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Citibank analysis of metaverse potential, with references to Second Life.


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2 hours ago, animats said:

Recently, Roblox and Horizon have come under fire for having a capability for sex. VRchat has sex. Even Fortnite has sex

i haven't looked into their Terms of Service recently, but am pretty sure these platforms specifically preclude sexualised activity as a condition of use. Whereas Second Life does not

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15 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

i haven't looked into their Terms of Service recently, but am pretty sure these platforms specifically preclude sexualised activity as a condition of use. Whereas Second Life does not

VRChat has rather specific regulations on such content. It is allowed but only in instances set to Friends/Invite Only - Public it is outright banned (and will result in you being banned) whereas Friends+ and Invite+ are risky, disallowed on "paper" but doable if you trust those who you're inviting/allowing in.

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21 hours ago, animats said:

Citibank metaverse paper. A long read. Recommended for management-level Lindens. Mentions Second Life. A few quotes, from sections written by different people:

"In the early 2000s, Second Life offered a virtual world for users to hang out together and buy/sell virtual items to each other without any goals or objectives; depicting a “proto-Metaverse” in the words of Matthew Ball. However, it failed to see mass adoption as it was complex, restricted to PC-only, two dimensional, and pre-dated enabling technologies. By contrast, gaming environments like Roblox (2004) and Fortnite (2017) boast hundreds of millions of users and offer users goals and objectives to achieve in a virtual gaming environment."

 

"Taking a step back, this is not the first time we have witnessed activity in virtual worlds. If we go back to the early 2000's, Second Life had created a novel form of escapism via access to virtual worlds. One of the main reasons Second Life did not scale in 2003, when it was launched, is because the correct primitives and incentive alignment mechanisms were lacking. Today we refer to them as the Web3 tech stack, which powers a multitude of protocols in DeFi and the Metaverse. By contrast, Web2 platforms, which are often times monopolistic, do not enable any form of ownership or monetization for their users. You can think of this paradigm as a neo-communist model, where active users contribute to the value creation and development of a platform or a product, without any “return on involvement.”"

 

"To understand the first instance of what a functioning economy in the Metaverse looks like, look no further than Second Life. In many ways ahead of its time, Second Life is a user-created online world, in existence since 2003. It allows people to create avatars for themselves and have a “second life” of sorts in a virtual world. It can be viewed as part game, part chat room, and part commerce, and still has a dedicated user base of a few 100,000 active users. Second Life has had a thriving and vibrant economy for close to two decades; it had a 2021 GDP of $650 million, with 345 million transactions of virtual goods, real estate, and services. We expect the Metaverse of the future will include in-game tokens, traditional money, and digitally native primitives tied to NFTs and other tokens With Linden dollars (L$) as the in-world currency, Second Life details the various ways to make money in the virtual world: buy L$ on the in-house exchange LindeX, play Linden earning games, get a job buying and selling land, create and sell content, participate in referrer/affiliate programs, host and perform at events, sell information, win prizes, fill out surveys, and so on. We expect the Metaverse of the future would encompass existing forms of money and also a set of digitally-native primitives, tied to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other tokens, that were out-of-scope for a pre-blockchain virtual world. One of the key reasons for the introduction of the in-game currency L$, was to reduce transaction costs. In 2008-09, virtual shoes from Adidas cost 50 L$, roughly $0.19. If paid directly with U.S. dollars, transaction costs for the purchase will usually far exceed the price of the goods. By passing traditional payment rails, and using in-world currencies exclusively, transaction costs were kept low."

 

The paper is rather optimistic. Most of the content was actually written by, and is credited to, people heavily invested in cryptocurrencies. However, it was edited by Citibank, and there's some balance. A useful read if you're into where this is all going.

When 18 years ago I called the SL ideology "techno-communism" - and I wasn't alone in that in fact, the then-editor of Wired used the same term -- I was ridiculed and griefed by hackers wearing Soviet uniforms. But that's what it is, when it isn't some variation of Randism, which itself replicates some of the illiberal features of communism in opposition to it. "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." 

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18 hours ago, animats said:

Linden Lab needs to get Second Life un-banned from Twitch.

Why?

No one on Twitch cares about jazz/blues clubs, art exhibits, scenery or flying/driving/sailing crappy vehicles from one crappy region to another crappy region.

They care about gaming.

Also, Linden Realms, crappy SL combat systems and RL tabletop ripoffs do NOT count as "gaming".

Give us industry standard equivalent tools for creating games, first.

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If Twitch were to create a new "Metaverse" category then I think it would be wise of LL to try and negotiate with them to unban SL purely for the benefit of reminding would-be metaverse travellers that Second Life is still around.

There are a variety of communities on Twitch and while gamers are definitely the predominant demographic there is a comparatively small but thriving creative community and a host of other communities centered around a wide range of interests catered to by different channels/streamers, and there is undoubtedly some crossover between some of those interests and the sorts of activities and entertainment that can be found in SL.

That being said, having personally experienced the gibbering horde that is "Twitch Chat", I'd imagine that if SL wasn't banned then the most popular content on Twitch would be the livestream equivalent of those "Second Life Trolling" videos on Youtube, and even if that weren't the case the thought of the average twitch gaming community descending on Bellisseria is reminiscent of one of those old 60s movies where the outlaw biker gang shows up to terrorize some sleepy seaside village...

TwitchChat.jpg.0c16ef9d8b851f763bdac1bb15b4f285.jpg

 

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47 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

That being said, having personally experienced the gibbering horde that is "Twitch Chat", I'd imagine that if SL wasn't banned then the most popular content on Twitch would be the livestream equivalent of those "Second Life Trolling" videos on Youtube, and even if that weren't the case the thought of the average twitch gaming community descending on Bellisseria is reminiscent of one of those old 60s movies where the outlaw biker gang shows up to terrorize some sleepy seaside village...

Yeah, I was trying to avoid mentioning the nightmare fuel that is "Twitch Chat," but you're absolutely right. It's hard as all hell for streamers to create and nurture mature communities of adults on that platform - and I'm lucky enough to have found several. But...they're few and far between. So many streamers have the most toxic chats I've ever seen in the history of the Internet and they don't do much to change it, so unless you can get SL into the hands of the few streamers who actually built a fun, chill place to hang out, it's going to be a thing.

Re: the creative community on Twitch, it's pretty nice, but it's not really going to gel with SL unless they're into 3D modeling and watching people create in Blender/Maya (and some definitely are - but "3D Modeling Anime Waifus" is what they're currently watching, and only about 260 people at that). As of right now, the most watched channel listed under Art is Bob Ross, with the rest being drawing and painting of cartoon and anime characters (digital and non). Art is the category with the most viewers at the moment, Software & Game Development is second, and Food and Drink (RL cooking streams, so not relevant to us) is third.

Currently live in Music - VTubers singing, some DJs, a guitarist, some playing keyboards and lots just jamming out on different instruments. You don't really need SL for any of that - they have some nice looking visual setups already.

There are thousands of people currently watching life simulation content (Sims 4, Stardew Valley, etc.). But there, I feel like building and decorating is far more entertaining to watch (the UIs are just better for it) and there's a lot more gameplay, story, and interaction happening in between.

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To be fair, the proportion of twitch viewers that are active in chat is pretty small, and depends largely on the content.  One of my favourite streamers usually has 1000+ viewers and probably no more than 20 or 30 of them regularly use chat during the stream. The majority of viewers just passively watch and maybe a hundred or so will chime in with encouragement, etc. during the "exciting bits".  The same can be said of the largest streamers, I've seen streams with 100,000+ people watching and while the chat is pretty insane, it's still most likely all being generated by less than 1% of the viewers.

There are already a couple of SL creators that I know of that sometimes stream their creative process on Twitch, it would be nice if they were allowed to stream the rest of the process and show the end results, for that reason alone I'd support having the Twitch ban on SL lifted.

As for streaming other types of SL content on Twitch, I agree with Lucias sentiment.

5 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Give us industry standard equivalent tools for creating games, first.

GTA RP is particularly popular on Twitch, and SL does provide some great potential for RP, but not only is GTA V an extremely successful AAA title with a production budget of $265 million but the majority of popular RP streamers are all playing on the same heavily modified server, which by the owners admission is designed specifically to cater to twitch streamers and provide popular streamable content, with its own team of developers (some working full time) continually creating custom content to help facilitate the RP storylines of the characters.  While Second Life may have the potential for facilitating RP, creating something comparable to what's currently popular on Twitch would take a mammoth collaboration between LL and a dedicated  team of creators on a scale which is most likely infeasible.

That's not to say that there isn't still a place for Second Life on Twitch, I know of at least one quite popular GTA RP streamer who's also active in SL and sometimes uploads SL related videos to her Youtube.  She talks about Second Life on stream sometimes and the reaction from her community seems quite positive, with several of its members apparently already being residents.

I think any opportunity LL has to get more positive exposure for Second Life is worth exploring, especially with the current metaverse hype, but Twitch clearly doesn't want Second Life on its platform and their moderation is capricious at the best of times so, even if it wasn't banned, live-streaming SL would be a risky affair for the majority of streamers.

Edited by Fluffy Sharkfin
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Wouldn't the Twitch equivalent be "Garys Mod"?
Which seems to be an insanely popular virtual gaming world/sandbox?.
I don't have it or know anyone that plays it but I have watched some vids about it.
I don't see too much difference apart from lag issues and a supplied library of 3d stuff to play with.
Is there smexy stuffs in Garys mod? 

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27 minutes ago, Maryanne Solo said:

Wouldn't the Twitch equivalent be "Garys Mod"?
Which seems to be an insanely popular virtual gaming world/sandbox?.
I don't have it or know anyone that plays it but I have watched some vids about it.
I don't see too much difference apart from lag issues and a supplied library of 3d stuff to play with.
Is there smexy stuffs in Garys mod? 

I must admit I've never even looked at Garys Mod, despite having friends that have encouraged me to try it, but then apart from a couple of other platforms I've been pretty loyal to SL over the years.  Coincidentally one of those other platforms, EQ Landmark, is the reason I was introduced to Twitch, since the developers held a weekly livestream to keep the community up to date with what changes and new features were on the horizon. 

Another thing the developers eventually used their Twitch channel for was to hold building competitions (since part of the premise behind Landmark was that the developers wanted to enlist the help of the community in creating content for the next version of Everquest).  In order to facilitate this the developers held design meetings live on Twitch during which they would go through a design brief/style guide for a specific race in the game (the document was also available for anyone to download in PDF format), listen to feedback from the community and answer questions.  Then, once the competition had run its course, they would review the submissions and highlight some of the best entries live on stream.

I've seen a few conversations addressing how LL might make better use of the mainland and, while I know that it's exceedingly unlikely to happen, I can't help thinking that if they took a similar approach and came up with some fun building competitions based around different themes with some sort of coherent style guide they could crowd-source a tremendous amount of content and transform huge swaths of the mainland into something far more aesthetically pleasing and impressive whilst simultaneously engaging with their community and, potentially, a much larger audience.

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Oh man, EQ Landmark. I played around in that and was so excited for it. I was gutted when the project died. I was really looking forward to EverQuest Next.

Speaking of developers and Twitch, that's still a pretty huge thing. Larian Studios uses it to showcase major upcoming patches and classes and gameplay demos for the new Baldur's Gate 3, Visionary Realms uses it to show off sneak peeks they're giving into their new MMO Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, tons of indie and even major studios send devs out to hang in chat and talk about their new releases as streamers play them slightly earlier than their release date (which is great as they get to see their bugs happen live and fast track the fixes before full release), bigger developers do live interviews on Twitch talk shows on occasion, and some devs livestream their programming, art, modeling, and animation processes on games in progress. There are a few well-known voice actors who bounce into streams to say hi while their games are being played, as well, in addition to running their own channels.

LL having an official channel like that for building contests and events would be a lot better than watching random resident streams, but I guess if Twitch doesn't want Second Life on there and refuses to budge on that, it's a moot point.

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OK, I'll weigh in here about the SL-on-Twitch thing. I live stream my music performances from our SL venue to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch. I've never had any gyp from Twitch about it or complaints although that may be because my viewing figures are in single digits 😉 I'm not sure if it's relevant but for the last year I've added thumbnails into the video of me in the old home studio playing in realtime. However I had started live streaming to Twitch long before I added the RL thumbnails and was totally unaware of any issues as regards SL on Twitch. FWIW, I've had more gyp from Facebook who repeatedly flag me up as a spammer for posting my live streams to my own page[s] and YouTube sending me copyright strikes against me for playing my own material but those are stories for another day about badly thought-out and sloppily implemented algorithms / bots used to police the corporate end of the internet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Twitch page

The YouTube page

The Facebook page

The Twitter page

Edited by Alazarin Mondrian
grammar and comprehension stuff
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5 hours ago, Alazarin Mondrian said:

OK, I'll weigh in here about the SL-on-Twitch thing. I live stream my music performances from our SL venue to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch. I've never had any gyp from Twitch about it or complaints although that may be because my viewing figures are in single digits 😉 I'm not sure if it's relevant but for the last year I've added thumbnails into the video of me in the old home studio playing in realtime. However I had started live streaming to Twitch long before I added the RL thumbnails and was totally unaware of any issues as regards SL on Twitch.

One thing to keep in mind is Twitch can be quite inconsistent and very random when it comes to moderation. Some channels will get away with things for a long time and then suddenly get smacked. Others will make a tiny oops and catch a quick suspension that same day. If you have intentions of keeping and growing that channel (getting more viewers, eventually getting Twitch affiliate or partner, working with sponsors, etc.), you probably want to follow their written rules as closely as you can. It would be very hard to dispute them if they did decide to penalize your channel for streaming SL as SL is on the prohibited games list. Strikes on your account can be bad.

https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/list-of-prohibited-games

This part, in particular, is maybe why you've managed to skate on it. It requires someone else reporting it.

User accounts broadcasting or uploading content that feature gameplay from these titles can be reported via the user report tool under the option Prohibited Game (How to File a User Report). Reported users may receive a strike and a temporary account suspension. In order to discourage sharing this content, all titles on the list are removed from the game selector found on the broadcaster dashboard. Using the mature content flag, setting the broadcast or VOD to one of these titles, a different title, or ‘Not Playing’ does not constitute an exemption from this policy.

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Seeing Twitch discussed reminds me - did anyone see the stuff on Reddit where they did a R/Place recently using tiles (god the battle on the flags and then Streamers and the void) but overall quite interesting to watch the artwork and the communities/negotiation (and reactions!) and how people organised.   The Germans even had a night watch!

Imagine us doing the above in SL "metaverse" with prim cubes (ok the region would crash in 5 minutes and only 20 people would be able to even move through the lag) but being more serious for a moment,  it did make me think that's where SL has to push forward when that word metaverse is used - it's the communities here (in all their glory) and what our shared "canvas" is, which is still truly unique across the space.   

Edited by Charlotte Bartlett
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On 4/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Madelaine McMasters said:

 If I'm not the target market for this next wave of the metaverse, is whatever understanding I have of "metaverse potential" a help or a hindrance?

Isn't it good to have an understanding?  I don't see it as a hindrance....  but.....

Truth is,   anyone over 45 is no longer a target audience for anything other than AARP.   No one cares what us 50 something's want, like, need, or understand.....

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46 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

Seeing Twitch discussed reminds me - did anyone see the stuff on Reddit where they did a R/Place recently using tiles (god the battle on the flags and then Streamers and the void) but overall quite interesting to watch the artwork and the communities/negotiation (and reactions!) and how people organised.   The Germans even had a night watch!

Imagine us doing the above in SL "metaverse" with prim cubes (ok the region would crash in 5 minutes and only 20 people would be able to even move through the lag) but being more serious for a moment,  it did make me think that's where SL has to push forward when that word metaverse is used - it's the communities here (in all their glory) and what our shared "canvas" is, which is still truly unique across the space.   

I saw that! It was fun watching it come together live, too. A few of the Twitch communities I'm in added some channel logos and banners into it. That'd be wild in SL, but yeah, we'd crash the place if we tried, lol.

 

24 minutes ago, Cali Souther said:

Isn't it good to have an understanding?  I don't see it as a hindrance....  but.....

Truth is,   anyone over 45 is no longer a target audience for anything other than AARP.   No one cares what us 50 something's want, like, need, or understand.....

Funny enough, I don't even know if the younger demographics are exactly a target for metaverses either. I took a peek a while ago at the Horizon Venues (not World - the live performance/concert version) Meta Oculus thinggiemadoohickey website. The reviews there are not great. A LOT of "too many kids running around" "immature kids ruining the show" "kids screaming" type complaints. Among others. Lots mentioned the Foo Fighters concert that pretty much killed the servers and kept a lot of people from seeing the show, too. Sounds like that app at least is trying to target everyone at once and that's just not going to work.

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