I began thinking about this issue more seriously (concluding immediately it shouldn't be "all or nothing" on either score) a few weeks ago and then this last week, watching my son close up his games for the summer and tier down his SL account. <CLICK> and characters on WoW that seemed boring or were on an RP server that proved too fake were deleted. <CLICK> and Runescape, skilled out the max with all kinds of swords and helms, is sold to a younger player still thrilled with grinding. <CLICK> and a mall and game-within-game and tons of fascinating content in SL is deleted, sold, forgotten except for a screenshot. I had all I could do to convince him that he should keep his "brand" and leave out a store on a 512 to keep selling content. When he was able to make $53 U.S. in just a week or two, he decided to keep his little store -- but not log on. Well, for one, he's going fishing and boating and that's a good thing!
But...he was curiously "untethered" to his av -- to use an expression I heard Sherry Turkle apply to discussions of virtual worlds at a talk she gave in SL once. That is, his avatar was just a kind of glorified browser. Oh, to be sure, his name was cool and even his look with his amazing armour and fierce fire particles. But...my son could never understand why anyone would want to get married in Second Life. The avatar is just a mule, a closet, a place to keep your inventory. He's a hand-tool for building, in the shape of a person to give you an idea how it will feel to walk around a house. But...he's not a person.
Why marry a hammer, or a closet?
If anything, I'm the opposite, deepening each avatar, adding to his character, legend, possession, experience, associations, friends, societies, groups. This could be age or gender or culture at work, of course, or simply a blatant fact: that these immersive worlds are least impressive and effective in acting upon the very generation that has been exposed to them the most. They may pull the curtain aside and see the little man behind it way, way faster than we do.
Not six months after I declared 2006 to be the "Year of the Avatar" (and all kinds of famous people then copied me yuk yuk), now the eggheads are declaring the "avatar" metaphor to be "dead".
(BTW, I was the one in another TN thread to pose the question of what it would be like to have games/exploration of worlds without avatars, i.e. no body or human or animal like thing, but rays or light or simply chat or perhaps some other thing...)
The avatar had a brief existence as an expression of the soul in an immersive 3-d streaming world, or game, or legend, or society but...as soon as the world was washed out to make the web, the avatar became about as interesting as somebody's Yahoo account named [email protected]
Part of the problem is the outing of identity. While they promised the identies were secure and there was a firewall between them, they were sharking us, as I should know. But it's not just me -- look at the uproar in the blogosphere now as someone with a popular political commentary blog is "outed" to be someone more complex, with possibly a conflict of interests...
Just as there was a stampede for anonymity as a source of creativity, there was a stampede in the backwash in the Metaverse ebb and flow as some people then wanted their own literal real-life names to better position their brand and business. A Linden told me that if I were tired of all these description-less avatars calling themselves "Prokofy" in SL (one called "Prokofy Fugu" is even blamed for grid-crashing during the birthday) I should trademark my name (!). Gosh, $139 to prevent the False Dmitrys of the world? Looking over trademark law, I'm given a little pause...it talks about trademarks being refused to things that don't seem what they are...and I have to wonder if virtual land in pixel format on servers I don't own might not fall into that category...
When we make e-mail handles or blogs, we make up names and personas that are kind of like Avatar Lite. They represent some facet of ourselves, exposing some aspect while hiding another. These are artifacts of the soul. They were bound to merge.
Philip Linden seems to say he wants SL to become like the web, and everything he puts into the mix these days, whether promised HTML-on-a-prim or promised web-services (whatever they are, exactly), or even the dull RL shirt he put on instead of his old rocker's T, seem to tell us that the walled garden of SL, as Tony Walsh called it, the world or worlds-within-worlds, are going to have to thin out, become less deep, lose their immersiveness, become more open, and...flat.
On the one hand.
On the other, in fact Philip and the others are rushing with often what seems like unseemly speed (driven by investors? competitors? the adrenalin of conviction?) in fact to making worlds that are even more worldy -- but more like the Little Prince's tiny planet than a connected, contiguous open grid.
These mini-worlds or fiefdoms have little geographic sense unless their wealthier patrons or more savvy businessmen have created continents out of 4 or more of them. How much world do you want? Caledon or Svarga or RFrye Isle are all worlds -- spectacular worlds, worlds within worlds, with legend, colour, sights, sounds, and culture. They're about as worldy as you could want -- as long as you aren't on the ban list, and as long as you can basically afford the price of the rental admission to live there, which is rather steep in SL terms.
More and more people are rushing in the door, and I personally find myself curiously unconcerned about the greater griefing it means (my solution is to bolster the police blotter with things like Prop 1533 to name all names in discipline cases and establish a justice and dispute system with policies and institutions, not think up more coded technical ways to control parcels--but of course that's hard work).
That is, I welcome anything that removes barriers to account formation, especially for foreigners, and simply people who want a third life now that others have made their second life miserable. I see a lot of use of alts by oldbies precisely to get away from bad relationships, stalking, griefing, and bad associations. Everyone likes to get a second chance, especially when Second Life, which was supposed to be that chance, is ruined.
I'm the first one to protest to Daniel Linden, however, because I don't think the Lindens are telling the truth (to themselves, first and foremost) about the increase in griefing and the increase in the overall surface area of griefing. However, the hysteria whipped up about these accounts, and the Limousine Liberals like Cristiano Midnight protesting about them, are mainly interested in freedom for the sex business and freedom from possible harassment or entrapment for improper behaviour with minors -- griefing with its nuisance or destruction faction is not of interest to those who already live on low-traffic core sims or sequestered private islands.
So the ultimate irony is that all those people lecturing us about how we have to stop being worlders and get with the platform, and how "nobody logs in to every page in the Internet" as I was somewhat peremptorily told today by Foolish Frost, are actually the first to think up a hundred ways to close up these "web pages" and in fact make worlds! It truly is the richest irony!
Foolish Frost has a very interesting thread in which he celebrates all these accounts being formed without ID and wishes for the disappearance of ANY registration requirements like on the web but then...proceeds to think up an elaborate system for anyone who secures a hunk of land to make anyone they don't like not only banned from that land, but unable to see it, hear it, or know about it. He calls it "cloaking," and it's his answer for how we can live on servers in peace and harmony. Hiro Pendragon had once suggested something like this with a misting up or disappearance of people on the other side of my land border -- avatars, houses, ugly signs -- poof. I found this rather like air-brushing people out of history.
In fact, it reminded me a great deal of C.S. Lewis' "Great Divorce," where Hell happens to be just a place where you can't see Heaven very well, everything is grey...you are very tiny...and the blades of grass are so real they are as hard as diamonds and hurt your insubstantial feet. You take care of the problem of evil by just...making it small and almost invisible.
I have always maintained that the creation of an Archipelago of Egos in this fashion will not only be a closed society and an atomized society, but like all closed, atomized, destroyed societies with no social fabric, they will be units rife for totalitarian ideas -- on two counts. One, the forces that are able to withstand the centrifugal force of opening up worlds to the web and flattening everything out of the vertial immersive experience are the very societies like BDSM RP or Gor or other elaborate and controlled game play that provides its own internal, social controls to keep out the openness and spontaneity of the rest of the world. Two, anyone with just one Big Idea, or operative universalist theory, will be able to penetrate the rigid but therefore brittle walls of the walled-in cisterns. Precisely because they are walled in, these little mini citi-states and Republics of Me will be as easy to knock over as the Incas once they lost their chief.
Information wants to be free, you say? Free market models always prevail because they prosper? Think again. In SL, many, many people in fact enjoy the lifestyle of having or being a slave, and a slave subject to the most refined forms of pain and suffering. We can have the Suicide Girls and the trussed-up Pony Girls but...we can't have yard sales. Yard sales are evil, and to be controlled, if not eliminated. Freedom...but not freedom for *other people* to sell *outside my commece circle* say the oldbies who want to control the economy like FlipperPA Peregrine (who is busy invoking the threat of lawyers over a new competitor whom he claims copied his TOS language -- I had a guy once copy my info card word-for-word, even including offers and features he didn't even have in his rentals, and I personally contacted him and told him he was a lamer and an idiot and made him rewrite his cards--people copy my stuff all the time LOL.)
And now the old socialist failed experiment of Neualtenberg has finally bared its fangs and made an appalling new guild-type arrangement where some people, called "meisters," will get more land and better houses if they are more creative and can cover their rent with a certain percentage of their sales (the Government or in this case something that is more like the Central Commitee will hinge their rent payment to their sales by garnisheeing their wages -- this used to be called "indentured servitude"!). Those new or less talented will be granted pushcarts to work their trade and study with their meisters until they can create and sell better. It's hair-raising social Darwinism, Marxism, and fascism all rolled into one.
Other than these obvious and funny internal contraditions -- which we're likely to see plenty of now as those celebrating open accounts and "information wants to be free" get busy closing whole swathes of SL down so they can stream these new accounts as they wish into their microbrewed filtered worlds as the worldiest of all of us worlders -- there are a lot of open questions:
1. When will the Lindens stop calling us "residents" and call us "browsers?" What is it we *live* in when we *live* in SL. For a time, the politically-correct Lindenist way of referring to one's relationship to SL was to say you "used SL" (like a tool, or a drug, for that matter). But they didn't call us "users" like Microsoft called us users, they called us "rezis" and not only because we rez into their world. Will we see some new nomenclature to reflect the changing reality as we lose the world beneath our little avatar feet?
2. Is "try before you buy" really going to work? There's a lot of excitement about something like Amazon.com coming in and making it a clickable experience to share books and thoughts with others in little Starbucks or Borders-like cafes. But...are you *really* going to want an avatar that has the same proportions and body fat as your RL self to get a realistic look when you go shopping? If you are...then you'll be clamouring for making yourself be able to be invisible in appearance mode, for when you switch your cool, hot SL body with its skimpy tart's outfits for your plain self with its saddle bags...I'm somehow thinking this is never really going to take off.
3. What's going to happen to those of us who bought parts of servers on the mainland? It's hard to understand the Lindens' vision for the mainland. On the one hand, they are finishing off the unfinished bit. They're likely to reach the end of it by the fall in terms of the number of sims they said they'd sell. Sims on the auction bring them only $1000, and private islands bring them $1250, so they have no incentive to sell sims that then produce many owners on them as they are sold off. Will they offer trades of land to islands? Or simply tell us -- which they are tacitly doing now -- to sell off mainland holdings if we want to secure our investments and switch to islands? The oh-so-savvy FIC types like Adam Zaius long ago made this move, and of course Anshe Chung, non-FIC though she is, is the preeminent mistress of the private island realm outdoing even the Lindens in putting out servers for people to live on happily.
At one point, when Moofp Murray saw all this land in Governor Linden's hand unauctioned and sitting there, he developed the theory of the death of the mainland. Governor Linden then got off his ass in the next few months to do a veritable, if you'll forgive the pun, land-office business, and sold a record number of parcels in March-May. Now what? People live on them, especially new people. What is the commitment to them? Could we get a statement?
4. Is HTML on a prim really going to be all that? I visited a secret Linden installation today (OK, how secret could it be if I was able to see it on the map and fly right into it LOL) with a strange acronym, owned by Cory Linden, that showed a kind of bazaar, with lots and lots of webpages (screenshots on prims) -- including our own Second Life Herald. Behind each web page/stall were little rooms. Perhaps this is how they envision the HTML-on-a-prim working, that people are actually going to warm their little avatar hands around the fire of a screenshot of a webpage that is a prim with HTML in it that you click on to read that page...except one of the key features of SL culture has been absence of much text. The visuals have always taken pride of place. Oh, to be sure, there are IMs and notecards. But they never worked on creating books except the hard way. I'm not sure that people are going to first come into an immersive world with an avatar they create and dress...and then hurry out again to the wider web to read pages, while their avatar dangles AFK -- even if, as Philip says, they will now have the thrill of being able to talk to all the people who are now on that webpage with them. (It's likely that the first pages that will become 2-D/3-D in this fashion will be webpages like 3pointd.com or the Electric Sheep or others whose content often consists of being "about the thing itself" but ultimately, we're likely to have more depth and diversity with that cafe/book experience already hinted at by the appearance of Amazon.com staff in SL.
5. Will LL change their land/income business model? Currently a large chunk of their change comes from auction sales and island sales and then tier. This is essentially server space maintenance fees. These fees are likely going to get lower if they want more people, and that means they may sacrifice one of the key elements of the SL economy -- virtual estate land sales and rentals, which hinge on the concept of the discount tier level. The Linden's old friend Ulrika Zugzwang has long lobbied against this "exploitation of teh ppl" which she claims comes from awarding land dealers bulk discounts for higher levels of tier (half a sim is $97 US after owning one sim, not $125). The rentals business can command as high prices as they do (I say "they" because I don't charge these prices) by counting on the fact that an individual pays $25 US to own 4096 m2 plus 512 m2 in SL on a premium account, whereas at the discount level of $195 US for tier, I'd pay only $12, at $.002960 US per meter. (Some island dealers are starting to charge only $15 US now for the 4096 to compete with Anshe, who continues to charge $25 US).
Philip has always talked about flat tier so I'm quite prepared for him to junk the main engine of the economy in the belief that he can substitute lots of smaller land holders or lots more wealthier big parcel holders who will have other entities like hospitals, universities, government agencies, or big business to pay tier, and not care about how to make it back.
The destruction of a good chunk of the virtual estate sector will only be hailed by the communists on the forums, and even someone like Anshe Chung or Adam Zaius will likely not protest to the point of quitting. Why? Because a year ago, the Philip and other Lindens sent a very strong message: content uber alles. By breaking the backs of all but the hardiest and most persistent land dealers on their auctions with land glut, the Lindens already ensure a flat price of $5/m which changes little, really. So what they're telling us as social engineers is that we need to have *content* on the land to be able to charge more for it -- either a compelling house or theme or RP or services of various types. Exploiting merely the differential between bulk tier rates and end-user tier rates will be junked as "so 19th century". Of course, it will deprive many of the mom-and-pop and club-sim micro-economies of their livlihoods, but when has that ever troubled the Lindens?
The Lindens can afford to monkey with the tier system now, because many of their customers have gone basic or keep only a 512 to get the $500 stipend each week --and many are on the islands renting from wholesalers, or they pay tier as individuals on the mainland. If the Lindens reduce the tier of a 4096 to $12 or $15 for everybody flat across the board, so there is no longer any differential, mainland owners can only be happy -- they'll now pay $10 or $12 less to own the same land. Island dealers who counted on that discrepancy between individual and bulk tier at first will now not care, because their customers who will still go on paying $25 for their increased value ever really comparison shopped and never wanted to own land and pay tier to Governor Linden, only to deal with griefing, lag, and ugly builds. The extra $10 they have to pay now will seem inconsequential for what they get -- it's a kind of subscription fee to a world...the world the Lindens declined to provide.
So it will be a handful of people like me still offering low-cost rentals with freer terms on the mainland who will be royally screwed. Interesting!
6. If the Lindens offer "host-your-own-server," what happens to the Mainland? Many tekkies are dying for SL to go open-source so they can host their own servers and do their own thing with virtual worlds. They're actually more worlders than they care to admit when they rush to have everything opened up to the Web, to be like the Web, and be all "information likes to be free" stuff, but in fact hurry to make their home brews in their basement like Jarod, and shut out people, thoughts, speech, images, builds, scripts, etc. they don't like. The truly ironic thing about all this is that those of us who were for a world on one grid actually conceived of it as more open to all than what we'll see coming out of all these types clamouring for open source. They will make like-minded little enclaves and shut their doors, and you wonder how much they'll even recruit to replenish their own niches.
This is a common phenomenon in all societies in transition: political factions and parties of every stripe, and newspapers of every political affiliation, proliferate like mushrooms after the rain. It was Lenin who said "Before we can unite, we must differentiate." The differences between Tekkie Vision 123498 and Tekkie Vision 1239487 is going to be indistinguishable and based on subjective preferences, chance impressions, snap judgements. It will be many years before alliances are made, and they'll only be made by really strong, totatalitarian personalities.
I'm thinking Lindens may keep Governor Linden's estate to indoctrinate newbies, and with certified instructions and courses coming, with further stratification, feting, indoctrination, conformism, the Mainland will become harder and harder to inhabit as a place of creativity. Already we see this in the way the entire greeter/mentor/helper/instructor industry is controlled. Once you get past Jeska's Januses, you may be doomed to roam the slag heaps of forgotten first land, abandoned casinos and malls seized and forgotten by the Governor, their greeter scripts still chatting into infinity about money balls and camp chairs, and the entire experience might be like that wrong turn in Back to the Future that occurs if the mother doesn't marry the original father, or if someone steps on a butterfly's wing and we never speak English....
7. Are verified accounts going to make a caste system? I published an announcement that I will rent to any type of account -- this is the opposite of some landholders who are going to demand tools to be able to ban automatically anybody with this "unverified" status on presumption of guilt that they are griefers. This will open up an increasing digital divide, the gray avatars forced to log on from public terminals like in Snowcrash....
8. Is business actually going to improve? The theory is that with many more people, and more connectivity to the Internet, business will flourish. I'm all for that. But I do wonder if it will work as planned. For one, there is quite a sizeable content-creation base that will resist the appearance of big business for no other reason than that it constitutes competition -- they will fight hard, until they stop fighting (like Aimee Weber gave up her childish notion of a global strike) and get jobs with those RL companies...until the thrill wears off on either side. Everyone will come in once -- as I keep saying, but SL could be a one-trick pony unless there is more interactivity, experience, friendship, love, socializing, fun to be had by these "mixed reality" events than we've seen up til now -- and that means worlds. That means *somebody* has to make the worlds, and while the Lindens would like nothing more than to outsource and delegate this onerous function, they still do run the servers and they need to create a dispute resolution process run by reputatable and rotating residents with Linden supervision.
Right now, SL is like a Nantucket or a Greenwich Village. A small cohort of people with a certain lifestyle, mainly wealthy or living such a Bohemian life that they need no wealth (or can mooch off others) are able to live La Deuxieme Vie. This life consists of talking about technology, using technology to make other technology, predicting the Next Big Thing, going to conferences and getting drunk or laid or both, hopefully in RL rather than SL, and doing some thinking and having interesting conversations as well, and doing what all great alternative social movements do in the end...selling out to the Man at the end. All these people will end up working at Google or Microsoft and like Philip, they will hope "they can remember these wild days".
These cultural enclaves will either boutiquify and form the nexus of urbanscapes and suburbancapes around them by people inspired by them to at least shop...or they'll collapse.
What will then become the new engine of creativity?
8. Everything else isn't going to stay in place, so will SL keep up? Right now, I see movies and new avatar capacity and other stuff happening even in my Yahoo browser -- I see more games, more 3-d stuff happening all over, even outside of what 3pointd.com covers. My favourite gas station or supermarket won't clear all the hurdles to come into SL, they'll make some el-cheapo version of a 3-D world using some other model that will give enough of the visual and social experience to keep most people happy -- and it will be free, too, and not require such a high-end computer and graphics card.
9. The RL doesn't stay static, either, so what happens with the next big war with the Arab world/the next big blackout/the next big terrorist attack/the next big recession? Nobody has yet figured out how to make virtual worlds and our avatars in them work without their tether to the real world and it will only take one such big lesson of the Real Life kind to sober up lots of people quick.
Intriguing thoughts, Profky... Something I definatly want to look into more. SL is definatly changing, and it makes me wonder what it will be like in a month, much less a year into the future. Will it stagnate? Will it blossom? Will it crash? Will it stay the same? I don't know, but I want to be around to watch, for sure.
Posted by: Talon Lardner | 06/25/2006 at 08:34 PM
You had me at Auden--and then Saint-Ex? Wondrous.
These are most provocative and insightful remarks. I understand about half and want to understand much more. The way in which SL plays out civilization in a time-lapse rapidity is fascinating. The way in which this SL engages the imagination in search of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" is almost overwhelming.
Thank you for these thoughts, and this blog.
Posted by: Gardner | 06/25/2006 at 09:07 PM
As always, your post makes for fascinating reading. Simply taking it in is challenging enough, let alone commenting thoughtfully on all of it!
One thing I would like to comment on is your thoughts on avatars and our relationship with them.
From my perspective as a fairly new user of these types of worlds, I must say that I have a very strong affinity for my avatar. When the ID requirements were unlocked I considered a separate alt but in the end I felt it would be a disservice to my main avatar to do so. It doesn't even feel particularly odd to me that I would consider my avatar's feelings in making such a decision.
For me, my avatar -a fur- is much more than just a walking browser, he is both a subset and an extension of parts of my personality that cannot find expression in the real world. Strangely enough, this relationship extends outside the main grid to forum posts, even to reading the various blogs, which I in essence do through my avatar's eyes. In most respects I am able to leave the (very pleasant) real world behind and engage with the different world we are offered in SL. Whoever described SL as a 'lucid dream' has managed to capture the overall texture of the world for me.
Much like a pleasant dream, I resist the nagging draw of waking back into RL when I am engaged in SL. As when I read fiction, I consider myself fortunate to be able to fully realise the world that has been created for me. Even better, I get to share the world with others in a kind of consensual mass-hypnosis.
I realise that many people would scoff at my take on this but for me the avatar is much more than bytes floating across the grid, he is a symbol and a representation of part of my self which can't easily be expressed in the real world. And because I am able to integrate his experiences back into the 'real' me, I feel larger and more complete than if he did not exist.
I have no insight on what differentiates people like me from people who don't engage so deeply with their avatars. I think age is important, though. Once we get past the solipsism of youth perhaps we are more able to develop empathy for others not of ourselves. Or maybe it is having children, which come from us but are separate that is the differentiator?
Posted by: Vonn Neumann | 06/26/2006 at 12:51 AM
>he is a symbol and a representation of part of my self which can't easily be expressed in the real world. And because I am able to integrate his experiences back into the 'real' me, I feel larger and more complete than if he did not exist.
I support this absolutely. But I don't even think of him as somehow being "suppressed" in RL and "letting out his real self" in SL. I think he just *is*. You don't plan it, or think about it, he's just instantly there, and of course, you get to know him over time.
I have several very well-worked alts and some that don't feel as much "at home" to me but I still respect their identity. Erasing them is a tragedy. In fact, it bothers me that I've had to erase a few, including one whose name got messed up as I was trying to make him, bah, that's just awful.
I'd recommend also going outside the world of games and their blogs and look at some interesting writing on the "history of the self" such as this review here:
https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20060619&s=larmore061906p
You can get a free 4 week trial.
Basically, he contrasts old and new, British and French philosophical views of the self. Adam Smith's view of the self being able to view others and itself impartially, the idea of a plurality of truths; or the French view of the disguised self in the society of the court. The ability to learn empathy and situate oneself in the viewpoint of another.
This same issue has a great blog by Lee Siegel, too, about the fascistic thuggishness of anonymous blog commentators. Sounds like the SL forums.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/26/2006 at 01:06 AM
It's also telling that the whole "web or world" discussion seems to hinge on the avatar. To the extent that you "invest this toy with consciousness" as Will Wright (creator of the Sims) said, you will want a world to situation that invested consciousness in. If he is just a browser, a placeholder, if you change him like scratch paper off a tablet or gloves, then he doesn't need a world.
>I feel larger and more complete than if he did not exist.
I suppose it is this sensation that keeps us coming back. It makes it intellectually and emotionally compelling. Philip Linden said that if this world was more intellectually compelling, people would stay in in for long periods of time.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/26/2006 at 01:11 AM
Another great post Prokofy! Will have to read it again and again for sure.
What I wanted to comment on was when I kept reading about this concept of worlds, I just kept harking back to the 2 years I spend in Active Worlds.
It seems strange that those who when discussions of competitors or similar applications to SL, always discount AW as anything worth taking notice of.
Then you have all this new info coming down the pipes that seems to want to create the types of experience that AW has been doing since the mid 90's.
I'm able to keep tabs on AW through my Partner Ariel, who has still maintained her account there, and has a world of her own that she builds in/on and works on. (I think I snapped a pic of of her wonderful waterfalls - will be on my blog soon enuff)
So is SL sort of turning around backwards and taking their technology back to the future? Using their high-end whatevers to recreate a (better?) version of the concept AW has had from the get go?
I've always imagined an application that blended the best of SL (in my view that's simply the tremendous avatar customization ability), with the best of Active Worlds (in a nutshell - the building capabilities are simple and easy to learn; they already have web on a "prim" type dealy; and the option to own and control your world from your own server/computer).
Oh well some very interesting thoughts, and questions. You always get me thinking! HUGGS :D
Posted by: Brace | 06/26/2006 at 09:53 AM
Perhaps it's that squat, scrurrying little avatar of AW that puts you off at the beginning. I couldn't seem to find my way around AW and get used to moving, etc. It's like SL in that respect, unless you have a friend to walk you through it, it can be rough. I've noticed from some of my tenants who are good builders that they were in AW. Yes, they were first in the host-your-own area.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/26/2006 at 10:44 AM
I tried AW for the first time about 2 weeks ago. It does seem quite difficult to find your way around, but thats probably just because I couldn't work out where things like maps were located.
Considering the levels of graphic detail it certainly seemed a lot less laggy than SL.
I was always under the impression that it was a bit of relic and that not many people used it, but thats probably just hype from other virtual world package creators.
Posted by: Stan Pomeray | 06/26/2006 at 11:09 AM
> Sims on the auction bring them only $1000, and private islands bring them $1250, so they have no incentive to sell sims that then produce many owners on them as they are sold off.
I agree that LL gets less on a sim auction than an island to "buy" the server. But, tier of many small owners on a sim adds up to more than $195 for an island to "maintain" the server. Plus, each one of these little owners has a premium account that they pal LL for, whereas paypal island renters go basic. So even a simfull of firstlanders who pay no tier per se will bring LL more US$ ongoing then an island.
Longterm, by keeping up the sheer number of landowners many of whom are sitting on small lots, LL will have greater flexibility with making adjustments to the tier system or whatever they think of next. If they create an environment where mainland's dead, LL will have to deal with large(r) US$ paying island owners. Sure, it'll just trickle down to the small island renters, but seems to me that LL leaves itself more longterm options open by having lots of small payments coming in each month, than a few Anshe sized ones.
Posted by: Alec Carson | 06/26/2006 at 02:38 PM
Alec, open up the map of Second Life and see all the land for sale on the mainland. That tells you how much tier LL really collects. There is an estimate that more tha a third of the servers on the mainland, all told, are for sale. Now, you could say, but hey, that person still pays tier even if they have land for sale, and then LL collects twice -- but...so much of it actually gets abandoned, and /or flipped on the trading tier of several dozen medium-sized land barons who end up mainly selling to each other and keeping portfolios of land that they sell some of, but usually not most of. There are no end of new people trying this idea out and discovering it's a losing proposition. So it's not a recipe for a healthy society.
The Lindens would simply rather sell islands. They do everything to drive customers to islands. Islands have set-up fees, give them $1250 all at once and $195 tier, and then only one customer to deal with, not 16 or 32 as on the mainland. All that billing and complaints and such is all off-loaded to wholesalers like Anshe.
When I talk about islands, I mean the wholesalers who buy 25-50-100 of them and pay tier, not the basics who rent on them.
by keeping up the sheer number of landowners many of whom are sitting on small lots, LL will have greater flexibility with making adjustments to the tier system or whatever they think of next.
I wish this were true, and I even used to think it: now I know better after more than a year and a half working in this business. They want people to become island customers. The Concierge doesn't even answer the emails or IMs of the mainland owners even if they have 10 or 20 sims. They are created almost exclusively for island customers. Islands is the future they want. They don't want a hundred people spread across 10 or 20 sims that sit empty much of the time and take up space and personell on their part to run. They want people to herd on to the more efficient and more high-paying islands. It's sad, but there it is, it's a management and business issue for them.
There is nothing for them, scale-wise, in keeping hundreds of often fussy and unhappy customers on small plots on the mainland -- they want Anshe or Adam or Hiro to deal with them or even Prok. It's just not to their advantage as they move to the million mark.
Your premise seems to be based on the idea that Anshe, as a big wholesaler, is a risk to LL if she pulls out. But she won't. She's addicted. It's a two-way addiction. If she does, in the inimitable words of Kenny Linden, "there's always another guy to buy the island." And trust me, there is.
Look at the map, Alec. Just look at the map. That tells the story. MORE islands sold than mainland sims. MORE green dots on them. MORE dead space on the mainland. MORE land for sale=unhappy people who may even just abandon their land.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/26/2006 at 02:46 PM
Once again, you're full of lies. I never threatened with a lawyer, and pointed out that the part of the ToS which was copied verbatim was probably "just an oversite". In fact, I was very friendly and personable and wished the best of luck.
Still, it is obvious Prokofy is an intellectual property thief: I'm fairly sure Prokofy did NOT receive permission to reprint artwork from the classic novel, "The Little Prince", just like he did not get my permission to use the "FIC Logo" designed by my friend (to which I have been given the IP rights) that appeared in this same blog a few weeks ago. Keep on fighting the good fight while committing actual crimes Prokofy: it really falls in line perfectly with your dispicable image.
By the way, did you pay an attorney $325 an hour to review the legal language in your notecards? Of course not, because you're nothing but a scourge to SL who is insanely jealous of those who are more talented than you. I guess I should know better than to expect you to check your facts or let the truth get in the way of your insane paranoia in inane ramblings.
Posted by: FlipperPA | 06/27/2006 at 01:35 PM
haha Flipper, did you see the 3pointD's post on IP rights violations?
http://www.3pointd.com/20060626/surreal-ip-rights-issues-at-slboutique/
The best part was the image in the post which is the subject of the violation itself. Gotta say, it kinda pales your FIC logo.
Posted by: Alec Carson | 06/27/2006 at 03:45 PM
1. Indeed you DID threaten that fellow MYSL with the barest of thinly-veiled threats by talking about lawyers examining TOS language. It was the typical sort of thuggish threat-mongering that you and other ESC types like Hiro Pendragon are known for (member of ESC group, regardless of whether he is technically "paid" by the group). It's really nasty stuff, and it does not bode well for your company.
2. The Little Prince cover is everywhere on the Internet, in Google images, and there is a concept called "referencing" which indeed my use of this picture is. I haven't referenced it for profit, and no one is giving me any take-down notices -- you're the only one trying to threaten over this perfectly innocent reference.
3. Your FIC art is copyable and in the public domain as I've already stated. You have it out in world, on copy/transfer. It is, again, a *reference* to another site. A review, like a book review, which can cite 250 words out of a passage of a book. Go ahead, Flipper, try out your lawyers on this one. No crime has been committed except in your addled brain -- like the "crime" of holding yard sales in SL.
4. This recurring fallacy that I am "jealous" of those "more talented than me" lets me know the universe you live in -- one in which you are all jealous of each other and worry about who is talented and who isn't. I'm not even in this race, I don't care about being a merchant of PSP images swiped from the Internet and reworked for sale as "original intellectual property" in SL -- like your site's featured Dali painting. Honestly, you're absurd.
5. Why would I pay an attorney $325 when I could find one pro-bono, but why would I have a lawyer look at a routine contract for rental? It has all the basic terms that people need to safely and fairly transact business. You're insane.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/27/2006 at 04:20 PM
oho, so now prokofy you decided to elevate yourself to a jamie bergman ish level?
lets call that improvement, from crap filled "i know everything better than everybody" mind to IP violator.
Honestly, to me and most peoples that had the time to read you, you are just some kind of reject, hiding under your kilometric rethoric, trying to impose your world vision by drowning your non arguments into dense pile of words.
Still, reference or not, the artist who made this artwork from the "petit prince" belong to its author, aswall as all the som tastefully chosen images and photos you use week after week to feed your little speech space.
As useual you stay close to yoursel:
lieing, libel filled , self centered, bitter human typewriter
Show some respect to those that are worth one million of time your poor little self.
Respect, Me , Alec , FLipper and all the others that created this wonderfull world you are leeching on.
Now lets see if you are able to stay on track when answering, if you go again in one of your hallucinating ego masturbation , you will owe me 100L$.
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 06/28/2006 at 12:30 AM
Oh, for God's sake, Kyrah.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut | 06/28/2006 at 02:18 AM
good lord Kyrah 0_0
put that drink DOWN sistah gurl!
"Respect, Me , Alec , FLipper and all the others that created this wonderfull world you are leeching on."
0_0
what in the hell are you smoking? Dint nobody create nothin cept philly creating Second Life for you me and whoever to do what they like, how they like in it.
And what's all this "respect" stuff. Prokofy is FAR from being the only one - MYSELF INCLUDED - who saw exactly what Flip was doing on his so called "helpful and friendly" post.
And someone was good enuff to call him on it - TWICE.
As for all the artwork hullabaloo Prok isn't running around selling Le Petit Prince tshirts and whats not. OK? Get it??
Its a little bit scary how yall can't even see the difference.
You might as well go bitch up on Tony Walsh's blog for "stealing" pics of the technology and games he writes about.
Gimme a huge break.
and Flip dear heart - love ya man - but even YOU gotta be able to step back and realize that that post was as about as friendly as a congratulatory pat on the back with a spiked gauntlet.
ESPECIALLY coming from YOU. Its not like you haven't popped a forhead vein in other arenas when competition rears its head.
Some folks are just tired of seeing it. Free country. You keep on keepin on with ya friendly posts, and me and a lot of others will keep on keepin on callin ya out on em.
What exactly is it yer so scared of anyways? And if yer NOT running scared, then you might wanna check yaself - cuz thats exactly what it looks like.
(Did I cuss on this post? I was seriously tryin to hold back.)
I'm just a little - ok SERIOUSLY - miffed at little miz Kyrah - and yer damn lucky I'm not up in SL hardly anymore, chica.
What the damn hell you did that you think is so gosh darn special that we all gotta toss you some "respect"?
so you gotta buncha stores.
Yay YOU.
But why should me or anyone else make that a basis for respecting you? Cuz if that's the case then respect goes to every dang body else - including me - who's got stuff out in SL for sale.
???
After you sober up or come down or whatever it is you got going on - I'd appreciate an explanation.
You had the ovaries to bust out with it - so have em to explain just what you meant.
Because you know, maybe I DID miss out on who's butt I'm supposed to be kissing. Oh wait sorry - feet was it?
Posted by: Brace | 06/28/2006 at 04:45 AM
"insane paranoia in inane ramblings."
Hmmm considering how paranoid and inane they are supposed to be, its strange how they seem to antagonise people so much isn't it.
If it really is that inane, why worry about it?
Unless...........
Posted by: Stan Pomeray | 06/28/2006 at 07:46 AM
"Respect, Me , Alec , FLipper and all the others that created this wonderfull world you are leeching on."
Is this a wind-up? Its got to be a wind-up, surely. Or else someone's just mutated into Eric Cartman.
Jeez.
Posted by: Stan Pomeray | 06/28/2006 at 07:50 AM
But I'm not "leeching on" any world. I pay for it. And I help create it, too. I don't owe anybody a thing. This is creator-fascism at its ugliest.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 06/28/2006 at 08:34 AM
if i remember you are forum banned for a reason, nobody want a parasit like you prok
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 06/28/2006 at 11:36 AM
if it was just depending of me you would already be banned Prok
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 06/28/2006 at 04:03 PM
Still waiting for an explanation on what you've done that is supposed to demand our respect, Kyrah.
Posted by: Brace | 06/28/2006 at 08:17 PM