Op/Ed: Where does SL go from here?

by Pixeleen Mistral on 17/11/06 at 5:46 am

by Inigo Chamerberlin
InigoThe past few months, and especially the past few weeks, have seen some amazing things go down in SL.

In an attempt to get on top of what it all means I’ve been talking to people in SL, trying to get a feel for what the general perception is of recent events.

The opening phrase in every case was ‘Where does SL go from here?’

Replies ranged from the pessimistic but short “Where it’s been going the last year. Downhill” – to the longer but more optimistic “Oh, SL is going through a period of change, things look a lot worse than they really are”. That last you might have guessed from a particularly ‘on message’ Linden.

More specific responses included “I’m a huge admirer of Philip and what he’s created, but I can’t help feeling that things are getting seriously out of hand lately, some of the recent decisions of Linden seem unsound, difficult to understand”.

My own view is that, while Philip and his team may have been at home in the ‘development’ environment of the earlier days of SL, as SL has grown and became capable of attracting a more ‘entertainment’ seeking userbase they have rapidly got out of their depth. At this point in the growth of SL what’s needed is a management more focused on delivering a stable and usable product, and less on the ‘beta test’ mentality that pervades much of the Linden Lab we know.

Well I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, SL is all about freedom, wasn’t that the original concept? And information, tools, it should all be free. Look at the current registration. That’s LL’s idea, free for all!” was an interesting response.

The current furore about the infamous CopyBot is the end result of this outlook. Freedom is all very well, but it incurs responsibility, something not exhibited by the creators of that tool! To me this is just another result of LL’s overall attitude to SL which makes involving outside groups in the ‘development’ of SL perfectly acceptable. It also makes it possible to ignore serious bugs and ‘issues’ which can be pushed aside pending the sometime-never ‘final release’ stage.

I can’t see SL going very much further if something isn’t done pretty soon. The performance sucks, the reliability sucks and the people in charge don’t seem to have a clue” this from a relative newcomer.

Ironic really. Coming from one of the masses of newcomers who have increased the load on the grid and the asset servers to the point where going shopping is a task to be approached with trepidation, given that sims now take upward of ten minutes to rez in some cases and it’s often quicker and more reliable to log off where you are and log back into your target sim because teleport is so unreliable.

Which is interesting in itself – just how does THAT practice affect that oh so important ‘Logged In Last 60 Days’ figure on the front page of the SL website?

I don’t like the way things have shaped up recently at all. The ‘insider trading’ thing with the sims – bad. And the way that new guy was backing and filling about the price increase. Now there’s this CopyBot thing, I mean? WTF? I’m pretty sure there was something in that TOS thing about not reverse engineering the software – now I hear the people behind the bot did that and are in cahoots with Linden. Crap. This place is a cess-pit” sharp words indeed from a (currently closed) store owning veteran of six months.

Arguably one of the most disastrous events of the last couple of months was the emergence of the fact that certain Lindens had pre-informed various privileged individuals of the forthcoming proposed rise in island prices, enabling them to pre-order at the old prices. Credit to those who did not take advantage of this and instead passed the information onto none other than the Herald’s Prokofy Neva.

I have to admit that until this point I had thought some of Prok’s FIC comments were maybe a mite overstated – but this really convinced me that he was right (almost) all the time.

Of course, this reflects one of LL’s big problems. A surprisingly large proportion of its staff are in fact, supposedly ex, residents. Unfortunately for anyone harbouring delusions of probity or fairness, some are a lot less ‘ex’ than others and continue to favour the interests of in-world friends and associates – something which representatives of RL corporations are curiously uneasy about…

The remarks about CopyBot and ‘the people behind’ it – LibSL – of course highlight another example of LL’s inability to distance itself from residents and resident groups. While reverse engineering the SL software is definitely contrary to the TOS, it appears that, in SL, as in fiction, ‘some animals are more equal than others’ and LL’s tacit acceptance of the activities of LibSL, indeed their suggestion that they are a useful resource to LL, makes that abundantly clear.

It’s been argued that LibSL’s ‘help’ has been invaluable to LL in sorting out some of SL’s more obvious shortcomings. Sorry, not an argument I can accept. I haven’t noticed any improvement in the performance of SL during LibSL’s involvement with LL – rather the opposite. Still, hauling in a bunch of hackers with no stake in SL to play with the software fit’s right in with LL’s ‘permanent Beta’ philosophy, doesn’t it?

SL is going nowhere. If anything it’s in reverse gear. Things were steadily improving until about a year ago, then it all went terribly wrong. I think the only hope for SL is if LL sells it to a third party. And that recent blog by the man read more like a sales pitch to any interested third party than any thing else. Except the bits where he was rambling about letting the whole world in for free. That was just plain silly. But things are going badly. Hopefully someone with their head screwed on right will buy us up” said a rather despondent sex industry worker.

Ah yes. That last blog entry. Actually she’s right you know, it did read a bit like a sales pitch, didn’t it?.

However I did notice that in the closing words of his ‘Mission Statement’ Philip yet again goes rather off the deep end. Loosely paraphrased he states his intention not to restrict in any way the availability of SL (griefers included please note) to anyone.

Furthermore that he won’t alter SL in any way to make it less accessible to anyone.

Fine, so, given that the majority of people in the world don’t posses a computer, never mind a high end PC connected to the ‘net by a broadband connection, what next Philip? Those of us owning or renting land in SL are already subsidising the hordes of freeloaders you invited in. What next? Increase tier a hundred fold so you can cable up the third world and issue high end PCs, with regular upgrades of course, to the population?

Going? Is it going somewhere? I don’t think so. I tiered right back recently. I’m tired of paying through the nose to benefit all these free accounts. And the prospect of paying higher tier in the future – do me a favour. Where did LL get that Zee guy from? We had a working world here, first of all they mess it up by filling it with free accounts, then they bring in a guy who wants to charge us more for a crowded world you can barely use any more. SL’s going nowhere like that.” From an ex-island owner now living on a rental island.

The man has a point. As the numbers logged on at any time continue to rise SL becomes slower and more unstable. However, the one indisputable fact, unless you are Philip Linden (last heard chanting the mantra ‘free accounts have no impact on performance’) is that every account logged on consumes bandwidth. Bandwidth has to be paid for. And land owners and renters are paying for it. Except there has been no great rise in land rental/ownership since the influx. So, either bandwidth has to be limited, or Philip reaches in his pocket and pays for it – now which do you think happens?

Then LL employs a new CFO who after a quick glance at the books, thrashes around looking for ways of raising revenue enough to pay for the increased bandwidth requirements caused by free unverified accounts.

Charge the rich guys and gals? Philip loves it! The prime choice of Left wing pseudo-liberals – hit the rich!

Hence the island price rises, soon to be followed by overall price increases no doubt.

And that’s not to mention the cost of all those additional terabytes of asset storage created by our freebie heavy freeloaders.

And the resultant near crippling of the entire overloaded asset system.

Where did they get ‘that guy’? Well, that’s enough for an entire article. But anyone who’s interested, just do a search for Zee Linden in-world, then Google his RL name and that of his last employer. That should do a lot to convince you of the lack of business management skills at LL. I think most of you will agree that ‘Zee’ wouldn’t have made a shortlist for CFO if you were running LL?

You know, if you’d asked me that even six months ago I’d have been really optimistic? I was totally pissed off at all the doom and gloom merchants warning what would happen if LL carried on as they were. Now I’m not so sure. Quite a few of the forecasts have turned out true, I guess some of those folks knew what they were talking about?

The thing about SL it’s easy to overlook is that people here can be anything from a teen geek living at home to a retired multimillionaire, and anything in between. And quite a few of them must be smarter and more savy than Philip, it’s inevitable. So, maybe they were worth listening to. But LL’s never been too good at listening to anything they didn’t want to hear. Too bad, they may just be reaping the harvest of that” said a former LL forum ‘star’ – much to my surprise.

Sensibly, no predictions, just a few pertinent observations. And yes, some of the people you meet must, simply by averages, be smarter, more experienced, better qualified than you, or even, dare I say it, Philip and his crew.

As for LL’s unwillingness to listen to anything they didn’t want to hear, that’s well documented – even recorded in the decision to kill most of the forums.

So – Where IS Second Life going? What did I learn?

Well, nothing startlingly new, but talking to these people, and others, has helped crystallise a few thoughts.

Second Life is either in trouble, or poised on the edge of it.

The main reason seems to be that the management style is hopelessly wrong. Second Life ought to be, at this point, a stable reliable social entertainment platform, with the added inducement of the possibility of in-world commerce.

Instead it resembles a beta test version, and as such ought to be truly free – but its sheer size makes that impractical.

What’s happened is that Second Life been grown to a size no Beta test product should be allowed to. Now LL is saddled with a product so large and complex that further development, even bug fixes, are too complex to contemplate.

And because they are locked into their management style they simply can’t move forward. All they can do is keep growing Second Life, which can only result in it becoming slower, less stable and eventually failing.

Not an encouraging prospect – the answer to ‘Where does SL go from here?’ appears to be as, one of my interviewees said, ‘Nowhere’…

If that IS the case, there are only three possible scenarios – with a whimper – with a bang – or bought out. Hopefully the last.

I really don’t want to see it fade away, strangled by it’s inability to handle the loads now placed on it.

And I’d hate of try and log on one day and find it all just – gone.

So regretfully I have to hope that someone more competent will take it on.

25 Responses to “Op/Ed: Where does SL go from here?”

  1. nimrod yaffle

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Great article Inigo.

  2. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Oh dear – I didn’t think it was THAT bad.

  3. Urizenus

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Wow. Great essay.

  4. Chrischun Fassbinder

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Again, sounds like SL is growing up. Time for it to “get a job” and pay its own way in the world. Mommie and Daddy VCs aren’t going to keep giving the world money so it can bum around the net and be cool.

  5. Nobody Fugazi

    Nov 17th, 2006

    If it’s so bad, why is everyone still here?

    It *is* a stable social platform. However, it is as economically unstable in a way that mimics the real world.

  6. Loki Eliot

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Great article…

    Perhaps its time for sumone to come along with Secondlife 2.0

  7. Eric Rice

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Well okay, then, Microsoft could buy SL, REALLY treat it like just software, never interact with the userbase (except for marketing purposes) and your opinion can be directed to that blue screen over there ——>.

    Microsoft likes pricing models, people bitched, and uhhh, pricing is still higher! \o/

    Not sayin’ I like it, but the other side of the ‘world’ thing is software. Period.

    Shrink Wrap is teh People!!

  8. nimrod yaffle

    Nov 17th, 2006

    “If it’s so bad, why is everyone still here?”
    Because competition hasn’t came yet.

  9. Urizenus

    Nov 17th, 2006

    That’s the truth. Where are we supposed to go? Back to TSO?

    Eric is right that microsoft is not the answer. Maybe the answer is that SL goes open source, and we get a kind of sharding effect where there are lots of little SLs, some of them stable and others pushing the technology depending on the whim of the shard demigods. Then people could vote with their little pixelated feet.

  10. Random Writer

    Nov 17th, 2006

    I’ve done ALOT of checking for something else that comes close. There just isn’t anything like it…. yet. 2007, there are 3 games expected to be released that run in the same vein as SL. But right now, nothing.

    As for Microsoft… not everyone uses the products and those who do, have a choice. And that voice increasingly is going away from Microsoft in many areas, like Mozilla/Firefox, etc.

  11. astro

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Hmmm”BOLLOCKS”

  12. astro

    Nov 17th, 2006

    oh and by the way bring back the”PROCK” x

  13. Nacon

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Finally… a great article! It’s just what I like to see everyday instead of reading more non-sense theories from Prok.

  14. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Thank you for your thoughtful and reasoned comments astro.
    The first has been printed and left in the editorial outhouse where it may yet be of some use.

    The second IS a damn good idea. Don’t anyone forget who blew the whistle on the ‘Island price hike insider dealing’ scam…

  15. SL Guy

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Great article, but what real solutions do we have to fixing the problems. If second life is literally boundless, perhaps we could build our way out of the hole?

  16. astro

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Free the PROK one oh and er…KICK OUT THE JAMS “mother*******” x

  17. wheretherealmoneyis,baby

    Nov 17th, 2006

    What LL really needs to do:

    Step 1: figure out someway to allow users of both X-Box Live and the Playstation 3 Network to run the SL client

    Step 2: hold an IPO to fill the coffers and repay the VC the $20m that Philip says has been spent thus far on SL

    Step 3: buy Google

  18. Cocoanut Koala

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Wonderful article.

    Regarding the profitability of SL, and the confusion on that:

    1. Philip has stated that SL itself is very profitable.

    In other words, it pays for itself, and then some. What we pay in tier and other costs (buying and selling Lindens, etc.) is plenty to keep SL nicely in the black. (And probably at an ever-increasing profit.)

    2. Philip has stated that SL will soon have the investors paid off.

    In other words, once that happens, all the profit from SL will be applied to itself, rather than used to pay back the investors (including Philip himself, though his seed money probably already been paid back.)

    Interestingly, his new hiring kick coincides very neatly with the new cost for islands, and the way they manipulated that into a buying panic.

    I think if we knew what these higher-ups are paying themselves, we would probably fall over in a dead faint.

    coco

  19. Prokofy Neva

    Nov 17th, 2006

    Finally… a great article! It’s just what I like to see everyday instead of reading more non-sense theories from Prok.

    I love it when people hide behind anonymous nicks to harp at others.

    Much of this article is stuff I already said, and reported on. It’s very well put together, but says nothing I didn’t already say — and thousands of other people said, as they are in fact making up more than half of the article in the form of quotes. I’m all for doing that, and it’s a good piece, and we need more of them at the Herald, but that doesn’t take away from my pieces one bit, nor serve as a justification for your nasty swipe.

  20. astro

    Nov 17th, 2006

    sorry folks it,s a lousy article…it makes me sad…THE HERALD is suposed to hit hard with toungue firmly in cheek…you turned it into a blog…i prefer a bit of satire with my SL…this isn,t RL…GET A GRIP…or better still GET A SECOND LIFE x

  21. astro

    Nov 17th, 2006

    oh and by the way……”BOLLOCKS”

  22. Random Writer

    Nov 17th, 2006

    “”"”Much of this article is stuff I already said, and reported on. It’s very well put together, but says nothing I didn’t already say — and thousands of other people said, as they are in fact making up more than half of the article in the form of quotes.”"”"

    Wow… can you not get any fuller of yourself? First you rip the other content writers, then don’t stand behind an editor, who allowed you to speak your mind in the first place, the chance to get things sorted before more damage is caused, now you rip the writer of this article, because ‘you’ve said this already’ and ‘it’s half quotes’.

  23. Prokofy Neva

    Nov 17th, 2006

    1. It’s not about being fuller of myself, it’s about standing behind my own hard work, and frankly sheer endurance power to deal with all the amazing amount of harassment and griefing I’ve put up with.
    2. I don’t rip other content writers; I rip people who try to damn me by giving praise by others and slam me to boot in a facetious and silly way, because I *HAVE* said the same things.
    3. It is half quotes — but that’s fine. The art of a good SLH piece is taking the pulse and getting the right quotes that sum it all up.

  24. Random Writer

    Nov 17th, 2006

    “”"”1. It’s not about being fuller of myself, it’s about standing behind my own hard work, and frankly sheer endurance power to deal with all the amazing amount of harassment and griefing I’ve put up with.”"”"

    And you don’t think in any way that you’ve brought it upon yourself?

    “”"”2. I don’t rip other content writers; I rip people who try to damn me by giving praise by others and slam me to boot in a facetious and silly way, because I *HAVE* said the same things.”"”"

    So you are jealous of others praises? Yet, you did the exact same thing. Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite? That person stated a perfectly thought out opinion considering the blow up of your recent articles, mis information, horribly choiced worded write ups, etc. Ironic, that you make op/ed pieces, which by the way wasn’t very factually checked, with twisted words and then slam someone else for THIER opinion.

    “”"”3. It is half quotes — but that’s fine. The art of a good SLH piece is taking the pulse and getting the right quotes that sum it all up.”"”"

    Ironic that you say that considering the recent events.

  25. marilyn murphy

    Nov 18th, 2006

    the single most important issue, that really needs to be addressed and dealt with by linden labs in my mind is the beta mentality. this article discusses it to an extent.

    seriously, its simply true. after ending beta and going public in July of 2003, sl has introduced change after change, improvement after improvement, sometimes on a weekly basis.

    i remember thinking, when they introduced version 1.1, “good, this is going to fix the problems and smooth things out.” sigh.

    isnt there a point where you have a genuine polished product ready for paying customers? is there just an endless beta mentality in LL? will i never see a stable platform with some bandwidth and reliable performance? is this it? am i living the dream already and its just forever patching little things and never fixing the fact that i cant see to shop for ten minutes after i land in a mall?

    im not very computer savvy at all. i dont really understand how this all works. but a while ago i went to world of warcraft by blizzard, my only other online gaming experience ever, and was astounded at how fast things work, how pretty things are, and how many people could crowd into a given area. lag there means something might take a whole 5 seconds to load, or u might slow down some in ironforge.

    im probably comparing apples to oranges in my admitted ignorance here. it just seems to me, if that is possible there, why not here?

    in the end we are just an experiment it seems. some big shot gaming company or software company will buy up sl and dismiss all of us.

    anyway, its nice to see this article. and im not interested in joining a a debate about prok.. but simply point out that prok has said all this in the past. one way or another.

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