The Lindens have come up with yet another audacious FIC plan, this time to coopt the United Sailing Sims group, and instead of acknowleding this brazen privileging of one resident group over all others, they are vigorously denying that it is any form of favoritism at all -- which makes it worse.
The move illustrates what you can get with a lot of whining and special pleading and amplification of a sense of victimhood -- the USS was crying the blues more than anybody that they were hit by the same 67 percent increase in price costs for OS sims that hit everybody else, and there was all this fretting about how they were threatening to close down and remove their "rich content" from the scene so that the Lindens would "get it".
Look, sailing is one of those things you do in SL -- or you don't. It's hard to be part-way about it. Most people *don't* because the thought of having to fuss with prims and wind currents (yes, there is real wind in SL) and the finicky personalities that magnetize to such operations in SL are a turn-off. "Thecommunity" of sailors is notoriously rift with sectarian wars, dramas, and bannings -- read the Herald (Pixeleen himself is a big sailing fan and therefore engineered some of the drama, too).
Riding a dinghy around the Linden seas is an occasionally fun and self-directed experience where you rarely encounter another soul -- and an easy experience as you just sit and move the arrow keys as if you were just walking your avatar -- because...in fact that's all you're doing. And that's why it isn't terrible fun because you can...fly and achieve the same purpose. Sailing is different, though, because it requires manipulating controls to, well, sail, the way you do in real life.
But those that enjoy all the trappings of sailing are like sailing snobs in RL, they obsess about it and spend loads of money and time on it. If a sailboat is a hole in the ocean into which you pour money, think what it is in Second Life.
Now, because of a petulant threat to pull out of SL because the cost of paying tier on new Homeland sims would be too great, the Lindens are making a special exception and moving the entire continent of the USS...up to the Mainland, right smack next to their feted and expensive Nautilus project. This violates an ancient commandment of Lindenor, which is that "thou shalt not move a resident's island near the mainland" unless of course it's some of those very, very, special rare and early FIC islands like Avalon (Rivers Run Red).
In this blatant USS move, that manages to combine feting with cooptation with dubious value, USS will still have to pay that steep new tier (I'm not getting this cryptic reference to "stable mainland prices" referenced by Sailor's Cove, that makes it sound like they are given lower tier). But supposedly, what they will get out of this transfer-fee-free scheme is a windfall of visitors to buy their rentals and content and generate traffic for them. I can't quite see what they *will* get out of this except Linden advertising, the intangible benefit that goes with all feting, which *may* translate into more content sales/rentals for this special group, but could just as well give them boatloads of annoying newbies.
Because of course, in the finicky seas where MarkTwain White rules supreme with an iron fist, causal newbies in dinghies will be discouraged. That's because the USS will commandeer the seas for a constant round of serious sailing and racing events, and the maintaining of avatar-and-resource-sucking flotillas of 10-12 -- the whole reason these fussy folks couldn't take the $75 low-prim sims is that they claim they can't have all the boats in a race be able to cross all the sims at once -- see, we aren't really talking about casual, light-use sailing on that infamous Linden "stretch of water" that has an easy entry-level for anybody; we're talking about an intense, elitist sport with a high threshold for participation.
MarkTwain White, whom I've known since he long ago became an early buyer of Ravenglass (and eventually moved out because I battled him over the use of security orbs that made the experience for everyone else on 4 sims very nasty, and because he wanted absolute control that private islands give you), is indeed a very authoritarian personality. This can come with being in the BDSM trade. As manager of the Hollywood golf course, he was notorious for creating that sort of elitist, ban-happy sim that attracts a steady stream of fake alts from the Herald.
If you look at the officers of USS, you will see it is a group held very close -- not a group you can join, or that has 300 or even 100 closeknit enthusiasts -- it has only 10 people, who ruthlessly control their domain with every Ban-Link sort of security you can think of because sailing is prone to griefing, as again, you can learn not only from the Herald, but just going to one of the events. Griefers have constantly preyed on this and other sailing groups because they can get maximum attention to crashing a sim during a race where hundreds of people might be trying to watch or participate.
So my first question about all this has been, um, ok, who gets to run the ban list? For example, I'm not sure if Barb Carson will be let near this (did she have a falling out with MTW after first joining her sims to him back in the day when she ran the New England sim?) but she was extremely rigid and ban-happy, maintaining a ridiculous and constantly arbitrary building code and banning people whose writing she didn't like (again, the Herald) or who crossed her in some way (me).
And this is EXACTLY the right question to ask when you look at the authoritarian, fussy personalities involve, the heavy, elitist factor for the participation in intensive and not casual events, and the already-existing feting that has taken place around Hollywood -- and now Nautilus. See, the deal will be that it will be Linden Land, that will be set to this group, and they will have the power to control the land -- more than the infohubs set to resident groups where all the resident developers get is prim-setting rights and nothing else.
I'm not sure how things will flow from the open Governor Linden sims directly adjacent to Nautilus on to the USS domain, or even if in fact this "Sea of Blake" will be turned over to USS too -- it's not deployed yet so I can't see the land controls.
When I raised the problem directly with Jack Linden about the use of ban lists like Ban-Link on these new FIC sims, he bustled around and told me that I shouldn't let edge cases prevent progress on the mainland. Um, yeah, Jack, you're a fine one to talk, since it was precisely the ridiculous geek-driven properatarian edge cases of the Mainland that let you become paralyzed with inaction for three long years on the issues of ad extortion (somewhat fixed) and ad cutting (still not fixed).
Moreover, it is unprecedented: never in the history of Second Life have the Lindens turned over ban powers and other advanced land powers to resident groups permanently -- it's always been temporary with things like Winterfaire, Burning Man, or Busy Ben's or SL Birthday (and those cases didn't include ban).
Jack thinks he'll solve the problem of excessive banning by USS with just a review of challenges to it to see if they are merited -- putting it off to some mere minor administrative solution instead of realizing the intrinsic clash here in usages: a) predominantly newbie users drawn from sign-ups, splash screens, infohubs, etc. interested in a casual sailing use without complexity b) intensive elitist use in the skilled sport of competitive sailing c) even more casual onlookers who won't actually sail on even a dinghy, but are just coming for a look-see. The mixed use of these sims will get problematic, and it will end with MTW and co. simply ejecting newbies in small craft and non-in-group gawkers whenever they need to have a sailing contest. I'm sure there's a lot more potential for drama that I haven't even mined, as I don't follow all the intricacies of the sailing dramas.
Of course, there's the issue of Nautilus itself. I'm not sure that the Lindens didn't pre-FIC this character Atown Fall, who moved in like a ton of bricks, immediately set up A Town Hall (haha) and told everyone he was organizing residents to push other residents to make their builds the way ATown Fall wants them, and who is also part of a group that has landed strangely well-prepared with ready-made theme-related content such as scuba gear that they sell all over the continent to a captive audience, like the $50 map that has ATown Fall's pompous slogan on it and his branding.
The Lindens are desperate for content stickiness they can co-opt, and they'll do what they have to -- and those desperate for revenue to pay for ever increasing tier will strike whatever bargain they need to with the Lindens rather than go out of business, I guess. Sony HOME and There.com and other services start at one end of the VW spectrum, not permitting unregulated and free user-generated content, but licensing third-parties or cleared residents vetted through committee to put out content that they get a percentage of the take from, in exchange for helping secure IP. SL, at the other end of the spectrum, is now slowly going to meet that model at the other end.
What's REALLY appalling about this most blatant example of my FIC theory (begun in 2005 to explain the strange dominance of the forums by a select bunch of privileged kids who never got banned) is that Jack says insolently in the forums discussion, filling up with protests, that this is NOT privileging:
You've both raised favouritism as an issue which is something that
often gets brought up whenever Linden Lab does something involving a
subsection of the community rather than everyone all at once. Let me
address that straight away because there is no favouritism at play here.
First of all, this isn't something exclusive and it will not be the only such project of its type. In deciding that we wanted to look for ways to involve estates to the benefit of both themselves and the Mainland, someone has to go first. In this case that someone is the USS group. The USS happen to be ideally suited to being part of the first project of this kind but had another group approached us it could have been someone else.
The USS are a particularly good fit because they are large, well
established and have a strong theme that is PG in nature and appeals to
a wide range of residents. They also happen to be extremely well
organised. If you have a similarly sized group and want to propose a
project that would benefit everyone, please get in touch with me so
that we can talk it through; there is no closed door here.
Lastly, the USS have received no special pricing on their regions, no
discounts, and no free land whatsoever. The Sea regions we're adding
belong to Linden Lab, just as we own all those that circle the large
continents. The only thing we have done is to agree to relocate their
estates for free, which considering the size and complexity of the move
is clearly the fair thing to do. If and when we run similar projects,
that same courtesy will more than likely be extended to others.
This is gaspingly brazen and nasty (and Ciaran is right that Jack has now been to one too many spin control workshops at the head office), because it puts out the Big Lie about feting (it *is* feting!) and implying first that there will be a long line of other projects, then doubles back and whacks you with classic fascistic tekkie social Darwinism, telling you that only groups that are "strong" and "organized" and "a good fit" will make it through that awful process of "Linden natural selection" (bleh).
While the group receives "no free land," what they do get is...mainland access, which gives mainland higher density of avatars, mainland freedom of access (at least on its outskirts), mainland visibility, and of course splash screen, blog, etc. amplification which is free advertising.
The USS isn't large. It's got 10 fucking people in it -- by it's own admission, it's a group of 9 big land owners. (It's also not so much a group, as a fan following of authoritarian MarkTwain White). Elanthius summed up the problem here:
It turns out they totally did learn that lesson. I guess they used some connections at high levels of LL in order to save their business and leech money off the mainland, good for them. Sucks for absolutely every other business owner in SL.
When he's challenged about this ACCURATE statement by the asshole personalities in the USS, he points out that if somebody who whines that they don't make a buck off this is in it, why, they themselves are the renters in this renting scheme. The USS claims rentals aren't the essence of what they do, but of course they pay the bills, and they are in fact important and will go on being so, and now they can likely be sure of never complaining of poor occupancy, with an influx of mainland advertising and visibility. And when Svar Beckstead, for example, objects that his "sims are open to the public," that has to be challenged: what public? The intensely competitive professional sailing "public," or the real public with its casual boats?
In capitalism, one business success would not ordinarily be seen as "leeching" from another -- that's the socialist ideology at work (present lurking even under the surface of geek capitalist Elanthius) -- business adds value, and doesn't redistribute it. But Elanthius is *right* to use the word "leeching" here because when the Lindens artificially boost one group, outside the normal market competition of capitalism, using their socialistic oligarchic functions, then it is not fair and not free.
And what the Lindens very cleverly and cunningly do with this gambit is outsource the hate -- an increasingly common authoritarian practice aided by new media. The Lindens set out something to split the community, and can rely on their sycophants like Shifting Dreamscape to make this kind of indignant intervention, and then portray those who complain against unfairness of "not wanting anyone to have fun" (Fungineering is one of the biggest exigencies of the virtual world that really takes on a sinister aspect at times).
I really find this unbelievable. The Lindens do something really cool, opening up a huge area for sailing, boating, and other watersports, and all people can do is complain and look for ways this is screwing people over.
In fact it *does* screw people over, as the windfall includes not only mainland traffic, but essentially the free cooptation of the adjacent Governor Linden seas of this Blake Sea, as Matthew Dowd objects to the claim that there is "no different tier":
But [the Linden Blake Sea sims will be] attached to their estate so in effect they are getting free use of openspaces/homesteads which they otherwise would have had to purchase and pay tier for - at a time when many (smaller) privately owned openspace regions themed for sailing are being closed due to the LL's imposed price increases.
I've not been one of those dumping on Nautilus -- I like it. It's middle-brow content -- I'm a sucker for middle-brow content like most people. I don't care if its cheesy - -it looks good and has nice free content and is fun. It's a great build. It isn't boring or all for sale as Ciaran claims.
Yet now, with this obvious USS feting, I'm taking a step back. I enthusiastically bought 3 hugely overpriced parcels there to be part of the whole experiment. I started a regular publication and have spent a lot of time exploring the sims and watching it grow. Now, I'm not sure if this sailing fete be such a good thing because it leeches explorers and casual boaters on existing waters away from the businesses on the mainland of Nautilus out to the Linden sea and beyond to USS. It's not at all clear if the traffic that might influx to the area, especially with Linden splash-screen boosting, etc. -- will have any kind of "spillover" effect to those businesses that just spent incredible amounts settling down on the interior of Nautilus especially.
The other queasy-making piece of all this is to think of who is next on the FIC list. Jack justifies the move by saying it's the first in a series of many such projects. Uh-oh. It's a curious twist, taking the people who broke away from Jack's ass-ugly ad-filled and neglected mainland to strike out on their own on private islands and built up rich content empires, whacking them once with the steep island price rise to $1675; devaluing them with the sudden drop to $1000; whacking them further with the OS debacle (some had divvied up their expensive islands into 4 to try to make back some of their loss), then when they were good and shaken, suddenly coopting them back to a cleaned-up mainland. In miniature, it feels a lot like Soviet-style forced relocation operations.
If the Lindens said truthfully, "Look, we privilege certain groups for our own business and political concerns under our own strange amalgam of fascistic social Darwinism and techno-communism, and too bad for you," at least the label on the can would be clear. What's especially horrible about this sort of thing is their denial of it and talking out of two sides of their mouth. It's hard to know what is driving it, if not a desperation to increase sign-ups (which they always seem ambivalent about due to threshold problems) and make SL look more appealing as it continues to get negative press from their own felt need to suddenly jack up prices.
I was about to un-boycott the Lindens, as the ad farm progress was substantial, and begin to go to their office hours again -- whoops, bad idea. Premature. And essentially ill-advised. The essential truth remains that you must make your way as independently from them as you possibly can muster, turning to them only for the most urgent technical problems, and not hoping that your own efforts to run a business or promote some community project relies on their blessing and attention. It doesn't. When it begins to, you have to pull back.
I don't remember saying Nautilus was boring, I just think there should be more to do out there, the same as Bay City. Hopefully the theatre will be open soon, if it isn't already. For the prices people have paid for those parcels I don't mind seeing them getting a boost at all.
The idea that there has been no favouritism here is an absurd notion and Jack seems to be banking on people who find something a little distasteful with this partnership being shouted down as killjoys.
The ban issue isn't one I'd considered, surely USS aren't going to have control of the ban hammer on Linden controlled land?
USS are getting a massive boost out of this, plenty of other openspace owners would love to have that courtesy extended to them.
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Posted by: Ciaran Laval | 12/20/2008 at 03:20 PM
But they will, Ciaran, that's the point. Here's what Jack told me precisely, when I asked, "Um, Jack, who gets the ban controls?"
"We do, it is linden land ultimately, but the uss group officers will also have the usual group land abilities to help during race events. Why do you ask?"
"The usual group land abilities" means...what, exactly? Is this Linden Land that is *set* to a group -- no. It is *group land* says Jack. That means...Linden land, owned as a private island, but deeded to that group. How else can you have "group land abilities".
For example, the Governor Linden land in Ross infohub is set to my group Pharos Properties under this system of resident-developed infohubs (there are 14 of them). But that doesn't enable me to terraform, link, ban, put in a URL -- or do anything but just set out a prim.
So...what are these "group land" perms that MTW will get? Will the Lindens make MTW an officer of the LDPW and give him the power to deed a security orb?
I'd like to see precisely what the dials are.
Posted by: Prokofy | 12/20/2008 at 03:37 PM