There is no pattern here

I haven’t written in a while, not because there is nothing to say, but because I have been busy with other stuff. So here is a post of random thoughts.

Gaming thoughts

So last month L.A. Noire, advertised as the most expensive game ever, was released for XBOX360 and PS3, but not for PC. People keep talking about a “next generation” in consoles, but that next gen already exists among us PC enthusiasts. Now I do not want to start a war between consoles and PCs, but this is something I have learned and have numerous examples to its veracity: Complex games are far better on PCs than they are on consoles. Console controllers are fine for simple games like arcade ports, 2D scrollers, racing games, simple sports sims, etc., but for FPS, or third person 3D, or RTS games, PC controls are far superior. Keyboard in one hand and mouse in the other just feels more natural than two thumb controls and a dozen awkwardly placed buttons on controllers designed for 12 year old hands.

So why do gaming companies not support PC gaming anymore? Most likely it is sales, and also copy protection, and not having to try and support 3 dozen different graphics cards, all good reasons. But games are hitting an upper limit in how complex they can be by pandering to consoles. A complex game like L.A. Noire could be a lot better on a PC, but there are no plans to port it.  Even though I own both an XBOX360 and a PS3, I will not be getting it anytime soon.  I already got Red Dead Redemption collecting dust, having never gotten past the tutorial because I hated the controls so much.  (I don’t really play game with controllers, I use my PS3 for watching videos, and my XBOX360 for playing Kinect Sports and occasionally Windows Media Center).

I tried the demo for Dragon Age 2 on my PS3, the PC version is better.  I tried console and PC versions of DC Universe Online, and the PC version is better.  They ran into a problem on DCUO in that there is a power combo that is uber powerful when played on the PC version (specifically the Transmutation power in the Sorcery line and Shuriken Storm on the Martial Arts line would, when executed in sync, do massive amounts of AoE damage).  This combo was easy to execute on the keyboard/mouse, but damn near impossible to do on the console controls for the PS3 version.  The problem was that there was no fix for the PC version that did not create a massive nerf of the PS3 version.  I do not know if they ever fixed it, I stopped playing DCUO back in February, and haven’t gone back.

WTF is going on here?

Another blogger name Cyber Trekker over at http://thegreatslexpedition.blogspot.com/ has been posting a lot that Cyberspace (aka the Metaverse, aka the 3D web) is already dead, thanks to mobile communications which are moving people back to “reality”.  (He’s not the only one, I have been seeing a lot of 3D web is dying articles lately, this was just one).  Simultaneously I see this video demonstrating Windows 8′s new interface model, which looks like Microsoft has plans to turn the PC into a big Windows phone.  Simultaneously EA announces that SimCity 5 will be a Facebook App. Meanwhile, famous game designer Richard Garriott wants to create a new “semi-3D” Virtual world portal that will tie social networks like Facebook, with mobile apps, with new virtual worlds into one big happy family.

I’m sorry but, this is insane.

Let me be clear: There is enough room on the Internet for everything and everybody.  Some may get the impression that the 3D virtual worlds are dying because their “share” of the internet is getting smaller.  In fact, the 3D Web continues to grow and it is only a matter of time before it too expands into the realm of mobile computing.  Its already making minor dents. But I have always said that the 3D web will never take over the 2D web, instead they will enhance each other.

Second: Memo to Microsoft: If I wanted to have my PC work like a tablet, I would just get a freaking tablet.  The Windows 7 interface is the greatest PC interface ever, and I already have gadgets on my desktop that show me news and weather and other stuff, and it is a lot prettier than the ugly orange-green-blue-purple mobile phone interface you are pushing for Windows 8.  Why not multiple interface models? One for traditional keyboard and mouse, one for “touch screen”, and one for Kinect?  You did not think of Kinect did you?  The bottom line is this: If you focus on merging the PC experience with the mobile experience, you are going to lose on both fronts.  Android, based off Linux, is already available for PCs that want to behave like mobile phones. There is no need to have common interfaces between devices.

Thirdly, Facebook sucks for gaming!  I know how the 300 million facebook users seems like a huge audience for gaming, especially social gaming, but every game on Facebook is a novelty at best.  SimCity might do well, as long as it is simplified to the casual user (wasn’t that what the godawful SimCity Societies try to be?)  As far as trying to interface a virtual world with Facebook, its been tried multiple times, always ending up in failure.  Facebook is a place designed for real people and real identities, virtual worlds are place for fantasy and role play make believe.  Are you really interested in letting your family, friends, and workplace know about your cosplay activities? Virtual Worlds and real life Social Networks do not belong together, ever!

Is there a pattern here? We have console game designers trying to turn console gaming into something it is not. We have advocates of mobile computing saying that mobile computing will take over everything, which is clearly not true. We have game designers tinkering with gaming on social networks, something it is clearly not designed for.  We continue to have people wanting to merge social networking and virtual worlding, which are incompatible.

The only pattern I can see is that there seems to be an ongoing battle between those that want to merge everything together, and those like me that think we are better off using the right tools for the right uses.  But this battle has been going on for a couple of decades.  In the 90′s “portal” websites like AOL and Yahoo wanted to be everything for everybody.  They wanted to make their websites so complete, there would never be any reason to go anywhere else.  They failed of course, but a lot of good came out of those attempts.  Now Facebook wants to play the “portal” role, and mobile phones and gaming consoles want to eliminate the need for PCs, and none of these objectives will succeed, but maybe some good will come out of the attempts.

Or, maybe there is no pattern here.

Second Life Given Back to the Role Players

So I spent a  fair amount of posts devoted to what seems to be a battle of “visions” going on in Second Life.  A string of posts starting with this one I wrote a year ago.  I have written so many I just decided to create a new sl visions tag. Click to see all the related posts.

So here is the story in a paragraph.  There have been three competing “visions” of what SL should be: The role-player vision, the merchant vision, and the 3D Facebook vision.  Since the resignation of the last CEO Mark Kingdon, the temporary CEO Philip Rosedale has systematically disassembled the 3D Facebook vision, largely because it is unworkable (as I predicted).  Because of the resources spent, changes requested by the merchants have not only not happened, but actually they are worse now.  Merchants continue to quit with profits way down.  That leaves us role players basically in charge, and if you have seen the latest re-design of the main Second Life page, you will see, that SL has recognized it as well.  We are back to “Your World, Your Imagination” again (though not in those exact words).

Now a lot has happened under the brief Rosedale administration:

• Second Life Enterprise Grid – Gone
• Basic account support – Gone
• Premium support – once 24 hours, now limited hours
• Non-Profit/Educational Sim discounts – Gone (or soon will be)
• Avatars United – Gone
• X-Street, soon to be integrated into game, currency exchange Gone
• Teen Grid – Gone (or soon will be)
• Community Gateways – Gone

Now many of these I am sad to see are disappearing, while others I say good riddance.  What they are doing is simplifying the whole thing.  Simplifying, always a good thing.  The general philosophy is now a “hands off” policy, meaning they are giving us players more autonomy.

Meanwhile, check out where their current development efforts are focused:

• Mesh
• Display Names
• Voice Morphing
• Wearable Avatar Physics
• Havok 7 support

Here is what they all have in common:  They are all good for us role players.  If you are in SL because you enjoy pretending you are someone else, whether that is a formal role player in a community, or an informal role player pretending to be someone you are not, then SL seems to be catering to you again, after a couple of years where they weren’t.

Here’s the cloud to go along with that silver lining.  Philip Rosedale has stepped down, and Linden Lab is once again looking for a new CEO.  Furthermore, there is good evidence that the remaining employees don’t really seem to “get” the whole RP vision thing.  Here is hoping they hire someone who does.  Unfortunately, I am not that hopeful.

Wither the Merchant Vision

So there are now two different visions left about what Second Life is, or should be. What vision you are apart of is largely based on what motivates you to play. I call these visions “role play” and “merchant” as a short hand way of understanding them.

There are builders who build for fun, they are part of the role play vision. There are builders who build for profit, they are part of the merchant vision. There is a lot of mixing and gray area obviously.

We can all see that SL has plateaued, and will likely decline soon. This is very bad for the Merchants. It is possible that Mesh could revitalize the market, but I am leaning to the idea that it will radically change the market so much that it is unlikely to help the current merchants.

Most of us Role Players have accounts in other places, especially many open sim grids. When SL closes, we’ll probably spend a little time mourning, then we’ll be elsewhere.  Us non-merchant types will likely move on to Open Sim and start building there. Heck, a lot of them already are. Similarly the various role play communities would move and rebuild as well.

The Merchants don’t have many other places to go.  With no currency, no theft protection, no one to file a DMCA complaint to, the merchants have no desire to move to Open Sim, even if there were no SL.  The market place in SL is one of a kind, the closest is IMVU, and it is about a tenth of the size of SL.

The RPers may have built SL, but it is the merchants that made SL popular, they provide most of the content we RPers enjoy.  We non-merchant RPers are better off with the merchants around, which means we are better off with SL around.

I believe that when SL eventually closes, there will be a new virtual goods market somewhere, innovation abhors a vacuum.  Maybe not of the same nature as SL, but I see other virtual good markets, like Renderosity and various app markets, succeeding in other similar venues, so it is only a matter of time before there is another virtual goods market where creative people can make a few bucks.  This is another topic I have already written about.

A 30% Layoff is NEVER a Good Thing!

I had a post ready trying to explain why some of Second Life’s recent changes is a risky venture, but ultimately may prove a good thing.  Then Linden Labs announces 30% staff layoffs.  No matter how they try to spin it, this is a bad thing.

A few essays ago I explained that there seems to be a battle for Second Life on three fronts: The role-players that want more freedom, the merchants that want more security, and Linden Labs, that wants a 3D version of Facebook.  I have written fairy extensively on the first two, so I thought I’d spend some time on the Linden Lab perspective.

I came up with this basic outline:

1.) Second Life is trying to become a more mainstream Virtual World
2.) The search tools in Viewer 2.0 are crap, the conspiracy theory is that the changes were done on purpose to encourage use of XStreet. Linden Labs makes more money off XStreet sales than they do in world sales.
3.) Plans are already in the works to merge XStreet and Search.
4.) Changes to XStreet and Search heavily favor already successful businesses, and hurt small businesses and new players looking to make money.
5.) The SL free housing project and recent marketing campaign is discouraging “making money” in favor of residency and avatar design. Its like they are purposely discouraging user generated content.
6.) As a result of 2,3,4 and 5, there is a mass exodus of small merchants in SL going on right now. Stores and malls are closing, to XStreet only or closing for good.
7.) As a result of 6, it is a bad time to be a land baron right now, especially on the mainland.  Lots and lots of empty lots.
8.) SL usage is noticeably down, a lot of the older users are cutting way back on land and tier, or are just dropping to free accounts.
9.) SL made their changes knowing full well that 8 would happen. They hope to make up the difference with new more “social” players.
10.) Replacing old players with more new players, is going to require a lot of marketing cash, with no guarantee that it will even work.

Bottom Line: Second Life is trying to push away players interested in making money, in favor of players interested in socializing. They are pushing “buy the coolest stuff” instead of “make your own stuff”. This is an extremely risky move on SL’s part. This is Second Life could be dead in a year risky, or it could be the greatest thing ever.

So how does this 30% staff layoff factor in.  Second Life has been heavily marketing themselves for a couple of months now.  I’d say that the layoff is a credible sign that it is not working.  We will know more when they release the Q2 numbers.  I would ignore the economic numbers, there are lots of close out sales going on which is keeping the economic numbers looking good.  The numbers to watch are active players. This is calculated by Linden Labs as the number of people who have logged in for at least the second time in a given month.  Last quarter’s numbers:

Monthly Unique Users with Repeat Logins Reaches 826,214 in March,  User Hours Reached 116 Million in Q1 201,  Peak Concurrent Users Hit 81,156 in Q1 2010

Lest we forget, the new terms of service everyone agreed to last April had provisions to not hold Linden Labs libel for any losses due to the sudden closure of Second Life.  Even though Second Life remains profitable currently, if things start to go south, services like SL tend to not just stay open until the money dries up. If profits start sliding with little hope of going back up, it would be prudent to quit while you are still ahead.

I do not know what will happen in the future, nor do I have any inside knowledge of what Linden Labs has planned.  All I do know is that the press release sent out by Linden Labs reads an awful like the press release sent out by There Inc. when they were in trouble back in 2004.  There Inc. was eventually able to bounce back and have a few successful years before closing their doors earlier this year.

The announcements do not mean the end of Second Life, nor do they necessarily mark the beginning of the end of Second Life.  They do however prove with absolute certainty, that Second Life will have an ending.  That is to me the most important thing to take out of all of this.

“New Era” of Second Life: Role Play Getting Screwed!

It seems every few months, I write yet another post about how SL is going in the wrong direction.  Here I am again.

In the last few weeks, Linden Labs has released a new “SL 2.0″ viewer,  has introduced new welcome centers, new starter avatars, a new 3rd party viewer policy that essentially has killed all third party viewer development, and new terms of service designed to protect LL liability from merchants that use the service.

I’m generally OK with the changes making SL easier to use, especially for new players (it’s about time!).  The client changes are a mixed bag, the new client looks better, but many useful tools are buried deep in the menus and are hard to find.  There are serious bugs that still need to be addressed as well.

The other changes I am not OK with. Yes, Linden Labs has the right to allow or disallow third party viewers as it sees fit, and has the right to change the rules of use as it sees fit.  That does not mean it should.

I will not go into details about these changes, plenty has been written about them elsewhere.  My concern is with the overall pattern of change.  They are not changing the technology in any way to protect merchants from theft, meaning theft will continue, by those who do not care about the rules.  Instead, they are making it more difficult for us rule abiding players from doing what we want to do with the service.

I see what is going on as a conflict of three visions:

1. The Merchant Vision: “We want SL to have strict submission rules and built in protection for our merchandise.”

2. The Linden Vision: “We want SL to be a 3D Facebook with tens of millions players.”

3. The Artisan/Role Play Vision: “We want Our World, Our Imagination back, we want a place to play and have fun the way we want.”

I’m one of the people in the third category.

On the Merchant Vision: Rules that go in place to protect merchants from thieves also restrict those of us that are not thieves from doing what we want.  Among the artisan/role player class, there is a general “liberal” share and share alike, take what you need and do what you will attitude.  We are artists who create for fun, not profit.  We want an environment to play in and we are willing to pay for it or create it ourselves, but worrying about the origin of textures, who created what prim etc, and what permissions are in place just distracts from the fun.  Its all an unnecessary burden on the players.

On the Linden Vision: As Linden Labs reaches out to the more “mainstream” audience that come in from places like Facebook, the more trouble they will cause all the goreans, furbies, nekos, age players, gender benders, cos players, and everyone else the mainstream doesn’t “get”.  Misunderstanding leads to unnecessary drama.

Role Players built Second Life.  Yet, every change LL has made in the last two or three years has had at least a small negative effect on the RP community.

I still love Second Life, but I no longer see a future for me there.  The “cutting edginess” has dulled.  It is still a gold mine of virtual places, that I will continue to explore, but my metaverse interests are moving elsewhere.

That elsewhere is OpenSim, a small but growing community on the frontiers of the metaverse that welcomes the “liberal” artisan/role players.

And, that is the topic of my next few posts…  (to be continued)

Latest Anti-Copy Tool May Violate TOS

Skillz Hax, creator and owner of Insilico and one of a team of developers of the Emerald Viewer, have released what they say is the ultimate anti-copy tool for merchants.  But before you anti-copy people get too excited, there is good evidence that this tool violates Linden Labs Terms of Service as well as many international laws regarding electronic privacy.

The device in question is the “Gemini Cybernetics Client Detection System CDS Ban Relay“.  It works by creating a giant 256x256x1000m megaprim over your land so it can detect every single person in the region via llVolumeDetect collision. It then uses obscure methods to detect exactly what client you are using.  The methods are complex and can see through “spoofing” (clients pretending to be other clients).  The developers refuse to divulge what methods they use, and that is a major problem.

Here is the story in a nutshell.  It is very easy to copy stuff in Second Life. It always has been easy.  A few years ago Linden Labs itself released a tool in open source called copybot to assist people to back up their in word creations. As designed by LL, you could only copy and back up 1) stuff you created yourself, and 2) full perm items that are allowed to be modded, copied and transferred.  The problem was by making the tool open source, it was easy for people to find the three lines in the source code that could be erased allowing copying without the permissions check.  Even so, the tool is hard to use as it uses a command line interface.

Enter the hackers, who added copybot functionality to their own 3rd party SL clients giving a simple point and click functionality to copybot instead of the complex command line interface.  Suddenly copybot was available to the masses just by downloading one of several different 3rd party SL clients, which I will not name here.  At first it was easy to detect users of these with a script, but client writers figured out how to make their clients look like other clients to avoid detection.

What the CDS Ban Relay does is use other “secret” methods to detect what client people are really using.  If it detects one of the banned clients the user is put on a list and banned from ANY stores that use the CDS Ban Relay.  It bans them even if they come back online with the official client or a legitimate 3rd party client.  According to the sales pitch, false positives are impossible “100% guaranteed”.

This 100% guarantee immediately put the tool under tons of scrutiny.  How can the makers be sure? Especially since being permanently banned by potentially hundreds of places is a rather severe punishment not for actual copybot use, but for merely possessing a client capable of copybot activity.

Then Skills Hax made a potentially fatal mistake in defending the system saying:
It collects data about the pc that can be used later even if there are no tells any more. (emphasis mine)

Ouch! Collecting data about someone’s PC without consent is illegal in many countries, including Canada, Australia and most of Europe.  Now we all gave consent to Linden Labs when we agreed to the terms of service for Second Life.  This data is being collected by a 3rd party company without consent, and is being stored on private servers not associated with Linden Labs. Unless this system asks for permission from every person that enters any property using this system, it is likely illegal!

Furthermore it looks to be against the Linden Labs Terms of Service:

Section 4.1 paragraph 3: In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: [...] (v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;

The automatic bans for life could be considered a form of harassment, a violation of the Terms of Service. Its use of region wide megaprims could also violate Terms of Service, especially if used on the mainland servers as megaprims will no doubt cross property lines.  That’s a violation of community standards.

Linden Labs needs to seriously look at this tool and determine if its use is a violation of TOS.

UPDATE: A few people have tested this things limitations. What we know now is that it does not collect info on your computer, only your avatar name and UUID.  We also know that its ability to detect bad clients is far from perfect, that server lag can hamper its functions, and that the device itself can cause a fair amount of lag on busy servers.

While the evidence is coming in that the device is not “illegal” per se, its use on mainland servers can cause serious trouble for its use of megaprims that cross boundaries, its teleporting home without warning, and its use as a griefing tool.  If you want to use it to protect a mainland store, think again!  Estate owners have more lee way on these matters, and should not run into problems with LL by using it.  However, there are a few people who are avoiding estates known to use this program, even if they never use copybot enabled clients.  Putting a system like this in place could drive away customers at best, and could make you a target of copybot hackers at worst.

Second Life closes their “Community” Forums

I keep having to write posts about how Second Life continues to try to become more mainstream, without following any clear vision as to what Second Life is all about.

To recap there was my post 3 months ago “Have we lost the Second Life Vision?“, where I described briefly that the primary purpose of Second Life was to create online fantasies.  Then there was my post a month an a half ago “The Mainstreaming of SL” noting how innovation and originality is becoming rare in Second Life.

Well the SL community has been forced to under go more changes of late.  First, was the not unexpected crackdown of SL avatar accounts on Facebook.

Second, was Linden Labs purchase of the own Social networking site Avatar’s United, so us metaverse based personalities can join the social networking bandwagon without hiding from the self proclaimed Facebook police in one bizarre case.

And the piece de resistance,  the closing of the community forums on secondlife.com.  They are being replaced by a blog format that Linden Labs can better control to their liking.

My general position in all three of these is to sit back and watch, and enjoy the show.

On the Facebook thing.  Facebook has a philosophy of the internet that is very popular, but completely incompatible with Second Life as I have pointed out many times.  In protest, I dumped my Facebook account which I never used anyways.

On the Avatar United thing. I created an account.  There has been a fair amount of drama about how the site works, allowing you to create any name you want, including names that you don’t own.  Apparently lots of people made names with “Linden” as a last name just to prove some kind of point.  Actually it just proves my point that all social networks are incompatible with Second Life, even ones designed for Second Life players.  Some say it opens the door to scammers.  I say there are already so many doors open to scammers, whats one more?

On the closing of the Second Life forums, I think it is sad.  I used to go there all the time for help and suggestions.  I learned more about LSL scripting there than on the official wiki.  My concern is that after Linden Labs did the same thing to the Xstreet forums, they changed a bunch of rules on the site that they knew would upset the people that hung out there.  So what big changes does LL have in mind that would upset the now ex-forum community?  Avatar script limits perhaps?  Attachment prim limits?

I look over this virtual drama and see a general pattern.  Second Life is being yanked in 3 directions: the “Lets be a 3D Facebook” vision of Linden Labs, the “Lets be There.com” vision of the more vocal players (I’ll elaborate in a future post), and the “Let Second Life be Second Life” vision of us players that just want to have a good time.

The Mainstreaming of SL (or why I will reduce my coverage of Second Life)

On a web page I wrote about the history of computer animation, I charted how the industry went from cutting edge to mainstream in about a decade, wearing off the novelty, but still producing quality from time to time.  I believe that is the present state of SL today.

Second Life is becoming “mainstream”.

I have said on a few occasions that SL is like a 3D AOL before the world wide web exploded. In the early days of the web it was fun exploring new web sites to see what people were posting. As the web progressed, the number of web sites exploded, and the overall quality improved.

At that time I was a reader of PC Magazine and they were doing an annual “Best of the Web” list each year. They had to stop when the web reached a saturation point.  I feel like we have reached that point in Second Life.

We used to go to really original places like Svarga, Straylight, and Insilico and be amazed. Now dozens of new servers pop up monthly with similar looks to these places.  It is getting harder and harder for builders to trump the latest, and even if they do get something amazing built, it gets lost in the noise.

The overall quality of SL region builds is going up, which is a good thing for us players that love to explore, but it is getting harder and harder to find places unique and original and wonderful enough to blog about. My next post is going to be the my second annual best of SL, and it will probably be my last best of list.

At the same time SL is changing its business model. Recent xstreet changes have been made which have upset casual merchants, but at the same time should help keep the copybot pirates from making a quick buck. SL is also limiting scripts people can run simultaneously, and making other changes that hurts the “freedom” in SL, but should make the platform more attractive for casual “mainstream” users.

All of this is following the same trend we saw in computer animation and the world wide web.  We are reaching a saturation point. Second Life is no longer cutting edge, instead it has dulled a bit.

The cutting edge is in the Open Sim community, which still is working on improving the platform to match SL, and hopefully surpassing it soon.

The potential cutting edge can also be seen in Blue Mars, which recently added the Caledon “steam punk” community from Second Life to Blue Mars and is opening stores.

My current plan is to keep this blog going, but instead of pushing myself to post every week, I may post only when I find something to post about.  Hopefully there will be enough to keep me busy.

Have We Lost the Second Life Vision?

Three other blog posts generated a fair amount of feedback over at SL Universe this week.  First was a protest over in world copying promoted by the Shopping Cart Disco blog.  Second was an article at the Pixels and Policy blog about how real life gender affects second life play. Third was a proposal by Hamlet Au at NWN about integrating Facebook and Second Life in an effort to get more players into SL.

My response to all three was decidedly negative.  Even though these three separate issues have little to do with one another, they all deny the whole vision and purpose of Second Life as if they are a part of a concerted effort to turn SL into something it is not.  Have we lost the vision of what SL is supposed to be?

The bulk of my venom is over the second and third posts, but I should begin and end with the first.  I did not participate in any protests over copyright issues.  Not that I am opposed to copyright protection or removing counterfeit goods, or punishing those that violate copyright in world.  I am opposed to changing the rules of SL to accommodate copyright protection.  I have explained why in previous posts.

Every now and then we get an article about how people play avatars that are nothing like who they really are. Men pretending to be women, women pretending to be men, adults pretending to be children, children pretending to be adult, humans pretending to be animals, animals pretending to be human.  You get the picture.

My response is always: That is why it is called SECOND Life. Yes, there are fake people in SL. In fact the vast majority of players look nothing like their avatars in RL, whether it being a few inches taller, or 20 pounds lighter, all the way to playing fantasy alien species.

The truth is there are plenty of fake people in real life as well, the fake people in Second Life are a much more interesting fake.  In real life we pretend to be something other than ourselves, because societal norms tell us we should.  In Second Life what we pretend to be is a personal choice, a creative representation we choose to project.

As I have pointed out before, there is a large part of the general population that doesn’t get this.  They believe that our online persona should be real, that the virtual world should mirror the real world, they are offended by even the idea of “role play”, and they are likely to show up more often in social networks like Facebook.

I did finally get a Facebook account and use it to talk to family and old friends.  I don’t bother with all the other crazy stuff that goes on there like Mafia Wars and Farmville.  So yes I understand that SL’ers may be ok with social networks.

I’m not so sure a typical Facebook user would be that interested in Second Life.  Advertising SL or integrating Facebook in SL will not work.  The TOS policies in FB are decidedly anti role play, and they will occasionally suspend accounts of people using fake names or 3D rendered profile pictures.

Bringing in the Facebook crowd means bringing in the kind of players that reports people wearing child avatars for being under age; that think it is cool to “out” the gender benders; that take offense at furbys and goreans and nekos; the type of people that don’t understand “role play” and generally cause problems for those that do.

These kind of players don’t last long in SL anyways. If SL wants to attract future loyal players, they need to hit sci-fi and comic conventions, SCA and Renaissance fairs, war reenactors, and other places likely to attract the role playing types. I’ve met lots of SL players who are into all of this stuff IRL as well.

Second Life is a world designed and built for role players of all types. That is what it has always been and needs to remain.  Concerning yourself with real life identities is a waste of time.  Trying to “mainstream” Second Life is counter productive and wont work.

Linden Labs needs to stop marketing Second Life as a place to make money, especially since only about 2-3% actually do. They also need to stop marketing as a social chat environment as there are dozens of better places to chat.  It is far more effective, I believe, if SL were marketed as a fantasy mecca, as a place to create your world. Its what those misleading ads for Evony and IMVU do, and they have attracted millions of players.

Which brings us full circle to those concerned with copyrights and stuff.  SL was not designed to protect copyright. Many real life 3D artists don’t bother with SL for that reason.  I figured this out a long time ago myself. If you release something cool in SL, it will get copied and stolen, and spread around.  Somehow this idea that SL is a place to make money has caught on and has turned into an entitlement, they are demanding that the Lindens protect their investment with draconian rules to limit play for non-paying players, or to limit what can be uploaded and by who.

From a role play perspective this whole thing is silly anyways.  I build my character, make or buy clothing, make or buy housing and enjoy the world.  If I want to play the role of “fashion designer”, I design avatar clothing, and have fun doing it, and if I make money too, great!  It means I can play the role of successful fashion designer.  If others are making cheap knock-offs of my product line, well that’s the life of the virtual fashion designer.

Worrying about what others are doing with your stuff just leads to stress and burnout.  Aside from filling out the occasional DMCA ticket, people shouldn’t waste their time over it.  This is all antithetical to the whole spirit of Second Life.  SL was designed as a fun diversion, a fantasy escape, with as much freedom as possible, not a big business platform that needs to be scrutinized and regulated.

With the recent departure of some key players, Second Life seems to be at another crossroad point. In these times, there is always this serious risk that things could change enough to destroy what has been built.

It is time to remind people of what the whole purpose really is.

The Inevitable Class Action Suit Against Copies

This week, two of the more successful creators in Second Life filed  a class action suit against Linden Labs due to lost business resulting from other players copying their items and selling them as their own.  This is a very touchy issue for a lot of people, the thread at sluniverse.com was 15 pages long in the first 24 hours of the post.

I thought I’d share some thoughts on this. I am not a lawyer, and I have no clue how this will play out. My best guess is an out of court settlement that will not change the situation at all. Personally, I believe that there is plenty of blame and misunderstanding to go around.

Lets start with the basics:

1.) Second Life was not designed with security, copyright, or IP protection in mind.  Otherwise, 60% of all textures and 90% of all sound files would have never made it into the game.

2.) It is technically impossible to stop the copying of textures and objects on to people’s hard drives, and damn near impossible to stop these copied textures and objects from being imported back into the game under a different “creator” name.

Linden Labs has failed in two ways:

1.) They failed to publicize facts 1 and 2 above, thus giving most players the false impression that they can make what they want and no one could copy it. Even worse, they instituted a policy early on that the rights to all textures, animations, scripts, etc imported into the game would remain with the player that imported them, thus implying that they can be safely used in game.

2.) They have failed to enforce copyright claims, even at the bare minimum level an internet “service” is expected to do. Claiming to be a “service” and claiming only the users of the service are responsible if they violate copyright or trademarks has not stopped other internet services from getting take down notices, and should not stop Linden Labs either.

The filers of the class action are stating some things in the class action that are clearly not true as well. Take a look at point 6 on page 3:

6. Linden Labs has the means to simply and easily halt the alleged conduct, but refuses to do so because it makes too much money from all the infringement.  Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit in order to prevent Linden Labs from continuing to commit trademark and copyright infringement and to recover damages for Linden Labs unlawful behavior.

This paragraph is for the most part false, and its inclusion undermines paragraph 4 and other parts of the complaint. Especially false are the words “simply and easily” as if a simple command into some SQL database would solve a complex copyright issue.

There are a lot of ideas floating around to prevent copyright issues from coming up in the first place, and I have yet to see one that would not seriously harm legitimate businesses or the SL economy as a whole.  The most popular is to not allow people who do not have financial data on file to cash out lindens for dollars, in hopes that the lack of anonymity will scare away copy scammers.  The flaw is that it is not necessary to use Lindex to buy and sell lindens. If LL starts restricting the Lindex, it will open up third party exchanges.

The only way around these loopholes is to not allow any unverified free accounts to have any lindens at all. This will further deteriorate new player experience, and ultimately hurt the economy as a whole as it limits the customer base.

The least harmful way to enforce copyright is the “You Tube” way. Take it down if a copyright holder wants it taken down. The burden of proof of a copyright claim would be on the copyright claimer, requiring evidence that you uploaded said texture or created said item before the copy, to prevent false reporting for griefing purposes.

Complaints regarding copyright or trademark should be investigated. If the investigation determines the claim is valid, the offending object gets removed and replaced in people’s inventories with a notecard explaining what happened, and who made the complaint. It should also possibly result in the suspension of the copiers account, rescinding of land holdings and lindens.

I know this would result in a lot of innocent victims losing stuff they paid for, resulting in lots of complaints, but it could lead to other reforms for the better, like a rep system or insurance system. Who says these have to be run by SL?

Even this is not a fool proof system, but it is a way of doing something, which is more than they are doing now.

Some other 3DVWs that allow user created content that can be bought and sold by players, namely There and IMVU, have restrictive approval requirements, that also cost money to submit new items, and it takes days to get it approved.  This makes sure people aren’t copying other peoples work, but it also slows way down the growth of content in the virtual world.  Second Life has definitely benefitted from the exponential growth afforded from an open submission policy.  Restricting the policy would completely change every aspect of Second Life.

In conclusion, I believe this lawsuit will never get to court and will end in some settlement.  I’m not worried that SL will close, I am worried that LL will have to make some draconian change in policy that will ruin SL. Getting rid of the offending material, and maybe the offending avatars is fine.

Making changes to the submission process, or making economic changes, would no doubt do more harm than good.

Why BUILDERBOT is an Awesome Idea!

The Second Life world seems to have its panties in a bunch over a new 3rd party utility by Rezzable dubbed Builderbot.

Basically, Builderbot can copy every object in an Second Life sim and put it into an OAR file that can be loaded onto any OpenSim server, thus making a near exact copy (scripts as usual are a problem).  They also are creating an OAR editor, and (even more impressively) a way to port OAR files into Second Life, thus making transfers from OpenSim to Second Life possible.

There are two things that are upsetting to the Second Life community: 1. Builderbot does not look at copy permissions or ownership, it just copies everything on the sim. 2. Rezzable was planning to release the SL to OAR part of the Builderbot for free.  These things had the whole community grabbing torches and pitchforks ready to boycot Rezzable. Rezzable finally gave into demand and will not be releasing the SL to OAR part free.

Hate to be the person that disagrees with pretty much everybody on this issue, but maybe I’m the only one who sees the big picture. Builderbot is an awesome idea and a key component to expansion of the 3D web. It is probably the most important 3rd party SL utility ever, and if Rezzable doesn’t release theirs, someone out there should release something similar, including the ignoring copy permissions and ownership part.

Mobile Building

Lets start with the obvious need for Builderbot. Currently, putting a build in Second Life requires that you actually be in Second Life and spend sometimes weeks building there, paying monthly tier as you build. If you want to take your time and do it right it will cost you. Then there is the occasional system hiccup that could cost you hours of work.

Builderbot does two things, it moves the building part of the project off the SL grid. You can now build your server build on your own computer, no system outages to worry about. You can save and backup your work to OAR files as often as you like. If you make a mistake, just load the latest backup. When you are done building and ready to move your build to SL, it can be moved into SL in a matter of minutes, or at most hours. This is the primary design of this program.

Fixing SL’s Design Flaws

Second Life as it was initially concieved is a flawed system. Whoever thought it was a good idea to equate Real Estate with computing power, I hope they have learned a valuable lesson. I have written about this major flaw before. Bottom line, SL runs on thousands of computers, and as many as 80% are not doing anything at any given time.

The obvious fix is to store unused regions in memory and load them up to an available server as needed. Linden Labs could cut their server need by 50-75% with such a system.

They could also bring up mirrored instances of extra busy servers. Want to give a concert that 1,000 people can attand? Just copy the build on 10 different servers that can service 100 people each. If more people want to show up, add more instances.

None of this is possible without a reliable backup system. OpenSim has OAR files, SL has got copybot (basically nothing). What Rezzable is doing is creating a tool to save SL regions as OAR files that can be stored when not in use, quickly loaded when needed, quickly mirrored on multiple servers. Obviously there is some extra programming involved to do all this, but considering the cost savings it is definitely something worth doing.

Why it is necessary to ignore permissions

The biggest concern from most of the Second Life players, is that Builderbot ignores permission. Copy a region, move to OpenSim, and everything in that region has no permissions at all. Anything in Second Life could be quickly copied, permissions be damned.

Rezzable argues that there is nothing in SL that cant be copied already. Players argue “True, but you shouldn’t make it so easy.”

Building a region is like building a website. I build websites myself and anyone can steal my code by right clicking and click “view source”, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. It is super easy.

What most Second Life players  are asking for is DRM management for SL content!

DRM has been a failure everywhere it is tried. Music, video, ebooks, the case against DRM is pretty clear. Read boingboing.net to find out why. How many of you asking for DRM for SL have stripped DRM off a music or video file so you can play it in the format you want?

A Future Marketplace

I come from the 3D Artist community where people build and sell detailed models for use in other people’s projects. All of these models are distributed DRM free and fully copyable and sharable. Yes, there is piracy in 3D models, but it is part of the cost of doing business. But since I do artwork I may want to sell, I pay for all my models and commercial licenses.  This business model is where the 3D web (SL and Opensim) will eventually go.

Most SL players are thinking in L$ economic terms without seeing the big picture. Eventually there will be an xstreet for all grids, and the ability to buy a pre built full region builds (OAR files) to load on to your personal server or hosted server is likely to be a new popular alternative method to static build exploring.

There is much money to be made in building custom regions.  Especially commercial clients who would not dare copy other people’s work. Individual objects and props have their place in the new marketplace as well, especially if they include commercial licenses that will allow the objects to be put into other builds.

I believe this could be a huge market. If I could explore lag free by loading OAR downloads to my computer based open sim server, I would love it! If I could edit them and share with others to show my edits, that would be really awesome as well. I’m quite certain I am not the only one.

The possibilities for Second Life are numerous as well. Can you imagine the fun of going to an SL club that has a different build for every event? Random combat locales? Roleplay setting that can be brought up as needed?

Like it or not this is the future! Second Life is just the early primitive beginning. In a few years we will probably wonder what all the fuss was about.