Vivienne Schell
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Posts posted by Vivienne Schell
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Don´t panic!
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"I' don't spend just "a few dollars". I don't spend anything. I take it out, for goodness sakes."
Wonderful. No wonders that Linden Lab, being a business, tries to get rid of you.
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Because it´s "next generation" and "better" it should include these features, at least:
- A "feel" implementation (like when you jump into voxel water you actually "feel" it)
- Lifebelts (Because you actually can drown in voxel water)
- Jobs for everyone
- Trade Unions
- The Trump Tower
- No child left behind
- Some sensorised full body suit for experiencing virtual kinks (Spank me!)
- Social ghettos for freeloaders (Like the Shelter, but in voxels)
- Diseases including avatar cancer
- The cure for cancer
- The Norwegian Fjords
and most important, a RL export module for Xcite bits (Size matters).
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"To those who find that hard to accept, stop spending now. Then you'll have 2, 3, 4 or more years to get all the enjoyment you paid for out of the things you've already bought. And that's a long long time."
Rubbish. If only a quarter of the existing user customer base would follow your advice SL would be dead before the "better" "next generation" wishiwashi promise would even see the beta light. I´m not talking about the freeloaders and the ones spending a few dollars - as you obviously do -, I talk about the people who spend thousands of dollars a year on sims and whatsoever."LL *has* to come up with the next generation platform for its own future prosperity."
LL has come up with a big bubble made of hot air so far. And if they really "MUST" come up with a so-called "next generation" "platform" (whatever this is, maybe it´s a Ford T model) is questionable anyway. It´s corporate gamble, and neither you nor me are involved, it´s all about business plans and profits. The board cares about dollars, not Second Life. Most likely some major investors fell for just another shiny "promising" tech hoax presented by another silicon valley born geek "visionary" for "conquering the mass market".
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"The New World is much better and less confusing to those uninformed about it as of yet..Because that is exactly what it is.."
The last time I heard that was when they came up with Viewer 2. I bet that you are one of the 10 percent users who use this much better and less confusing hell of a Linden made user interface cause you have faith in Linden Lab software design, right?
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Yeah, and the Persians massacred the Greek cause they loved change by all means.
This here isn´t about "change", anyway. It´s about a corporate decision made by a company which depends on profits. "Better" and "Next Generation" are empty word without specification of what "better" actually is supposed to be. And I didn´t hear anything specific. We´re dancing on architecture.
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Fact is what we know, and we don´t know anything except that the "next generation" thing will run on "more platforms" and that SL content will be not compatible.
"More platforms" certainly will include mobile devices, otherwise the term "next generation" would be absurd. Now look at what runs on tablets and smartphones and how, due to the technical limitations there.
"Betterworld", most probably, will be nothing but a strictly simplified Second Life, which will be a lot easier to use and to access, but it will lack almost everything of the rich content and community life Second Life has to offer once it goes online.
I don´t mind if Linden Lab starts another attempt to expand their business. But so far all their attempts failed more or less, and judging by the records this attempt will turn out to be just another DOA failure. No need to worry. Business as usual.
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"The new world will be a colony of Second Life."
So it will be a first person shooter for slaughtering the native pixels?
:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:
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"Actually upgrade path might be a misnomer. Content creators need enough of a heads up before it goes live to be ready to hit the fround running with completed or near completed goods. Easiest way is to get them involved in all stages of beta from closed to open so that long before the new grid goes finally opens they have goods ready for the new residents."
Wishful thinking. Look at the proofs. Proof is that when they came up with mesh this was closed and open beta for a loooong time. Then it went online and it took another year, if not more, until mesh items became available in SOMEWHAT substantial amount. And when you visit enough sims you´ll notice that at last 80 percent of rezzed inventory items still are NOT mesh.
Betterworld will not only have a "mesh" problem, but imagine that additionally any typical SL script functionality will be broken, any SL animation will be broken, including AO´s and whatever else animations in SL are good for.
And what exactly would encourage content creators to drop their SL activities for Betterworld? The expectation of a million excited people dropping in to buy the same stuff they already paid for in SL all over again? A chair is a chair, you know. Most stuff will not look or work substantially better in Betterworld.
Add the fact that the upcoming Facebook VR most probably will cover any kind of family entertainment, anyway. So what would encourage the Off-SL content creators (turbosquid, renderosity and the like) to go for the SL market instead of the much more promising Facebook VR market?
Add the fact that it´s a miserable start for any kind of new product with a "loss" included.
No, even in good faith for Betterworld, there are way too many obstacles for optimism. Maybe Linden Lab will come up with a lil bit more than empty jackets later on to convince me. We´ll see.
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Madelaine, I absolutely agree that polling does not lead to success. But in this particular case here, seriously: One does not even need a poll. The polling has been done by giants like Apple and Microsoft and any other successful software company with the obvious results. And you may call my question simplstic, but the truth - unfortunately - often is simplistic. And so is customer will, particulary here.
Even with a (still running) SL as backup, i strongly doubt that LL will be successful with the new platform without offering a substantial amount and variety of content instantly - which irequires - at least - a clear migration plan.
Lemme try to explain. In SL you have starship which crashes on region border crossings. In Betterworld you´ll have no region border crossings, but you don´t have a starship to crash. What´s better?
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"Did Microsoft ask ANY of its users if they should keep XP support going? Any of them, just one?"
Did Microsoft stop you from using SL on their new OS? Or better: Your assets as pictures, documents, movies, any kind of essential core content? Formats as jpg, avi, doc....
Di they? Of course not, cause even asking you would cause irreparable damage. The real world isn´t stupid enough, you know.
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"If porting inventories meant that SL2 is not as good as it could be, then leave the inventories behind."
This is not a matter of formats. It´s a matter of content quality. If Linden Lab really wants to have better content quality in SL2 why do they base iit on user created content then? Even if they switch to different formats: How can they expect that the "next generation" content will be of better quality while being made and uploaded by the same crowd who made the content for SL1?
"It's a very self-centred attitude."
Of course it is, but that´s totally okay. Linden Lab´s attitude is as self centered as yours or mine or everyone else´s. It´s all about compromising. "No backwards compatibility" isn´t a compromise, it should be and certainly is negotiable.
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"The question is too simplistic and therefore the answer both obvious and useless."
So you declare obvious customer/consumer will being useless? Where do you live? Between the code lines? It certainly cannot be on this planet.Oh, and the phones you installed, i guess the customers just wanted to phone somehow. Oh, what an obvious, useless and simplistic declaration of will.
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"Well, it has already been pointed out why 100% backward compatibility is not possible at all"
I cannot see the word "impossible" in any of the official Linden postings. All they said so far is that they will not restrict themselves by thoughts on backwards compatibility at THIS POINT. And the number was not "impossible", but "not 100 %". They should waste no further time and move the numbers to a point of customer acceptance now, my suggestion is 97 percent, or better 96.9 (Sells better).
Their talent for self-creating cutting crisis is as astonishing as their talent for managing the crisis. Exciting to watch!
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I doubt that the new avatars will be better looking as their new newbie mesh avis. Just create a new account and go for the proof of what Linden Lab is willing and capable of to do. Or better do not, it might destroy your illusions of a company which knows what "the noob" wants in a shocking devastating way.
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"please, please, SL2 , put in some building guidlines that make sense."
We would not need a SL2 for fixing this, you know.
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"I do remember an LL poll - about the V2. The had the poll and then ignored the results and went ahead with it anyway."
The original polling, introduced by Linden Lab in 2004 was done on an at least monthly, if not weekly schedule (any other oldsies left here who remember the exact schedule?) and abandoned before your avatar was born.
But it´s plain wrong that Phil Rosedale did not listen, the opposite is true. At that time Lindens were present and actively communicating at every newbie hub and we had a lot of fun bashing them for their beards. Even later on a friend of mine set fire under Oz Lindens bottom during an office hour. I think that they gave up on it once the big 2006-2009 hype let first SL and theri their servers explode, which exposed their fragile pixel psyche to public wrath in a too unpleasant way (or maybe they were as fed up as we were by the scheduled thurdsday blackouts!).
"There should not be a poll on SL2. It has nothing to do with SL, except that it's a new model."
I agree that there should not be a poll on the technology. But other aspects would probably be enlightening for the Lab.
Like:
Do you want to be able to port your inventory to SL2? YES - NO.
:matte-motes-oh-rly:
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Medhue, there is only one valid idea to keep SL 1 going until SL2 is up without a major loss of customers and content, and that´s 100 percent backwards compatibility of customer assets. As long as this is not announced, SL1 is a lame duck and SL2 will be DOA due to a substantial lack of instantly available content.
Another way would be to withdraw all the "greater" "better", "new" propaganda by announcing just another tablet/smartphone app without any potential to replace SL1.
Anything else is doomed to fail. It´s as if your beloved Blender heinis would announce Blender 3 tomorrow, where you could not even use a simple Blender 2.7 cube.
Hilarious.
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"I have little sympathy for this idea. Imagine what second life would have been had Philip Rosedale solicited input from potential customers, rather than followed his dream.
The best work I've seen in my professional life came from people who "just don't listen""
Your professional lifespan must be based on a short term memory then.
Until 2007/08 Linden Lab did official, extensive public polling. Which was not a bad idea at all.
But it´s a lil but too late for polls on SL2 now, unfortunately.
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"If you don't own the animations you are out of luck..."
No. Even not if there will be a new asset server system. Inventory to Inventory conversions aren´t rocket science, just more costy for the Lab. But then: If they want people to populate their new world, then they should take care that they do this for some reasons. Less lag and better functionality without available content isn´t a promising perspective.
IIt could (!) be that the real trouble is not the format change or conversion, but the method animations are planned to work in the new environment ("sit on something", "sit target", "attachment", "avatar offsets"). If this will change per se, any animation ever made for Second Life will not work in the new environment. This would be REAL trouble. But that´s speculative.
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"It is damn hard to have a migration plan when you don't even know what to migrate to."
They know in theory. But a theory isn´t a sales argument. And shouldn´t be prematurely announced as a product.
And if they really were open to ALL possibilities it would not be a problem to tell people:
"100 percent compatibility with your assets."
And make up a list of what will be the lil exceptions (like empire state buildings) and guarantee customers a path to conversions, at least.
I´d be totally fine with this, and not only me. On the other hand, if they really, really wanna leave everything behind and create something absolutely new, even a completely new customer base, while telling their old customer base "Don´t worry be happy", OK. This is gambling with Second life customer money, not serious business. And gambling is prohibited in California, as far as I know.
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"Where do you get "within six months" from? I thought the Beta was supposed to be available sometime next year, not by the end of this one."
Oh, now you caught me doing exactly the same what Linden Lab does: Speading wishiwashi announcements for firing up useless panic debates.
Sorry for that.
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". which is why I have suggested alternate routes that can make for a smoother transition and pan out to everyone's advantage"
They definately need some kind of migration plan, otherwise this neither will work for Second Life nor for the new project. Most amusing here is that some of the things which cause the most trouble, namely texturs of empire state building size, can be ported 1:1. in case i got that right.
:matte-motes-shocked:
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Anyways, you still were able to play your MP3´s on Vista, right? And watch your AVI´s. And if a 1995 Word document does not open in 2014, ok, then this was not declared MS intention but colateral damage.
When Apple moved to OS X, you still could play your MP3´s, watch your MOV´s and use your Photoshop assets.
We can discuss the migration quality of Apple and MS core business product upgrades and replacements, but neither Apple nor MS would ever dare to destroy their business and customer base by depraving them of their assets.
That´s real business, not playing the gods of the techie microcosmos in a niche. And this difference in the basical sense for business/customers and biz/tech balance is probably the reason why Apple and MS can throw 500 already employed forces on a new product while LL can´t even afford one.
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change or die
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
"Mesh, however, changed all that. There's a lot of crappy mesh out there of course, but mesh has, overall, undoubtedly improved the appearance of Second Life."
"Mesh" is highly overrated. If it "improved" anything in a visual way this judgement is based on subjective taste, not facts. What really counts are concurrency, user numbers and the profits. From the business point of view "mesh" is a total failure. Neither concurrency nor user numbers improved, the grid still is shrinking as it was shrinking before the introduction of the format. Another fact is that Second Life boomed and peaked long before Linden Lab came up with off-world formats like sculpts and mesh.
Everyone can conclude everything, but in the end nothing Linden Lab tried over the past six years was overly helpful or successful in regards of expansion. SL, at best, stagnates in it´s niche, like it or not. While over the same past six years something like Minecraft, which uses a simple user interface and simple cubes, and static 3D chatrooms like IMVU stepped in with much more success.
My conclusion is that technology and formats, even the "best", cannot replace a basical, specific "I am here for doing this" customer declaration of will. Second Life, as is, actually serves too many niches in a niche. And Linden Lab tries to serve the needs of ALL these very different customer groups, so that it´s something like an ongoing compromise, where everything works somehow but nothing really works perfectly. All this for tremendous development and maintainance cost for Linden Lab.
No wonders that the company thinks of a different platform with by far more specific and stripped down focus on possible user activity. I do not expect, any kind of "Second Life Two" wet dream becoming true. This would make no sense, neither in a technological nor a business way. Whatever the thing they work on will be, it will not be even close to what Second Life is.