Why, in Second Life, jerks are a minor problem.

[AyelaNewLife]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

After 20 years .. yeah, its shockingly bad. We're dead in the water and have been for years. 

Profitable and growth are entirely different things, and to assume simple profitability is acceptable fundamentally misunderstands the culture of US tech businesses.

If simple profitability was acceptable, our own King Philip wouldn't have spent years running around trying to make a deal to sell this place. Or why when he did find a buyer, the first thing they did was carve off the exciting fintech part.

Belli is a loss leader that has shown it can grow user subscriptions. Which in turn helps to lock users in to the platform and increase on going engagement.

LL are losing money on Belli in order to achieve growth.

Growth is the only metric that matters.

Can you name me one virtual world, online game or similar product which has experienced year-on-year growth past the first 18 months post-launch?

In the history of the internet, can you give me one example that meets this bar you've set for SL?

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Profitable and growth are entirely different things, and to assume simple profitability is acceptable fundamentally misunderstands the culture of US tech businesses.

If simple profitability was acceptable, our own King Philip wouldn't have spent years running around trying to make a deal to sell this place. Or why when he did find a buyer, the first thing they did was carve off the exciting fintech part.

I'm confused.

I thought "growth" was only important for publicly traded companies, and/or companies that need to attract and keep investors?

For private companies, profitability should be sufficient in my understanding. 

Unless I'm missing something..

[BelindaN]

I read one and a half pages. The rest, TLDR. Jerks are not a problem. Guys who log on for sex are an occasional problem. Why are any of us in world? 

How many answers to that question? If SL was a cutting edge geek universe I wouldn't be here. I enjoy chilling in SL. Nothing wrong with my FL, but I need some me time.

I like SL. That's why I come back. I like assembling my own place. I like dressing up. It's actually a bonus that the geeks rubbish this place. We don't want millions in world. Think of the lag!

 

 

[Ags Falconer]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm confused.

I thought "growth" was only important for publicly traded companies, and/or companies that need to attract and keep investors?

For private companies, profitability should be sufficient in my understanding. 

Unless I'm missing something..

It depends on the focus and goals of the owners. I've known some private firms that wanted to stay laser focused & small; and of course profitable. I've known others (more actually) that had an explicit strategy for growth. 

And naturally, everything in between. 

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Ags Falconer said:

It depends on the focus and goals of the owners. I've known some private firms that wanted to stay laser focused & small; and of course profitable. I've known others (more actually) that had an explicit strategy for growth. 

And naturally, everything in between. 

A focus on "constant growth" leads to many questionable decisions, stock buy-backs (instead of investing in people), and inevitable disappointment. Nothing grows forever!

[Quistess Alpha]

4 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Can you name me one virtual world, online game or similar product which has experienced year-on-year growth past the first 18 months post-launch?

Facebook?

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Facebook?

Facebook hasn't been the same since Farkle went away.

[Ceka Cianci]

56 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

A focus on "constant growth" leads to many questionable decisions, stock buy-backs (instead of investing in people), and inevitable disappointment. Nothing grows forever!

The last place i worked was a privately owned corporation owned by one family.. At one point it was the largest privatly owned corporation in North America..  About three years ago they sold off to a much bigger company that has locations all over the world and outside investors..

Within 3 years time they lost just about anyone with experience on every level..I was there for the whole 3 years that they first had it and watched them clean house of over 50% during covid.. That set the tone for everyone else left..

People already were leery of them from the get go, that sealed the deal when they did that.. especially firing them through Email too..

From that moment on all I heard was this attitude of us against them, where before it was a, We attitude..

I would go into all the things  they did and the changes and the daily safety meetings and bla bla bla.. But just gonna say, They can't hardly hire anyone locally anymore, because the word is out on them.. so they'll either end up folding or shipping in people to work it.. Everyone knows their business now.. When they cut heads it's with a sickle and no pecking order.

 

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Ceka Cianci]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Facebook hasn't been the same since Farkle went away.

plus they aren't a game or a virtual world..

[EliseAnne85]

11 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They wont. No one will suddenly join because texture rendering was dragged kicking and screaming into something approaching standard industry workflows. Not a single person.

PBR will usher in a whole new generation of content for us to shop for, make all our old content look more like garbage and further increase the technical & artistic mastery required to make acceptable content. It might boost the economy as we all repurchase everything and help retain creators. 

I'm very excited it's coming and believe it to be long overdue, but it's just one thing on a long list of things that LL as custodians of this platform should have been doing for the last 10 years. PBR is like a fresh lick of paint. It's maintenance .. and hopefully part of a longer term plan to get us away from opengl and advance the platform generally.

Of course new users won't join because suddenly there are reflections.  Most people who join MMO's want to socialize.  

So, basically the plan is, to save SL, have about one-third of existing users buy a new "gaming" computer and all existing and new residents buy new content for SL.  

The thing is, it's a bad economy.  I think it's bad timing and that it does have the possibility of being a total flop.  Not because of what it is, but because of bad timing in a bad economy which may last two or more years; it's not known.  However, many companies are scrambling in a COVID world.  I just think we cannot go unrealistic and that incentives to bring in new and keep existing users would be better.  We need a new Gacha, and I don't think PBR is it. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Coffee Pancake]

Go back and listen to our Wolfsome overload's SLB interviews. Philips can be very illuminating too if you separate out the 20/20 nostalgia.

What they insist SL must achieve, the conditions placed and plans for carving it up are all right there. Tilia getting carved off was practically a given following their statements. A grand adventure in fintech paid for by increased prices for all of us, with likely more to come!

If Meta roll up tomorrow with a pile of cash offering to buy what's left .. of course they wont sell, of course, absolutely, 100%, not at all, nope, no way. No need to bring it up, don't know why they did, why would they do that .. seems totally unnecessary to have put that in the world, but he did.

SL funding is dependent on it being able to show growth. They will pour money on the problems we all like to complain about .. IF .. it can show growth.

Listen to what they say.

Is SL a party at 10pm with more people still to show up? Or it is a party at 4am ... 

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm confused.

I thought "growth" was only important for publicly traded companies, and/or companies that need to attract and keep investors?

For private companies, profitability should be sufficient in my understanding. 

Unless I'm missing something..

It's partly a cultural thing and one that's especially prevalent in corporate tech. Growth is the mantra. Nothing is ever enough. You don't get judged by how well you keep the line, you're judged by how much higher you make it.

SL isn't a fine little business making fat stacks. It's a squib. A firework that failed to go off and has been sat sputtering for 20 years. Our glorious owners don't want a reliable income from a niche product, they want a 🚀to the moon with an IPO and stock offerings. If they don't get that, they will just dump a bucket of water over it and move on. (Time spent here is time they could be spending on a better 🚀 .. is Tilia a better 🚀, they seem to thinks so).

(don't think they will? remember Sansar that syphoned off all SL's return investment and left us with a shoe string staff .. and then almost sunk the entire company and took half the staff with it when they gave it away for pennies on the dollar - that was an attempt to build a better 🚀 - remember way back when people would keep a Linden headcount/role-call, might be an idea to do that again, just saying)

 

 

 

 

[Coffee Pancake]

  

1 minute ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Of course new users won't join because suddenly there are reflections.  Most people who join MMO's want to socialize.  

So, basically the plan is, to save SL, have about one-third of existing users buy a new computer and all new content for SL.  

The thing is, it's a bad economy.  I think it's bad timing and that it does have the possibility of being a total flop.  Not because of what it is, but because of bad timing in a bad economy which may last two or more years; it's not known.  However, many companies are scrambling in a COVID world.  I just think we cannot go unrealistic and that incentives to bring in new and keep existing users would be better.  We need a new Gacha, and I don't think PBR is it.  

Tech advancement alone wont move the needle, it wont grow the platform.

This is why despite years and years of literally begging Linden developers to move away from Open GL, it never happened. Business would never sign off on it as there was no business case for it (aside from maybe ending references to SL tech being regarded as old junk), even though the technical and existing customer use cases were rock solid.

I'm worried the business case has finally been made only because "performance" followed by "looks like crap" have been highlighted as a key reason people leave. As true as that might be, it misses the entire point behind the need for proactive maintenance and development. If we get PBR and no next step toward Vulkan/Metal .. then we will know it's business decisions as usual for LL. 😭

 

Really though, we need social advancement, we need to get SL content outside of the SL bubble, a way to put active and interactive avatars front and center on other social platforms. There are efforts with flickr and blogging .. but that's not really reaching outside of the bubble, just making fresh SL bubbles in other places.

ActivityPub might be something to explore

Finding way to open source the servers, maintain DRM and the centralized economy and letting SL finally step outside the walled garden is probably the best shot we have. LL end up providing grid, drm and financial services. Everyone ends up running an SL region for fun, hobby and educational projects. 

[Love Zhaoying]

28 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

don't think they will? remember Sansar that syphoned off all SL's return investment and left us with a shoe string staff .. and then almost sunk the entire company and took half the staff with it when they gave it away for pennies on the dollar

You'd think - or hope - they learn from that misadventure.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You'd think - or hope - they learn from that misadventure.

I think you have forgotten the previous " build a better 🚀 " misadventures. Cast your mind back to the M and Humble years.

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

15 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If we don't grow, we are just counting off the days before our inevitable sale to another company that needs to open the goose and see how the eggs are made.

Further to this point ... if anyone thinks any other company large enough to buy out LL will want anything at all to do with the adult/sex side of SL, that's another thing that would be stopped by a new owner immediately. And I'm not just talking the fringy kink stuff that goes on in the sims we all know exist, most major corps don't want anything at all to do with sexuality.

On the other hand, I think that's also an argument that might show that SL isn't on anyone's radar for acquisition. By stopping adult-related groups, sims, activities, animations, etc etc ... any new owner would then face a drop of users. Not a majority of users, but enough that you'd wonder why you'd made the purchase in the first place. Then again, business owners these days are weird, Elon being a case in point.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I think you have forgotten the previous " build a better 🚀 " misadventures. Cast your mind back to the M and Humble years.

 

I may not have been paying attention then, all I can remember is Sansar and Tilia at this point. I'm only 16 years old, I think!

[Katherine Heartsong]

2 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

plus they aren't a game or a virtual world..

That seems to assume that SL is a game. It's not, is it? It's a social platform (granted in 3D) with content created by the users. I'd say FB is a very apt comparison to SL as a social platform, even though I hates FB with a raging passion.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

That seems to assume that SL is a game. It's not, is it? It's a social platform (granted in 3D) with content created by the users. I'd say FB is a very apt comparison to SL as a social platform, even though I hates FB with a raging passion.

Except that there is very little social going on within Secondlife other than one on one. And therein lies a part of the problem for those who come expecting an actual "social platform" rather than just a dress up game.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 1/16/2023 at 6:29 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

As a GenX-er, Second Life is awesome! Detractors can "stuff it".

I'm also Gen X, wonder if it appeals to our gen more than others?

I love the creative aspect of SL and exploring. I've never liked board games, video games, or anything where there is a discernible "point" to the game. I don't care about pre-determined "goals", I like doing my own thing and pottering around online and irl. 

[Istelathis]

6 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

That seems to assume that SL is a game. It's not, is it?

I sometimes think of it more as a user generated entertainment portal, where I can log in with my avatar and choose from a variety of activities I can play.  I almost never use SL for socializing, outside of the forums.  One of the things I like about SL, is the ability to hop from one activity to the next, maintaining the same avatar for whatever adventure I may find myself in.

One of the things that turns me off from other similar platforms as SL, is that socializing feels almost enforced, and that the platform was built around extroverts that go out of their way to ensure socializing.  SL offers a lot for us introverts, that just want to wander around people, appreciate everything they have built, watch an ever evolving world, but not take on an active role with them.  

[Katherine Heartsong]

1 minute ago, Istelathis said:

I sometimes think of it more as a user generated entertainment portal, where I can log in with my avatar and choose from a variety of activities I can play.  I almost never use SL for socializing, outside of the forums.  One of the things I like about SL, is the ability to hop from one activity to the next, maintaining the same avatar for whatever adventure I may find myself in.

One of the things that turns me off from other similar platforms as SL, is that socializing feels almost enforced, and that the platform was built around extroverts that go out of their way to ensure socializing.  SL offers a lot for us introverts, that just want to wander around people, appreciate everything they have built, watch an ever evolving world, but not take on an active role with them.  

Very true that's why I have a very hard time "defining" to non-SL folks what exactly it is and can offer them.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

2 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Very true that's why I have a very hard time "defining" to non-SL folks what exactly it is and can offer them.

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

18 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Except that there is very little social going on within Secondlife other than one on one. And therein lies a part of the problem for those who come expecting an actual "social platform" rather than just a dress up game.

That depends on your definition of "social", of course. One of the many things that put me off about Facebook/Twitter/whatever is sharing things in a gigantic anonymous crowd. Social life in SL is appealing precisely because the crowd is mostly local. Region occupancy limits and lag keep us in small groups except in venues like the forum and group chat, which attract a relatively small part of the population. People who come to SL hoping for a large crowd experience are bound to be disappointed, which is fine as far as I am concerned.

[Rolig Loon]

11 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

One of the things that turns me off from other similar platforms as SL, is that socializing feels almost enforced, and that the platform was built around extroverts that go out of their way to ensure socializing.  SL offers a lot for us introverts, that just want to wander around people, appreciate everything they have built, watch an ever evolving world, but not take on an active role with them.  

THAT captures my meaning. Thank you. SL is comfortably social for those of us who would rather not be in a crowd.

[EliseAnne85]

58 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Finding way to open source the servers, maintain DRM and the centralized economy and letting SL finally step outside the walled garden is probably the best shot we have. LL end up providing grid, drm and financial services. Everyone ends up running an SL region for fun, hobby and educational projects.

Wut?  Is this saying we could have our own land but we'd have to pay for the server?  Can u tell us more?