Deltango Vale

So, like, I totally agree. Its such a problem, y'know, and well, it, like, really gets on my nerves. Like REALLY. I mean, why cant people, y'know, make an effort to write propper cause, well, its better, yeah? Anyways, thats the ways I sees it.

I have a bad feeling we have been fooled. It appears VAT has only been cancelled on Premium Membership costs, NOT on the monthly tier costs associated with Premium Membership. If so, it's a hollow victory indeed.

My first thoughts on Project Sansar (poorly named, in my opinion because of the confusion with Sansara, SL's first continent) are as follows: 1) I believe the business model is wrong A taxation-based model is difficult to implement and awkward to manage. It creates disincentives to economic activity and smacks of RL politics. How much tax, on whom, under what circumstances, with what exceptions, under what conditions, across what time frame, subject to what future changes, decided by whom, influenced by whom? We suffer enough of this crap in RL. Do we really want it in a virtual world - a world that is voluntary, where we can choose to participate or not with the click of a mouse? It makes far more sense, in my opinion, for Sansar to follow the SL business model of charging rent for land. Not only is land LL's primary source of revenue in SL, but it would separate LL (the owner of the world) from the residents (the economic agents of the world). One of the key lessons LL should have learned by now is that owners should not be players. Many of SL's problems over the past seven years were the result of LL's political intervention in the society/economy. This was exacerbated by lack of vision, poor strategy, underinvestment in infrastructure, inadequate communication with customers (residents), incompetent management and amateurish PR. The price of land need not be high if the world is managed properly. 2) I believe the strategy is wrong As I have been saying for years, virtual worlds should not be managed by engineers. New technologies should be employed to enhance human social interaction, which is deep and complex, not added as toys to be played with and discarded. Facebook's success is NOT built on engineering prowess; it's built on social transactions. Therefore, the purpose of incorporating new technology into Sansar - of building Sansar around new technology - must be to facilitate human social and economic transactions. It should expand human capabilities and freedoms, not channel or restrict them. 3) world or game? A main criticism of SL has been, "what is there to do there?" Well, what is there to do in Facebook? There is no set goal in FB, no mission to accomplish, no path to follow. It's "show & tell" writ large. Sure, one can play games in FB, but that's not its main draw. People use FB to transact with each other socially, through words, photos, video and music, as part of the great social dance we all play in life, which involves, among other things, identity, culture, status, relationships, emotions, beliefs and opinions. Anyone who has spent any time in SL knows that it's a rich and vibrant social milieu - FB x 1000 - because of the ability to communicate in three dimensions in real time - four dimensions if one includes one's avatar, which is a huge source of personal information all by itself. In general, then, at this preliminary stage, I have strong reservations about Linden Lab's ability to construct a new virtual world. Has the Board of Directors and senior management truly learned from the mistakes of the past? Does the company have a realistic vision of the future of VR? Has the company been restructured to promote talent and creativity or is it still mired in bureaucracy? So many unanswered questions and so little information from Linden Lab.

Financial Times, September 16, 2015 12:39 pm Second Life eyes second act as virtual reality matures Tim Bradshaw and Emma Jacobs Ten years after they were published, the magazine covers hailing Second Life as the future of the digital economy still hang on the walls of its creator, Linden Lab. The hype faded long ago from the user-generated virtual world, however. Visitors can still wander around a reconstruction of St Paul’s Cathedral, go line dancing at a country and western club, watch planes land at an imaginary airport - or get their pixelated kicks at adult venues. But while Linden says there are still almost 1m regular users, the niche feel is a far cry from the headline-grabbing days when Reuters thought it necessary to open a virtual bureau to report on the goings-on of players and their “avatars”, or digitised representatives. Now though, the people behind Second Life are gearing up for a second act, thanks to the advent of virtual reality headsets such as Oculus Rift. As Facebook-owned Oculus, Sony’s PlayStation, smartphone makers HTC and Samsung, and games publisher Valve all ready virtual reality headsets for launch in the coming months, Second Life is serving as inspiration - and cautionary tale - for a new generation of virtual-world companies. This summer, San Francisco-based Linden Lab began testing a new virtual world dubbed Project Sansar, with updated 3D graphics and an entirely new business model. “Second Life is obviously the thing that we and everyone else can learn the most from as it’s the most successful virtual world, through until today,” says Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s chief executive. Across town, Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab’s founder and former chief executive, is trying to bring to life the sci-fi vision of the “metaverse” - a whole universe of virtual worlds - with his latest start-up, High Fidelity. And down the highway in Silicon Valley, AltspaceVR is working on a new VR-based communication platform of its own. Mr Rosedale, who has devoted his career to virtual worlds, is convinced that their moment has finally arrived. “Why all the hype around Second Life and why now the hype around Oculus? It’s because this is going to happen,” he says. “These projects are driven by inevitable changes in human behaviour and communication.” But Mr Altberg, a former Yahoo executive who joined Linden Lab in 2014, believes Sansar must overhaul not just the graphics and design of Second Life but its entire business model to succeed. Economic activity within Second Life is based on property. Some participants have bought swaths of virtual land from Linden Lab, developed it into a resort and then sublet it to casual users, turning a real-world profit in the process. Sansar replaces that with a transaction-based business model. Linden Lab will take a cut of any payments made between its community members, similar to Apple’s 30 per cent commission in the iPhone’s App Store. Put simply, Sansar will have “lower property tax, higher sales tax”, Mr Altberg says. “Unless you monetise it, land in Second Life is too expensive.” Wagner James Au, author of virtual reality blog New World Notes, says virtual fashion entrepreneurs form a second category of users who have made money from Second Life: creating boots, clothes and hats for avatars. “Judging by the popularity of adult-rated areas in Second Life, virtual porn is probably the third category,” Mr Au adds. ------------------------------- So why am I here? Sibley Simon believes few tech products were “as perfect for a boom-and-bust cycle as Second Life”. Mr Simon founded The Electric Sheep Company, which created software and content for virtual worlds; he is now working for a housing group in California. What fuelled the cycle, he says, was that it made a great news story, people could understand the technology and believed that “tens of thousands” were making money from it. As well as hype, clunky and unintuitive software was an impediment. Eric Romo, founder of AltspaceVR, says he has absorbed the lessons as he develops its avatar-based communications software. “One of the big pieces of feedback is people got [to Second Life] and didn’t know what to do. “We want to show people what you do with the products and give them exciting ideas ------------------------------- While Mr Altberg says freedom and openness was what made Second Life a success, he concedes that it “didn’t do enough early enough to separate out certain types of content” - a delicate balance it is “still dealing with today”. “That’s something we’ll sort out from the beginning in Sansar: to ensure certain kinds of content have metadata that can be sorted and filtered,” he says. The risk of encountering flying genitalia did not deter many big companies from setting out their stalls in Second Life back in the mid-2000s. PA Consulting got involved in the early days, running a conference in the virtual world, inviting clients to explore how they could use the technology and also doing training for an oil and gas client there. Five years ago, it wound up its Second Life office. Dan Rossner, a digital expert at the consultancy, says it was a useful learning experience but “not from a revenue perspective”. Rob Gear, PA Consulting “futurist”, makes the point that Second Life was never “the only game in town” and that other platforms were experimented with. Justin Bovington created a Second Life concert with 1980s pop band, Duran Duran, as well as providing content for IBM and Adidas. “The recession hit and budgets for experimentation were scrapped. The big problem in corporate use was that there was an initial steep learning curve and only then was there a good experience,” he recalls. For many companies, it was a brilliant public relations exercise at first, says Mr Bovington, now a creative industries strategist at the UK’s Plymouth University. “With the Duran Duran concert it got great PR. I was on television programmes. But you can’t do that continually.” Since Second Life’s launch, social media has sprung up, he points out, giving a fresh way of sharing content generated in a virtual world: “We’ve moved very fast in the past five years.” Mr Au believes that large companies are about to repeat the same mistakes they made during Second Life’s hype period, investing in VR projects “in an attempt to seem cutting edge, with little or no understanding of the actual market for VR, or its prospects of becoming an actual mass market product”. With Second Life, they mistook breathless media coverage for actual users and actual user growth, when in fact, Second Life was “during its hype period and still is, a midsized MMO [massively multiplayer online game] at best”. There is nothing more embarrassing, he says, than a company attempting to seem forward-thinking, only to conspicuously embarrass itself. It is, he says, “the corporate equivalent of a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis inviting hundreds of twentysomethings to a nightclub he bought, only to have none of them show”. Unless a company has a direct relation with the actual, existing VR market - hardcore gamers - it should keep its involvement with virtual reality modest, low-key, and exploratory at best, he believes. For those that do want to experiment, Linden Lab, AltspaceVR and High Fidelity are all working to ensure that doing so is much simpler - and cheaper - than it was in Second Life. “We are attempting to democratise the creation of virtual experiences,” Mr Altberg says. “We do have an unfair advantage in what it takes to do these kinds of things . . . Through a lot of positives and through a lot of pain, we have learnt a tremendous amount.”

Thank God! Finally! I have been bashing Linden Lab over the head about this problem for seven years.

Dres, Of all people, you know the answer to that question and the reasons why. As an aside, eBay and Amazon have badly damaged their reputations worldwide by adopting an authoritarian, paternalistic and blatantly political position under duress from social trolls.

Hot off the press: http://observer.com/2015/06/if-you-werent-there-you-missed-it-journalism-inside-video-games/ When I think how much history has been lost in SL, I think of all the wealth that LL let slip down the drain. The relative price of tier (relative to a basket of RL infotainment goods and services) has been prohibitively expensive for many years. It is now roughly 3-4x what it was in 2006 (relative to a 2015 basket of RL infotainment goods and services). Large numbers of historic sims with amazing builds have been lost. Total land continues to shrink. Virtual worlds are grabbing the world's headlines and Linden Lab is a million miles behind the curve. SL2? No news. No promotion. No media exposure. No excitement. No enthusiasm - what one has come to expect from the folks who couldn't get anywhere with SL1.

I find that the world divides between those who 'get' VR and those who don't. It's a bit like one of those gestalt pictures where the image is fragmented, disguised by noise. One looks at the image, perplexed, until suddenly one 'sees' the object. Those who can't see the object think it's a bogus test. They think that those who claim to see the object are mentally deranged. My BF and I have a good friend who's incredibly smart and quite artistic, but no matter how hard we try to explain VR to him, he just can't get it. AR and VR are separate creatures. Both will define the future. Let me attempt an analogy to explain VR. Think summer cottage. From a raw, financial and technical perspective, a summer cottage makes no sense. An engineer will suggest instead building a rec room in the basement. No need to purchase additional land. No need to pay and administer separate utility bills and taxes. No extra maintenance and security costs. No transportation costs. No duplication of refrigerator, TV, beds and cleaning products. A rec room in the basement is sensible and efficient. Why, then, are human beings so irrational to want to have a summer cottage? Because it's NOT home. Because it is an escape from home. Because it is a place to be free from the routines and constraints of home. Virtual reality is like a summer cottage. Yes, currently, VR is a bit crude, but one need not have a wild imagination to connect the dots to the future. Moreover, VR is an inexpensive and low-maintenance summer cottage. No need to humph a 500 lb piano up a flight of stairs; just buy a virtual one and rez it wherever one wants. Sooooo, with VR it DOES make sense to have a rec room in the basement because one can instantly travel to one's virtual summer cottage - even in wintertime - without all the problems mentioned earlier. In the not too distant future, VR will offer 90% physical reality at 1 percent the price. That's why it's poised to become the fourth economic structure (virtual services) after the current three (realworld services, manufacturing, agriculture).

"640K ought to be enough for anyone." - Bill Gates

Creativity (creation) and narrative can't be separated, but I take your point about the background story arc of EVE. Far more important, in my opinion, was the crisis both worlds faced in 2005 (EVE) and 2006 (SL). CCP made the right call; Linden Lab made the wrong one. CCP chose individual responsibility; LL chose paternalism. Which, interestingly, brings up back to the story arc. "Your World, Your Imagination" WAS the story arc. It was an open invitation for anyone, worldwide, to explore, unrestrained, his or her fantasies, enterprises and communities. I, for example, had some personal issues to sort out, which couldn't be done in RL. I also had commercial ambitions. I spent most of my leisure time on the dancefloor of Sanctuary Rock (now sadly gone). Almost everyone I met back then had a purpose. They saw SL as a vehicle for realizing long-held ambitions that could not be fulfilled in RL. I know this may stun new residents, but back in 2006, Linden Lab posted almost daily about their vision for SL as an open and creative world. It was an incredibly exciting time, filled with enthusiasm. Then came the paternalism, which sucked the wind out of SL's sails. The story arc was broken. For those who remained, the financial incentives vanished in a whirlpool of mismanagement. The ship ran aground. It's been stuck on a reef ever since.

Having puzzled over the issue of governance for some time, I believe that democracy would be fatal. Corporate governance is best AS LONG AS THE CORPORATION ISN'T STUPID. I don't believe that Linden Lab is greedy. If they were truly greedy, they would take a long-term perspective. I believe that Linden Lab is stupid - no conspiracy, just plain stupid. This is not a new problem. If one had a good king (say Henry V of England), the country prospered. If one had an idiot (say George III of England or Louis XVI of France), things went south. In the corporate world, we have the example of Kodak, a once mighty company that was destroyed by idiots. As the experience with CCP Games demonstrates, even clever companies can misjudge their userbase. Their solution was the CSM, similar in many ways to the earliest forms of democracy - an elite, elected council with a vested interest in the society (otherwise known as a property requirement). Perhaps something similar could be done with SL. One suggestion would be to sell shares in Linden Lab to the residents. This could be done incrementally when an existing shareholder (VC, executive or member of staff) wishes to sell his shares. An alternative would be to restructure LL as a resident-owned partnership. A superb example is John Lewis Partnership in the UK. I believe that the current owners might see this as an opportunity to exit the business (considering they have no understanding of SL or faith in its future).

Hot off the press: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/12/how-virtual-world-edge-of-apocalypse-and-back-again

You are right that the technical infrastructure of SL is not up to the task, but the concept and functionality of SL is revolutionary (just like the Model-T). The key point I want to make is that the focus must shift from 'engineering' to 'economics'. Form follows function. The Model-T was created to serve a social purpose. It was not created as a gadget in the hope that people might like to play with it. Second Life began as a gadget, which Philip soon realized also served a social purpose. He knew he'd stumbled ass-backwards into something big, but he was an engineer by training and couldn't marshal his realization into a commercial strategy. He lacked the experience and intellectual power to convince the Board and VCs of SL's true potential. Now Linden Lab wants to build a new virtual world. Great, but the company still hasn't learned the lessons of SL. Virtual worlds are not gadgets or games. They are full-blown political economies sitting atop a new social geography. The mechanics - the technical infrastructure - the form - needs to follow that function. BUT to understand that function requires knowledge of human nature and great wisdom - both in short supply at Linden Lab.

I find it amazing how few people understand virtual worlds, but I'm baffled as to why so few people in Second Life understand virtual worlds. Btw, irihapeti, this is not directed against you personally. When the first Model-T was produced, people gawked and laughed. There were lots of photos of cars bogged down in the mud or being outrun by a horse. Haha, who wants one of those silly contraptions? One spends 10 minutes driving and 10 hours fixing it. So, easy target, you say. Okay, I'll give you a photo of a modern Mercedes Benz and put you in a time machine and send you back to show the folks what a car will become. They look at the photo and smirk. They don't believe a word of it. Why? Because they have a certain mentality shaped by their experiences of their era. They simply can't grasp the notion of independent electric motors powering flat assembly lines or fuel injection or airbags or microchips or robotics. They lack the mental framework and the million bits of knowledge and experience of the modern world. They look at the photo and see an artist's drawing for a science fiction magazine. Remember how people scoffed at Dick Tracy's watch? It's only now that people can conceive it working because only now do they have the understanding of how such a watch could work. Same goes for virtual worlds. Most people don't have the mental framework or experience to see how virtual worlds will become the dominant political-economic structure of the 21st century. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic here, but I'm trying hard to make a point. Just because Second Life is the Model-T of virtual worlds doesn't mean one should dismiss it as a fad or something too complicated for the masses. Grandpa may have struggled with a mobile phone, buy your kids manage it in their sleep. As for the SL economy, remember two things: 1) it is mostly residential and 2) RL is a source of money. We don't have the luxury in RL of paying the rent from a bank account on Jupiter. We do have that luxury in SL. Whip out a credit card and Bob's your uncle. Also, think about why people have cottages. They want to get away from their normal lives and relax at the cottage. SL is 'the cottage' for most residents. All this adds up to a massive commercial opportunity that will make Facebook seem like 'Show & Tell'. Virtual worlds - and SL if it were managed right - will be FB x 1000. It's blindingly obvious to anyone who understands history and human nature.

"Edit: On second thought, we can actually compare SL and EVE Online since the active users figures are similar. But that just illustrates Deltango's point. A mass market virtual environment should have ten times the number of active users as a scifi game!" ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bingo! I actually logged in to make that point, but saw you got there first EVE Online is a dark, intimidating, aggressive, hyper-niche, male-centric, engineer-dominated, science-fiction, spaceship wargame. The learning curve is almost a vertical line. Basically, if you are not a math wizard with a solid physics and engineering background, you don't stand a chance of penetrating its arcane structure and dynamics. Yet, through superb marketing and advertising - driven in part by some incredibly sharp female executives and developers, the world has not only survived more than a decade, but has continued to garner respect and admiration from the virtual/gaming media in addition to expanding the userbase. Indeed, Second Life should have ten, 20, 100 times that userbase. I will not comment on the detailed engineering aspects of SL because I'm not an engineer. ChinRey and other have been pointing out the engineering problems for years. Yes, the technical infrastructure needs to be improved, but that is only half the reason why SL flatlined in 2008. The other half was a string of disastrous policy decisions that killed inward investment and undermined Linden Lab's reputation. Go global, recommends ChinRey. SL was global in 2006 and expanding rapidly in the global market in 2007, but LL killed that growth overnight out of greed, stupidity and a lack of basic accounting skills. As for land management, Linden Lab first starved then flooded the mainland market - doing far more financial damage than Ginko Bank (2008). Yet the Board got on its high moral horse and wiped out the entire inworld financial system, never once acknowledging the damage its own policies were having on the inworld economy. By 2009, with the rezoning of the grid - which received overwhelming condemnation from the residents - compounded by Linden Lab's lack of investment in the technical infrastructure - it was all over for Second Life. Badly burnt, the big wave of immigrants (2006-2008) started pulling out. Linden Lab's reputation was in tatters. The media walked away. Blame Philip Rosedale? Some do; I don't. The dead hand of the Board lay heavy on policy. Why do so few people understand these issues? Because they are not engineering issues; they are political-economic policy issues. Second Life is not a game; it is an immersive virtual world economy requiring executives and managers to have a deep understanding of human nature, economics, economic history and corporate management. They don't. Ironically, the folks running EVE Online do. That's the real reason why they are successful.

Oops, I didn't read clearly, but it did give me a chance to express some further thoughts on SL's potential What kills me is watching the competition produce top-end marketing and advertising to promote its world. The level of enthusiasm of the management and devs, the keen participation of the employees and the wide range of promotional activities demonstrates not only a profound faith of the company in its product, but generates momentum, which translates into media coverage (including awards), customer loyalty and the recruitment of new players. Sadly, I have no interest in "spaceships and spreadsheets", the game's unofficial slogan. It's a testosterone-driven geek universe that screams niche - and yet the world is hugely successful. The number of female employees - and I mean hardcore tech people - defies all the stereotypes. Considering that the game is infamous for having the steepest learning curve outside a doctoral program at Stanford, I'm astonished by its popular appeal. My point being: if they can do it, why the hell can't Linden Lab?

"Today, we’re happy to announce a new way to explore the wide variety of community-created experiences in Second Life, without the complexity of the third dimension: 2D side-scrolling (2DSS) mode. Without the third dimension, you can enjoy Second Life just like your favorite 8-bit games from the past!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- April Fools' joke?

"SL2 certainly has no mainstream potential. It's very much a niche product for the "high power gaming computer" people. And yes, that is a large niche but hardly mainstream." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- As perhaps the only economic historian in Second Life, I would disagree. One of the huge problems of SL is that it's packed with engineers. While engineers are extremely useful for nuts and bolts work, they cannot see the big picture: historical context and perspective, social trajectories, institutional and organizational change, vision, strategy, leadership, management and, above all, human emotions, motivations and behavior. Philip (an engineer) was baffled by the success of Second Life in 2006, but he had enough wit and wisdom to recognize that human beings were using Second Life as more than just a game. People were flocking to SL from all over the world, bringing with them a high level of enthusiasm, trust, ability and money. They learned how to use the viewer from each other. They upgraded their computers (which were less powerful than today's tablets). They put up with all kinds of bugs (who can forget 'downgrade' Wednesdays when LL would 'upgrade' the grid?) It wasn't just hype. There was a real hunger for the opportunities - human opportunities - afforded by Second Life. There were also commercial opportunities. While not the best documentary, illustrates some of these human and commercial opportunities. The same year, I wrote an assessment of SL, which outlined the potential of SL and the failings of Linden Lab to achieve that potential.Nothing has changed regarding Second Life's potential. Not only have the tools for accessing SL improved (low-cost, high-power computers, low-cost, high-definition display monitors, high-speed broadband, the Phoenix/Firestorm viewer, social media support, resident-based community and technical support), but the human desire to escape from RL constraints has not diminished. Second Life is not a game, it is a new social geography with a sophisticated political economy. It is a new country that floats above RL. Sadly, Linden Lab never understood this metafunction of SL, seeking instead to treat it as a game or 3D Facebook or a California theme park. The company just didn't get it - and still doesn't get it, but then, how could a handful of engineers and venture capitalists ever understand such things? People learn when there is an incentive to do so. They learn fast when they learn from each other. Also, each generation is capable of absorbing technologies that befuddles its parents (grandpa with a cellphone, dad with Oculus Rift). Writing off Second Life as too advanced for the human race is disingenuous. Second Life could become mainstream if it were treated as a new frontier instead of a shiny toy.

"I can't really imagine LL being stupid enough to allow SL works to be ported to SL2 against the creator's will. That would be suicidal, no serious content creator would ever want to deal with them again afterwards." - ChinRey ------------------------------------------------------------------- "They have done so many things that would cause serious content creators (ie those making significant income) to never want to deal with them afterwards. But if you want to earn a living in a virtual world, it's the only game in town, you grit your teeth and bear it." - Pamela Galli ------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is the crux of the problem: anyone who has invested in SL no longer trusts Linden Lab. The company's reputation is so badly damaged that the worst is expected by default. I, like Pam, have been gritting my teeth for seven years because SL is the only game in town. Under these circumstances, I believe Linden Lab is foolish to embark on the construction of a new world without first rebuilding SL's infrastructure, fixing major mistakes and formulating a sound strategy. To attempt to build a new world without first proving competence to a highly skeptical userbase in its existing world - let alone the RL investor base - is to invite ridicule - which is precisely what's happening. No, I do not trust Linden Lab to do anything right. I expect stupidity around every corner. I cringe whenever I see an official announcement, wondering what new catastrophe is in store. It means that my investment in SL is highly restricted and defensive. Having been burned so many times by LL policymakers (offset by the excellent inworld service I receive from the grunt-work Lindens, bless them all), I dare not expand my business. Almost everyone I knew of my generation is gone, their land sold or abandoned, their businesses closed, their enthusiasm turned to bile. There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. I believe Linden Lab missed the boat in 2007 (on Captain Philip's watch, though I blame the admirals). It will take an enormous effort in terms of leadership, intelligence, ability and teamwork to make up for those seven lost years, let alone the next seven. This is why I believe SL2 will fail, but perhaps there is a silver lining: Linden Lab will be ripe for a buyout at a fire sale price.

Excellent post. Thank you.

Excellent post. I agree with all of it. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. CCP Games suffered some of the problems on your list. The result was a full-scale riot by the players. Here is the (roughly 03:30-13:30). Note both the honesty of the executives/managers and their openness with the players. CCP has continued to make mistakes, but having learned its lesson, it's much quicker to fix them.Sadly, Linden Lab ignored massive protests by the residents at some of its policy changes. The company retreated into its ivory tower and locked the door.

Good point about corporate culture: "It takes good leadership and lots of time and patience and hard work to fight the inertia caused by this and steer the organisation in a completely new direction." At the same time, there lurks on the Board at least one person who was directly responsible for SL's change of direction in 2007. As for the venture capitalists, their problem is an obsession with short-term returns. Imagine if someone like Elon Musk or Warren Buffett were to buy Linden Lab! Not only would they provide sound leadership, but they'd have a 25 year time horizon. Moreover, they'd have the brains to comprehend the core nature of Second Life. They wouldn't cut off their heel to fit into the glass slipper (the original Cinderella); they'd build Oz from the ground up and sell ruby shoes.

You are right to provide an example of what I was suggesting. Let me elaborate. Two unscripted virtual worlds went live in 2003: Second Life and EVE Online. Both are open-ended political economies. Both are worlds, not games. Second Life enables user-generated content and connects financially to RL. EVE enables an entire universe to run on a single server. Compare the website of Second Life to the website of EVE Online. Compare the YouTube channel of Linden Lab to the YouTube channel of CCP Games. Here is an example of promotional artwork. Here is the announcement of the 2016 Fanfest. Here is a RL monument built to celebrate the residents. Here is the trailer for the .Here are the executives, managers, developers, programmers and staff .My point is not to compare the two worlds in terms of function and design, but to compare the two companies in terms of vision, enthusiasm, openness, professionalism, communication, customer relations, advertising and marketing. I'm sure you'd agree that Linden Lab needs to up its game.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a littel bigger, darling."

Here is the history of Linden Lab's sexual policy. Philip was involved in countering accusations of child pornography in Second Life (2007). The policy of rezoning the grid was formulated in 2009, after he left. Regarding SL Marketplace, I supported it at the time - and still do - but I also strongly encouraged Linden Lab to reduce land fees (to keep merchants inworld and/or replace them with residential landowners). By refusing to reduce land fees, Linden Lab encouraged merchants to close their inworld stores. Meanwhile, residential landowners were downsizing or leaving entirely. Therefore, while SL Marketplace was a good idea, it was poorly planned and executed.