Reply With QuoteFile this under "who gives a flying fuck?"
Nicholaz "the mad patcher" Beresford, who maintains what is widely regarded as the best open source version of the Second Life viewer, has gotten fed up dealing with Linden Labs:
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.c...-of-truth.htmlWhen I started, I thought LL™ folks were just a bit overworked and with some outside help from a group of friendly open sourcers and code sorcerers the viewer would turn into a solid, stable and even sleek piece of software.
The realization took me some time, but eventually it did dawn even on the optimist which I am, that it was not going to happen. Not through the Linden™s themselves, and certainly not through contributions from the coding community, because the Linden™s were increasingly ignoring the contributions.
There was a time when code submissions were readily accepted, then they were more and more cherry picked and these days, as far as I can tell, they are ignored at large, even if they are addressing the most basic and obvious problems like crashes (and I am not at all speaking of GUI changes).
Bruce
File this under "who gives a flying fuck?"
I was hoping for actual trouble, like a lawsuit or a child porn investigation.
The long-term problem with Second Life is that as a user-generated content game or environment, the bar for producing that content is set very high.
By contrast, the bar to create content for Youtube/Myspace content is set very low.
Well, the long-term problem is that they thought creation was the killer app instead of the content, and only so many people want to be programmers.
It's trouble in the sense that, not that this guy specifically has given up, but that Second Life's attempt at open source seems to be little more than a facade. They're not accepting other people's fixes, and they're very slow about fixing their own stuff, so the prospects for improvement any time soon are close to zero.
With SL's paying customers stagnating and the game's architecture rendering further expansion difficult, things are not looking good.
Bruce
Yeah, my impression is that Second Life is primarily of interest to content creators, not for content consumers. Of course, the popularity of Second Life has more to do with PR than technology.Originally Posted by Andrew Mayer
- Alan
Squeaky I miss you. Come back.
That dude is ™ crazy.
It's a not very subtle commentary on this: http://secondlife.com/corporate/bran.../reference.php
Who are you? I'm a little weirded out.
Ah ha. Like on Digg when people post that a picture has been 'edited™ using Adobe™ Photoshop™ software™'
Wait, the what...?
-Tom
#PlanetCrap
While Second Life has 12 million or so total accounts, most of those are free. They have also have a select number of preimum subscribers who pay $9.95 per month for in-game benefits like a weekly stipend of Linden Dollars, greater ability to build on their own land, and premium support. Subscriptions were growing until about 95,000 in June 2007; they dropped, started growing again, and now they're back down on the decline, currently at 91,500.
Subscriptions are not the only way Linden makes money, but US $ Exchanged on the LindeX™ Exchange was flat last year and US $ Spent by Users was also down.
US $ Exchanged on the LindeX™ Exchange (in Millions)
US$ Spent by Users (in Millions)
Bruce
Last edited by SirBruce; 04-07-2008 at 02:32 PM.
The problem with Second Life is that "Linden Dollars" sounds like something you'd earn working in a cult.
I cannot put my finger on why exactly. There's just something inherently creepy and sleazy-sounding about the name "Linden".
Heh, I actually knew they had premium services, but I didn't realize their numbers were that high. I'm still flabbergasted, but now with more hard data at which to be flabbergasted.
-Tom
That pretty much describes my job right there.
Bruce
The flabbergastation of numbers?
Flabbergasting people with hard data.
Bruce
Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure
You know that old saying... in the poker game of life, women are the rake, man.
They're the fucking rake.
Let me rant a bit: Despite the noted issue of content consumers versus creators in the "player" base, the real problem in my mind has always been that good content is impossible to find.
I'm talking, completely fucking impossible unless you know EXACTLY what you're looking for.
Imagine the internet without a search engine. That's pretty much Second Life right now. The only way to find great content is to have it recommended to you by a buddy.
So what does this mean for SL?
Well, early on it meant nothing. I remember when SL was about 20 sims max. You could zip around that in about 20 minutes and find all the cool that there was to see. And there was some inspiringly interesting stuff.
Now that SL is.. what, 500+ (?) sims it's impossible to do this. And that's why you hear people endlessly complain that there's nothing to do in SL. Because it's impossible to find the cool shit.
LL used to take a more hands on approach to promoting good content, and while they did you would hear a lot about neat things being built, eg. the early fairground sims they built and so on.
But when they stopped doing that they didn't replace it with anything to help players get to the good stuff. Instead, players are forced to use the crappy in-world search which just produces the most keyword manipulated results, usually based around casinos (back in the day), clubs or fetishes.
It's really, really annoying and I've ranted about it on SL and on my blog (I haz blog, can I be kewl now?) for a bit and nothing ever gets done.
There is enough kool stuff in SL to keep you occupied every evening for a week. You'll just never, ever hear about it. And that's kinda stink.
Last edited by Calistas; 04-07-2008 at 06:43 PM.
Give anonymous some credit. Epic Wins take time to produce.
I think that the "popularity" of SL, or its "consumers" for that matter, IS a PR campaign.
I'm rather surprised that big companies with plans to integrate their offices into the virtual world of Second Life® haven't yet figured out that Second Life® is little more than a playground for freaky people online.
You'd think that some of them would know how to use a Google search before investing millions into this.
Many seem to think there's some value in being able to video conference, but with avatars instead of real people.
Myself, I don't see the point. There are very few problems that 3D solves that sensible 2D doesn't do better and faster.
It's gimmicky and makes them look hip to their shareholders I guess. And it's cheap to do for the press mileage and Wired coverage you get.
People like to hide online.
Make avatars that look "cooler" than they do, in their own perception anyway.
Why do people play MMOGs in the first place? Mainly for escapism.
In some weird universe, SL grants the advertisers and their audience a virtual "video conference" (as Calistas put it) that feels more comfortable and aimcable to the parties involved.
But, like everything else in cyberspace, it is all a big vapour lie.
This messsage was brought to you by:
"
Sir Bruce
Paintbrush charts and a whole lot more
Sir Bruce
Flabbergasting people with hard data since 1986
It's what we do
Sir Bruce
"
SL is the 3d internet version of a piece of plain, white paper.
Give a piece of paper and a pen to 1,000 people.
900 will draw pictures of cocks, tanks and/or interesting weird doodles.
90 will draw something random, and be passably not shit
9 will draw something you'd be proud of drawing yourself.
1 will draw something truly inspiring and interesting.
Second Life again proving it's VRML 2.0. A 3d world is a terrible UI for navigating a lot of information.
I'm not saying it's unsolvable problem (you could probably organize real estate via some kind of social network style rating system), but it's certainly why all these companies/organizations opening "stores" in SL were doing little more than generating a press release.
So the Daily Show last night made fun of Congress for having hearings on virtual worlds.
Oh here.
Why am I suddenly embarrassed that I even know what Second Life is?
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