New book about SL: "Making a Metaverse That Matters"

[animats]

I've been over there twice, and haven't seen problems. Just the usual curse of SL - a group of people standing around, not moving or talking.

[Love Zhaoying]

I would be interested to know if the platforms compared which have continued to grow (as detailed in the book) already had full mobile viewer capability, while SL is still working on it.

[Paul Hexem]

17 hours ago, animats said:

Nobody was having fun.

That's the new, improved onboarding.

 

11 hours ago, Perrie Juran said:

If LL gets the new mentor program right it should make a huge difference.

There's a guy on YouTube you may have heard of, Josh Strife Hayes, who reviews MMOs. One concept he mentions a lot that absolutely applies to SL is "quit moments". Situations that make a player go, or want to go do something else. Too many of those, and you bleed players.

SL has a ton of those. Hell, bad teleports force you to quit. 

Until LL fixes all the quit moments in SL- something I don't think they have the skill or motivation to do- everything else they're doing with these regions and mentors is just theater.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Until LL fixes all the quit moments in SL, everything else they're doing with these regions and mentors is just theater.

Yeah I don't think mentors are going to help long term either. And I don't think LL has been able to identify those "quit moments". It would be helpful to get feedback from people who ditched SL because of them. 

[Katherine Heartsong]

54 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

And I don't think LL has been able to identify those "quit moments".

As someone whose been in that field for more decades than I will admit to, I hope that LL has some dedicated UX folks researching the pain points around quitting, but for now all I got is ...

[Luna Bliss]

11 hours ago, animats said:

12 hours ago, elleevelyn said:

on this

there is a thing called "Escape From Freedom vs Escape To Freedom" which a number of people have written about. ...most online multi-player games are modeled on Escape From Freedom. ... i think present-day Linden is well aware that Escape From Freedom is where Second Life has to go if resident numbers are to grow, beyond the limited number of Escape To Freedom people in the real world

Yes. That's very much a theme of the book, repeated at least four times. It's something Rosedale disagreed with, but the book author thinks he's coming around. The author points out that all the virtual worlds with ongoing growth have a sizable game component.

Perhaps I should read the Hamlet book to make a more accurate comment, but going by what the two of you said, this "Escape From Freedom" notion these ideas are branching off from was first mentioned by the Psychologist Fromm in 1941, as was already noted in this thread, and here is a description of the books premise:

"If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape modern society or penetrated so deeply into the causes of authoritarian systems. If the rise of democracy set some people free, at the same time it gave birth to a society in which the individual feels alienated and dehumanized. Using the insights of psychoanalysis as probing agents, Fromm's work analyzes the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule".

And so these techie guys who think they understand how a metaverse or community should be want to create a kind of Linden Lemmingland by increasing a population of residents who can't think for themselves and need excessive structure?

Shouldn't we, in Second Life, be encouraging people to think for themselves, find meaning for themselves. This would be the kind of guidance or structure that would be beneficial.

Dear God, I hope Philip is not "coming around" as you say.

I wish we would stop being obsessed with "growing the numbers" and instead focus on what is already here in SL, and attracting new people based on that rather than what certain games are doing, games that are being referenced as models that I did not find fun at all -- being shot at, having lewd comments sent to me, and hyper young people jumping around without purpose.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Perrie Juran]

14 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

To moderate the welcome hub strictly will take a lot of extra Linden employers to have someone 24/7 on duty.
I don't think it is a good idea to give volunteers the right to ban people. They can get in unwanted positions (griefers etc) with their accounts IMHO.

I wouldn't hand the Mentors the ban hammer. But LL is making an investment in this program. I hope that investment includes continuing support for the Mentors. If a Mentor sees a problem they should be able to get quick response from LL to deal with it.

Personal incident:

Several years ago I was taking a new person to see the Ivory Tower of Primitives. A few adjacent parcels were under griefer attack with self replicating objects with pornographic images and the region was lag bombed. I filed an abuse report.

Two and a half days later the mess had not been cleaned up. I messaged Torley Linden expressing how embarrassing it was to take a new person there. Within thirty minutes it was completely cleaned up.

At the Welcome Hubs quick response is needed.

[Arielle Popstar]

10 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Shouldn't we, in Second Life, be encouraging people to think for themselves, find meaning for themselves. 

I wish we would stop being obsessed with "growing the numbers" and instead focus on what is already here in SL, and attracting new people based on that rather than what certain games are doing, games that are being referenced as models that I did not find fun at all -- being shot at, having lewd comments sent to me, and hyper young people jumping around without purpose.

So when people do think for themselves it results in you being shot at, lewd comments and hyper young people. 

And yet you complain when people are obviously thinking for themselves. Bit of a quandary isn't it.

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

11 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Shouldn't we, in Second Life, be encouraging people to think for themselves, find meaning for themselves. 

I wish we would stop being obsessed with "growing the numbers" and instead focus on what is already here in SL, and attracting new people based on that rather than what certain games are doing, games that are being referenced as models that I did not find fun at all -- being shot at, having lewd comments sent to me, and hyper young people jumping around without purpose.

Expand  

So when people do think for themselves it results in you being shot at, lewd comments and hyper young people. 

And yet you complain when people are obviously thinking for themselves. Bit of a quandary isn't it.

But people entering a place like AVChat are entering a gamified state and herded into what is expected in such a place, and so your analogy is inept (apples to oranges problem).

[animats]

Some quotes from the book:

Page 298: "Every metaverse platform that has been launched without game mechanics has failed to gain mass adoption".

From a business perspective, he's probably right. We need games to get new users through the first week. LL needs to fix the pain points for games within SL.

Page 298: "Something magical was lost when our focus on metaverse platforms moved away from live, immersive social creation, and we resigned ourselves to offline editing in 3D software programs."

There's something to be said for that. In the early days of New Babbage, I'm told, people stood around and watched others build. Maybe SL should have a building construction system and a clothing design system in world. Ones with lots of templates to work from. Ones where you make walls or shirts, not pull vertices around. Much less general than Blender or Clo/Marvelous Designer and easier to use. Those are hard problems and there's not much open source software to mooch.A good start would be to provide a set of standard blanks (T-shirt, dress, pants, etc.) and a texture editor comparable to those ones for ordering T-shirts on line. (Yes, you can start with Robin Wood's old templates and use Photoshop or GIMP. That's still too hard for at least 80% of the potential user base.) My clothing skills are only good enough to make T-shirts and leggings for SL. Anyone from the SL clothing industry want to comment?

Page 301: "We have explored how ultrarealistic human avatars can negatively shape the culture of a metaverse platform, arguably shifting Second Life in its later years from a highly imaginative creative platform to a heavily materialistic, often-toxic consumer driven experience (with some creativity still persisting on the sidelines.). This variety of avatar definitely did not grow Second Life's user base."

That's an interesting subject. Roblox has been moving towards more realistic avatars, and they're now about up to pre-mesh SL avatars in look. (There's some parent opposition to this,  their average user is age 13.) VRchat uses reasonably realistic avatars, although they keep the complexity down to keep the VR frame rate up. Fortnite is deliberately cartoony, but that's because it's a very violent game that would not be a kids game at the realism levels of, say, Red Dead Redemption or one of the Tom Clancy games. I tend to think that SL's problem is that it's in the uncanny valley - avatars are just good enough that we realize how bad they are. That's where Hollywood was about 20 years ago. Go watch the Polar Express trailer. Hollywood is totally past that, and so is much of gaming. SL is stuck just before subsurface scattering, which means skin is in the dead to plastic range. I suspect this drives the trend towards excessive tattooing.

Edited July 6, 2023 by animats

[elleevelyn]

13 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

And so these techie guys who think they understand how a metaverse or community should be want to create a kind of Linden Lemmingland by increasing a population of residents who can't think for themselves and need excessive structure?

Shouldn't we, in Second Life, be encouraging people to think for themselves, find meaning for themselves. This would be the kind of guidance or structure that would be beneficial.

Dear God, I hope Philip is not "coming around" as you say.

I wish we would stop being obsessed with "growing the numbers" and instead focus on what is already here in SL, and attracting new people based on that rather than what certain games are doing, games that are being referenced as models that I did not find fun at all -- being shot at, having lewd comments sent to me, and hyper young people jumping around without purpose.

i won't get to far into the deeper ramifications of Fromm's (and other's) work other than to say that Escape To/From Freedom is a fairly well researched observation of how humans making individual decisions in what they perceive as their own best interests can impact on the behaviour of the group as a whole, both positively and negatively.  Basically when people get overwhelmed by to many decisions they tend to herd - seek out others who espouse/share the same views/values as themselves - which can also result in positivity, negativity or (in most cases) some balance of the two

so in this sense is not so much that game developers are leading the herd. They are more identifying where the biggest herds are and tailoring their offerings for the bigger herd. The issue for Linden is that for 20 years Linden have tailored their efforts to a small herd. The issue for the members/residents of this small herd is that they like the herd as it is - their herd. And any attempt to integrate their herd with another bigger herd that has different wants/needs is met with resistance -- which is a second issue for Linden, made more problematic as it is the small herd members who pay the bills so far to date in the main

this said, is not insurmountable to integrate herds when there is a will by the members/residents of the small herd to embrace the integration and not fear being subsumed and left bereft. Again I raise Bellisaria as one way that Linden are attempting to integrate the herds by making the estate appealing to those who prefer to live in a more regulated society. The more societal regulation there is, the more authoritarian it is - by Fromm definition). And is actually working for Linden at least from a business pov. Lots and lots of regions added to Bellisaria (far more I think than Linden initially expected) with the accompanying uptake of Premium subscriptions

[edit add] Interestingly many of the current newly Premium subscribers come from the ranks of the existing small herd. Which is a kind of who knew revelation -that many of our Escape To Freedom herd members have had some Escape From Freedom tendencies all along

Edited July 6, 2023 by elleevelyn
to date

[Luna Bliss]

17 hours ago, elleevelyn said:

On 7/5/2023 at 10:13 AM, Luna Bliss said:

And so these techie guys who think they understand how a metaverse or community should be want to create a kind of Linden Lemmingland by increasing a population of residents who can't think for themselves and need excessive structure?

Shouldn't we, in Second Life, be encouraging people to think for themselves, find meaning for themselves. This would be the kind of guidance or structure that would be beneficial.

Dear God, I hope Philip is not "coming around" as you say.

I wish we would stop being obsessed with "growing the numbers" and instead focus on what is already here in SL, and attracting new people based on that rather than what certain games are doing, games that are being referenced as models that I did not find fun at all -- being shot at, having lewd comments sent to me, and hyper young people jumping around without purpose.

i won't get to far into the deeper ramifications of Fromm's (and other's) work other than to say that Escape To/From Freedom is a fairly well researched observation of how humans making individual decisions in what they perceive as their own best interests can impact on the behaviour of the group as a whole, both positively and negatively.  Basically when people get overwhelmed by to many decisions they tend to herd - seek out others who espouse/share the same views/values as themselves - which can also result in positivity, negativity or (in most cases) some balance of the two

so in this sense is not so much that game developers are leading the herd. They are more identifying where the biggest herds are and tailoring their offerings for the bigger herd. The issue for Linden is that for 20 years Linden have tailored their efforts to a small herd. The issue for the members/residents of this small herd is that they like the herd as it is - their herd. And any attempt to integrate their herd with another bigger herd that has different wants/needs is met with resistance -- which is a second issue for Linden, made more problematic as it is the small herd members who pay the bills so far to date in the main

this said, is not insurmountable to integrate herds when there is a will by the members/residents of the small herd to embrace the integration and not fear being subsumed and left bereft. Again I raise Bellisaria as one way that Linden are attempting to integrate the herds by making the estate appealing to those who prefer to live in a more regulated society. The more societal regulation there is, the more authoritarian it is - by Fromm definition). And is actually working for Linden at least from a business pov. Lots and lots of regions added to Bellisaria (far more I think than Linden initially expected) with the accompanying uptake of Premium subscriptions

[edit add] Interestingly many of the current newly Premium subscribers come from the ranks of the existing small herd. Which is a kind of who knew revelation -that many of our Escape To Freedom herd members have had some Escape From Freedom tendencies all along

Well first let me say that I'm not opposed to a bit more gaming in SL. Even I, if anyone can believe it, like to shoot clay pots in VR and ride roller coasters there. What I'm opposed to is an excessive focus on gaming, and that's what Animats seems to be pointing to, via some snippets from the book where he says the need for those who need more structure  (bring in the lemmings) is advocated 4 times in the book. I'm also confused as to how we would even appeal to gamers, as the game engine has been touted to be so archaic that we can't deliver the type of gaming experience a gamer would even want!

Regarding just WHO LL has been been catering to for 20 years, and an appeal to let in other along side us, as if we're selfish pigs who just want our stuff here....well...pffffft

For years, on this very forum, people have complained that LL cater to EVERYONE but who was already here. LL really tried to expand in so many ways over the years, much to the dismay of the customers. The most recent was Sansar where they believed everyone here would don their VR headset and hop on over to the new world with a better game engine. I loved Sansar -- me and 10 other people it seems   Others can point to other expansions they've attempted over the years that never worked.

So it's not that there's this private "herd" that wants things their way. There are simply some voices here that to do want SL to be excessively gamified beyond recognition.

Personally, I think an emphasis on the arts, on education, and CREATIVITY!....along with more Bellisseria developments (I have 2 homes there and like it) would be the way to go. This just seems like another big push for 'the next big thing' in a misguided attempt to 'fix SL' (ie: bet big and rake in the big bucks)

Animats latest snippet from the book is:

Page 298: "Every metaverse platform that has been launched without game mechanics has failed to gain mass adoption".

Has anybody considered that a community can be successful without "mass adoption". That is anathema tho, to the techie boys in San Francisco.  And they like games. And I do believe they want to turn SL into a gaming world, even if not as technically proficient as what is possible in popular games in existence, and so likely will not be successful, and then for the most part ignore all the other valuable communities within SL, neglecting to pour these resources into places that will matter.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Fauve Aeon]

SL is over a half a billion dollars ‘successful’ with what it has. Costs go up and existing user bases decline over time though. In a potential growth stage I think there’s room for both kinds of developments, attraction & retention - including hopefully some ‘come back’ initiatives to existing but inactive users. The new Senra starter avatars seem promising as a much better start than previous beginner avatars, especially with dev kits available. Not everyone is into avatar styling and the idea that you need to immediately buy and learn to use a bunch of replacement body parts for your avatar to even ‘look decent and not be considered noob or outdated’ is for the birds if you aren’t ‘into it’.
The new Welcomehub is nice and there’s both new development (laser tag, Motown, movies & more) and much-needed basics (a sandbox & dressing rooms) and we’ve seen continued development of the currently successful things like Bellisseria expansions. Why not both - some continued development and offering some new & more game-like activities?

With the mobile apps, I think there’s going to be somewhat of a shift in the way SL is approached, I did read that when IMVU went mobile in 2014 and it had a growth jump. As of 2020, its user base was 80% mobile. That’s something to consider.
Quotes from an article at gamedeveloper.com: Product operations VP "Patch" said it would be possible to do "pretty much anything you can do with the desktop Second Life viewer without being tethered to your computer." 
So to me that says - by nature of app vs viewer - although some things may be approached differently from a UI standpoint by necessity,  I don’t think the mobile apps will change the fundamentals. I don’t think mobile SL is going to turn into mostly a ‘social chat, avatar fashion doll, world of games’ scenario. I was on the fence about reading the book, and my SL-using partner has no interest in reading it - but I’ll probably order it tonight. 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Fauve Aeon
Clarity

[diamond Marchant]

On 7/4/2023 at 9:46 PM, diamond Marchant said:

I tried to buy the Kindle version and it was not available.

It is available but Amazon no longer allows you to purchase kindle things on your iOS device. I was able buy it on a laptop and send it to my iPad. Seems goofy,.

Update: prolly this is to avoid having to pay Apple a percentage of the amount paid

Edited July 7, 2023 by diamond Marchant

[elleevelyn]

5 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

CREATIVITY!!

Has anybody considered that a community can be successful without "mass adoption". That is anathema tho, to the techie boys in San Francisco.  And they like games. And I do believe they want to turn SL into a gaming world, even if not as technically proficient as what is possible in popular games in existence, and so likely will not be successful, and then for the most part ignore all the other valuable communities within SL, neglecting to pour these resources into places that will matter.

is not a binary decision. Is possible to have both, where different things can co-exist

again Bellisaria, it co-exists with traditional mainland, both of these estate models in turn co-exist with private estates

major retention of new accounts does need to be developed on a large-scale. Tinkering about with small-scale initiatives during the on-boarding process isn't going to do this. Over the years Linden have pretty much tried every small-scale on-boarding initiative there is. Including shopping malls, shooter arenas, vehicle race tracks, sailboats at the oceanside WAs, building sandboxes, tutorials, L$ grinders like Linden Realms, etc etc to name some. These on top of things like Community Gateways by which residents have provided onboarding experiences themselves to new accounts,. And also things like Destinations to help new people explore

and after all these initiatives, here we are with what we have. Which is nothing to be sneezed at when resident creatives have been able to cash out about USD65 million dollars annually (last time I looked)

the thought behind gaining increases in new account retention isn't so much to grow the creator base. Is to grow the customer base of the creatives. Second Life has a ton of creatives already, so this not the problem. The problem is retaining accounts so they become customers of both Linden and the resident creatives. Customers like their experiences to be easy to use and easy to understand.  And the easiest thing to understand (at least in the 3D online realm) after creating the character (avatar and outfit) are games. Games are way more easier to navigate than is navigating social interactions leading to building relationships

and maybe thats the thing. After Bellisaria maybe the next big large scale estate project will be for gamers. I have some thoughts about how that might be gone about, and am pretty sure Linden does also. Linden did do this way back in the beginning times - the badlands to the east of the then Clyde wall. But at the time server space for land was at a premium which caused settlers to go over the Wall to settle in the badlands and they didn't like getting shot at. So Linden nerfed the badlands all the way down to one region Jesse, as a museum piece pretty much. Today server space is no longer the issue it once was. So who knows, the badlands may come back, and for those who don't like getting shot at then don't go over the Wall

[Cedric Brown]

8 hours ago, elleevelyn said:

is not a binary decision. Is possible to have both, where different things can co-exist

again Bellisaria, it co-exists with traditional mainland, both of these estate models in turn co-exist with private estates

major retention of new accounts does need to be developed on a large-scale. Tinkering about with small-scale initiatives during the on-boarding process isn't going to do this. Over the years Linden have pretty much tried every small-scale on-boarding initiative there is. Including shopping malls, shooter arenas, vehicle race tracks, sailboats at the oceanside WAs, building sandboxes, tutorials, L$ grinders like Linden Realms, etc etc to name some. These on top of things like Community Gateways by which residents have provided onboarding experiences themselves to new accounts,. And also things like Destinations to help new people explore

and after all these initiatives, here we are with what we have. Which is nothing to be sneezed at when resident creatives have been able to cash out about USD65 million dollars annually (last time I looked)

the thought behind gaining increases in new account retention isn't so much to grow the creator base. Is to grow the customer base of the creatives. Second Life has a ton of creatives already, so this not the problem. The problem is retaining accounts so they become customers of both Linden and the resident creatives. Customers like their experiences to be easy to use and easy to understand.  And the easiest thing to understand (at least in the 3D online realm) after creating the character (avatar and outfit) are games. Games are way more easier to navigate than is navigating social interactions leading to building relationships

and maybe thats the thing. After Bellisaria maybe the next big large scale estate project will be for gamers. I have some thoughts about how that might be gone about, and am pretty sure Linden does also. Linden did do this way back in the beginning times - the badlands to the east of the then Clyde wall. But at the time server space for land was at a premium which caused settlers to go over the Wall to settle in the badlands and they didn't like getting shot at. So Linden nerfed the badlands all the way down to one region Jesse, as a museum piece pretty much. Today server space is no longer the issue it once was. So who knows, the badlands may come back, and for those who don't like getting shot at then don't go over the Wall

you're hired

[HeathcliffMontague]

I felt like was I in a metaverse of sorts when I sat in a "data lab" in the lower levels of my University, in the very early 90's when you had to choose sides between the D&D folks and those who wanted to use this "thing" to communicate between borders (we all got along after enough beer). I chose the latter. I might involuntarily have contributed to Twitter.

[Gwin LeShelle]

On 7/4/2023 at 2:30 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

I found Wagner James Au's recent articles on Second Life are a bit misleading - leaving out bits, de-emphasizing bits, over-emphasing bits.  Written for the audience, instead of for "truth".

I am afraid his book would just p!ss me off.

Let me know if anyone reads it, if it actually seems "fair and balanced", or if it white-washes / sugarcoats / is obviously biased.

Yes, I know he is a pillar of our community, and is essentially a "founder" in some ways (as someone who wrote officially FOR LL).

 

The reason I never read his blog anymore and this book for sure I won't read either. It has always been this way XD 

A bold, objective and unfiltered view is what I love to read and I sure am not finding that at NWN ...Hamlet lost those sides of a journalist quite some while ago somewhere on the way...being busy to please everyone ... especially the people at LL.

I don't know why but now I have to think of my favest song ...

"Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?...Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange ....A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

The reason I never read his blog anymore and this book for sure I won't read either. It has always been this way XD 

A bold, objective and unfiltered view is what I love to read and I sure am not finding that at NWN ...Hamlet lost those sides of a journalist quite some while ago somewhere on the way...being busy to please everyone ... especially the people at LL.

I don't know why but now I have to think of my favest song ...

"Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?...Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange ....A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"

Love the song!

To his credit, the stories get promoted enough I see them multiple times in my Google News feed (but I have "Second Life" in my "look for stories" so that probably helps).

Animats and others gave some good deep details from the book, but to be honest, I'm just not interested in reading someone's analysis and predictions.  I'd rather "learn about it here" and just..live it. I suppose, the book and Au's writings get so much attention here because he is a) a long time journalist on SL, and b) "mainstream" (people will read it, so you hope it is "true and accurate").

 

[Gwin LeShelle]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Love the song!

To his credit, the stories get promoted enough I see them multiple times in my Google News feed (but I have "Second Life" in my "look for stories" so that probably helps).

Animats and others gave some good deep details from the book, but to be honest, I'm just not interested in reading someone's analysis and predictions.  I'd rather "learn about it here" and just..live it. I suppose, the book and Au's writings get so much attention here because he is a) a long time journalist on SL, and b) "mainstream" (people will read it, so you hope it is "true and accurate").

 

Yep same. Over the years there were so many would should could be articles written about SL, from people that never even used it and just lamented about hearsay stories, or just spent like 10 minutes on it, that I am just tired I guess. And like 99 percent of those articles pronounced SL dead, while it is still, 20 years on pretty much alive and kicking. Especially compared to some other certain Metaverse x3

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

Yep same. Over the years there were so many would should could be articles written about SL, from people that never even used it and just lamented about hearsay stories, or just spent like 10 minutes on it, that I am just tired I guess. And like 99 percent of those articles pronounced SL dead, while it is still, 20 years on pretty much alive and kicking. Especially compared to some other certain Metaverse x3

It seems one difference is, the current discussions are of the form:

"OMG! SL is still here?

Um..what should we do?

Look at them over there!  We should be more like them and grow more or WE WILL DIE!!!!"

So, some of the "analysis" is to ask all those "what if? why not?" questions about SL.  

But SL is like a cruise ship, hard to turn on a dime.

 

[ChinRey]

On 7/5/2023 at 4:26 AM, elleevelyn said:

there is a thing called "Escape From Freedom vs Escape To Freedom" which a number of people have written about. Not least of who was Erich Fromm circa 1941.

I'm not familiar with this concept but judging purely how the term is used in this thread, it seems to me that "Escape From Freedom" has two very different - opposite even - meanings.

In a game the purpose of the rules is to create challenges. They limit your options and you still have to figure out a way to finish your tasks.

In HOA style settings like Bellisseria the purpose of the rules is to eliminate challenges. Everything is laid out for you and all you have to do is sit back and (presumably) enjoy.

[diamond Marchant]

Am in Chapter 2; the one about Second Life. When I joined in 2009, I was told that Second Life had gambling and when that got shut down, a ton of residents left and have yet to be replaced. This is not in the book. Rather, our noob stickiness problem is due to complicated UI, TPV confusion, missing mobile after the IPhone, and current loyal residents. Yay us! Evidently we do not comply when asked to support new features we think are stupid.

He does not say this but he says stuff about Philip that suggest working for him was challenging.

Is Richard Nelson Oz Linden?

Edited July 8, 2023 by diamond Marchant

[Perrie Juran]

On 7/5/2023 at 11:47 PM, animats said:

Page 298: "Something magical was lost when our focus on metaverse platforms moved away from live, immersive social creation, and we resigned ourselves to offline editing in 3D software programs."

There's something to be said for that. In the early days of New Babbage, I'm told, people stood around and watched others build. Maybe SL should have a building construction system and a clothing design system in world. Ones with lots of templates to work from. Ones where you make walls or shirts, not pull vertices around. Much less general than Blender or Clo/Marvelous Designer and easier to use. Those are hard problems and there's not much open source software to mooch.A good start would be to provide a set of standard blanks (T-shirt, dress, pants, etc.) and a texture editor comparable to those ones for ordering T-shirts on line. (Yes, you can start with Robin Wood's old templates and use Photoshop or GIMP. That's still too hard for at least 80% of the potential user base.) My clothing skills are only good enough to make T-shirts and leggings for SL. Anyone from the SL clothing industry want to comment?

There actually is a lot to be said for that.

There were three things that really changed the face of SL.

Mesh was one of them. It allowed people who had no real interest or involvement in Second Life to come in and take money out of the Economy with no need to put anything back in.

Almost simultaneous with that was the growth of the  Marketplace. The shopping experience in SL just about vanished. Pretty much all the Malls vanished. I knew many people for whom shopping with friends was a fun experience. I enjoyed window shopping with my girl friends. We'd be helping each other choose outfits. Also the Malls acted as anchors for many clubs. So there was that social aspect tied to it also.

The third was Linen Homes. It is not a good position to be in when your Supplier also becomes your Competitor. My first Land Lord owned about three full Regions. He was an excellent Land Lord and provided added service value to his rentals. He was a 'go to' person if I had a question about something. His rentals were excellent for new people starting out. But with new people being enticed into Linden Homes his business started drying up and with a reduced ROI it was no longer worth his time.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 7/5/2023 at 11:47 PM, animats said:

Some quotes from the book:

Page 298: "Something magical was lost when our focus on metaverse platforms moved away from live, immersive social creation, and we resigned ourselves to offline editing in 3D software programs."

That was the end of it for me. I may log in to sl now but I've not been invested since this happened. I'm not saying it wasn't inevitable.