Chairman of the Board is on LabGab

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

And Roblox and SL are alike like apples and pears!

Roblox people are a totally different bunch than SL people XD 

Roblox has a wider demographic that just very young kids and it has a plan to grow the platform with the kids as they grow up.

The idea is keep your son playing Roblox when he's 12 .. 15 .. 19 .. and so on.

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

12 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Roblox has a wider demographic that just very young kids and it has a plan to grow the platform with the kids as they grow up.

The idea is keep your son playing Roblox when he's 12 .. 15 .. 19 .. and so on.

 

 

Sounds more like they are trying to keep the kids from growing up. Maturing and moving on to more grown up type things. 

So many conflicting messages being sent 24/7, a literal bombardment. No wonder people's heads are messed up.

[Coffee Pancake]

30 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Sounds more like they are trying to keep the kids from growing up. Maturing and moving on to more grown up type things. 

Sounds like someone needs a spare afternoon and a large lego set.

[Silent Mistwalker]

18 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Sounds like someone needs a spare afternoon and a large lego set.

I wouldn't know what to do with them. They didn't exist when I was a child. 

Now if you had said Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, I would have said, "You're on! Name the date and time!" 

Oh wait. We didn't have play dates back then either. That's ok. I've been used to playing all by myself for decades. ☺️

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I wouldn't know what to do with them. They didn't exist when I was a child.

Umm, Lego has been around for more than 70 years.

[Silent Mistwalker]

15 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Umm, Lego has been around for more than 70 years.

Let me rephrase that then. They did not exist in our house. None of our toys were plastic.

 

I am over 60 though so they may as well not have existed for me since girls weren't allowed to play with boys' toys back then.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[MoiraKathleen]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Let me rephrase that then. They did not exist in our house. None of our toys were plastic.

 

I am over 60 though so they may as well not have existed for me since girls weren't allowed to play with boys' toys back then.

I don't remember Legos being around when I was growing up either, even among my male cousins, or from listening to my husband talk about toys they had growing up.  The building sets I remember from childhood were Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets.   Perhaps they weren't popular yet in the U.S. back then. 

Though right now as I type this, one grandson is playing Roblox on my desktop PC, and one grandson is in the other room playing Legos  

 

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

The building sets I remember from childhood were Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets.  

Yup.  And lots of hardwood blocks.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Let me rephrase that then. They did not exist in our house. None of our toys were plastic.

 

I am over 60 though so they may as well not have existed for me since girls weren't allowed to play with boys' toys back then.

Legos weren't in N. American until much later.  I didn't know anyone who had them.  

In 1961, Lego wished to expand sales to North America but did not have the logistical capabilities to do so. Lego made an arrangement allowing Samsonite to begin producing and selling Lego products in the United States and Canada.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Umm, Lego has been around for more than 70 years.

Not in N.America.

[MoiraKathleen]

7 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yup.  And lots of hardwood blocks.

And one I forgot, but was my favorite when I was in kindergarten - the cardboard bricks that were brick-sized.  We had those in my kindergarten classroom for play time, and they were fun to build with because they were large enough you could build walls with them. 

[Quistess Alpha]

22 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

were large enough you could build walls with them. 

and they were much more fun to topple over. . .

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't recall Mitch Kapor ever doing a Town Hall (the old format) or much of anything in the past except some interviews where he basic called us the Island of Misfit Toys, so LL can only go upwards with this. Some people are confused about his role -- he is not the CEO replacing Ebbe, and no, did not mention when/if that replacement is coming, nor about the VP of Engineering. He is the chairman of the board or in this case the role can be called president.

The most operative news from this interview as far as I'm concerned is that he said he was a long-time friend and actual real-world neighbour of Philip Rosedale's, and had also known Philip's wife for many years, and that the two couples went to Burning Man together, they were in the same camp together. 

So Philip was looking over the hedge one morning and instead of asking to borrow a cup of sugar, he asked to have some VC cash buy his brainchild so it would be in good hands, well that's how they do things on the West Coast, they are not like us on the East Coast. So yes, quite a cup of sugar, but I think it was a good investment.

Speaking of which, Oberwolf, to whom I did send some wolf snacks, is more of an East Coast individual. I could detect either a Canadian or upper midwest accent there for sure. He is not of the Silicon Valley culture. He went to Wharton School of Business. His companies have dealt with car parts and snacks and that's a good thing. SL is way more about car parts and snacks, essentially speaking, than about Infinitely Distant Stars and multicore servers or whatever the geeks want. He sounds very customer oriented and that's a good thing. To be sure, he is an investor in this gig work app which I think suffers from all the evils of all gig work things, but it seems ok.

The fact that he knows Philip as a friend; that he is very enthusiastic about SL; that he wanted to come in and buy it -- that's all a plus.

Today in the Lab Gab, Grumpity said that a new VP of Engineering was being hired and she looked forward to introducing them soon. That sounded as if the hiring was in the pipeline, but who knows. No word about a new CEO. Obviously, since Ebbe was committed to being intensively involved with SL even in his dying days, which is very commendable, seeing to the uplift and all the rest, the search for the new CEO could not begin while he was alive. I hope they will find someone like him from the industry, and not from within the user or staff base, which I think would be a bad idea. They need a figure with a resume like Ebbe, middle management for a giant corporation like Microsoft or Yahoo, who wants to run a small company but who has grown-up skills in the real world.

Anyone in this role would probably do well to keep his distance from the user base knowing what rabid haters can be found among them, if not griefers willing to crash sims if something doesn't go their way, or the opposite, a base of fangirlz and fanboyz who smother you with love and want to be your friend. 

Grumpity also mentioned something I haven't heard a Linden say in ages: active users = 200,000. Concurrency we know is 40,000-50,000 which she confirmed as 40,000-45,000.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Let me rephrase that then. They did not exist in our house. None of our toys were plastic.

 

I am over 60 though so they may as well not have existed for me since girls weren't allowed to play with boys' toys back then.

I certainly played with Legos, GI Joes, and Tinker Toys and I'm older than you are. It's true, girls were driven towards Barbie Dolls, but my parents felt they were too expensive and too risque and didn't buy them for us. I don't recall that we got Legos in the early 1960s, I just don't think they were mass produced in the US in the same way, they were originally created in Denmark, no? We had Tinker Toys and then eventually the Legos I recall more in my own children's childhood. We didn't have play dates, either. We had to fend for ourselves from 3:15 to 6:00 pm -- Mom and Dad were at work. We sometimes started dinner. Then we heard my father's whistle about 5:45 to get ourselves home for dinner with face and hands washed and properly in place to say grace by 6:00 p.m.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, MoiraKathleen said:

I don't remember Legos being around when I was growing up either, even among my male cousins, or from listening to my husband talk about toys they had growing up.  The building sets I remember from childhood were Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets.   Perhaps they weren't popular yet in the U.S. back then. 

Though right now as I type this, one grandson is playing Roblox on my desktop PC, and one grandson is in the other room playing Legos  

 

Yeah Erector Sets. That's the one I was having trouble remembering the name of. Always have for some weird reason. Had trouble remembering the name of Erector Sets that is. Get your mind out of the gutter. 🤭

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Legos weren't in N. American until much later.  I didn't know anyone who had them.  

In 1961, Lego wished to expand sales to North America but did not have the logistical capabilities to do so. Lego made an arrangement allowing Samsonite to begin producing and selling Lego products in the United States and Canada.

Well that certainly explains that since I do live in the US. Thing is my mom hated anything plastic.

[Silent Mistwalker]

41 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I certainly played with Legos, GI Joes, and Tinker Toys and I'm older than you are. It's true, girls were driven towards Barbie Dolls, but my parents felt they were too expensive and too risque and didn't buy them for us. I don't recall that we got Legos in the early 1960s, I just don't think they were mass produced in the US in the same way, they were originally created in Denmark, no? We had Tinker Toys and then eventually the Legos I recall more in my own children's childhood. We didn't have play dates, either. We had to fend for ourselves from 3:15 to 6:00 pm -- Mom and Dad were at work. We sometimes started dinner. Then we heard my father's whistle about 5:45 to get ourselves home for dinner with face and hands washed and properly in place to say grace by 6:00 p.m.

I never played with Barbie dolls. Never owned any.

[MoiraKathleen]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I never played with Barbie dolls. Never owned any.

I probably would not have if it hadn't been for grandparents, and the year they gave me the Barbie Carnaby Street House doll case, I was in  heaven     More germane to the thread about  "Are we too Nice", my dolls lived a quiet and agreeable life without a lot of drama or competition. They liked being nice, even if they were seen as boring.  My sister's and my cousin's doll families were always full of drama and fighting, which I did not like even as a child. 

Back on topic to the Lab Gab episode,  I was really encouraged listening to him.  I like that it sounded like he's been in-world quite a bit, and especially that he went through the new user experience all on his own.  I think that he will be one who gets what SL is about, and I think that is even more important for a Chairman of the Board than a CEO (although it's still very important for a CEO, also).  Anyway, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic, because why not?  I have no desire to waste energy on doom and gloom and negative scenarios that probably wouldn't even come to pass.  So, I'll keep a positive outlook, see how things go and re-evaluate how I feel about my experiences here if or when there are actual significant changes that impact them.

[Drayke Newall]

17 hours ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

My 10 yo son plays Roblox i for sure won't let him play SL and I really do not understand why many people often say we need the Roblox users ....it's not the first time I see that.

No one has ever said we need 'the' Roblox users. What people are saying is that Second Life needs the same amount of growth in users Roblox has and to do that needs to constantly improve on retention, new user experience, features etc to get those numbers just as Roblox and similar companies do.

That doesn't mean Second Life needs to become like Roblox or the like or do exactly the same things they do. It means that Second Life needs to evolve and move with the times, expand, improve etc as they have done to keep 'current' with the rest of the tech world.

17 hours ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

And Roblox and SL are alike like apples and pears!

Roblox people are a totally different bunch than SL people XD 

Very true, however they have managed to grow their userbase year on year by 100,000's of users to reach 1.7million on at any time. Second Life on the other hand hasn't even reached its hype year current user numbers and those hype years ended in 2008/9.

[LibGwen]

Extending Sid Nagy's metaphor, remember silver tarnishes.

Too many posts in this thread remind me of when TV shows I've liked got popular.  New enthusiasts would flood the forums and executive mailboxes, "This show is great.  And don't you think it would be ever so much better if it was like this other show I used to watch but I don't any more?"  And soon the show would be *un*popular because the original audience had left in disgust and the new audience had moved on to trying to influence some other show.

*

When people ask me what Second Life is or what I do with it, I say "It's a platform.  You can do all sorts of things.  I really like that."  But I'm not aware of any articles or blogs that see it like that.

Edited June 24, 2021 by LibGwen

[Anna Nova]

Since this thread about der obersturmbahnfuehrer's pr failings has already been pirated.  Can I just say how much I like @Innula Zenovka's new signature, it's on the other page so from memory, something like:

“The lefties of the future will tweet a lot of made up Innula Zenovka quotes.”
Donald Putin. 

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

STOP CALLING THEM "LEGOS" !!!

Lego is a company name, not a product name. Lego make interlocking plastic bricks which are officially NOT called "Legos".

They, (Lego) would prefer you call them "Lego bricks", not (cringe) "Legos".

 

[Prokofy Neva]

44 minutes ago, LibGwen said:

Extending Sid Nagy's metaphor, remember silver tarnishes.

Too many posts in this thread remind me of when TV shows I've liked got popular.  New enthusiasts would flood the forums and executive mailboxes, "This show is great.  And don't you think it would be ever so much better if it was like this other show I used to watch but I don't any more?"  And soon the show would be *un*popular because the original audience had left in disgust and the new audience had moved on to trying to influence some other show.

*

When people ask me what Second Life is or what I do with it, I say "It's a platform.  You can do all sorts of things.  I really like that."  But I'm not aware of any articles or blogs that see it like that.

It's hard to sell as a "platform where you can do anything you want," because people don't know they need or want a virtual world and they don't even understand what a "platform" is. Maybe now that they have Slack everywhere, they might think of it as the "watercooler" section or something, but not really. 

The "platform" idea is akin to a "sandbox" or "free play" idea in the world of gaming and gamers can then understand SL as a place where you have the instruments and the elements of the game, but aren't driven into game play and have free-style, if you will.

Except that still leaves the problem of "what to do". In sandboxes, people practice the existing game, make mods, fool around with builds, but it's tied to the game. So what if there is really no game, but only a space where you can make games on top of it? Well, then people think of Steam or indy games, but you still aren't reaching most people who are not gamers, or are very light gamers.

What do you need a virtual world FOR? If you say "for a sense of presence," they could answer, but I can go on Facebook with pictures and stories and short video clips or even Facetime tethered to real life and have all the presence I need. Why do I need an artificial furry or dragon or svelte young version of myself, it's all kind of fake and sus.

My best friends in life, some of whom I have had since grade school, so that means more than 50 years, are people who aren't even on social media, let along something like SL. They don't use it at all, fearing punishment for saying the wrong thing at their jobs. Or they worry that it will be a time suck and pull them into time wastage. They are dutiful people with jobs and families and responsibilities, it doesn't even track for them as some kind of place you use during the pandemic, or when, say, a child moves half way across the country, because you have Skype or Zoom for that. 

Philip Rosedale has always expressed the essence of SL in a way I always found very compelling, which was that instead of being stuck with atoms of the building blocks of the world, which you can only modify up to a point, let's say by cooking a meal or pounding a table together, you have pixels which have infinite capacity for shaping and building. And as he said in the Lab Gab the other day, his original vision, I would add, after they got done blowing up things as a way of terraforming in Linden World was to aggressively build. Build and build. Of course, some of us felt that there should be more rules and rules policed more to prevent not just the tragedy of the commons but the edge-casers and edgelords with the devs' ear. Some Linden thought it was hella cool that some oldbie scripted a submarine, and that oldbie got to bring a sim to its knees nightly with his creations while the rest of the people on the sim who bought land there had no script time left over for their modest needs like doors or sit animations. The Lindens "solved" this problem with a kind of collectivization of script time, where everything would be slowed down equally. Not sure if they still do that. They seemed to have never met a script they didn't like. And that's still a problem. They could deprecate "teleport home" in a heartbeat and security orbs would still serve their purpose. Yet they don't make that very important step toward civilization and bearability.

So the current ad campaign seems to stress not creation and "your world/your imagination" in the sense of "world builders" as Fantasy Faire calls them, which is a tiny user sub-set, but creativity in costuming, like a kind of grand cosplay online in 3D. So you get to be a steam punk guy or a cat or a N'avi or fairy or whatever, and fly around and shapeshift. Except not everybody was in their high school play. Not everybody does cosplay or LARPs or gaming of any kind. Not everybody even enjoys dressing up for Halloween very much.  I think it's a tough sell to a very niche audience that goes and costumes in other ways in any event.

If "be somebody else" isn't going to fly, literally, and you try "be a better or more fun self," If you try to sell SL as a social, chatting, romance kind of space, that's hard because in the first few minutes or hours or days, the newbie just can't connect. The video that Soft Linden posted the other day and asked essentially, "how could the Lab retain this guy" was one that I felt was more about "why bother to retain such people". That the Lab even still thinks they *need* to attract and retain war gamers is just beyond mind boggling to me. They don't. Not at all. Leave them alone.

The guy in the video was one of those ADHD types, either with actual ADHD or ADHD culture, which is very common among the Internet young, where he races through the world at top speed burning through content, endlessly unsatisfied and endlessly singing the song "I feel useless and contagious/here we are now/entertain us". That sums it all up. So he's annoyed that the frame rate lags. He wants instant gratification with "something to do" or "something to see that's like wow" or someone to talk to who isn't AFK or a bot. Well, you're in the wrong pew, bud, go back to your war games on Steam or whatever. He complains that clubs keep banning him because they have a rule against new accounts. As well they should! Not only due to griefing but the more prevalent problem of jealous ex-partners coming back on alts to spy on their love interests or harass them. 

So what's the solution, Governor Linden makes a club? Where Mole Security is on tap and day-olds are allowed to come but kept from griefing if they came from 4chan? Yes, that happenin' company club called...Governor's Mansion? (you'd have to build a new one). City Hall? Town Square? People hate player governance attempts, however, except when they make them themselves and get the devs' ear (as in Bellisseria). So it would have to have a cool name but then it's just one more big job for the Lindens and they have enough.

Of course, I periodically repeat that to solve this problem, you need to bring back resident ads to be purchased at infohubs which we used to have in telehubs, hello. There's this fear that they will be too tacky or too XXX but in the past, they were for things like Riverwalk or fireworks or live music, the Lindens obviously vetted them to take out XXX material. There is no good reason not to allow people with venues or offerings to purchase ads like they do Classified, only ads that really get seen that aren't in the broken search. But there is so much jealousy and fear around this subject that it never advances even back to the status quo of 2004-2009 which was at telehubs.

I am waiting to actually see what this much-ballyhooed New User Experience is all about. When I made an account recently to see it, I was shocked -- appalled -- at how bad it was. You literally had to jump from cliff to cliff with the risk of falling into the abyss, all while dressed in 1970s disco clothing which I think most people would feel left them covered in shame. It was insanely bad. That idiotic "F1 is in the Client" sign which has two incomprehensible terms in it for most new users was still spinning around as if had purpose, although it should have been deleted 15 years ago. Yes, I'm aware that if the system picks up that you are not actually new, it might not let you see the new new -- but it's bad enough.

Sometimes companies have a vision of themselves and then try to morph their vision of their customers accordingly, and a lot of us are keenly aware that we were not the customers the Lindens wanted for years and years and maybe still aren't, although with Bellisseria, they did learn something.

To give you an idea: in the early hours after the news of Ebbe's death hit, people went to the Memorial Garden even though it is broken. And no Linden thought to turn on at least a 30 minute autoreturn and ability to put a candle, so people were holding giant torches out of the Library. I spotted a few oldbies and long-time lifers, some ancient enemies or friends who I hadn't seen in a long while, but most of the people were the kind who had spent at least US $40 on their avatars and weren't all that old or had the avatars out of the library.

There was one hipster looking fellow who simply said in chat, "Thank you, Ebbe, for helping me find the love of my life." Now isn't that what it's all about? That. Being a norm. Finding a partner. Not flying around like a vampire.

Then there was this woman in one of those bodies which I find off-putting where the legs are very spread apart and the hips exaggerated, the better for....child breeding, I guess -- who was apparently a born-again and was praying in the manner such folks do, acting as if Jesus was a personal friend but also acting as if they could give tips to God, "Lord, we ask you to bind on earth as in heaven..." etc. It was one of those ludicrous combos -- the body and the born-again praying. Born-agains as such don't bother me, because I went to a Pentecostal church for some years and I'm a practicing Catholic. I just feel in SL, you never know what religion or not-religion some one could be in a room of strangers so it's better to keep it to yourself.

But this woman went on praying, and a Mole actually said thank you, that was beautiful. And the fact is, some of the Moles, as people from the hinterlands of the US or from other countries, might culturally be closer to the actual user base than the lifer Lindens who are Silicon Valley techs and therefore not the norm. And again, this is SL. It's not the SL the forums divas like; it's not one they admit as atheists take great glee in pointing out religion is declining in the US and don't realize there is still a sizeable population of believing Christians. So here are the customers. Not the ones you wish you had. But the ones you do have. They need stability, rules, nice places to live, and not to have to look at really explicit adult content if they have not chosen it. They're like one of my customers tonight, who has four babies and a somewhat straying husband whom she has persuaded to look for a larger house given their brood -- in SL, that is. Or the customer who lived in the monk's dormitory as that's what there was, and then moved to the farm when that was available.

None of these people have the slightest interest in flying around in steampunk or N'avi knock-off costumes, you know? They actually like normal life and versimilitude, a word which I use which isn't really a word but it applies to SL. They may not get enough of normalcy in their own chaotic or impoverished lives and want the family and the picket fence, and God bless them.

 

 

 

 

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, LibGwen said:

Too many posts in this thread remind me of when TV shows I've liked got popular.  New enthusiasts would flood the forums and executive mailboxes, "This show is great.  And don't you think it would be ever so much better if it was like this other show I used to watch but I don't any more?"  And soon the show would be *un*popular because the original audience had left in disgust and the new audience had moved on to trying to influence some other show.

Why do people keep saying that everyone wants second life to become like another program just because some users want second life to improve on things to become modern again to generate new user interest. No one is saying that. Apparently according to what you posted you believe that people saying (like in this thread) that LL need to improve the new user experience, update graphics engine, improve on chat/profiles/default avatars etc is trying to become another program. 🙄

1 hour ago, LibGwen said:

When people ask me what Second Life is or what I do with it, I say "It's a platform.  You can do all sorts of things.  I really like that."  But I'm not aware of any articles or blogs that see it like that.

Yes, it is a platform whose features (that generated a new technological innovation never seen before) have been steadily replaced by 'out of platform' alternatives instead of allowing them to remain created inworld. Its core feature of you can build everything you want inworld whilst socialising etc has been ripped out.

Why is Roblox so popular? Because it allows a user to build something using either Roblox's assets or third party assets. It means the learning curve is reduced because a person only needs to learn how to build using Roblox or if they want another program. Then you can sell those assets and they are equally saleable. You will have a hard time finding someone to by a prim object these days.

Why is The Sims popular? Because it allows you to build things in world, enjoy them and people can sell them and share them. No need to learn another program. Why is Minecraft so popular? Because it allows you to build in world and share those builds and socialise with people. Why are survival games popular? Because they allow you to socialise and build things in world for people to come in and play/enjoy. See the common theme going on here?

Second Life is the predecessor of all of those games mentioned above. They were the first inworld user creation and socialise platform. The first to do both at the same time. Rather than expanding on that by updating the inworld creation system, allowing for inworld animation creation, better terrain controls, better scripting etc., they chose the easy way out and removed the one aspect that people and yes even gamers enjoy and want. Socialising whilst building in world. Keeping that immersion of doing everything in world or in the platform and not out of it.

[Sid Nagy]

As I already wrote in that other thread, when I came to SL in 2007 people where building everywhere. With a few weeks of practice your builds could be as good as those of others.
The amateur builder, who had no specific background, could make stuff.
Now the toddler blocs get you nowhere compared to the Blender artists. The amateur builders left.

Updating the builders tools with more prim models, a build in possibility to make meshes out of them, maybe even build in mesh libraries with basic shapes would improve SL's usability a lot again.
Back to the roots.
Bring the builders back in LL, then we have something to promote again.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Sid Nagy