Philip Rosedale is back as "Strategic Advisor"

[Coffee Pancake]

34 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I'd have thought income vs expenditure has to come into it somewhere, doesn't it?    Do you have any idea (preferably based on something other than speculation) what those figures might look like?

Of course not, no one does.

We get to see the PR movements, industry press, the hiring priorities and the glass-ceiling reviews.

There is no escaping we're on the cusp of a metaverse / virtual worlds bubble with our pants round our ankles and an 18 year advantage that counts for absolutely nothing. Roblox, VR Chat and others are stealing our lunch money in ways we can only dream about and having tremendous fun doing it.

SL is to virtual worlds what Unity is to game development, or at least it should be.

Their aren't that many places to look for reasons why it's not.

[Pamela Galli]

I just played Wordle for the first time, now I am hooked, like millions over the past few weeks. Because it is simple, easy, fun. Like Roblox. Or Words w Friends. Unlike SL.
 

My suggestion wrt SL attracting new users has always been to hire experts in task analysis (educators) to design an introductory SL experience. A place to have fun without having to undergo the trial by fire that we all survived but most do not. Sort of like, you can stay there or you can level up to current SL experience. Maybe Phillip gets that? 

BTW for about five minutes there was once a basic web based intro to SL which I thought did a pretty good job. Ideally that would be the best way to introduce ppl to SL.No idea why it disappeared.

Wordle 212 4/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩
🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Pamela Galli

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

My suggestion wrt SL attracting new users has always been to hire experts in task analysis (educators) to design an introductory SL experience. A place to have fun without having to undergo the trial by fire that we all survived but most do not. Sort of like, you can stay there or you can level up to current SL experience. Maybe Phillip gets that? 

SL is no more complicated than any any other video game, certainly easier in many respects to the systems and mechanics in play in a typical MMO. Oh no !! .. we have money and inventory and shopping .. to which the response is "just the one currency then.. come back when you have 272, each with their own sources and vendors".

The new user experience gets all the flack for low retention rates, and nothing LL ever did changed how many people stayed.

Maybe because it's not the new user experience that's the problem. Maybe people aren't idiots.

SL's problems start with the jank and crashes and burn the moment people ask slightly deeper questions,

• so .. why am I here?
• what am I supposed to do now?
• I need to spend how much to get a half decent avatar?
• WHY WOULD I SPEND THAT ? 
• I DONT EVEN KNOW WHY I'M HERE.

Then when you show people what they can do in SL, they don't see the potential for all the jank that we turn a blind eye to.

A small percentage saw past the garbage and they stayed.

We are those people.

 

 

[Alazarin Mondrian]

On 1/14/2022 at 11:38 AM, Miles05 Reitveld said:

Nevertheless, I am hoping that something fruitful will come from this venture as VRChat, Neos VR and other platforms are eating up LL's current share of creative space. Something needs to change soon before they're eaten alive...

 

 

I have to admit I'm seriously underwhelmed by VRChat and some of the other new virtual worlds that have sprouted up recently. I find VRChat almost impossible to log into. 9 times out of 10 I log into the website, pick a location try to go there and nothing happens. Sansar looks really high quality but it's kinda empty. SL's got critical mass and a huge internal economy so it won't be going away any time soon. Updating the graphics and physics engines might be useful in order to appeal to a new audience. Also, now that SL's hosted on AWS maybe they can arrange for some of the graphics rendering to be done server-side so that the entry-level hardware requirements aren't so expensive: cheap, fast and easy is always popular.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

13 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

so .. why am I here?

In most peoples' cases, it's for the sexxies 😉

[Paul Hexem]

Unless making him "strategic advisor" will somehow "strategically" fix all the bugs and issues that have existed since the first time he worked here, this is like celebrating that you changed a tire on your car that has no engine.

[Sammy Huntsman]

SL needs a total overhaul of its shaping of bodies. From the ability to mold your face like clay to the point, where the need for ethnic heads and flat chest mods are not needed. I mean imagine this, if you lowered your breasts to 0, instead of it's current look. There were no breasts there, or you can choose to put breasts on males through the same edit appearance menu. So there would be no need for male or female mesh bodies. You can literally mould your body to your desire and aren't limited by the current constraints. 

[Coffee Pancake]

48 minutes ago, Alazarin Mondrian said:

In most peoples' cases, it's for the sexxies 😉

It's really not, the sexxies are easy to find, but as an active population with singular purpose it's pretty small.

Most people are here for the other people, and the possibility of maybe some occasional sexxies.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

Knowing why people made accounts and logged in would be nice to know if growing SL is the goal.  When I first joined, I had no idea that people did the sexxies online.  I have learned a lot that I didn't need to know in the last decade+.

I joined to meet people from other places, to make my very small RL bigger, and to "travel" to places, real and imaginary, that I could never see in RL.  I also joined as a challenge to learn some new skills.  I stayed because I enjoyed both of those things over the years and still do.  I knew absolutely no one who was already in here.  I saw an advertisement somewhere saying I could meet people from all over the world.

[Coffee Pancake]

Dragging us back on topic , @Inara Pey just posted a write up ..

https://modemworld.me/2022/01/17/hi-fi-and-the-lab-in-the-press-further-speculation-from-me/

Pay attention to staff details at the start

Quote

 

In all some 7 members of the Hi Fi team will be moving to work alongside the Second Life engineering team, effectively increasing it by around 20%.

The move will mean that around 165 people will be working on Second Life and Tilia.

 

.. for a tech company that's dependent on software, such a small percentage of the workforce are connected to engineering (all of engineering, not just viewer shiny).

That's what business numbers being a trash fire looks like, advancing the product is not a priority and because growth can't be easily attributed to engineering, engineering gets no money for big projects or staff so spends all it's time fighting fires or focused on things business think are important (like the 360 snapshot functionality, that a tiny few of us will use).

 

[Pamela Galli]

11 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Knowing why people made accounts and logged in would be nice to know if growing SL is the goal.  When I first joined, I had no idea that people did the sexxies online.  I have learned a lot that I didn't need to know in the last decade+.

I joined to meet people from other places, to make my very small RL bigger, and to "travel" to places, real and imaginary, that I could never see in RL.  I also joined as a challenge to learn some new skills.  I stayed because I enjoyed both of those things over the years and still do.  I knew absolutely no one who was already in here.  I saw an advertisement somewhere saying I could meet people from all over the world.

Agree, meeting people is primary. If my intro to SL had been a scenic cafe where I could have sat and chatted or danced, I might have stayed there, at least until heard about the advantages of leveling up.

[Innula Zenovka]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Of course not, no one does.

We get to see the PR movements, industry press, the hiring priorities and the glass-ceiling reviews.

There is no escaping we're on the cusp of a metaverse / virtual worlds bubble with our pants round our ankles and an 18 year advantage that counts for absolutely nothing. Roblox, VR Chat and others are stealing our lunch money in ways we can only dream about and having tremendous fun doing it.

SL is to virtual worlds what Unity is to game development, or at least it should be.

Their aren't that many places to look for reasons why it's not.

Yes, but you said "business numbers are doing that the same as always, same old trash fire."  

I mistakenly took these "business numbers" to mean figures on a balance sheet, but clearly you meant something else by the phrase. 

What are these numbers and where can I take a look at them?

[LittleMe Jewell]

Quote

In all some 7 members of the Hi Fi team will be moving to work alongside the Second Life engineering team, effectively increasing it by around 20%.

The move will mean that around 165 people will be working on Second Life and Tilia.

For those that don't want to do the math, the above means that LL had 35 folks on the engineering team, has added 7 from Hi Fi, bringing the total engineering team to 42 people ---- out of the 165 total people working on Second Life & Tilia. 

So 25% of the people working on Second Life and Tilia are on the engineering team -- the other 123 folks are doing other stuff.

[Prokofy Neva]

9 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

And LL only half-implements major features.

A HiFi "rep" was present at the end of the last server meeting and basically eluded to what all this is about and that the same maneuver was done in HiFi.

All these niche, gimmicky features which no one asked for, only benefit a handful of users and even some developers are seemingly skeptical of are simply to showcase & promote the platform's "capabilities" to outside investors and advertise "third-party" software for purchase/acquisition to outside buyers.

There is nothing in it for average, everyday users other than the return of "familiar face" to persuade them that something magical is on the horizon like it was the last two times "familiar face" showed up, when nothing of use to the users resulted from it.

Alternatively replace "familiar face" with "rockstar daddy" or "MMO Jesus", if that does it for you better.

Well, let's say you yourself were the returning "Rockstar Mama". What is the first thing you would do to improve SL? Would the Lindens let you do this thing? And if not, why not?

To me, the first thing they should do is "fix Search," but that isn't important to most people as they are on Firestorm, where it isn't broken, plus it's never been as "fun" as other things.

So my question is, what is the first thing you would do that isn't like a "nice to have feature request" like "let's put SL on mobile" or but some practical thing that would improve all of SL as it is?

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

For those that don't want to do the math, the above means that LL had 35 folks on the engineering team, has added 7 from Hi Fi, bringing the total engineering team to 42 people ---- out of the 165 total people working on Second Life & Tilia. 

So 25% of the people working on Second Life and Tilia are on the engineering team -- the other 123 folks are doing other stuff.

Is it an odd configuration to hire the *engineers* of another company and presumably put them on full salary with benefits, but then the idea guy, the VC who is an engineer himself -- Philip -- is only a "consultant" (advisor)? Maybe that was his wish? Or maybe that's how it *is* done? It's not an aqui-hire but some other animal.

Still, the news report says that High Fidelity *invested in* LL. That means they/Philip put their own money in, "skin in the game" as they call it in Silicon Valley. And knowing its history, and how long it took Mitch Kapor and Pierre Omidyaar to get *their* money out of the game with interest -- "a liquidity event" -- Philip would be realistic about what would be happening with "his money". And its really his money from what I can tell, i.e. not like a Bain Capital leveraged buy out kind of thing.

And I keep thinking of that $100 million worth of hardware that Philip referenced in the creation of SL. It makes me feel as if I have been flying around inside the Kohinoor Diamond. It's too bad they let microparcels and ad-farming ruin the value of their Kohinoor Diamond.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

For those that don't want to do the math, the above means that LL had 35 folks on the engineering team, has added 7 from Hi Fi, bringing the total engineering team to 42 people ---- out of the 165 total people working on Second Life & Tilia. 

So 25% of the people working on Second Life and Tilia are on the engineering team -- the other 123 folks are doing other stuff.

Is that a good co-efficient?

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

NICE

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 1/14/2022 at 6:53 AM, Tama Suki said:

 I don't understand why SL has to be advertised as a silly game to entertain only bored and wealthy elderly housewives 

There are actually a lot of men in SL. For one reason or another. ahem.  

[Pamela Galli]

Interesting video of 2021 new user experience. Comments too.

After all these years, this is what LL has come up with for new ppl.

 

 

[Paul Hexem]

3 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

For those that don't want to do the math, the above means that LL had 35 folks on the engineering team, has added 7 from Hi Fi, bringing the total engineering team to 42 people ---- out of the 165 total people working on Second Life & Tilia. 

So 25% of the people working on Second Life and Tilia are on the engineering team -- the other 123 folks are doing other stuff.

That's actually terrible.

But it's not uncommon for modern games today.

The days of software companies (especially game ones) being made up of actual devs, are long gone.

[Prokofy Neva]

16 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

People really do have to remember that we're customers of a corporation, and marketing isn't just reserved for attracting new people or media gossip, plenty of time and effort is spent on how to present things to us.

We're only ever told half the truth, given half the picture, half the time at twice the price.

It's going to take a lot more than the headline "good news" to turn this ship around.

We will have more developers and some of HiFi's IP to play with, that should result in some movement of the dial ... if the business numbers folk don't steal them.

Philip is back .. but actually not. He's going to show up to some meetings and "advise" .. probably on a high level abstracted basis. His Twitter feed is a fairly good place to start if you want to get a feel for what that might be like. He's not in charge or steering the ship, business numbers are doing that the same as always, same old trash fire.

 

LL have basically one shot to make this work, or it's all for nothing and the Tilia life raft will get pulled down with the ship. 

We're only ever told half the truth, given half the picture, half the time at twice the price.

That much, eh?

But there are these 7 engineers who are going to come riding over the hilltop like the Magnificent Seven, no?

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

That's actually terrible.

But it's not uncommon for modern games today.

The days of software companies (especially game ones) being made up of actual devs, are long gone.

Game companies tend to be stuffed to the gills with content artists rather than programmers. Building all the assets from scratch is a huge undertaking that easily takes years of work, unlike SL, asset production isn't a solo job with one person expected to tick all the boxes.

1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

We're only ever told half the truth, given half the picture, half the time at twice the price.

That much, eh?

But there are these 7 engineers who are going to come riding over the hilltop like the Magnificent Seven, no?

When 7 engineers with boosts the engineering capability by 20% .. it's a start. 

[Paul Hexem]

19 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Game companies tend to be stuffed to the gills with content artists rather than programmers. Building all the assets from scratch is a huge undertaking that easily takes years of work, unlike SL, asset production isn't a solo job with one person expected to tick all the boxes.

I was thinking more about the companies from the 80's and 90's like Naughty Dog or Blizzard or ID Software, versus what they look like today.

Back then, the same people playing and building the games ran the companies. Today, not so much.

[Maryanne Solo]

The video, (Ty Pamela), does not address the noobs main gripe being exactly the same thing that still astounds me after all these years.
Which is: there was no description or explanation of how the world "arrives" in your viewer.

The very first thing new users must understand is the slide show/yet to rezz factor, which as a first impression, is truly horrendous. 8-/
Waiting for your world to rezz is the most nonsensical thing one could imagine, but is of course, the present & the future. 

[Pamela Galli]

LL should put ChinRey and Penny Patton in charge of designing and building the new user experience, and staffing it with official guides.

And see what happens.