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

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour 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.

That was the outline in the question asked though. Games and virtual worlds.. It's Definitely one of those.. hehehe

[animats]

9 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?

Roblox. Roblox is almost as old as SL, but they just kept growing, and growing, and growing. Average user age 13, 75% mobile.

(Incidentally, when looking at virtual world stats, the important one is concurrent users right now, because that's usually checkable from the outside. It's tracked for all Steam games. (Meta/Horizon, however, does not report it.) Platforms like to report Monthly Active Users, but that number is often exaggerated. Decentraland has a sizable MAU count, but typically only about 450 concurrent users. They allow guest logins, and each guest counts as a new user. Signups are even less useful. That usually just means someone, or some bot, entered a new email address.)

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

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

https://www.osgrid.org

[EliseAnne85]

34 minutes ago, animats said:

Roblox is almost as old as SL, but they just kept growing, and growing, and growing. Average user age 13, 75% mobile.

I was thinking that Roblox is so different from SL and that it's popularity was probably based around something like Mom and Dad were using Roblox as a sort of "babysitter".   This copy and paste from the Wikipedia on Roblox* kind of says what I was thinking.  Therefore, Roblox is nothing like SL which is somewhat adult-leaning and parents *may* have SL on avoid because of that reason.  Plus, it's mobile too, making it more popular.  I don't want SL to follow Roblox and become G or PG centric. 

*Roblox is free to play, with in-game purchases available through a virtual currency called Robux. As of August 2020, Roblox had over 164 million monthly active users, including more than half of all American children under 16.^[9][10] 

Edited January 19, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

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

34 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

https://www.osgrid.org

Yes, something like opensim / osgrid. But with centrally controlled DRM, LL handle serving up assets from the CDN and all the payment processing.

You would get your region running on whatever you liked (real hosting, a vps, a spare machine, raspberry pi) and then pay LL for access to the "Second Life" shared grid services, a spot on the map and agree to be bound by LL terms of service and acceptable content policy (so no hosting a region with banned content).

LL would of course continue to offer their own region hosting and mainland just like they do now.

This was the original dream for SL after the viewer was open sourced, It's believed that King Philip didn't like the idea and it's the root cause of his falling out with SL's 4th highly influential employee, Cory Ondrejka - instrumental in the open source viewer program we have and the design of the scripting language amongst many other things.

I for one believe Cory was right and we have been paying for Philips mistake ever since.

 

 

opensim demonstrates the desire for an open SL like platform, but it fails to deliver because of the lack of rights management needed for an economy to function and lack of content moderation. opensim is great for messy builders, great for content pirates and great for all the content banned from SL for good reasons. Which means regular people don't go there, no one wants to set up a shop there, and only a few hundred are online on a good day.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Coffee Pancake

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, EliseAnne85 said:

I was thinking that Roblox is so different from SL and that it's popularity was probably based around something like Mom and Dad were using Roblox as a sort of "babysitter".   This copy and paste from the Wikipedia on Roblox* kind of says what I was thinking.  Therefore, Roblox is nothing like SL which is somewhat adult-leaning and parents *may* have SL on avoid because of that reason.  Plus, it's mobile too, making it more popular.  

*Roblox is free to play, with in-game purchases available through a virtual currency called Robux. As of August 2020, Roblox had over 164 million monthly active users, including more than half of all American children under 16.^[9][10] 

Roblox do have plans and dev programs to grow the platform as it's users age. It's not all children, not by a long way and they're very aware of the demographic bubble SL has created for itself.

There are very few young people here, and we're all getting older .. and dying.

[EliseAnne85]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Roblox do have plans and dev programs to grow the platform as it's users age. It's not all children, not by a long way and they're very aware of the demographic bubble SL has created for itself.

There are very few young people here, and we're all getting older .. and dying.

I added but Roblox doesn't have Adult content or do they?  I thought they didn't.  Then, I added I don't want to see SL become G or PG centric like Roblox.

[Paul Hexem]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I for one believe Cory was right and we have been paying for Philips mistake ever since.

I've been saying that for years.

You look at a game like Ark: Survival Evolved, there are tens of thousands of private servers up costing the devs nothing, but encouraging people to join to play with their friend that's running said server.

[EliseAnne85]

10 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

But with centrally controlled DRM, LL handle serving up assets from the CDN and all the payment processing.

They could make every transaction have to run through CasperVend in order to receive some kind of percentage of the profit if we all got our own region.  Not that all of us with regions would sell PBR stuff, I mean the one's that would sell PBR stuff.  I don't know if CasperVend in and of itself could be any kind of digital right's management (DRM) system or not.  I'm just wondering out loud here.  

 

[Akane Nacht]

5 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Facebook?

Look at that jump in the Asia-Pac stats. SL simply can't replicate that. Scam investment spammers, questionable pharmaceutical merchants and 50cent army would be utterly lost here. 😇

[Arielle Popstar]

3 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

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

Aside from Osgrid there is also the Dreamgrid installation that allows relative noobies to install their own independent hypergrid enabled Grid where they have complete control of their grid and yet have the ability to travel to other grids for shopping, sightseeing and socializing. Small independent grids are lightweight enough that I have run them on the same machine as my viewer though I usually run it on an older spare laptop. Though as Coffee points out Osgrid only has a few hundred in concurrency, across the hypergridded metaverse there are hundreds if not thousands of others online. You can get an idea here: 

https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2023/01/opensim-grids-register-4k-new-users-add-land-area-but-usage-falls/

[Katherine Heartsong]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Yes, something like opensim / osgrid. But with centrally controlled DRM, LL handle serving up assets from the CDN and all the payment processing.

You would get your region running on whatever you liked (real hosting, a vps, a spare machine, raspberry pi) and then pay LL for access to the "Second Life" shared grid services, a spot on the map and agree to be bound by LL terms of service and acceptable content policy (so no hosting a region with banned content).

LL would of course continue to offer their own region hosting and mainland just like they do now.

Pretty much how I envision this idea of a "metaverse". LL (or others) provides the parts I bolded as part of a group of companies delivering the foundational bits of a connected metaverse, the add in a touch of Mastadon type control over your own "grid" instance (e.g., who you connect to [possibly paying as mentioned], who connects to you, content, your world attributes etc) and the ability to move from grid to grid (permissions required) and good to go.

Honestly, anyone running their own sim in SL or even group of sims that don't connect directly to LL mainland is already demonstrating this very idea.

LL could play a big part of the foundation of something like that.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Istelathis]

10 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Though as Coffee points out Osgrid only has a few hundred in concurrency, across the hypergridded metaverse there are hundreds if not thousands of others online. You can get an idea here: 

I think most people just hang out in their own regions, doing their own thing until an event occurs that they may be interested in.  That is the downfall of free land in a simulated environment - I mean, for people looking to meet others and have an easier time doing so.  It would likely be the same scenario with SL, as more people would start to spend their time further away from others in their own free regions with the exception of events and more popular areas.

With tools such as https://opensimworld.com/ it is easier to navigate the hypergrid to find events that are occurring, as well as explore the plethora of regions people have made available to the public - same goes for mewe where there is a larger following, and it become a lot easier to find events and populated areas, but chance encounters on random regions is far less likely.

With SL acting as the central asset manager, as well as hosting all of our account data it would make piracy a lot harder, it would also give people a better idea of how popular some self hosted regions are.  There could also be an income to be generated through advertising one's region although I would not support such advertisement.  I do think LL would lose money doing so in the long-term though, if they do make most of their money hosting property as I think they may.

I do think games such as fishing, and Lindo would become ever more popular, as people would want to try to populate their regions as is the case now, as well as incentivize others to come to their clubs and encourage people to explore what they have created.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were ten thousand or more people logged into Opensim right now, just spread out throughout their own grids.  Many of which are not registered through opensimworld, or interested in sharing their regions with others.  Additionally there are probably thousands upon thousands more NPCs littering the multitude of regions.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/18/2023 at 10:55 PM, Ags Falconer said:

@animats, i like your perspective on the strengths on distributed governance of behaviors based on distributed authorities because of local control of spacial areas in Second Life. I had not thought of it in precisely this way before you outlined it. Thank you for that. 

Personally, I love the notion of a community that governs itself to become the kind of community that it wants to become. Kinda like real life....

There are no "distributed authorities" in SL as in certain federated liberal democratic RL countries. That's because one platform provider makes all the justice decisions without an independent judiciary and free press, and can "for any reason or no reason" ban anyone from the grid.

And there's much more in that vein that could be said but likely you imagine SL to be some kind of virtual unicorn realm where code-as-law is deployed with only beneficial results.

There are also larger things to consider, as in the debates we used to have with Daniel Linden, back in the day, who was presiding over reform of the group tools and Governance. This "distributed" theory is content to leave "capture roleplay" or "griefers" or "big business which ruins the RL environment" or -- let's pick something you might get agitated about -- the US military -- to have their own island, and do what they want on their own island with their own rules. And not be concerned about any pernicious effect they have as their practices in fact seep out to the rest of the grid.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:04 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

The same few people here shoot down all ideas.

SL is more than capable of including things that don't appeal to everyone, least of all the tiny fraction that have made these forums rather than the virtual world their home.

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.

You don't have to worry, full fat SL will never run natively on phones or even tablets. 

It's actually for the same reason SL hasn't been made to run in a game engine like Unreal .. even though the source is open. Everyone with sufficient skill and understanding of how the platform works to pull off porting SL to unreal (etc), knows it's a fools errand to even try. The naïve see 3D graphics, games have 3D graphics, hey why isn't this thing like that thing.

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.

I'd like to see the hard data and the quotations from the Lindens about this notion that keeps recurring here that "Bellisseria is a loss leader." 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/19/2023 at 3:59 PM, Katherine Heartsong said:

Pretty much how I envision this idea of a "metaverse". LL (or others) provides the parts I bolded as part of a group of companies delivering the foundational bits of a connected metaverse, the add in a touch of Mastadon type control over your own "grid" instance (e.g., who you connect to [possibly paying as mentioned], who connects to you, content, your world attributes etc) and the ability to move from grid to grid (permissions required) and good to go.

Honestly, anyone running their own sim in SL or even group of sims that don't connect directly to LL mainland is already demonstrating this very idea.

LL could play a big part of the foundation of something like that.

The Fediverse model is attractive to geeks who think society's problems are fixable by code. They aren't.

There are a number of clunky and even pernicious features to the Fediverse model as we can all see on Mastodon -- and they are like the original notion Philip Linden had that "islands" would fix everything because people would just go on islands and do their thing and thus not bother anyone else. The entire fragile economy of our world was devastated in 2006-2007 because big businesses were allowed in with the notion that things they did would be separate from our little world. So their hiring away the best developers and hollowing out the world; their introduction of RL wages as a standard; their demand for safe, vanilla activities and restraints on their own visitors (such as students) from visiting the rest of the grid -- all this and more nearly knocked over SL before they all fled because it didn't do what they wanted, namely enable them to have ads and scoop up user data.

Mastodon won't be commercialized in this way, although if parts of it were it might be saved.

Meanwhile, every day, there is an annoyance and an obstruction with the federated system. Example: I notice that a person I was friends with on Twitter who is in SL simply deleted her Twitter account, understood. She went on Mastodon where I was able to follow her from my social server. I told another friend where she was, but she couldn't follower her from *her* server unless she made yet another account, on that server -- and not all of them have accounts on demand.

Or the news server I chose to move my RL work account to - newsie -- is denounced by social's masters because they are not permabanning someone who is deemed "transphobic". Rather than just blocking that one person, the call is to block the entire server of newsie for "enabling transphobia". The facts of this case don't matter at all to those inciting this call so I won't even attempt to rehearse them. But the point is that one server, on the basis of something people may have differing assessments about, will block an entire server over it, so then any list I have built up can't see my posts on that other server, regardless of whether I, too, have blocked that objectionable person. And on and on.

It's like Yeltsin's parade of sovereignties gone wild -- which of course he didn't believe in which is why we had two Chechen wars, and why the Soviet-born founder of Mastodon solves things with war and not the rule of law. 

[Stephanie Misfit]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Or the news server I chose to move my RL work account to - newsie -- is denounced by social's masters because they are not permabanning someone who is deemed "transphobic". Rather than just blocking that one person, the call is to block the entire server of newsie for "enabling transphobia". The facts of this case don't matter at all to those inciting this call so I won't even attempt to rehearse them. But the point is that one server, on the basis of something people may have differing assessments about, will block an entire server over it, so then any list I have built up can't see my posts on that other server, regardless of whether I, too, have blocked that objectionable person. And on and on.

It's like Yeltsin's parade of sovereignties gone wild -- which of course he didn't believe in which is why we had two Chechen wars, and why the Soviet-born founder of Mastodon solves things with war and not the rule of law. 

Flee Twitter decrying lack of free speech. Create another option and ensure that it has even less free speech.

[Istelathis]

Mastadon is not twitter, as far as I understand it, the platform is designed for people to have an option to be with like minded others and socialize with one another with as little conflict as possible in a formatted site that looks similar to twitter.  All of the drama, free speech, etc can be found on other sites.  

It is great for people who just want to get away from it all online, while socializing with their friends and others with a similar perspective or philosophy without interruption from others looking for conflict. This is not necessarily a horrible thing, not for everyone, for those looking for such an environment it works wonders.  

Twitter and Mastodon despite the protests of many, are not the Internet or even the web.  They are just sites on the web, they are not limiting people's free speech anywhere but on their own sites.  People are still free to roam other sites, and express themselves as they see fit (well with the exception of some countries that limit such freedom).  Neither are actually town squares, or the basis of which all of freedom comes from.

With that said, for a Metaverse*, it would be similar to having an ISP that limited your access to various services.  imagine being closed off to Netflix, by your ISP.  It would be a layer that connected various 3D sites, that we all relied upon to access those 3D worlds.  Worst still, would be if the internet provider of that metaverse charged you extra for the privilege of using that service.  Now, having a provider that allowed within it a service or a virtual site that was run similar to Mastadon on top of the metaverse would be fine.  

As far as SL, it would probably work as it does now.  Some regions would allow only group access, some wouldn't, SL would remain the central authority of it all I imagine.  Accounts would likely only to exist in LL, and not be stored on third party regions.

For opensim, it is entirely different, as there is no central authority and grids are run by their own set of rules.  It too, works great for people looking for grids with a set of rules that fit their own set of values, although it is not in general used as the such.  There are grids that have banned other grids, due to a variety of reasons but it seems to be rare. 

* Depending on how one defines a metaverse, if we use the word to loosely define any number of 3d worlds that run independently from one another, then this entire post is in vain.  My own definition of it would be a set of standards used to build and traverse virtual worlds, much like the web is today. 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Istelathis