Second Life Views is a program that has proved controversial not only because I objected to it. Of course, on the forums, it's mainly only Cocoanut standing up to the small but persistent inner core of the forums who keep defending the status quo ante ("Founding Fathers Syndrome") even to the point of hysteria. But there are enough other voices resounding on forums and blogs and in world that I hope the Lindens reconsider their notion of forming a permanent resident advisory board.
Some on the forums have purported to find some analogy between our making Metaverse Justice Watch last summer, in its original incarnation, and this "permanent resident advisory board". Of course, there's a big difference: we were self-selected, and all we did was petition the Lindens. To be sure, we were stuck petitioning them like boyars appealing to the tsar, or guilds appealing to the king, in a medieval set-up, not like customers, more like supplicants.
Four things resulted from this meeting -- other than the vilification we were subjected to on the forums.
1) First, the one request we had, for the Lindens to develop and relase their employee ethics requirements, was fulfilled. They did this after about 6 weeks. From discussing this topic, many believed that Lindens were not allowed to maintain big businesses and earn money, lead big non-profit projects, or garner reputational enhancement or extend it to partners or friends. The ethics manual of sorts, a rather wan and thin document (though it's good *something* exists) didn't really clarify this issue at all. Later, we were to watch aghast as Lindens in fact maintained their big RL or SL projects -- finally the attention brought to this issue compelled BuhBuhCuh to "out" that he was Ben Linden (more on this another day -- it's funny that after all the thuggish threats made against me by Hiro and others, the outing proved to be a big non-event for this Linden and his pals, and I think most people didn't notice, didn't care, and haven't glommed on to him anyway now that they know his "true identity").
2) The second thing that happened is that we were told that neither land nor wealth were recognized as stake in SL, unlike RL. This reified the content-creators hold over SL, to our dismay, and helped preserve the model of SL as "Content Tsar's Kremlin" -- create or die, be a creator or be a consumer, etc.
3) The third thing that happened is that while the telehubs weren't on the agenda, contrary to popular hysteria, when they *were* put on the agenda later in the summer by some in the same group as the original MJW, the Lindens took the meeting, took it seriously, and agreed to the buyback. I think it's one of the few times when we can point to the Lindens actually heeding something the land baron lobby said, and acting on it (I suppose their willingness to put in telehubs in the northern atoll continent was another concession, except later it seemed Lindens were letting us know that telehubs were planned for the Iris Moth temple anyway, and I suspect that what the Lindens had really been about last year with first the atoll continent, then the map, and then p2p was trying to do something that was originally supposed to have all 3 things at once: a spectacular new continent with an intriguing legend; no telehubs in it to mar the experience; and the map and p2p to be able to hop all around it with ease and preserve its pristine beauty. But coding being what it was, they had to sequence these developmental phases.
People imagine the land lobby to have all kinds of clout; in fact the Lindens are always breaking their backs. It's been rather sagely pointed out by a smart friend that the land glut continues on the auctions: the Linden has devalued another 5 percent in the last month, but land price has only increased by 1 percent, and that doesn't even fit their notion of expanding to meet the population. Something's up.
The failure of the land lobby to get their way is just part of life -- interest groups don't always get their way. If it were a company and customers, it wouldn't matter. If it were a guild and the Middle Ages, it would be too bad too if the landowners failed to beat the craftsmen. In a country, however, it does matter.
4) The fourth thing that happened is that seeing this grassroots organizing by a group of its highest-paying customers, bar-none, the Lindens reacted by attempting to subtly co-opt it. First, they sat idly by as the "community" savaged all the people in MJW (to this day, the forums freaks are still ranting about an alleged claim that we all called everyone else "tourists," when this was only one part of what Anshe said, and was meant in the most ordinary way -- that many, many, MANY people drop into Second Life and NEVER COME BACK (something most people don't even want to talk about, until it gets on a Harvard blog, and then finally Hamlet nee Linden blogs about it). And LL even cooperated in the splitting of MJW -- manually removing me from the group at Anshe's behest -- and enabling MJW to be made into a farcical political theater occasionally taken over for laffs by Jauani or one of the other regs like Nolannash or Enabrat.
Then they made the Community Round Table. This was going to serve as their cleaned-up, controlled version of a residents' lobbying group by taming and neutralizing it, citing the Big, Bad, Unruly Town Hall meetings. They looked blindly at the audience of these meetings that were so griefed, and refused to admit that it was just W-HAT and their hangers-on and plausible-deniers inworld.
They handily booted me fro the CRT mailing list early on using various subterfuges, but then the CRT got overrun, too, and presented them with a problem: how could they meet privately with the people they liked, and get away with it, with all the scrutiny?
Indeed, one of the main reasons that FlipperPA and the Lindens want to get the hide-from-map function going in the game is so that they can meet with each other, and big clients, and whomever they want, without any transparency, or any pubilc accountability. They want secrecy, invisibility, and most of all, a free-hand to do their thing without complainers or exposers getting in the way.
Making this ResGov, patterned after the ResMods, or one could point out, the Quislings or the satraps or the Russian overlords of the 'stans, the Lindens can feel less nervous about this big world they can't even physically see anymore with all these people on it.
They know that while everybody bitches about resident government, they will roll over supinely and take it up the ass sublimely if it is something like this, where the "company" invokes a "focus group" and the need to listen to its "customers" in the usual consumer model.
One of SL's Greatest Economic Minds (yes, Jamie, there's more than one!) said at the Sutherland Dam last night that I need to drop my "mercantile model" because Lindens are going with a "consumer model" for their business and economy.
Except...I didn't think up the mercantile model, our um progressive Lindens did. SL is nothing so much like a company town of the 1930s, and their corporate philosophy stems from the most ancient and creaking idea of one big CEO and loyal family members, some of them literally relatives (the Lindesidents), and the numerous tool and die makers or welders or clerks or typists spread out through the mammoth chain of factories and franchises all over the land. There's nothing at all modern and "consumer oriented' about this -- in fact those of us with inworld businesses and customers are forced either to go out of business due to rising costs and rapid inflation, or mimic the LL old-fashioned top-down hierarchical model as we queue up and wait for attention from the Concierge, pay heavy taxes to advertise our wares in Classified, pay land fees that would make a Russian serf quit-renter blush, constantly double our prices, and suffer occupational hazards of all sorts that aren't even really studied properly yet by science or government.
In fact a consumer-oriented model (everyone things this is going to be open-source) is years away, possibly even light-years away. In fact, just like they dumped a lot of people off the world with the removal of events grants and development incentive (and now are monkeying even with the payouts to their instructors with a new voucher proposal (!)), so they will dump off many amateur sim owners who rent directly from Governor Linden when they go open-source. Where will those consumers go? They'll be forced to queue up to the few prosumer/satrap overlords whom the Lindens will have developed by that time as the Game Masters, the few who will get licensed copies of the software and either have their own servers or get special discounts on the servers, wholesale. In fact, the model is more like Moscow, the Central Committee, the regional party secretary, and Bishkek than anything recognizable modern, free, flexible, and equal.
Only when Second Life becomes more like Napster used to be, where people buy and sell worlds and their contents peer-to-peer with out queuing up to Linden Lab, anshechung.com, or SLboutique.com, could there be a real "browser" and "Internet-like" experience like Walker is always talking about on 3pointd.com
Some competitors to LL are already thinking in talking in those terms, where there will be home-brewed light and portable Worlds for Windows or something, but it's not there yet. What's far more likely is this oligarchic model we have now -- which isn't an accident. Many people especially on the forums think of our current actual Second Life, with its brutal prices, land fees, and auctions won by mainly one company, with hugely stratified land prices and a land glut, as somehow just an aberration, something that is this one person's fault, or something that is corrected by this or that little measure, especially of the bromide type, such as "learning to understand this is a GAME and having some FUN in it!"
Instead, people must realize that it's this way because it *is* this way. As much as the Lindens are enlightened despots, enlightened game gods, as much as they listen more to their customers and by contrast with the Sims Online are a benign tropical paradise dictatorship, the fact is, they are still despots. Code is law. Cory reigns supreme. There is no voting "no". Robin gets to pick 8 people...and 8 more...and the IRC channelers get to cluck or whistle in approval or disapproval. This is how it is. You couldn't change this unless you bought out Linden Lab -- the only way to overthrow it literally -- and that's not going to happen client-side.
Now...we're supposed to discount this country stuff entirely, we're supposed to discard Philip's famous quote as just an example of him smokin' weed, and we're supposed to wise up to the fact that currency exchange, social and economic classes, massive immigration, control of borders, signing of treaties, etc. doesn't amount to a country.
OK, fine, let's jettison all this country stuff for the moment and just take the company stuff on its own terms.
Of course...the forums armchair analysts, especially those with little or no business experience in RL or SL, are fond of wagging their finger at your and admonishing you to "care about LL's bottom line" and "realize they have a business to run". LL is something more like a government-funded experiment (that's why they call it Lab) or a non-profit venture -- it's doesn't yet make a profit. In fact, it's long-term life might be better secured as a think-tank for the Metaverse rather than a software company, which would be a respectable role for it.
But let's just suppose, given that they are "very close" to being profitable (a few more islands! a few more thousand customers!) that they are a real company. And that what they're holding is a "focus group".
Of course, in "focus group" terms it's a bust -- you don't pick people for a focus group *this* way, reaching for a few categories from A to B.
If there really was a "focus group" being made, we'd see the following avatars who really represent SL:
o big, busty black female entrepreneurs "representin' from Hotlanta" who have sizeable amounts of island or whole-sim mainland land holding and events and/or content business and a heck of a lot more fun in SL than most forums-posters.
o some Victorian-clad Caledonian 32-year-old female lesbian musicians who play live music on weekends
o 40-something part-time Wal-Mart employees who work as call girls at Barbies (male or female in RL; female in SL) and live in Prok's rentals until they can buy their own land
o teens posing as adults with names like 1234KewlRick who are talented weapons makers pulling in as much as $50-100 USD a week
o 30-something American males who are insurance adjusters in RL who find love and big palaces and bling in SL and rent from Azures
o 50 year old programmers literally having a second life with SL and who sample BDSM in lite amounts
o Italian or Arabian princes in RL who are squandering the family inheritance on huge shopping islands, bling, and girls before they get bored and go off and play WoW
Well, you get the idea. Not the FIC, or the anti-FIC but completely other kinds of people -- there are lots, lots more of them on the grid than you or me.
So this isn't about the actual customers, even the actual island-buying, premium-account buying customers, such as to make a focus group. Focus groups, and I've been in them, and also made them, are drawn from your user or subscription base or even funders and they are made up of demographics, zip-codes, etc. We could have a whole long discussion about what a focus group is or isn't, but let's face it, that's not what the Lindens are making when they take Kex Godel or Alliez Mysterio -- these are people that either they expect to tell them about programming issues possibly with a very critical eye and mouth (we keep hearing this claim that there are angry young programmers pissed at LL for all kinds of righteous reasons) or people that they figure will tell them stuff they can't be bothered to find out about -- like how the hell you can make a dime off buying 29 of Philip's pet rocks, also known as islands.
I think this isn't really about getting advice from the People, or the Symbolic Representative Groups, however -- the Sounding Board concept. It's more about the message they want these Platonic Ideals to take *back* to the People.
I think the Lindens honestly function in a kind of cult - the love machine concept, this "we're all in a barn together" office layout (I'd make short work of that, as I think anybody who has ever had to run an office would) -- the fatty breaks, the whatever -- whatever that je-ne-sais-quoi is the Essence of Lindenor that they'd like to get people to grok on in person, since conveying it over broadband proves so difficult. If nothing else, you'll get to smell what kind of air freshener they have in the bathroom and take it from there, and also give us the skinny on whether they meet state regulations for emplyoee lunch rooms.
Now...if we're going to reject this idea that it's a country -- sending messages back to the People who emerge convinced and come back and spread the gospel (no doubt this line item is under the "evangelizing" category of PR) then...we'd have to assume that picking 40 customers (remember there will be more than one group) out of the 24000 online any one day isn't the best way to sample even a company's opinion or even the best way to convince all those skeptics like Prok (or that guy on a Harvard-related blog I was just reading who said his first sign-on to SL "wasn't pretty" and he quit in frustration).
So...let's stick with the company thing a minute. The company and its needs and its bottom line (this is the assignment Surreal and others have given to Cocoanut to work proposals against) is supposed to be Uber Alles, correct?
Wrong. If Second Life, the platform and the grid and all the things on it, were just about One Company, All Hail the Holy Company, it would be utter folly.
The reality of Second Life is that it is about *many* companies. It is a prototype of a web application, a software package that will be part of the 3-D web and what's called the Metaverse. So...how it deals with *companies* now given it's long-term prospects is really important.
And this is precisely what they aren't looking at in any systematic way.
The *companies* of Second Life are people who run businesses in SL. They run content, land, event, venue, or service businesses. These are small, medium, and large. They generate revenue, even if -- much like Linden Lab itself!!!! -- they are "almost but not quite yet profitable". Why only look to the 2000 people who generate $20,000 a year in income by not really billing for their hours and letting their RL gigs feed their online hobby? Why not also look at a lot of other people -- thousands who still manage to cover tier and then some? Each and every one of these little or medium or big operations are tremendously important not only for Linden Lab as a company, but for the Metaverse as a prospect.
Companies. Companies that have other companies, connections, families, co-workers, vendors, suppliers, customers. Very, very few (they tend to be the FIC and *are* the FIC because of this) residents ever use SL in their RL jobs. Of course we know the celebrated Flipper has done this with his gas station, and there are others who are "RL in SL" in ways that are innovative and interesting, though hard to prove valid as a cost center for most businesses.
And of course we have Twentieth Century Fox...once. We have Microsoft...once. We have Wells Fargo...once. We have Warner Brothers...once. Maybe twice. But...their long-term visibility or presence is a wildcard right now.
Resident-created businesses aren't terribly interesting to the Lindens. They actually seem to have a bit of contempt for them, because they've stopped all of their incentives, not even keeping something that would have been a really obvious incentive, like a small business or even any business award that went to avatars that could actually show inworld profit in their accounts over revenue and expenses, or even just substantial revenue enhancement through attempting various strategies. They could even consider bringing back a voluntary leader board of those willing to subject their accounts to such scrutiny.
But...they are far more eager for quick fixes with big-named companies that can ensure huge splashes of media coverage (be sure to read all the way down the comments on this one for a good horse laugh).
Companies that are just companies, in a vacuum, selling widgets, might bring in their main widget-buyers or advisors in the industry known for good widget-making for a confab and a look-see.
But...remember last year when a bunch of people made what they called "RL FIC Invasion of SL?" Flipper was on it, I think, and I remember Jake Reitveld was on it and gave a thoughtful talk about it at the Sutherland Dam. I distinctly remember what he said: "They want resident government, they want the residents to take over the world, they want to make that possible." THAT is what it's about.
So...let's parse this. How can you take over a world, when there is no world? How can you rule a country, when there is no country? The same people who happily tell you to get over your little fantasy that there's a country turn around five minutes later and talk with somber and fake altruistic faces about governance of the complex world of the grid. Somebody has to Help the Lindens because gosh, it's so big now!
So...there's a lot to think about there, but stick with the Big Company among Many Other Companies model that I'm suggesting.
You are a big supplier of servers, a downloadable client to access those servers, the illusion of land, and a kind of very light and largely ineffectual police service. To make that service/company work, you have to have lots and lots of other companies -- virtual estate sellers and renters, builders, scripters, clothiers, events-planners etc. who take care of all these customers who come in the door. Because that's the model -- it's not about making content, pushing it, have the customers burn through it, making more content. It's about putting out the skeleton for others to build content and push and burn through.
Of the people they've picked for round one, two fit that model of companies-within-the-company -- Alliez and Nexus -- and one, Catherine Omega, is related by marriage, as it were, to the chief clothing making and RL-gig-lander and builder Aimee Weber.
Second Life is a nesting doll of companies. Inside the first matryoshka, is the biggest SL company, Anshe Chung. Inside that, is somebody else who buys Anshe's land or rents Anshe's land, and so on, down the line to the littlest t-shirt maker in appearance mode who sells in a first-land shack for $5.
All of the matroshki can only make sense within the nesting-doll set-up. Nobody buys just one nesting doll, or the smallest, or the medium size -- the whole point of nesting dolls is to buy the package.
And each layer of the nesting doll depends on the previous bigger doll to open it up and uncover it -- unless you unpack the dolls, you can't see what is underneath. In much the same way, any business within SL not only depends on LL for its very essence on the servers (it can't exist yet apart from them), it also depends on LL or some other bigger doll within the nest to open up and uncover it -- the dependency is hierarchical.
Of course, any of the dolls might try to form their own relationship outside the nest, but we don't have a lot of examples of that. In fact, one way to look at it is to see that the big doll is actually a set of littler dolls that it has GOM'd.
Akh, as Tyutechev put it so inimitably, "Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone."
can you use a headings and a table of contents with anchors please? i have trouble reading the current stream of conciousness format. thanks.
j-wu
Posted by: jauani | 06/17/2006 at 10:57 PM
No.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/17/2006 at 11:36 PM
if you made your format more accessible you could reach a wider audience.
Posted by: jauani | 06/18/2006 at 03:23 AM
That's ok, why don't you try working with your own blog, Jauani.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/18/2006 at 09:32 AM
Funny how nobody seems to be able to handle reading anything that is more than about 10 lines long these days.
It must be something to do a general shortening of attention spans.
Sorry...was that too long?
Posted by: Stan Pomeray | 06/18/2006 at 10:46 AM
This was actually one of my shorter entries, it had numbered talking points, and it had pictures to break it up.
Jauani's own style is to put fashionably tiny print and to put more space between the paragraphs and bold up the numbered talking points. *shrugs*. Well, I don't think that necessarily makes anything more readable.
I'd like to think I'm no worse than Samuel Pepys in the paragraph department. BTW, there's an annotated Internet version of his diaries that are a lot of fun
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
Perhaps my theory that the modern blog is illustrative of the shortened attention span is shot to hell by comparing length of posts from the 17th century to the 21st, but see what you think.
I think Thoreau probably makes my case better:
http://www.concord.org/~kathy/Walden/wldbean.html
But yes, I think ever since Harper's magazine began to change its format and then the Internet was born, nobody can read more than a "screen full".
It's often because they have 10 other things going on at once.
Try putting Thoreau into a text summarizer, it's fun:
http://swesum.nada.kth.se/index-eng.html
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/18/2006 at 11:01 AM
That summarising tool is magnificent. I summarised this entire post and the most important 10 words are (it comes out more than 10, even if I asked for only 10):
"Country or Company or Country Club?
Akh, as Tyutechev put it so inimitably, "Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone."
Posted by: Timeless Prototype | 06/18/2006 at 02:01 PM
I tried it on 5 different summarizing tools and got completely different things, some including Tyutchev, some not. These programs are stupid, like the wisdom of crowds. No doubt that are set to tag words like "Finally" or "in sum" or "Certainly" or whatever.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/18/2006 at 02:15 PM
Without a doubt, the programs have no emotional perspective on the matter and very likely the words are weighted and probably any cross references within the same document bring greater weight to the words.
But like it or hate it, it did in fact summarise the most important point, which I choose to interpret as: you can't just think about it, you have to live it to understand it.
If I was a god of a world (which I believe I'm not, until otherwise informed), I'd want to live in the world - experience what they experience - before making any judgements on anything.
Posted by: Timeless Prototype | 06/18/2006 at 02:26 PM
We are all gods of this world.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/18/2006 at 02:53 PM
Another round of very interesting arguments, Prokofy, and again, I find them flawless. Perhaps I can only comment on one aspect of it; I admire your tenacity to focus on the "SL (or the Metaverse) is a country" mantra, but it seems that this was sadly one of the things that Philip has dropped.
Well, perhaps not dropped. He still seems to claim that "SL is many countries", which would be even in line with your reasoning — there is not "a community", but "several communities"; there is not "a way of doing things", but "several ways of doing things"; and, lastly, there is "the way the Lindens would like things to be", and, as a contrast — there is reality. Which is *not* the way the Lindens "like" it, since it doesn't fit very well in their overall mindset.
I'm naturally suspect, of course, so I don't blame you if I'm accused of "switching mindsets". Do I still believe that "SL is a country", as my signature seems to indicate? I did once, but after questioning LL directly, Philip's answer (on his blog) was elucidating. I had the wrong midset — and have to adapt to the "correct" one (read: the one LL is promoting), or die (disappear from SL) in the attempt. That's what I'm still trying to do, and this is what you could possibly label as becoming a "traitor to the cause" — escaping the "SL country" by bringing in "foreign investment in SL" (read: using RL projects to sustain my continued experience in SL).
I won't argue on what's "best". The concept of "SL as a country" fascinated me for several reasons — so much, that I refused to get biased by reading Snowcrash (your own comments on that book also helped me to avoid it). The experience I have is that *many* people (20%? 30%? Still quite a lot of people) do indeed "behave" as if SL is a country. They struggle for a living here. They could be doing the same on other, 2D virtual communities. They could be content creators for Renderosity or any other 3D modelling community (where indeed clothes are sold for half a dollar, not unlike SL). They could be programming interactive games, sold through webpages for US$10 or $15, but they do the same in SL for about the same amount. They could be selling advertising on blogs, or developing small-scale e-Commerce sites, but they're renting malls and promoting live concerts in SL.
So why are they all here?
I'd say, because here they have an *opportunity* for business. Remove that opportunity, and they'll go away (or, for the record, make that opportunity so difficult, that it will be impossible for them to thrive). And this should *also* be on LL's mind when thinking about redesigning all of SL (its economy, or the way its society "should" work).
Having just been presented with one case of a good friend leaving her mall just because of LL's "attitude" towards their "virtual country" (and not much beyond the attitude — she did well, financially) makes me think if LL's "attitude" is so well in tune with the resident's own.
It's not only us (residents) that have to adapt to change; LL should be doing the same.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | 06/19/2006 at 05:32 AM
The problem with the Philip/country quote is that it has legs -- each new, bland, major RL media piece on SL contains it. He even does reiterate it at times in presentations when talking about the currency exchange. I do have the impression he doesn't do this much lately, but he has surely said it since the famous first time he said it, and not said anything to contradict it, like, "Gah, I'm not running a country, it turns out I'm not running a country, I'm running a third-rate sex chat room with links to shopping sites."
It's true, also, that he has decided to let the Archipelago of Egos called the private island system, which at one time wasn't in his ideology, be the "colonies" (that's what he actually called them). This is King George catching up to the fact that his subjects are fleeing his kingdom of the mainland.
They are big on "diversity" lately -- and that is even the hoary call of the third anniversary, "celebrating diversity," which sounds as exciting as my kid's public school field day, complete with educational posters and forced fun. The diversity in reality goes from A to A-and-a-half as we can see from the "Group of 8".
I still think the Lindens' real and unstoried product is the country. But they step on it and don't like it because it erodes their power, so ultimately they'll kill it.
Still, I don't believe in the social Darwinism that you socialists in fact believe in, with your "to each according to his work" stuff. Not everyone can drag RL work into this game, and not everybody can get the pet rocks to turn a dollar, it's hard.
You should read Snowcrash because it will help you understand the Linden's cult. Just because I'm critical of Snowcrash isn't any reason not to read it. It's an awful book, and they are replicating the dystopia.
All those web things you describe are solitary pursuits. I could "draw this dog" and "earn $$$$$$ at home" too, but what fun is that? It's the *world* aspect of the shared community of people, the ready stream of customers and friends you can readily interact with in acceleratd time that makes it interesting.
When they stopped all this subsidy of inworld activity, they didn't have a plan to sustain it some other way because they didn't want it. They wanted to kill it. Whatever survived their social Darwinism, survived, or died. They don't care. They can't care, because they opted for this route. They hope big companies come in and take over the cost and the management. They've carefully prepared a feted inner core to be the guides to these big companies, and they are no doubt pleased at their subsidy of this tiny cohort, because so far, it seems to pay off for them. They've even co-opted the Herald, their old enemy, that wouldn't *help,* by getting Walker into ESC's orbit and having ESC sponsor Walker's major career-building blog 3pointd.com and leave his toys and sandbox at the Herald to languish -- that's what the Lindens like to see happening to the world, people abandoning the sandbox and the toys to do real things.
LL's attitude isn't in tune with your friend and her mall. Not at all. LL doesn't need your friend and her mall. Reuben has explained that -- they don't need the country, or the country to be 500,000 instead of 250,000. They got enough of the vestiges of a country to keep the project going without having to fill in the dotted lines. Instead, for a while, during a phase, all the big companies will come in *once* and dine out in the media for having come in this *once* to a world we all made, which they all are stepping on.
Then what? This is another historical juncture for SL and the metaverse -- I know they have them every 2-3 weeks but this one is more serious.
What you didn't seem to respond to is the "nesting dolls" idea.
People go on and on about LL's bottom line and LL's corporate strategy and LL this and LL that.
My point here is that if they're going to make the claim (largely unexamined and unexposed) that 2000 people make at least $20,000 a year in this game, which approximates a "living wage" especially outside the US, then they have to realize it's not about one company, but the rest of the dolls in the nest -- there are hundreds of companies represented by those 2,000 people.
And in fact easily another 5000 make money of some sort -- they generate enough to cover tier, or to substantially cover their projects such as to make the SL con work it.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/19/2006 at 12:59 PM
SL does show all the signs of being "groomed for sell off". There is that same sort of paranoid need to "gain customer buy-in" and "impose mindsets" that companies often use when they want to appear to be a tasty morsel for investors or potential buyers.
The current emphasis on ensuring that new account holders not only get the "correct required perception" of SL, but also are steered towards behaving in certain (defined by some superior power to be "acceptable" ways) is further evidence of this.
The idea that SL could be "a country" was ironically one of the things that initially attracted me to it. But quite clearly SL is now being marketed (whether directly or by inference) as a 3D version of the world wide web, and I believe that 3 or 4 years from now, if SL does survive, it will take this form, with websites essentially substituted for "land parcels".
As with the world wide web (which has also been regulated to the point of tedium, in my view anyway, over the past 10 years) the big players will bring in the big money that LL clearly wants.
The "game" side of SL probably will survive, just as "games" can be found lurking in corners of the world wide web. But the "game" enthusiasts will probably get the feeling that they are getting in the way of the conformity sledgehammer.
Of course, I'm happy to be proved entirely wrong.
Posted by: Stan Pomeray | 06/19/2006 at 01:37 PM
Stan,
They already have customer buy-in. customers have bought-in to the tune of something like 85 percent of their server costs and maintenance fees. Even if it is only 65 or 75, there's an awful lot of servers out there, with an awful lot of people who bought them, and pay maintenance on them each month -- and if that isn't buy-in, I'll eat my hat.
As for imposing mindsets, they do that every Wednesday. I can click on the message to "update to 10.00.14.00.2.1/2.000" or...not. If I don't, I don't come in the world.
If that isn't imposing a mindset, I'll eat my hat.
It's a good thing I don't wear hats.
I agree that there is a horrible conformism happening at the OI and HI, complete with denizens from those militaristic groups like the Alliance Navy who have a toehold there, and also got themselves prominently featured in the Third Anniversary celebration with airshows. Fortunately, there's now a big sign there didn't used to be at OI: "Skip Orientation". I'd highly recommend it. Instead, go directly to New Citizens or even to me and my newbie type events or communities and the Ross infohub. Or to any of a hundred other people who provide more of a homegrown orientation depending on what your interests are.
It's being marketd as an early pioneer in the 3-D Web thing. The question is whether they'll keep that title. I'm getting a blog together on this topic.
Yes, whoever joins MUDs anymore?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/19/2006 at 02:02 PM
The problem with SL being a country is that the notion is based on the mistaken assumption that a large, contiguous, non-terraformable land mass provides the framework for a country.
It doesn't.
It provides a sense of space. In fact, it *only* provides a sense of space. That in itself is pretty useless in an electronic environment. Oh it's supposed to be compelling and comortable and prompt collaborations and grouping.
But it doesn't.
It's just a big old ugly sense of space that drives people up the wall because we have no more control over it than we do our real lives making it sort of senseless altogether to waste our time on mainland (read country-related) activities.
The Linden's have been trying to build a country on their estates for years now. They've failed miserably and made a lot of us miserable in the process.
Other groups have figured out that what people want is a hood. A small enough sense of space that they can know their neighbors, see their county on the map and take pride in how it looks and what goes on there.
Sure they know there are other lands (read countries) out there that they can visit. But they can point to that set of sims and say "That's my ; I live there. I know those people and work with that government and we do great things together."
One day LL will realize that licensed software running on indepedent grids, linked into centralized common areas by agreement, will provide people with virtual countries in a true metaversal world. But for now they're still listening to people who preach the one world on one grid under one dictator because that's supposed to be somehow provide more freedom of choice for everyone.
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 09:46 AM
The quote above is supposed to read:
"That's my --country name--; I live there. I know those people and work with that government and we do great things together."
Apparently you can't use geater-than and less-than signs when posting here. Maybe they require backslashes or such.
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 09:51 AM
Khamon, I'm not buying this, as you may know. Why favour neighbourhoods and dis countries? You don't have to celebrate hoods by stepping on countries. Perhaps Caledon or Azure Islands couldn't have their sense of hood if it weren't for the contrast with the big ugly country of the mainland.
But it's still a country. America is big and non-terraformable and awfully ugly in places but it's still a country.
Maybe countries aren't supposed to be comfortable. I was looking at one of my hoods last night -- Grace. It has been transformed from the rolling pastoral graceful Grace that some of us worked REALLY hard to keep nice in the face of all kinds of crap, where it had a golden age for awhile, back to the crapola around the edges threatening the community again. Why? Because assholes sell off 16m2 and 64m2 sections of their land for a fast buck. I can never understand how this happens, but overnight, when that happens, clutter, griefing, stupidity begins to invade.
Some guy put in an airport, which, by itself might be tolerable, but the combination of spinning stuff, and his indifference (collusion?) regarding the 16m2 signs has helped create a menacing effect.
FINALLY an eyesore waterfall on the Midge side is gone...but the owner liquidated to Anshe which means we have miles of chopped up small parcels now that will very likely fill with poseball sellers. For now, I can take down HUGE PINE TREE but it may come back. Grace is a funny hood that has a lot of conflicting stuff going on it -- it's a longer story that I can tell here -- but when does hood become country or visa versa? Just because Grace has conflicts and problems doesn't mean I would want to abandon it. I think the more you fight for your country through various battles and thick and thin, the more you want to stay with it, a certain loyalty builds up to it.
I don't think the Lindens ever tried to build a country. I think they tried to build a federal government, by putting in recruiting stations, welcome areas where they can indoctrinate new citizens, giant stadiums for their leader's town hall, etc. They have the accoutrements of a federal government, but it lurches from laxness to totalitarianism and never focuses on creating policies that could help the country. They turn a blind eye to the quality of life and property destruction issues like security orbs and the Bush Guy and then swoop down like avenging angels on yard sells, the life blood of the communities.
You're right, though, this country is a fool's errand on the mainland. It's wearing me out.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/20/2006 at 10:24 AM
You don't buy it because you have really strange ideas. What is America as a country but a federal government. Without the federal government we're all just a lot of contiguous states.
Okay call the hoods "states" if that makes you happy. Those are the countries that people ascribe to under the empirical US constitution and flag.
You don't buy it because you're blinded by the notion that a big, ugly, contiguous, nonterraformable landmass *is* a country. Yeah Pa, we don't wear no shoes causen we lives in the Alabama ayhuk.
You just don't get it do you? But then, I don't really care if you do or not as you long as you don't try to pass any of this off as legitimate journalism to an unsuspecting public.
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 02:34 PM
Oh, Khamon, you're terrible.
Posted by: Andrew Burton, aka Jarod Godel | 06/20/2006 at 02:36 PM
Jarod and Khamon at Typepad
the typing ferocious
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 02:38 PM
But it is legitimate journalism and it is a country, Khamon. I mean, geez, you live in this country, too. Just because your country gets ugly doesn't mean that it forfeits its essence nature as a country.
If the Lindens offered me a 1:1 trade for my total land mass on the mainland for private islands, I'd consider it, but if they weren't killing the mainland, I might say no, because I like the idea of having neighbours and a contiguous layout.
Nowadays, when I look at the map, I see many islands in fact near the mainland, and the whole concept of "island" is eroding as people string bunches of them together and make continents.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/20/2006 at 02:51 PM
"Nowadays, when I look at the map, I see many islands in fact near the mainland, and the whole concept of "island" is eroding as people string bunches of them together and make continents."
Yes, true, point set and match. Give people the ability to build their own continents and they will. Give people the ability to link those continents onto a common space so their residents can travel through a sense of planetary space and they will. Give people the ability to host their own continental grids and link them into common spaces and they will.
The first two have already proven true. The third will as well. Yet your consitent answer to such a proposal is that it somehow dashes everyone's freedom to the wind and blows the world to smithereens just because LL won't be hosting and lording over the it lock, stock and barrel.
The US is a country because the people of fifty states agree to abide by a constitution and support a federal system of government. A virtual country will work the same way with far more land, far more people, far more innovation, and far more tolerance than is suffered by a single company operating a single grid to accomodate a single world view, at a steady financial loss I might add.
But you don't buy that. That only facilitates tiny little hateful techie gated communities as evidenced by the dAlliezes, Azure Islands, Caledon, Dreamland, Nunki Kai et al.
Giant contiguous landmasses don't build countries.
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 03:23 PM
The US is a country because the people of fifty states agree to abide by a constitution and support a federal system of government.
Point, set, and match yourself. The Lindens shuold strengthen their federal government and enforce the TOS against spam and property devaluation like the Bush Guy. The states (the parcel autonomies) should cease their fuck-you hedonism and stop driving people to the islands by observing a modicum of restraint and refraining from heedless terror-forming and build-griefing. It's not that much that is asked, really, no more than states and the central government conceded in making the United States -- in fact a lot less, because things like the death penalty, foreign wars, and abortion aren't in the SL repetoire to worry about.
Yes, the hateful tekkies are one of the biggest forces mitigating against minimal restraint by landowners and consent to the rule of a federal government's reasonable rules.
Giant contiguous land masses are what underlies the entire project of Second Life.
>Give people the ability to build their own continents and they will.
BTW, we can buy the precooked ones off the mainland auction and make them, too. Where are 3 other people who will each put in $500 to get a sim rolling and a sim government?
Give people the ability to link those continents onto a common space so their residents can travel through a sense of planetary space and they will.
Well, now, let's not exaggerate here, Khamon. Fly around Dreamland a bit. BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE SENT HOME RED BARS BOUNCE BOUNCE. YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO CLEAR THE AREA. So much for planetary space.
>Give people the ability to host their own continental grids and link them into common spaces and they will.
Well, they can do this with mainland sims too, really. That's what I do with my rentals, more or less, it's just that I get along with my neighbours, imagine that.
We try to abide by a couple of simple rules -- when the parcel goes up to sale, offer to your own neighbours first. When building, don't put your building right smack on the property line or up so many stories it blocks your neighbours' view. Don't put out stupid spinning signs and laggy listening scripts and junk. I dunno, you know, it's not that hard to make a country.
One sim at a time. Even as serfs and quit-renters on Governor Linden's estate.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/20/2006 at 03:51 PM
"BTW, we can buy the precooked ones off the mainland auction and make them, too."
This is a good idea. Why don't you centralize Ravenglass holdings into a few sims contiguous sims where the biz owns all the land and can enforce some zoning to alleviate some of the headaches you, and your clients, are continually fighting?
It seems a diservice forcing your poor renters to neighbor with disrepectful griefer types just so you can own land all over the map.
Plus, it's much more state like and supportive of the federal system to enclose a large, contiguous area of land so that people can see that this is Ravenglass and it's really nice.
Do your bit Prokofy, centralize, contiguize, that's the ticket to defining space.
Posted by: Khamon | 06/20/2006 at 04:13 PM
Wait a minute, champ, first you want centrifugal forces, you're there chanting "united we stand, divided we run fee at last," you're all for Balkanization and weakening the federative state. Then five seconds later, whoops, Ravenglass is supposed to centralize, contiguize, and push everybody out, declaring all beyond its borders as lawless.
Huh?
Can't we all get along?
I want neighbours to be tiering my view so I don't : )
Most neighbours work out. A small percentage don't. The rule of law cannot be enforced due to a poorly constituted and weak federal power.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/20/2006 at 06:55 PM