best, and what I like:) my SL is focused on a little gallery and a photo studio that I run. My online times are all about photos I do and now and then (when I get time) I visit some sims and just wander around, enjoying my peace. And maybe others don't like those deserted places, I actually enjoy them like that. It feels like some peacefull magical world, far away from everyday crowd. 

And my SL name is hmm, how to explain it lol, well half of my life I liked the name really much, then I found out my rl name could be that (my parents couldn't decide between two), but it isn't. When I was registering for SL, I knew exactly what my name will be haha

---

Thank you for answering my question. (I recalled an earlier post in which you asked if anyone could guess the source of your name; but you did not elaborate. I didn't reply then, but wondered if Tamara + Artis was a pun...Tamara, artist. The only Tamara artist I knew of was Tamara Lempicka.)

I'm not very familiar with Tamara Lempicka's work but I have heard of her. There was an interactive theater experience written about her some years back. Interactive and art make me think of Second Life.

I can relate to the affinity for a name which you find later you were nearly given.

Jeanne Anne said:

<<  is it really worth $295 per month to store the cartoons you make on a LL server .. just so you & your bros can go there now & then & rp being a viking or whatever ?!? it all just seems so dumb to me ... >>

Jeanne Anne, one person's stupid is another person's genius I suppose. 

[Tamara Artis]

Yvw;) I answer every question I see, sry I missed that one before...

And since I started this thread it would be polite not to skip the discussion, which I am kinda lost in lol, anyway.. I'm not planning to leave SL but all your replies made me aware of some cool places that would be good to check! As soon as I find some time

[Maryanne Solo]

---

Jo Yardley wrote:.

Berlin, like almost all sims, has its peak hours and quiet time, so it is always possible to

v

ind it deserted.

---

Typing with a German accent Jo? That is realism for you lol

My fave fun saying is Wirtual Vorld.

Berlin is a great sim. Only been there the once so far, but I was in 1920's attire.

Must go again.

 

[Michaelatv Destiny]

I been an active member of SL since 2007, But 7000US$     £4000 later, I have nothing to show for the hard work i put in over nearly 3 years, trying To make A Full sim British Airport financially viable.

 

The basic faults withing SL have never been dealt with. Creators are making more script heavy and beautiful 3D jet liners, but Without some seamless Linden oceans, these planes never make it to there destination, thus, Airports cant get income from hangers, or letting out office space, or Tie downs, if Aircraft cant even make a 15 sim journey, with only 30% success rate. If mainalnd full sim tier wasnt costing me £50 a week i would still be here.

I heard something about LL merging with Steam. cant for one moment think gamers will give SL 1 minute of there time, They play seamless game play like SWTOR & Company of heroes, not to mention many others, on steam like rail simulators. Its the grids that are outdated and the lack of forethought by the greedy americans who still think europe is out of recession, our petrol is going up another 5p im told very soon, back up to £1.40 a Litre.  Do americans have any idea, what the cost of living is like in the uk and other euro countries battling with fiscal collapse. If Linden labs took a step back and saw there  land pricing is not affordable for the majority of low paid workers, and dropped every tier price and cost of land by 30% at least, then, maybe people would take a chance.

 

For me, I had my fingers burnt too many times, vehicle travel remains one of second lifes most appealing draws, sadly it fails big time, to deliver to get any sort of craft movement  across 10 sims without crashing, and thats without the 6 would be paying passengers these jets are capable of carrying. I wont be back building any more airports until, some work is done on making oceans LAG free, NOT 80% lag, with Nothing in them!!!!

 

To many, some people just like to chill out and go roaming, but for serious sim owners, who spend hundreds of hours creating sims, and pouring good money after bad, for no  visible reward, its gets so boring, most, pull it all out and leave, and go somewhere else.

[Jo Yardley]

I've also been an active member since 2007 and own 2 regions.

I can see gamers give SL a minute of their time, or more.
I am a gamer myself and have been spending at least an hour in SL almost every day for the last 4 years.
Most of my SL friends are also gamers, they like SL, why wouldn't other gamers?

Yes the recession is tough and life is not cheap although it doesn't really affect me, I'm just as poor as I've always been and I've always lived in a very cheap way.
But I managed to make my sim pay for itself, I've got a shop that makes a profit and am about to expand into being a landlord.

I do agree that tier has to change, I'm not saying LL should cut all tier at once, but I feel that a system with different kinds of tier would work really well.
For instance offer people the option to rent a sim for just the weekends (making life for clubs easier), or give discounts to premium members, like a region costing only 50% tier the first month or so (making it cheaper for people to set up something temporary or try out an idea), etc.

Sim crossing is not an issue that bothers me much, but yes I can imagine it is bad when you try to fly planes.
I love the idea of planes flying between sims, dropping off passengers.

But I like to consider myself a serious sim owner, managing a community with over 70 tenants for over 4 years now.
I've probably spend thousands of hours working on it as I keep improving it all the time.
I've invested very little money and it started looking after itself almost from the beginning, so even though it won't make me rich, it isn't draining my rl bank account either.
And the rewards are priceless, every day the sim still brings a lot of joy to me and being able to share my passion with others is a great feeling.
And with my shop, the commercial region and going into real estate, I reckon the financial rewards are becoming more interesting as well, although of course the money is nothing compared to what I make with my rl job.
But if you are planning to make big bucks from SL, historical roleplaying sims are probably not the best way.

[Domitan Redenblack]

My formula for "fixing SL" financially

 

1. Offer limited free access to SL with bandwidth limited to 300 kbps (just as it was for years)

2. Offer "Super" access to SL with bandwidth only limited at 3 Mbps (twice current limit),  for $9 per month.
3Mbps access would reallly make exploring SL fast and easy, and being 10x as fast as "free" many would adopt this.

- I could care less about the current premium stuff; the land is crap, limited, and the kickbacks are laughable.
- increase this fee to $10 per month next year, then $11 per month in 2015, etc

3. Cut tier in half.

 

Comments?

 

[Phil Deakins]

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

I been an active member of SL since 2007, But 7000US$     £4000 later, I have nothing to show for the hard work i put in over nearly 3 years, trying To make A Full sim British Airport financially viable.

---

I've been an active SL user since 2006 and, imo, hoping to make a profit out of an airport in SL has always been unrealistic. In other words, if you were hoping to make a profit, or even not to lose money, then the airport business was the wrong thing to get into, imo.

What you have had for your money is 5 or 6 years of enjoyable hobby. That's all that most people get from SL, and it's well worth having - it's a positive.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Trying to make an airport profitable by offering rentals there for planes is dicey at best. At most I would say you are lucky to get some rent to help defray part of your tiers and that is about it.

Generally people, even if they fly, would rather spend there L's on rent or tiers for a home or a shop.  Renting space for aircraft is a luxury many can't afford and if they can they have other priorities for that money.

Most of the people that I know that fly keep their aircraft in their inventory and rez as they use them.  Of the ones that want to have them out, they usually will put them out at their homes for display and some have private airstrips or helipads.

If your airport is in a good location where there is a lot of open space for flying, perhaps you would be better charging a fee for being able to rez a plane and take off there if it is reasonable. You could make your runway a separate lot and use the pay option in the land tools and set a reasonable time limit.  Another option would be to make rezzing restricted to a group and charge a fee to join the group on an annual basis.  Create a group that is named Airport name + year.  At the end of each  year, create one with the same name but the current year and then change the group on your land.

Even this though probably wouldn't yield a profit or maybe even a break even situation.  Phil is right, what you have is a hobby and not something that has much potential for profit.

[Aethelwine]

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

I been an active member of SL since 2007, But 7000US$     £4000 later, I have nothing to show for the hard work i put in over nearly 3 years, trying To make A Full sim British Airport financially viable.

 

The basic faults withing SL have never been dealt with. Creators are making more script heavy and beautiful 3D jet liners, but Without some seamless Linden oceans, these planes never make it to there destination, thus, Airports cant get income from hangers, or letting out office space, or Tie downs, if Aircraft cant even make a 15 sim journey, with only 30% success rate. If mainalnd full sim tier wasnt costing me £50 a week i would still be here.

I heard something about LL merging with Steam. cant for one moment think gamers will give SL 1 minute of there time, They play seamless game play like SWTOR & Company of heroes, not to mention many others, on steam like rail simulators. Its the grids that are outdated and the lack of forethought by the greedy americans who still think europe is out of recession, our petrol is going up another 5p im told very soon, back up to £1.40 a Litre.  Do americans have any idea, what the cost of living is like in the uk and other euro countries battling with fiscal collapse. If Linden labs took a step back and saw there  land pricing is not affordable for the majority of low paid workers, and dropped every tier price and cost of land by 30% at least, then, maybe people would take a chance.

 

For me, I had my fingers burnt too many times, vehicle travel remains one of second lifes most appealing draws, sadly it fails big time, to deliver to get any sort of craft movement  across 10 sims without crashing, and thats without the 6 would be paying passengers these jets are capable of carrying. I wont be back building any more airports until, some work is done on making oceans LAG free, NOT 80% lag, with Nothing in them!!!!

 

To many, some people just like to chill out and go roaming, but for serious sim owners, who spend hundreds of hours creating sims, and pouring good money after bad, for no  visible reward, its gets so boring, most, pull it all out and leave, and go somewhere else.

---

[rant on]

I just did a bit of exploring. Sim crossings seem better, But.... now I am crashing because sim's are full or those damn banlines or orbs preventing you from crossing and returning your vehicle. So much for paying for protected waterfront when I can only ride my boat around in a circle because of inconsiderate neighbours and lack of foresight\enforcement of conditions of land sales. Or ride my bike a few sims down the road in either direction before hitting a full sim.

[/rant off]

[Michaelatv Destiny]

Hi, thanks for replies.

I should add, that before getting into Aviation, in 2008-2010 I owned a few clubs, when they were king, I started of as member of a german dancing shemale type club. Moving on to being assistant manager,  before clubs and the suplliers of disco stuff, almost collpased overnight, when greedy LL hiked up the tier charges so much, many called it a day, and many , many first class jazz venues, went out of business. So did my first club I made with my best mate at the time.  The only clubs with all the money  balls, lights, dance poses and poles plus shoutcast reciever, that i ever got busy, was within a combat sim, that had out of hours, none combat zones, mostly on saturdays, that was pretty full. But that didnt make any money.

Problem was, I was lured into second life To make money, in 2007, the slogan , when I first discovered SL, was "come to second life & make real Money".

 

For the first year, dancing for a living, I did make some good tip money,  1000L an evening from tips was the normal, until I got into land and rentals, and that all went pear shaped, when the tier hike kicked in.

On matter of Airports, I have owned three, one was on a prime waterfront sim, so you could just fly in from the ocean, but even with that huge advantage, Some weekends were so bad, That ocean sims right in front of your flight path would be offline for no reason whatsoever. Airport owners, By defination, Have to rake in £ from  rentals from Virtual airlines, or from private individuals who want there own hanger, but on a 65k sim, with two runways, There is very little room, for  space to make enough places. Airport owners also depend to some degree, of offering lower rates to vendors of creators of Aircraft. This all attracts traffic.

But, having just returned to SL a few days ago, I notice most airports are devoid of people.  You can make money from running a virtual airline, IF Second life was able to work like a seamless program. Imagine selling 6 seats on a  Boeing 737 Flybe flight from one airport to another, Most would pay a small sum of , say 10L for the experiance of air travel.  But many people, who have tried to take passengers on planes end up on the sea bed, with dead passengers, and they  blame you!!!, Not the fact that each grid just cant take an aircaft packed with instrumentation , and 6 avatars with any success over 15 sims at 250knots at 3000 feet.

many of my old friends in Aviation have gone back to real Flight simulators like I have, where  can Fly a real time journey from manchester Airport uk  To Alicante or barcelona or Ibiza, which is a popular destination. 

 

You cant really have an airport  open to the public by restricting it to members only. You have to allow access to the duty free stores or people who already own an airline and want to maybe take a check in  desk. The only thing that I sometimes did, was to restrict rezzing aircaft to a Special Area, by splitting a section of sim off.  Unfortunatley , since the teen grid was merged, at huge disgust in sailing and Avaition circles, greifing, and kids with MIGS trying to shoot down commercial Airliners, compound an already hard task to make your airport pay its way.

 

I dont think its fair, to qoute, thats its the wrong buinesss to get into. because it can be viable, can be profitable, together with cutting edge new 3D aircraft mesh models being introduced.  The problem is LL still stuck in the 19century, unable or unwilling to keep up with creators new vehicles, which is ever expanding into A simulator type of experiance. LL grid is not capable of running Air routes and  moving around 4 planes at differant levels, while circling, waiting for permission to land.  Its even more frustrating, if you have ever gone traning to be in the Second life coastguard, or trained to be an ATC, Which I did, and after some weeks, I was approved at a certified Air traffic controller, the hard  practical work and  paperwork to pass such tests, is pointless, if, in the end LL doesnt care about putting what you learnt into practice.

 

What ever happened to the learning experience, that was banded about years ago, where are the Job agencys, that were in most  street corners of sims, where jobs were offered. In my time, I have been an Admin, A Mentor, officer, diplomatic officer, and held posts Im still proud off, but in reality, the amount of money I invested in SL , has not realized any profit since 2009. Unless your a mega Sim/homestead renter, then your raking in the £££. creators are getting a very bad deal to me.  FREEBIES need totally banning from second life, and new comers given 500L to start them off, to get some better clothes. I see more and more freebie stuff more than ever.  In the end, the sl economy will go into meltdown, I know this, becuase some of my friends have pulled out of the market place altogether, some have just rented a space in a hi traffic sim, or a vendor board for 100L a week.  I make jewelry, I learnt myself from tutorials, I made some money selling birthstone necklaces, until, a couple of years later, the same type of necklaces, were freebies in stores world wide, the result end of business, I just give one of my creations to friends now and then, but when they sold, I recieved  200L for them, more than enough to cover my rent for a small store. Now, I have to give them away. So much for LL vision of 2005- 2007  "Join Second life and make real income"!!

[Michaelatv Destiny]

ban lines are the worst nightmare in second life, and ban lines should be BANNED totally.  sailing large ships, or even a small warship  is sometimes impossible because of restraints residents put in with NO thought to how much room some craft need to move from one sim to another. Orbs Are quite reasonable way to protect privacy. I have used them many times.

The problem is, not many , know the Guidelines, that is 20 second notice before your kicked. I always gave 30 seconds at least, to give time for slow vehicles to move out of my privacy zone. But idiots still put 10 seconds, which is not enough time to leave the area. You can submit an harrassment ticket for Orbs giving less than LL benchmark of 20 seconds. But with so many of them, you would be doing it all day.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

ban lines are the worst nightmare in second life, and ban lines should be BANNED totally.  sailing large ships, or even a small warship  is sometimes impossible because of restraints residents put in with NO thought to how much room some craft need to move from one sim to another. Orbs Are quite reasonable way to protect privacy. I have used them many times.

The problem is, not many , know the Guidelines, that is 20 second notice before your kicked. I always gave 30 seconds at least, to give time for slow vehicles to move out of my privacy zone. But idiots still put 10 seconds, which is not enough time to leave the area. You can submit an harrassment ticket for Orbs giving less than LL benchmark of 20 seconds. But with so many of them, you would be doing it all day.

---

Agreed.  I can't stand ban lines.  At least now there is the option of turning them off (something that wasn't available in the circa 2007-2008 viewers) but one can still slam into an invisible wall.  I've always preferred orbs to banlines, mainly due to banlines causing visual blight (or they did) but I do agree that 10 seconds is not enough time to mentally register, "Oh, I need to get out of here" plus actually moving.  I haven't used an orb in over a year but the one I currently own has increments of time up to 60 seconds, which is the setting I always used.  I also only used my orb around 3000m or higher so as not to interfere with sightseeing flying aircraft, hot air balloons, etc.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

ban lines are the worst nightmare in second life, and ban lines should be BANNED totally.  sailing large ships, or even a small warship  is sometimes impossible because of restraints residents put in with NO thought to how much room some craft need to move from one sim to another. Orbs Are quite reasonable way to protect privacy. I have used them many times.

The problem is, not many , know the Guidelines, that is 20 second notice before your kicked. I always gave 30 seconds at least, to give time for slow vehicles to move out of my privacy zone. But idiots still put 10 seconds, which is not enough time to leave the area. You can submit an harrassment ticket for Orbs giving less than LL benchmark of 20 seconds. But with so many of them, you would be doing it all day.

---

While I totally agree with you that 10 seconds is way too fast, I've never seen a "LL Benchmark" stated anywhere and this topic has come up innumerable times.

[Pussycat Catnap]

SL has been dying and about to shut the doors anyday now since 2003.

Its a bit like World of Warcraft that way.

Both of them are essentially dead, and have been for almost a decade.

 

Or... not.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

Orbs Are quite reasonable way to protect privacy. I have used them many times.

The problem is, not many , know the Guidelines, that is 20 second notice before your kicked. I always gave 30 seconds at least, to give time for slow vehicles to move out of my privacy zone. But idiots still put 10 seconds, which is not enough time to leave the area. You can submit an harrassment ticket for Orbs giving less than LL benchmark of 20 seconds. But with so many of them, you would be doing it all day.

---

While I totally agree with you that 10 seconds is way too fast, I've never seen a "LL Benchmark" stated anywhere and this topic has come up innumerable times.

---

There is no such benchmark. Just people who dislike Orbs that spout this nonsense.

 

I would file an AR if somewhere like open water and I crossed a parcel boundary, still on what looked like open water, and go instant ejected.

But if I walked inside of someone's home, I would expect to get about 0 seconds of notice - perfectly fair to toss me back home in that situation, as there was an obvious barrier I had to consciously cross in the first place.

Context is a lot more important than the actual time given.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Michaelatv Destiny wrote:

Orbs Are quite reasonable way to protect privacy. I have used them many times.

The problem is, not many , know the Guidelines, that is 20 second notice before your kicked. I always gave 30 seconds at least, to give time for slow vehicles to move out of my privacy zone. But idiots still put 10 seconds, which is not enough time to leave the area. You can submit an harrassment ticket for Orbs giving less than LL benchmark of 20 seconds. But with so many of them, you would be doing it all day.

---

While I totally agree with you that 10 seconds is way too fast, I've never seen a "LL Benchmark" stated anywhere and this topic has come up innumerable times.

---

There is no such benchmark. Just people who dislike Orbs that spout this nonsense.

 

I would file an AR if somewhere like open water and I crossed a parcel boundary, still on what looked like open water, and go instant ejected.

But if I walked inside of someone's home, I would expect to get about 0 seconds of notice - perfectly fair to toss me back home in that situation, as there was an obvious barrier I had to consciously cross in the first place.

Context is a lot more important than the actual time given.

 

---

I live up in the sky and know how quickly someone could enter my "air space" before even realising they had so I allow a very generous amount of time.

If I lived on the ground I would not be as generous.

[Deltango Vale]

SL is like Detroit. It's going nowhere until a new management team rebuilds the technical infrastructure and reverses years of bad policy decisions. The only alternative to SL at the moment is EVE Online, which is growing like wildfire under a brilliant management team. I pray daily that CCP Games will buy Linden Lab and take SL into the 21st century.

[Domitan Redenblack]

---

Deltango Vale wrote: 

SL is like Detroit. It's going nowhere until a new management team rebuilds the technical infrastructure and reverses years of bad policy decisions. The only alternative to SL at the moment is EVE Online, which is growing like wildfire under a brilliant management team. I pray daily that CCP Games will buy Linden Lab and take SL into the 21st century.

---

Interesing. I think SL wins big in two main ways:

1) The online community in SL is reallly quite amazing, if reduced badly from a few years ago...

2) You can build things yourself, and even program them.

I don't know of any other online worlds that come close to both 1 & 2 above.

 

[Porky Gorky]

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

SL is like Detroit. It's going nowhere until a new management team rebuilds the technical infrastructure and reverses years of bad policy decisions. The only alternative to SL at the moment is EVE Online, which is growing like wildfire under a brilliant management team. I pray daily that CCP Games will buy Linden Lab and take SL into the 21st century.

---

My sentiments exactly. I've tried every notable virtual world out there. IMVU is a great alternative platform to sell content but beyond that it sucks. The only other virtual world I have committed to over the years is EVE. 9 years nearly in both EVE and SL. In SL pretty much everyone I have known is gone. In EVE I can name at least 20 people who have been very active for over 7 years and still are now. I think that says allot about the EVE and CCP's ability to retain users when compared to LL.

[Jo Yardley]

Eve online sounds horrible, but that is because I don't like Science Fiction, I am also allergic to Fantasy so I don't like WOW either.

But neither of those can be compared to SL I think.

I've only been in SL for 4 years and in our sim we have a gallery of people who have not been active in SL for the last 2-3-4 year, but who've actually been living in our community for all that time.

Many of my friends have been in SL for years, some even close to 10 years, and I see most of them online regularly.

[Syo Emerald]

Just because you do not like a theme it doesn't make the game horrible. I think you also need to then call  nearly all other RP sims in SL horrible, because they deal with Sci Fi and Fantasy.

[Deltango Vale]

EVE Online is not exactly my cup of tea, but it is, without question, the most vibrant and successful virtual world in existence. CCP Games is so loved by its userbase that the hiring of an ex-EA executive was met with deep consternation. (Electronic Arts has been voted the worst company in America two years in a row.) As we all know, Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab, hails from EA. He seems to have brought the EA culture with him.

What drives me crazy - what has been driving me crazy for five years - is the failure of Linden Lab to realize the true potential of Second Life. Unlike CCP Games, Linden Lab appear to be a bunch of rank amateurs hellbent on messing up what could easily be the biggest thing since the widespread adoption of the internet. The future is virtual worlds. It's blindingly obvious to everyone except Linden Lab, who are instead tinkering with petty projects while the golden goose is dying of neglect.