Are there contingencies in place?

[Riodan]

I'm just going to express some concerns today regarding Second Life and it's future.  Clearly it's no surprise that the population pales in comparison to what it was 10 years ago, there are far less people logging in, and things have been on a downward spiral for a long time now.   As such, Land prices are ridiculously overpriced, the technology for Second Life is well behind the curve at this point, and it feels to most people I know like SL is dying and in it's final years. 

 

With that being said, I'm wondering what the contingencies are? 

1. Are there any plans on P2P functionality regarding personally hosted and owned dedicated servers?

2. Is there a Second Life 2.0 in development? And if so, what engine is being considered?

 

Ultimately, I ask these questions because I happen to do a good bit of development in Unreal Engine, and I know of several places with solid prototypes for virtual worlds already in development.  Before it gets asked, no I can't tell you who, or give you any details on what I do know, it would be ethically wrong as I've known a few people in the industry for years and won't betray the trust they've given me as a professional courtesy.   My larger concerns however remain intact regarding Second Life, most of us older folks have invested over a decade of money and time into Second Life. If for whatever reason, Second Life gets sunset what are the chances that people like myself will have the opportunity to host a dedicated server and manage their own grids?  As someone who does run several servers ranging from web servers, database servers and game servers, I could feasibly host hundreds of sims with the hardware and resources I have.  In truth, I could probably even go as far as to creating my own small virtual world project but at my age, seeing it to fruition is questionable.   

 

In truth, I've come to enjoy Second Life, but I do feel like some of the technology is dreadfully dated, the rendering and data pipeline is ineffective and needs quite an overhaul, clearly there's bottlenecking in the packet flow and database traffic, and it just feels to me like there's room for vast improvements.  In a perfect world these things would be getting addressed and those of us who wish to continue on with Second Life, potentially even developing outside of the Linden Lab umbrella, would in 90% of all cases, bring their own servers online and be willing to connect them to the network.  It occurs to me that someone is probably going to say "Yeah, because you want to make money."  For me personally, nope, I'd host my servers with no financial gains in mind, maybe run a club, or make a nice racing track sim or something along those lines though. LL could even simply take a percentage of all land sales for those who wish to be a land baron. 

 

In any case, I doubt anyone from LL will actually answer this, but it would be nice to be more informed, technology has come along way in the last 10- 20 years, and I know I'm not getting any younger, and most the people I hang around with in Second Life aren't either lol, so hopefully the evolution of Second Life and a new approach may be something we'll see?

 

[Qie Niangao]

12 minutes ago, Riodan said:

I doubt anyone from LL will actually answer this

Not only that. They won't see it, either.

Personally, I'd much rather the whole thing go away than share content from the Lab's grid with any other servers.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Not only that. They won't see it, either.

Personally, I'd much rather the whole thing go away than share content from the Lab's grid with any other servers.

There's always OpenSim..

I assume OpenSim is perpetually behind on adding LSL features (JSON, LSD, etc.) so all the work I've done in the last few years would be for naught. 

 

[Riodan]

Quote

Personally, I'd much rather the whole thing go away than share content from the Lab's grid with any other servers.

That's an interesting response, can you elaborate? I'm curious as to your concerns on the subject and this seems like a perfect time to gain understanding on how people are thinking about the situation?

 

[MBeatrix]

3 minutes ago, Riodan said:

That's an interesting response, can you elaborate? I'm curious as to your concerns on the subject and this seems like a perfect time to gain understanding on how people are thinking about the situation?

 

For me, to put it simply, it's a matter of trust in general.

[Riodan]

Quote

 

There's always OpenSim..

I assume OpenSim is perpet

 

Quote

 

There's always OpenSim..

I assume OpenSim is perpetually behind on adding LSL features (JSON, LSD, etc.) so all the work I've done in the last few years would be for naught. 

 

Your assumptions are correct, unfortunately they are way behind and in truth, it's just not worth the time it would take to see it come to fruition.  I've got a few associates that have dabbled on it, and they just aren't thrilled with the experience or the lack thereof of improvements.   In a perfect world, I'd have 5 years of development time to use towards a Virtual World project myself, but I'm getting too old for that stress and crowd funding for a project of that scope could take years itself lol.

[Love Zhaoying]

Be prepared for a lot of responses that do not take your concerns seriously.

The Forum gets posts about how "The Sky Is Falling!" all the time.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Hi @Riodan, if you use the Forum "quote features", the person you quoted will actually get notified - and we can tell who you quoted.

Option 1: After you select some text with your cursor, you will see a "quote button" appear to quote the text you selected.

Option 2: Use the "+" button to quote an entire post.

[Riodan]

Quote

*smiles* That's quite alright, as someone who's been in the industry in the past, I see it all the time.  I don't necessarily believe the Sky is Falling, but if history has proven anything in gaming, the shelf life is definitely beyond it's years.  I would simply like to see it continue another 10 years, but there are some relatively serious concerns, I work quite a bit in UE5 and things have become much easier in regards to development,  so I'm wondering if they have those plans in place, I just don't think the mobile approach is going to suddenly "Make SL Great Again" by itself lol.

 

 

[Candide LeMay]

30 minutes ago, Riodan said:

 Land prices are ridiculously overpriced, the technology for Second Life is well behind the curve at this point, and it feels to most people I know like SL is dying and in it's final years.

We have been saying this in 2008-9 already yet SL is still around.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Riodan said:

*smiles* That's quite alright, as someone who's been in the industry in the past, I see it all the time.  I don't necessarily believe the Sky is Falling, but if history has proven anything in gaming, the shelf life is definitely beyond it's years.  I would simply like to see it continue another 10 years, but there are some relatively serious concerns, I work quite a bit in UE5 and things have become much easier in regards to development,  so I'm wondering if they have those plans in place, I just don't think the mobile approach is going to suddenly "Make SL Great Again" by itself lol.

These same concerns are brought up all the time.  And here we are! 🙂 

I think you will not get any answer on "contingency plans", we are just users like you.

Linden Lab does not read the Forums (except occasionally and/or for Moderation), and does not answer every question.

 

[Riodan]

2 minutes ago, Candide LeMay said:

We have been saying this in 2008-9 already yet SL is still around.

You are right, still they are valid concerns, when I look at how they've set things up and reflect on it though, I just can't fathom how they expect to keep making a residual profit off Second Life, with just about any game server, the longer you keep it online, the more expensive it eventually becomes, people lose interest, hardware needs replaced, developers need to be paid, etc. I do understand why certain things are dreadfully off kilter regarding pricing with LL, but at some point they really need to either pump resources into updating everything or they need to start a fresh and newer virtual world.

[MBeatrix]

1 minute ago, Riodan said:

[...] but at some point they really need to either pump resources into updating everything or they need to start a fresh and newer virtual world.

Wasn't Sansar going to be that?

[Riodan]

Just now, MBeatrix said:

Wasn't Sansar going to be that?

Ironically, it was but it fell flat on it's face. I think this is probably attributed to the fact that you couldn't bring over your assets from SL, and it was a little too unfamiliar for most Second Life users.  People generally don't like too radical of a change when it comes to things like this, it's one thing to have better graphics and smoother performance, it's another when you put learning curves in front of someone just logging in for the first time.    Classic example, Star Wars Galaxies, it started out as a complex and advanced game design, years later, it was dumbed down to a point where it played more like World of Warcraft.  That change was enough to alienate most of their community and people went on to play World of Warcraft and other titles instead. 

[MBeatrix]

9 minutes ago, Riodan said:

Ironically, it was but it fell flat on it's face. I think this is probably attributed to the fact that you couldn't bring over your assets from SL, and it was a little too unfamiliar for most Second Life users.  People generally don't like too radical of a change when it comes to things like this, it's one thing to have better graphics and smoother performance, it's another when you put learning curves in front of someone just logging in for the first time...]

You're probably right but also consider that this is a niche, and possibly the number of people who can actually spend time learning a new thing after using something for years is possibly even smaller.

I think the Lab learned from Sansar, not only technically but also as a business. What do people say about trying something a second time and expect a different outcome?

Edited February 1 by MBeatrix
typo correction

[Modulated]

A sound contingency plan is to find another hobby if it ends.

[Candide LeMay]

27 minutes ago, Riodan said:

I just can't fathom how they expect to keep making a residual profit off Second Life, with just about any game server, the longer you keep it online, the more expensive it eventually becomes.

The move to AWS has allowed LL do scale up AND down as needed. And you probably misunderestimate just how much money is LL making on SL:

- private islands bring at least 2mil USD/month, probably closer to 3mil (depending on the distribution of full vs homestead and the various grandfathered prices)

- lindex fees are somewhere in the range of 1mil USD/month

- premium account fees & mainland land fees ... no idea, but given the popularity of Belli maybe another 1mil USD/month?

- name change fees - probably not significant but lolworthy, best business idea LL ever had

As a conservative estimate that's ~60mil USD/year revenue. And there was never any public indication that LL is not profitable. The previous CEO infamously called it a cash machine.

 

[Persephone Emerald]

35 minutes ago, Modulated said:

A sound contingency plan is to find another hobby if it ends.

SL will end eventually. Accept this as enevitable and don't invest too much money into it. 

[VenKellie]

1 hour ago, Riodan said:

2. Is there a Second Life 2.0 in development? And if so, what engine is being considered?

SL is already at version 7 both the viewer and server code with the release of the new rendering features

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

44 minutes ago, Modulated said:

A sound contingency plan is to find another hobby if it ends.

SL will end eventually. Accept this as enevitable and don't invest too much money into it. 

Yes! All good things come to an end.

But perhaps we will all be gone by then, too.  

It is likely that some new shiny metaverse will exist that is SO great and wonderful, we won't miss Second Life at all, or anything we created here.

 

[Extrude Ragu]

The last thing we need is more managed decline. I'd rather see LL spend time making plans for success than plan for failure.

I also don't particularly want my creations shared to some random grid either. I entrusted LL to manage the rights to that content, nobody else.

[Love Zhaoying]

It is tempting to argue "WHY don't you think Mobile will make a difference"?  

But, it seems the OP's mind is already made up.

3 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

The last thing we need is more managed decline. I'd rather see LL spend time making plans for success than plan for failure.

I also don't particularly want my creations shared to some random grid either. I entrusted LL to manage the rights to that content, nobody else.

I agree.  The "best case scenario" is if LL sold SL and the new company maintained the database and spun up a similar metaverse with the same IP rights profiles for all our existing content.

There is absolutely no reason for LL to work on that type of "contingent", since it would take a LOT of resources and would assume SL would be sold / need to transfer to a new company with a new platform.

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Riodan said:

As such, Land prices are ridiculously overpriced

While I might agree with your overall sentiment... land prices are at an all time low, and the steady trend of lower pricing may as well continue as LL shifts its income elsewhere.

Also, SL 2.0 was already attempted. It was called Sansar.

Edited February 1 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Extrude Ragu]

The real question that should be asked IMO is how does SL plan to succeed?

One of our weaknesses I think is actually ourselves. SecondLifes direction is largely influenced by its existing residents. Most of us are old blood who aren't looking to make a great deal of new friends, but rather want somewhere comfy to spend with familiar people we've already met, and maybe if you're a creator, new building tools. Many residents are so old that the platform changing to get with the times just isn't appealing to them because they're so invested in how SL works now.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

People have been saying "SL is dying" for three decades now, yet here we still are.

There was an SL v2.0, it was called Sansar and launched in 2017. Because SL inventories couldn't be transferred to Sansar, that it required a minimum of 8GB RAM and that their was a perception that an expensive VR headset was required, almost no one from SL left to use it, so it bombed.  Support was dropped for Sansar by LL and was later sold off in 2020 as an entirely separate thing.

Edited February 2 by SarahKB7 Koskinen