I can't be the only one who believe SL's Second Rising is not impossible, what do you think? - Strategic Overview

[lucagrabacr]

Just putting this out here, to make it seem less like I'm just upping my expectations without any goal

I'd say we have done it when people and the media look at SL and then go like, "Wow holy this is so great, why don't more people get on SL? Guys look at SL now, wow!" - and then people get on SL because it's great and exciting, and you know, like, snowball this rejuvenation of SL as the virtual world that keeps going and gets better and everyone are just excited about it, talk about it, make videos about it, see SL in a very different light

I follow all the Second Life coverage as much as I can and a lot of them keep referring to it in borderline past tense, or "it's still there", "still around", "still profitable" comparing SL with all these newer virtual worlds that offer a lot less than what SL offers because they are better at convincing people that they are the better shinier platforms 

Edited September 18, 2021 by lucagrabacr
typo

[Drayke Newall]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I have no expectation that a "AAA game level designer" could do anything at all with SL, but just to be clear about Rod Humble's tenure, if anything he wasn't budget-constrained enough. It was his time as CEO that saw the Lab buy Desura, LittleTextPeople, and Blocksworld, launch Patterns and Creatorverse, and oversee the death throes of the earlier-acquired Avatars United. A whole lot of money and time was squandered back then.

Blocksworld was actually a success and popular that ran from 2013 to 2020. The reason why it began to fail was, LL stopped updating it from around 2018 due to moving all their attention and effort to Sansar and so with no updates users dropped. Sansar was the cause of that failure not Blocksworld itself and was a good move from Rod that generated income for 7 years for Linden Lab.

Patterns and Creatoverse was what I referenced in another thread where LL wanted to hang to the coat tails of more popular games, in this case minecraft.

As to Avatars United, that acquisition was never about keeping it alive but obtaining rights to the profile and social tech which is still used in Second Life today. Additionally, that was purchased in Jan 2010 for that purpose and Rod was employed in December 2010 so he had nothing to do with that acquisition nor its termination after the tech merged with SL as planned and closed in September 2010, 3 months prior to Rod being employed.

LittleTextPeople was bought on the assumption that its tech could be used as part of entry into the mobile environment in the form of a sandbox text app. That was not a failure of Rod but a failure of LL not perusing mobile integration until last year.

As to Desura I have no idea why they sold it off after buying it however considering it was a marketplace distribution system I would dare say they were thinking of using it for a UI Marketplace however for some reason sold it. The fact that they planned to absorb Desura's development team and tech into Second Life as per their acquisition announcement shows this was probably the case. That is my assumption though however it makes sense as to why they bought it.

So I would say that Rod actually had many success and given he wanted to move into the mobile environment in 2012 shows that he had far more foresight than is predecessors and successors. His only real failure was Creatorverse and Patterns.

[Solar Legion]

I see the Wish and Complaint brigades are back in full swing again.

[lucagrabacr]

3 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I see the Wish and Complaint brigades are back in full swing again.

A lot of us who are for modernization of SL are not really complaining for the most part, more like showing that SL can be better and that things aren't as gloomy in term of SL's future as many would believe (and propagate) most of us are just really invested in SL and it's frustrating sometimes to see it unfairly perceived over and over again so I guess there's where the venting comes from

[Chroma Starlight]

46 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

STOP trying to make it look like I said something I NEVER SAID OR EVEN THOUGHT. I am not a villain. I don't even use Facebook. Or Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Discord or any of those platforms. I am not the horrible person you are trying to convince everyone else of.

But don't worry, I won't ever bother to reach out to you again. You've bitten the hand that offered compassion too many times. 

That wasn't my intent, I don't want anyone to be upset. I regret if my posts have upset you. I'm glad to hear you don't use it, I think those of us who refuse are better off than those who submit.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Chroma Starlight

[Drayke Newall]

36 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Rod built on what Will had already established.

You are missing my point. I am not crediting Rod for the development or creation of The Sims. Other than the oversite of the entire project and EA Play's marketing he had nothing to do with The sims development wise. I am crediting his oversight of EA Play and EA's team at the time and his tenure as head of The Sims for later games in making the game popular through marketing and distribution. Nothing more nothing less.

So I am not sure why you are so insistent that am saying that he is responsible for the success of The Sims from a development point of view. I said nothing of the sort. Simply that because of EA's distribution and marketing that Rod headed through EA Play's distribution and marketing, The Sims reached a wider audience and became a success. That is not my words but Will's in that he said he was choosing EA to acquire Maxis for the distribution network.

Anybody can create a good game but it is the marketing and distribution that makes a game do well as people need to see and buy it first to see how good it is.

In the same way it is marketing and distribution that allows second life to become popular despite how good or bad it is. A game could be terrible but have good marketing and make millions (like Cyberpunk 2077 recently) or a game could be brilliant like the sims and have bad marketing and make no money (obviously this wasn't the case).

[Drayke Newall]

15 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I see the Wish and Complaint brigades are back in full swing again.

[Silent Mistwalker]

49 minutes ago, tailpa said:

SHE'S NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU.

SHE DOES NOT HAVE PASSION ABOUT YOU.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU, OKAY?

RELAX, WE ARE ALL HERE FOR FUN, RIGHT?

I know that is you Chroma. Your forum avatar makes it obvious. You've used the same image in dozens of spammy posts under Chroma. 

Stop putting words in my mouth I never said and trying to make it look like I believe things I do not. I am not you. I am nothing like you.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, lucagrabacr said:

A lot of us who are for modernization of SL are not really complaining for the most part, more like showing that SL can be better and that things aren't as gloomy in term of SL's future as many would believe (and propagate) most of us are just really invested in SL and it's frustrating sometimes to see it unfairly perceived over and over again so I guess there's where the venting comes from

Like any service, once it has gained a particular reputation there is nothing whatsoever you or anyone else can do do squash/change that perception. Nothing. When you see such things, shake you head and move on.

As for this recent trend some have shown in trying to compare it to newer environments .... It needs to stop. Short of a complete rewrite from the ground up, it is not going to even superficially resemble any of the more recent comers. At all. And that is good.

Some time ago, I would answer such calls for such seemingly drastic change with the following: "Are you going to pay for any replacement content for everyone?" The usual responses amounted to hand waving and "It's not my responsibility" - showcasing that many simply do not care how much time and money others may have sunk in, they want these changes and they want them yesterday.

If Linden Lab is to go forward with such an overhaul, they need to do so as a wholly separate project. They need to build on what made the original Second Life so appealing - not the failure that was Sansar. And there's a lot of people they need to simply ignore.

If they develop such an upgrade on the side and then deploy it side by side, they can then get feedback and can properly gauge interest/reactions without sacrificing what they already have. Give people the option to move and replace any inventory they may lose.

[Solar Legion]

And right on cue, a serial complainer shows they do not like reality.

[Drayke Newall]

8 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Like any service, once it has gained a particular reputation there is nothing whatsoever you or anyone else can do do squash/change that perception. Nothing. When you see such things, shake you head and move on.

As for this recent trend some have shown in trying to compare it to newer environments .... It needs to stop. Short of a complete rewrite from the ground up, it is not going to even superficially resemble any of the more recent comers. At all. And that is good.

Some time ago, I would answer such calls for such seemingly drastic change with the following: "Are you going to pay for any replacement content for everyone?" The usual responses amounted to hand waving and "It's not my responsibility" - showcasing that many simply do not care how much time and money others may have sunk in, they want these changes and they want them yesterday.

If Linden Lab is to go forward with such an overhaul, they need to do so as a wholly separate project. They need to build on what made the original Second Life so appealing - not the failure that was Sansar. And there's a lot of people they need to simply ignore.

If they develop such an upgrade on the side and then deploy it side by side, they can then get feedback and can properly gauge interest/reactions without sacrificing what they already have. Give people the option to move and replace any inventory they may lose.

I must be sick as I agree with what you posted. A rare moment indeed.

Whilst I still think minor things need to be done for QoL (obviously things you dont agree with) any form of major update to Second Life such as graphics or regions or even the viewer unfortunately etc. just isn't possible especially after how disappointing and lacklustre EEP was. The sooner people realise this the better.

:EDIT:

6 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

And right on cue, a serial complainer shows they do not like reality.

I am not a complainer at all. Whilst I disagree with how LL have done things and wish they did better things I know it isn't going to happen. There is nothing wrong with people discussing wishes and hopes for a platform as it shows people still believe in the platform.

Whether they happen or not is an entirely different story. If LL were not interested in this kind of discussion of feature requests then they wouldn't have a feature request section in Jira.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Drayke Newall

[tailpa]

9 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I know that is you Chroma. Your forum avatar makes it obvious. You've used the same image in dozens of spammy posts under Chroma. 

Stop putting words in my mouth I never said and trying to make it look like I believe things I do not. I am not you. I am nothing like you.

hm.

Quote

> You say "Null, how do you think I should explain things to Silent Mistwalker?"

Null laughs. "Why do you need my advice for that?"
You shrug, and Null smiles. "To be honest, I don't care," they admit, and you know it's true, somehow. "But I think maybe you should just be honest with her."

Chroma and I are both a part of the Starlight System.

[Silent Mistwalker]

15 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

You are missing my point. I am not crediting Rod for the development or creation of The Sims. Other than the oversite of the entire project and EA Play's marketing he had nothing to do with The sims development wise. I am crediting his oversight of EA Play and EA's team at the time and his tenure as head of The Sims for later games in making the game popular through marketing and distribution. Nothing more nothing less.

So I am not sure why you are so insistent that am saying that he is responsible for the success of The Sims from a development point of view. I said nothing of the sort. Simply that because of EA's distribution and marketing that Rod headed through EA Play's distribution and marketing, The Sims reached a wider audience and became a success. That is not my words but Will's in that he said he was choosing EA to acquire Maxis for the distribution network.

Anybody can create a good game but it is the marketing and distribution that makes a game do well as people need to see and buy it first to see how good it is.

In the same way it is marketing and distribution that allows second life to become popular despite how good or bad it is. A game could be terrible but have good marketing and make millions (like Cyberpunk 2077 recently) or a game could be brilliant like the sims and have bad marketing and make no money (obviously this wasn't the case).

I think we're missing each other's points in the sense that you're not really talking about what I was.

The Sims 2 and 3 sold themselves. It was the popularity of the original Sims that sold the Sims 2 and the popularity of Sims 2 that sold 3. I'm not the only person who has been playing the Sims since 2000. 

Holay! I've been playing the Sims for 21 years! 😲

[Drayke Newall]

2 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I think we're missing each other's points in the sense that you're not really talking about what I was.

The Sims 2 and 3 sold themselves. It was the popularity of the original Sims that sold the Sims 2 and the popularity of Sims 2 that sold 3. I'm not the only person who has been playing the Sims since 2000. 

Holay! I've been playing the Sims for 21 years! 😲

Then we agree. My point was just simply that the marketing of the original Sims was largely responsible for it being a success and EA Play which Rod oversaw was responsible for that.

I too play the sims and have the since the original. That said I dont like sims 4 so dont play that as there is too little content and not a fan of the newer sim appearance.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

On reflection, looking at the past additions to SL such as Bento, Animesh, BoM, EEP, these are signs of incremental improvements. That's a good sign.

The one thing I would absolutely hate would be SL rewritten to try and look like something else. It's unique, and it should stay that way. Similarly, I would hate for somebody like FB to buy SL and "turn it into the soclal platform you've always dreamed of".

Sansar was an experiment to try and build a new SL from scratch, let's not go into why it failed, but the way ahead must therefore be incremental improvements of what we already have.

[Coffee Pancake]

Quote

WE CAN'T SL IS DEAD LET US DIE QUIETLY PLZ

I'm 100% team @lucagrabacr on this. 

SL can and should be better.

SL can and should return to growth and relevance.

SL should be the primary focus of LL.

SL should see serious investment.

We, as users of SL, are absolutely right to demand that LL put in the required sustained effort and investment to make that happen.

It is not acceptable to passively sit by and allow LL to make hay while the sun shines, letting us slide further into irrelevance while funding a seeming never ending litany of business diversification side quests.

The entirety of SL's life has been against the backdrop of LL desperately trying to do anything that wasn't in the interests of their core product and customers using and paying for it. Sansar being the pinnacle of this "if only we had entirely different customers" attitude.

We are and have been paying for all of this for the last 18 years. We are demonstrably serious numbers business numbers. We are representative of real customers prepared to spend real money and indicative of a much wider untapped audience.

There should be no debate here.

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Then we agree. My point was just simply that the marketing of the original Sims was largely responsible for it being a success and EA Play which Rod oversaw was responsible for that.

I too play the sims and have the since the original. That said I dont like sims 4 so dont play that as there is too little content and not a fan of the newer sim appearance.

Except EA had nothing to do with the original marketing as they didn't own Maxis at the time, which means Rod had nothing to do with it. He simply built on what was already there. Which is what usually happens. Someone starts something and someone else takes it over and runs with it. Kind of like football. The ball starts out in the quarterback's hands but he rarely (if ever) makes the touchdown. The player that does make the touchdown didn't initiate the paly, the quarterback did but the quarterback never gets the credit for the touchdown even though he s the one that made the touchdown possible. That's what I'm getting at. Will was the quarterback.

Sims 4 is way better now. If all you have is the base game then yeah, it's boring as. They have really been knocking it out of the park with these last expansions and packs. Some really, really nice objects and entertaining game play has been added. Oh and a lot of things have been added to the base game over time, like terrain tools and pond tools and all kinds of things.

I've never liked the cartoony characters but it a game intended for teens not adults so I deal with it and just add a few things for them (clothing, skin and hair) to make them more real. There is enough free downloadable content from well known creators to make the characters look as good as SL avatars and even better than SL avatars.

Sims 4 did get off to a very, very rocky start and I almost stopped playing it for good. But I also knew that it would take time to make any improvements once they learned how bad they had messed up and I was willing to give them that time. So far, they have met my expectations and in many ways exceeded them. There is still room for improvement, of course. What I'm saying is Maxis (NOT EA) has really been putting in the effort to listen to the players and give us what we want. Oddly enough, all that happened long after Rod was gone from EA, not while he was still there.

I'm sorry. I'm the wrong person to be tooting Rod's horn at. I left SL for many years because of what he was trying to do.

[Finite]

I think a nice step forward for SL would be for it to become more local and less web-based. For instance, having your inventory and a handful of specific sims that you regularly visit already stored on your hard drive so they're already stored rather than having to constantly download and redownload them whenever you visit.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 minute ago, Finite said:

I think a nice step forward for SL would be for it to become more local and less web-based. For instance, having your inventory and a handful of specific sims that you regularly visit already stored on your hard drive so they're already stored rather than having to constantly download and redownload them whenever you visit.

That would really be a step backwards since that has already been done in a much older 3d environment known as Active Worlds (opened 8 years before SL in 1995, SL in 2003) and it's still in business after more than 25 years. You have been able to host your own region (known as worlds) and your own object path form your pc from the beginning. Or you can pay for hosting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

But I happen to agree with you on being able to host our own regions at least if not the object paths as well.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Finite said:

I think a nice step forward for SL would be for it to become more local and less web-based. For instance, having your inventory and a handful of specific sims that you regularly visit already stored on your hard drive so they're already stored rather than having to constantly download and redownload them whenever you visit.

Your inventory is nothing more than a list of pointers to the actual entries plus any relevant property data, on top of there already being a cache on disk (which is how/why you can have "missing" inventory on one Viewer and not on another).

As for the Region data ... again, that already exists to a certain degree.

Having it otherwise would eat a fair bit of your disk space for a marginal gain - it has to contact the servers for updates/to update anyone else that may be nearby for Region data at the very least. Your inventory is given a similar treatment for each and every single outfit change, item rez, item creation and edit.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

I noticed there was no big giant thread last weekend…. & here we are! 😁

I don’t have any insight into other platforms or games to make a comparison.  But I think SL would see an uptick in cultivating a growing new user base that actually becomes regulars if there were some new position like a Mole that can meet & greet new users & offer guidance in a corralled new user area, or something to that effect- cause if you’re not someone with previous game experience SL is very overwhelming.

If there was some way to offer an introductory free or reduced rate1 month of premium, somehow one per user, not avatar might go far in generating more interest, too.  Tho I don’t know how that is enforced if it could be.  

OP has a passion for SL that is admirable.  But we’ve seen what those higher ups do with their profits in the name of developing their product: the wasteland known as Sansar.  It might be fruitful if those powers that be peeked in on conversations like these.

[Coffee Pancake]

10 minutes ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

But we’ve seen what those higher ups do with their profits in the name of developing their product: the wasteland known as Sansar.  

That kind of nonsense is not acceptable.

Lets be brutally honest here. LL is SL. Tilia is SL.  SL pays all the bills. 

We've had 18 years of hoping they would get a clue and do the right thing.

Holding their feet to the fire is the only thing we can do and it's about time we started doing it.

 

Lets start with normalizing all staff using the platform and assembling & updating their own avatars the same we have to. I don't care if it's support staff or an engineer or legal or a manager.

If it's too hard or time consuming for them to figure out, GOOD.

[Finite]

1 hour ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

That would really be a step backwards since that has already been done in a much older 3d environment known as Active Worlds (opened 8 years before SL in 1995, SL in 2003) and it's still in business after more than 25 years. You have been able to host your own region (known as worlds) and your own object path form your pc from the beginning. Or you can pay for hosting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

But I happen to agree with you on being able to host our own regions at least if not the object paths as well.

I didn't mean as to host it. I meant as to have most of where we visit already stored as in how most other games are. When I travel in say GTA or WoW or any other game I am loading them off my harddrive since they are already installed opposed to constantly having to download and load as what happens in SL.

I think people have this performance expectation that SL should run like other games when it's currently impossible since the game is completely web based.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Finite

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 minute ago, Finite said:

I didn't mean as to host it. I meant as to have most of where we visit already stored as in how most other games are. When I travel in say GTA or WoW or any other game I am loading them off my harddrive since they are already installed opposed to constantly having to download and load as what happens in SL.

With most other games the environment won't change unpredictably. In SL I've been at a club event where the owner started rebuilding the club in the middle of it.

[Doris Johnsky]

I wasn't aware SL "first life" had passed on quietly, if unexpectedly.