Gavin Hird
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Blog Comments posted by Gavin Hird
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...but the basic server code is OpenSim, which is open standard and shared by many grids (worlds). I don't expect LL to journey far from the standard.
Actually that is not true, as Opensim is a reverse engineering of LL's server code, and they are at about 70% of the functionality in the LL server – which is a moving target too.
Opensim has been the baseline for most of the other grids, but we see deviation from the "standard" here also since Inworldz have forked that code to rewrite the asset system in addition to other private functions. The folks behind Imprudence are also now behind a fork they call Aurora-sim, so this is not so clear cut any more. They have said they will add functionality in their viewer to match their server software as a priority.
On an interesting sidenote, Bluemars have released the client for iPod, iPhone and iPad today in the App store.
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@Rene,
Which part of "in a family oriented grid, there will be real children" was it you did not understand? Try to apply my argument to that eventuality ;-)
I mean, do you seriously think anyone but a child can appear as a child in such an environment?
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I agree with you in principle that the more self governed an online community is, the less likely it will be subject to legislative or political intervention. This is an opinion I voiced to LL back in 2008 when we hosted a couple meetings on the subject.
The error you make in your analysis is that you assume legislation is the same in the rest of the world as in the US. Remember more than half of the revenue for Linden Lab comes from areas of the world where the view on this may be very different. Not following such legislation may exclude you from a big chunk of the market such as the EU countries.
This is the primary reason why I believe many connected sub-grids hosted in, and adapted to more localized legislation would work better as you in sum could provide more diversity and a wider span of offerings.
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I've been a child avatar for the entire 5 years i've been in SL. Those who know me wether they are Adult avatars, furries, mermaids, giant hamsters, Griffins or dragons appreciate me and the work ive done in SL. I'm sorry that my choice of self expression of childish imagination and creativity for the past five years causes some people to WILDLY generalise my type of avatar and associate my avatar with their own perverted ideas.
This has nothing to do with perverted ideas, but protecting the underage. First of all we know there currently are underage in SL all the way down to the age of 10.
Secondly, if SL evolve to be a family venue, there will be real children in here. We then cannot have a situation where adult persons impersonate children; real children may not understand there is an adult behind the avatar. This is clearly a situation that can be taken advantage of. There is simply too much at stake – also for the person impostering a child who could risk ending up in a register or worse.
I also believe parents would be pretty freaked out over adults impersonating children in front of their own children regardless of the motivation of the adult behind a child avatar (unless perhaps for a theatrical performance, but then again in RL you would not make any mistake about the person being adult or not).
Finally, this is an area where we both culturally and in our legislation seek to protect the child, and the room for expression of the adult is limited for good reasons.
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That is how we got the pedos in SL - anything goes doesn't work!
Well, LL has not exactly been helpful here; allowing the child avatars to exist has both contributed to the anything goes impression, and played up to the agenda of pedos. There sure will be no room for adults running around masqueraded as kids if there are real kids in-world.
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I am sorry, but the provider of the service is liable in the eyes of the law. A complicating factor is that the service is offered globally, so all kinds of legislation can potentially get into the mix.
Which is why splitting the grid into more themed sub-gids that have TOS adapted to the theme. These could be hosted in different legislations to make diversification simpler from a legal standpoint. In this scenario LL could have the role as SAAS provider and not be the legal owner of the grids – these could be farmed out to separate entities licensing the solution. In such a solution portable inventories and ability to move between grids would be important for the overall success.
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Brett Linden said:
Looks like we have a huge pro-Facebook crowd here
To all the Facebook haters:
There is something called "knowing your audience". Facebook is first life, SecondLife is second life and they don't mix up very good most of the time.
What (it looks like) you are trying to do is to create an image on Facebook of how vibrant SecondLife is, but you do so at the expense of your own customers. Besides, it is very risky business as Facebook is a venue that will compete both for your customers time and energy. You risk loosing more current customers than you gain new. Also Facebook users are typically in the non-spending-on-internet crowd as they rather spend in RL on things they can show off on Facebook.
There are other venues you as a company can get more active, and this in a space where people are used to subscription based access, and are high consumers of digital content; the mobile area. This is where the real battle for attention will unfold – also for SecondLife.
I wish everyone a nice spring break when it comes. Looks like the northern hemisphere will be in for some rough winter weather still in weeks to come.
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There have been other events that required the use of Facebook or flickr. There was a Valentine's Day event last year that required posting a snapshot, for example.
Yes, there have, and the wisdom of sending your customers to a site that competes for their time and attention to register and participate in an activity for SecondLife is nevertheless questionable.
Maybe next quarter we can be presented with the efficiency of this strategy.
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With reference to the latest Spring Break in Secondlife blog posting, I think marketing tactics like this will backfire on Linden Lab to the extent we will see it in the next quarter figures.
"Show off your freshest “Spring Break” look (deadline: Feb. 6) by submitting your head-to-toe avatar shots to our Facebook page, where you’ll also find complete entry and image guidelines."
So here, you actually have to go to FaceBook, and most likely register as a user there, to participate in SecondLife activities. I find it rather shocking to be frank.
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I think this baffles many of us. Perhaps the push to have RL info in the public profile has got to do with this.
The Like button, however, has nothing to do with the FB profile as it will only establish a link between am arbitrary Facebook account and an arbitrary SL profile if clicked. So unless you like yourself from your FB account, there is no immediate link that can reveal your identity.
Add to that, I suppose the "Your profile is % finished" progress bar that is displayed on the profile will prompt a lot of new users to register their RL information on the profile, perhaps not even realizing it will be for all the world to see.
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I think you'll be surprised how high the use of the iPad is at home displacing a laptop or desktop, simply because it is small, light and easy to lay on the coach with or take to the bathroom or whatever....
If BM are going to render on servers and stream to the client, they will for all practical purposes limit themselves to a wi-fi connected device, but that may not be such big constraint as you first think. This might have to do with that the graphics render they have used have been windows-only.
However, for an SL client, you don't have to render on a server since the iOS devices can render OpenGL directly. The SL desktop client works reasonably good even on an EDGE connection once your environment has settled down. The biggest issue is latency when moving about.
For a 3G connection the SL viewer works well to snappy depending on the connection speed you get. I routinely log onto SL over 3G.
A mobile client could be placed in a canned environment or a max draw distance of say 16 meters significantly limiting the amount of data sent to the device. Turn of tree movements, clouds, bird chirps and voice, and the viewer does not have to update the environment all the time from the server. This is not unpossible. ;-))
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How do they expect to operate a cloud concept in a limited bandwidth environment?
One user-in-the-know stated it could take up to a gig an hour to operate Blue Mars. How do they expect that to succeed when Apple charges what, $25 a month for 2 gigs?
First of all all iOS devices has wi-fi, so in a home environment they can run at the same network speed as your desk or laptop. One would expect access to Blue Mars to be prevalent in the home.
Second: Apple does not charge for bandwidth. They don't sell that. An owner of man iOS device will purchase that from an IPS or a Telco.
Third: By letting the avatar operate in a "canned" environment, much, if not all of it will be cached on the device, and since there is little interaction with the surroundings, bandwidth requirements are pretty low. Just try it yourself. After you have settled down in a skybox, you will see your bandwidth with SL viewer 2.4 or higher slows down to 3-5 kb/sec. Which is perfectly acceptable for a mobile connection. Chat and IM adds very little overhead on top of that, and since the device also is an iPod, you possibly have the music you want to listen to local anyway.
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If these few functions is all it takes to make a VW, then two pickles and a bun are all you need for a supersized combo at Burger King.
They are not, but then again most of us are not bolted to a gaming rig throughout the day.
The client hierarchy would possibly evolve to be this:
- iPhone - stay connected primarily though messaging, in addition to shopping and avatar dressing
- iPad - light to middle level interaction in addition to the above
- PC client type system - immersion and content creation
The entire point of also going mobile is to get relevant in a space that explodes both in terms of technical capabilities, customer focus, content creation and real dollars. It is about to create new revenue streams and opportunities both for Linden Lab and content providers in SecondLife. I believe it is also a big opportunity to proliferate virtual worlds – much more so than chasing the Facebook crowd.
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The one you call Pocket MV was renamed to Pocket Metaverse about a year ago, and was the one I was referring to above. There is also another called Sparke, but it has not been updated for quite some time.
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Nobody is talking about a full fledged SL experience on a mobile device for now.
The point is the get a client by which you can be connected to SL throughout the day to stay in contact with friends, follow business and events, thereby making SL relevant in the same way as people feel they must be connected with Facebook or on twitter all day.
Many smart phones have the ability to do a number of rudimentary operations today including IM and chat, payments, inventory, map and teleports, and the PocketMetaverse app on iPhone/iPad is a good example of this.
I have only seen a video of the Blue Mars client, but it takes operation a bit further where it renders the avatar in full 3D and you can animate it and dress/undress it. From their original posting they will build on that to be able to render the immediate surroundings and perhaps close by avatars later.
The iPad and iPhone can already fully use the SLM via the website, and purchases would be directed to any client you would be logged in with. The problem is that an app such as the current version of Pocketmetaverse cannot render anything, so unless you could receive directly to inventory and unpack without rezzing in-world, you would not be able to enjoy your purchases on such a client.
Even such a limited client will be attractive to a wide audience. Remember how much time is spent in SL shopping, composing and dressing/undressing for outfits. Having the barbie doll in you hand so to speak would be the result of such a client. Many would possibly stop there, but others would want to venture into the full experience through a desktop viewer.
At least for an iOS device, the app will have to be built from scratch with the iOS SDK in Objective C, but since iOS supports OpenGL and libsecondlife has already been ported, it should be possible to render the avatar and objects without too much tweaking of existing libraries (of course there are limitations on a mobile device.)
Also remember all these devices have wi-fi, so bandwidth may not be such an enormous constraint as you think it would be. When connected via 3G or lower, you could fall back to basic operation and cached content.
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I thought Blue Mars is now dead. Why is is still being mentioned as some greener type of virtual grass "over there"?
I don't think so.
They have submitted their first mobile client to Apple for approval and distribution in the App Store. This client will have a potential exposure of around 100 million new customers in 2011 (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad) in addition to the installed base. Industry estimates are that Apple will sell 55-65 million iPads in 2011, and these are very capable of running such a client BM wants to go in the market with.
There is a lot of VC going into the mobile space these days.
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... they'd be intentionally trying to destroy the current model, our work, our efforts, investments, and society.
The problem is that the current business model is not sustainable for Linden Lab. They will not be able to survive by printing new land like they have done in the past. In addition the burden of the 85k accounts we talked about earlier is too high to be attractive for any large number to enter as a new customer.
What they (think they) must do to survive is to change their business model to one that takes a cut out of every visitor indirectly through ads, or directly through reasonably priced subscriptions and commission on sales of virtual goods.
I believe some of the changes in the TOS that has been made provides the legal framework to be able to go ahead with the destruction of the current model. Primarily through the change that make them, not you, the ultimate owner of all virtual goods and creations you put on the grid. This in addition to the text on change of service. They can change the service to be whatever they'd like it to be, and makes no guarantees on anything. This is now different from Blue Mars where content creators are the owners.
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Interesting post Gavin. I hope you'll be wrong on most counts....but should you be correct, there will surely be a mass exodus out of here! Overnight OS grids will get an influx of disllusioned residents
The VCs are currently unhappy with groups of customers standing in the way to acieve their overall business goal; to a make Secondlife available and attractive to a wide, family oriented audience. They would be thrilled if there was an exodus of said groups.
These groups are the adult community (Zindra et al), GOR, child avatars and some other fringe groups.
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There is a lot of truth in that Gavin. And the game the new CEO is most famously associated with - The Sims Online - made it accessible to a "wide, family oriented audience"
There you have it!
I left out the merge of the grids to justify phase 2 of the adult thing.
The area I believe they are unprepared for is mobile, and they may have been taken by surprise by Blue Mars. They have been absolutely silent on mobile – not technically feasible it has been said.
Blue Mars sent their first app to Apple for approval a couple days ago. Without too many bugs, we could see it in the app store in 14 days time.
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To suggest they are running around headless without any plan is a bit of a stretch IMHO. I can see the contours of this happening:
- Business goal is to clean up SecondLife to make it accessible to a wide, family oriented audience
The phases in reaching that goal – some of which have already transpired, are roughly this:
- Compliance; get rid of banking and gambling
- Adult content phase 1 was to establish an adult zone (Zindra + adult sims) and get the most annoying adult content and businesses hidden behind the restriction of account verification. This makes it easy to dump that zone when the time is right
- Adult content phase 2 is to take control of both web-based and in-world marketing through the acquisition of xStreetSL, a total rewrite to be able to add maturity and adult controls to the site. At he same time market the hell out of the web based marketplace to accustom new residents to do their shopping there and marginalize in-world merchants. The maturity changes we have seen on SLM this week has the overall goal to marginalize and displace adult and certain mature content out of the view of new residents. This makes it easy to dump it later.
- Linden Homes may be all that a future resident will get in terms of owning land. This will make it very much easier to scale the grid as you can pack a substantial amount of residents on few servers.
- Develop a new viewer that de-emphasize building. That functionality might even be completely gone in a future standard resident viewer. The rezz from inventory functionality would support this.
- Introduce mesh as a measure to displace prim based content and establish professional content developers. This will both clean up the grid, but more important make the massive asset store manageable as it will significantly reduce the number of assets required to produce the same type of goods and experience
- Cut the ties to generation 1.x viewers not by close sourcing the viewer, but by developing functionality that lies outside the viewer in essence; browser based search, browser based profiles, browser based group and chat/IM functionality. This is not easily copied by upcoming competitors as the business logic will reside in the servers and not in the viewer so much any more.
- Establish a framework for advertising in the viewer primarily to replace the lost business by sims currently rented by residents for building and hosting of unwanted (adult) content.
- When the above is sufficiently baked, announce a switchover to a new product, and perhaps introduce a new owner.
- ????!
- PROFIT – or so they hope
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Rachel Darling wrote:
... lose potential sales, because they won't be reaching their target market.
I think that is the idea here; to marginalize the adult and some of the mature content in an effort to clean up the grid for opening to a bigger family oriented audience.
We saw exactly the same when they moved people to Zindra with secret keywords and issues in the event and classifieds system that took ages to fix (if ever.) That keyword list may still be around somewhere. It used to be on slapt.me, but that site is gone.
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Gavin, forgive me, but that is an old, tired, cliche and uninteresting argument. I agree with you in concept, SL is more than just a game... but I have to question: are you here to debate and argue over semantics... or are you interested in the actual points being made? I don't know about the others here, but I'm not here to argue just for the sake of arguing. I'm focusing on the issues at hand, namely: is Second Life doing as well as Linden Lab PR is trying to present? How does whether or not SL is a "game" apply to that concept in any way? How does that have anything to do with the questionable stats listed in this blog?
It has everything to do with the poor performance this place has compared to other "games". Why?
Every time it is repeated in the public or by residents that SecondLife is a game, it sets expectations for new signups that can never be met. They walk in to Welcome Island and expect to find action and suspense like they do in other games out there, or on their consoles. They find nothing of the sorts and walk out the door within the next hour never to come back, telling their mates – if they even speak about it, how lame and boring the game SecondLife is.
I can't give you a good answer what SecondLife exactly is. I came here some years ago with virtually no expectations, but something hit a nerve. I think I was struck by the creativity and general friendliness of folks around here. A fascination of what, at the time, seemed like an unregulated frontier where anything could happen.
It is not like that any more.
We have a mother company that has started to compete with its customers and the folks who made this place come alive. A company who needs to skew the numbers and remove stats. A company that is so – I don't know – perhaps desperate it will sell our profiles out for ad space. A company that in just about every communication with their customers points them to Facebook, the biggest competitor for their customers time!
Hey, what the heck will a new signup think – perhaps even coming in from Facebook, when the first thing he sees on the login screen is "meet us on Facebook". Chances are pretty high he will turn back to where he came from. Within the next few minutes.
It sure ain't no game around here any more.
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A computer game has a programmed start, some pathways through the game and a few fixed endings depending on the path taken. SecondLife has no such thing and cannot be classified as a game.
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The Second Life Economy in Q4 2010
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A group blog by Secondlife in General
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Heh, I don't know what their ambition is, but let us call this an early concept that shows:
The help file says you will be able to modify and dress the avatar in a later version.
I suppose it will prompt existing users to log on and upgrade their avatar - good for the content providers and general mobilization of the user base.
I am sure it will appeal to the big crowd that spends a lot of time dressing their barbie-doll avatar including new users. If you look at the amount of accessories and clothes for the SL barbies, in addition to the time spent on this, I am not sure it is such a bad starting point for their app.