The Breakfast Club

Being honest and finding our true selves in #SecondLife

 

I’ve been in virtual environments for as long as I care to remember. The bottom line is that they all come and go over time. One thing that I am definitely not known for is praise when it is not earned, and if anything I am the first to point out the not-so-flattering reality of situations.

 

 

From left to right: Pooky, Crap, Qarl, Bevan, Aeonix | Picture: Breakfast Club (duh)

 

This is a post about the Second Life Brat Pack, or as a friend puts it “the cool kids”. We’re all part of this elevated status, a sort of digerati, and you know who you are (many more than the names on the picture above). So let’s be honest for a bit, shall we? I mean, since we’re hanging out during detention.

 

I can be overly critical at times, and I make no apologies for this behavior because it is criticism that is well earned and deserved. That being said, there are many who shy away from offering constructive criticism in exchange for the acknowledgment of the “cool kids” in the industry. I see this quite a lot in the virtual world sense, where many will sing the unending praise of a particular environment and refuse to say anything critical, or we too often want to be in a certain “clique” in the virtual world (or professionally) so we often just take on a mob mentality blindly.

 

Without honest criticism, praise is merely shallow ass-kissing. Plain and simple.

 

I am an advocate for virtual worlds on the whole, but not any particular environment, because I believe that what we have today is nothing like what we should have. This goes for whatever virtual environment currently seems to be “in the lead” – today that would constitute Second Life, but for how much longer is anybody’s guess.

 

There is a lot to criticize when it comes to Second Life (just as there is a lot to praise), first and foremost in the haphazard viewer and underlying structure of the technology, and continuing on with the loss of vision for the company overall. It is true that Second Life has achieved great things since it was created, but along the way, so much of that greatness was lost to “flavor of the month” mentality that I have become critical of what it has become as a result.

 

There is not a single part of Second Life that could not have been done far better than it has today, and no better example of this lackluster outcome can be shown than through the underachievement of Linden Lab for the past number of years by example.

 

I’m a realist at heart, so while others sing the unending praises of Second Life (or any technology) I’m usually the first to ask why such technology even deserves to be on that pedestal to begin with. I do give praise where it is earned, without hesitation – but you have to earn it. In the same breath, I am also looking for everything that is wrong with the same system not because I somehow have a vendetta or a score to settle – but because I know that if you want something to be truly better and to ascend to something greater, you have to be willing to point out where something is wrong so it can be made better. As uncomfortable as that may make people, the point is to continue making those people uncomfortable and take them down a few notches from that pedestal.

I want to make it a point to break the apathy and disillusionment. I want to return us to the days when we’d look at something and say “How can this be better?”

 

This is the premise behind being honest; not just about what you are praising, but honest with yourself as well. Honesty doesn’t always mean you’ll have your lips planted firmly on somebody’s rear end, and often times it will mean you are at direct odds.

 

That takes honesty, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

I’m not in the industry to hang out with the “cool kids”, though I often do. I’m in the industry to make an actual difference, and if I’m hanging out with the “cool kids” along the way, that’s a pleasant side effect. I’ve had the distinct privilege (and continue) to associate with some of the brightest men and women I’ve ever known, people who are far above the concept of merely Second Life and have contributed some of the most mind boggling innovations to virtual and synthetic environments the world may ever see. These are the people I personally admire in the industry – the unsung heroes of technology and innovation that make things like Second Life, and far more, even possible. Make no mistake, I’ve even criticized many of these people directly, and we’ve had a lot of great debates about the present and future of virtual worlds.

 

People like Rodvik and Will Wright stand on the shoulders of those giants, and probably don’t realize it – and if they do, neither of them are admitting it. The citizens of the virtual world seldom realize this as well, because to them, Rodvik and Will Wright are the giants.

 

Rest assured, they are not the giants. If you want somebody to praise, try some of the real innovators in the industry such as Jaron Lanier, Julian Lombardi or Randy Farmer. These people are the innovators, the pioneers in this industry. Those are the shoulders I stand on, and am grateful in every way for their contributions to society. It is because of them that I am able to contribute and further the industry myself along with many others.

 

Rodvik and Will Wright’s claim to fame is that they both made a popular video game – Spore and The Sims, respectively. Jaron, Julian and Randy helped define an entire industry. To put that into perspective, that would be like Will Wright inventing the concept of video games.

 

It’s all about perspective, and the moment we lose that perspective our subjective opinions on the matter become trivial at best. Are we really giving an honest opinion on the situation or are we just trying to appease the cool kids so we stay in their favor? I’ve noticed lately that there are too many people more interested in staying in favor than calling to task in order that the entire industry moves forward.

 

The entire purpose of virtual environments stems from our collective community of progressive and innovative thinkers constantly asking “How can we do better?” and as a community calling to task those who try and pass off half-finished work as a product. Now is not the time to lower our standards or accept less than the best.

 

We got to where we are today not because we thought what we had right now was the pinnacle, but because we thought it constantly wasn’t good enough and could be made better than what we had. I see a disturbing trend in the digerati of virtual worlds where they are endlessly praising and outright refusing to raise criticism, or associate with criticism, in exchange for the favor of those “cool kids” they think are the giants in the industry.

 

I’m not as easily bribed in exchange for favoritism.

 

 

What? It had to be said… and I know Crap is trying not to laugh.

 

 

What I want is a better Metaverse – that’s my asking price.

 

I will bite the hand that feeds me if it deserves it, and I have no remorse about being critical. If all you do is praise without offering criticism, you’ve lowered your standards and are simply being shallow.

 

If you want to make a difference… truly and thoroughly, you’ll have to remove your lips from people’s asses before you can use your voice the way it was intended. Even you have to draw a line in the sand, make a stand, and declare that you’re not selling your soul for the popularity any more.

 

Never accept less than the best. Hold yourself and them to a higher standard.

 

Acknowledge that what they have done so far has enabled many people to do amazing things over the years, but never forget that those stories are created and told by the community who want to create a better Metaverse, even when the companies behind those technologies are too misguided or apathetic to tell a better story themselves.

 

You tell a story, and I’ll tell mine. While your story may be some script in machinima, or hanging out with your partner. While your story may be mundane or extravagant -

 

where your story ends -

 

Mine begins with a better Metaverse for everyone in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Something Completely Different…

From #SecondLife to Second Fiddle in 2012

 

Is it a surprise that @Rodvik wants to focus on making video games?

 

I’ve been quite busy lately with research and development on some projects, so quite noticeably people have asked if I’m still around. The short answer is “yes”, though some other things have been keeping my attention other than Second Life. I won’t go into details about what I’ve been focusing on, but I will say that the technologies are really cool.

 

More importantly, however, I’ve been keeping an eye on the recent events concerning Linden Lab and Second Life through the usual channels, such as New World Notes, and more specifically the following little gem of news from them made me laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m in no way surprised that Rodvik has decided to focus on video games that are unrelated to Second Life and “expand” Linden Lab’s offerings past their flagship namesake. He’s a video game executive that was hired to run a Metaverse company, and I expected he wouldn’t do so well at this job.

 

Now, when I say he wouldn’t do so well, what I implied many months ago is the only thing this man apparently knows how to do is create video games, which is an entirely different market than managing and growing a metaverse. It’s a lot like the difference between a Bugatti Veyron and a Tricycle.

 

The Metaverse is the high performance, open ended, user created masterpiece of virtual environments. A tricycle entertains you for a few hours without actually adding any culture or wider appreciation.

 

Rodvik is a master of making tricycles.

 

That isn’t to say that there isn’t money to be made in making tricycles, or that Linden Lab couldn’t be profitable by making and selling those tricycles, but that isn’t what Linden Lab as a company is about. At least, that’s not what it should be about. Linden Lab was and is a metaverse company, with a flagship product and culture that is Second Life. When a CEO decides that the flagship product of the company is not worth the effort to give his or the staff’s full attention to, but instead decides that the future of Linden Lab is to pretend to be Zynga… there’s something seriously wrong.

 

Let’s face it, Rodvik has Farmville envy.

 

 

 

 

Rodvik’s assurance that there will be continued updates and functionality additions for Second Life is not comforting, because we already know what it’s like when the Lindens aren’t able to address the JIRA, fix bugs, or ultimately create a viewer that isn’t half assed and broken. There is no reason to believe that splitting the focus and resources of an already stressed team so they can make unrelated video games will have any effect other than to justify less support for Second Life going forward in favor of coddling whatever video games Rodvik wants to roll out for Facebook instead. This isn’t speculation, this is simply common sense management in knowing that splitting an already overworked team to focus on unrelated projects will mean:

 

1. The new products will be poorly executed.

2. The original product will suffer from poor execution.

3. Both areas of focus will suffer from mediocre execution at best.

 

Because his focus is on the new games, I’m likely to say that #2 is the most plausible outcome, which means that Second Life (as far as he’s concerned) is now Second Fiddle.

 

 

The decision he has made is the executive equivalent of changing the focus of the entire company to something unrelated in order to mask incompetence in the original venue he was hired for. If he cannot expand or properly manage the flagship product, but he knows how to make cheap little video games in spades, the latter will be his and the company’s new focus to make their projected growth going forward. Like I originally said when he was hired – when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We already went through this scenario with Mark Kingdon where he decided the focus was on enterprise servers, and if I remember correctly, through all of this divided focus, that didn’t bode well either.

 

Now, I could theoretically interpret Rodvik’s direction as a skillful manner by which to focus his and the company’s attention on rebuilding a better version of Second Life for the long run. Something from the ground up, or a total overhaul into a new system, which later he will encourage migration from Second Life to the new system as a result.

 

I could interpret it that way, but I choose not to do so simply out of common sense. If this were the focus, he wouldn’t have said “… unrelated to Second Life”.

 

Today marks the day that Linden Lab has begun its transformation into just another Zynga wannabe. Rodvik never really left his old position as a VP at Electronic Arts working on The Sims. He simply carried his old job into his new and unrelated job. In the process, instead of focusing on the job he was given, he’s decided that the focus of the entire company should instead cater to his whims and expertise.

 

In the process, he’s even practiced some great acts of cronyism by surrounding himself with video game executives and industry names to justify his reasoning why Linden Lab needs to pretend to be Zynga and pay less attention to it’s own flagship product and community.

 

From day one, all Rodvik saw as the CEO of Linden Lab was this:

 

 

 

Click the picture for a link to this item on Marketplace.

 

 

The real question in the end is two-fold:

 

Why did anyone not expect this to happen from day one?

 

And more importantly

 

What makes anyone think that this is actually good for Second Life?

It’s a Matter of Trust

Should the inmates actually be running the asylum? #SecondLife #OpenSim

 

When we think about virtual environments, often we’re in a perspective of one dimensionality; We can relate to a particular virtual environment that we’ve been involved with for a length of time but we find it much harder to expand that personal experience to reach into multitudes of other virtual environments or even the possibility that they are merely components of a larger system which we can describe as a complete Metaverse construct.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take, for instance, Second Life. It is the product of a company that we know as Linden Lab in California, United States, but in and of itself it is a walled garden virtual environment with no real incentive to be part of something larger unless that something larger has itself as the central authority and gateway to the whole. This is not altogether uncommon in the virtual environment industry, and as we look to other systems that are similar, there is little (if any) interoperability among the many which exist today.

 

We can, of course, look at systems such as BlueMars, ActiveWorlds, VIE, and countless others (Kaneva, web.alive, Jibe, OpenSim) but the underlying concern is that despite the advancements being made individually, they are all essentially symptoms of technology lock-in.

 

In relation to Second Life and subsequently the OpenSim based Hypergrid, we see what is essentially a minor evolution in open thinking. OpenSim being the natural progression of Second Life into a larger and more decentralized grid of interconnected virtual environment spaces which do not necessarily reside under the authority of a single company or entity, yet connect together much like we see the structure of the World Wide Web.

 

Much of what I contemplate when dealing with Object Interoperability for IEEE Virtual World Standard Group is to really break all of this down into the base components and take a hard look at what we know should be happening (an end-goal) versus what we actually have today. Whether or not I’m a user of Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Kaneva, BlueMars, OpenSim, or any number of other virtual environments is inconsequential to me in much the same manner as whether or not I use any particular flavor of operating system or even what particular websites I frequent online using a web browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc).

 

I do happen to lean more toward SecondLife as my chosen flavor of virtual environment, not because I believe it is somehow the best choice, but merely because I believe it represents a fundamental and underlying truth to what an open and interconnected Metaverse should look like. This is, of course, despite the very glaring shortfalls of the company responsible for maintaining and progressing the software responsible for SecondLife, in that while the company (Linden Lab) is acting in a manner by which is self-interested and a walled garden, the underlying technology itself is agnostic and has much potential if applied correctly. I see a lot of this progression happening more on the side of OpenSim based systems, and while I am still not convinced that OpenSim has a stake in the overall future of interoperable Metaverse standards, I do give those dedicated developers quite a lot of credit for at least trying.

 

That is not to say that I have somehow written off OpenSim or the efforts that are being made in that community. One must realize that I’m looking at this ecosystem as a whole and not for the individual components which may or may not comprise it. Which brings me to a bit of a history lesson concerning virtual environments, and rules by which I base my overall understanding for interoperability on; The Lessons Learned From LucasFilm’s Habitat.

 

 

 

Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer: Creators of the first Graphical MMO – Habitat

 

 

I know I quote this document more than a preacher in a pulpit on Sunday, but I have every reason to do so. Essentially, for a document that was written and published between 1989 and 1991 by two men who more or less invented the massively multiuser graphical online environment, it outlines many of the fundamental things which we should have been focused on in the development of virtual environments but somehow seem to have been openly ignored. For instance, in relation to the punk-ass kids in virtual worlds (such as Linden Lab) today who seem to have no respect for the grandfathers of the technology or the wisdom they passed down, we can apply the following lesson:

 

The implementation platform is relatively unimportant.

 

The presentation level and the conceptual level cannot (and should not) be totally isolated from each other. However, defining a virtual environment in terms of the configuration and behavior of objects, rather than their presentation, enables us to span a vast range of computational and display capabilities among the participants in a system. This range extends both upward and downward. As an extreme example, a typical scenic object, such as a tree, can be represented by a handful of parameter values. At the lowest conceivable end of things might be an ancient Altair 8800 with a 300 baud ASCII dumb terminal, where the interface is reduced to fragments of text and the user sees the humble string so familiar to the players of text adventure games, "There is a tree here." At the high end, you might have a powerful processor that generates the image of the tree by growing a fractal model and rendering it three dimensions at high resolution, the finest details ray-traced in real time, complete with branches waving in the breeze and the sound of wind in the leaves coming through your headphones in high-fidelity digital stereo. And these two users might be looking at the same tree in same the place in the same world and talking to each other as they do so. Both of these scenarios are implausible at the moment, the first because nobody would suffer with such a crude interface when better ones are so readily available, the second because the computational hardware does not yet exist.

 

The point, however, is that this approach covers the ground between systems already obsolete and ones that are as yet gleams in their designers' eyes. Two consequences of this are significant. The first is that we can build effective cyberspace systems today. Habitat exists as ample proof of this principle. The second is that it is conceivable that with a modicum of cleverness and foresight you could start building a system with today's technology that could evolve smoothly as the tomorrow's technology develops. The availability of pathways for growth is important in the real world, especially if cyberspace is to become a significant communications medium (as we obviously think it should).

 

Given that we see cyberspace as fundamentally a communications medium rather than simply a user interface model, and given the style of object-oriented approach that we advocate, another point becomes clear:

 

 Taken directly from the document, we see that the mode of implementation seems to have turned out quite different than what was rightly proposed. We see in this walled garden ecosystem that there is much more effort put into the platform (but strangely not in actually finishing any particular feature or part of the platform: Windlight, Mesh, Marketplace…) than the content agnostics. Taken together, by any measure, this should be regarded as a fallacy up front. Indeed it has become somewhat of a misstep in that we’re faced today with content that is locked away in proprietary methods, servers, and ultimately out of reach to all but the most determined content creators who jump through countless hoops to export and re-import their content from one environment to another manually. With the introduction of mesh based content into SecondLife, one would believe that a step has been taken to alleviate this issue, but if anything it has only exasperated the issue further by offloading the content creation outside of the walled garden and still leaving the onus of responsibility upon the content creator to systematically import that content from system to system manually. Of course, this lesson also applies to interoperability in a manner by which the actual assets and media are dynamic and standardized as well, allowing greater flexibility on the end-user for a myriad of access types.

 

The platform should be inconsequential, while the focus on content and facilitating the propagation of that content in a controllable manner automatically, should be the focus.

 

When I was a guest on CrossWorlds with Mal Burns (shown on left) recently I made it a point to hammer this point home, even if it was subconsciously on my part. Like anything regarding interoperability, we’re faced with a cascading domino effect whenever we try to look at any particular aspect or make changes to it. It isn’t as simple as changing a single thing and having the whole ecosystem work out,  but instead we look at how those small changes affect the rest of the system down the line. When we shed this light on Linden Lab, we see how the seemingly inconsequential side projects and diversion of attention to vaguely related things has shown time and again that even the smallest infraction of these rules can result in a snowball effect later on with all of the related systems – sociologically and technologically.

 

For instance, in order to enact a universal and decentralized asset system for a greater Metaverse, we must also look further down the line of influence and ask what else must be taken into consideration for that to happen. In regards to this, we can see we need the equivalent of a trusted identity standard as well as a certificate of authenticity for the servers themselves in order to facilitate the asset server and exchange even across SecondLife and OpenSim based systems.

 

This isn’t too far fetched, however, because there already exists the underlying basis for this even if it isn’t entirely being utilized. Whether this trusted identity comes from an internal methodology or whether the virtual environments which are increasingly connecting to your social media will offer the solution is up for debate. I can see the trusted identity aspect going in either direction, or even a combination of the two as simple as logging into SecondLife with the ease of a Facebook Connect, Google Account, Twitter OAuth or other method already in widespread use. My bet at this time is placed squarely on OpenSim in being the likely candidate for implementing this before Linden Lab, and thus pushing the overall Metaverse closer to reality.

 

If we were to look at the SecondLife Premium Memberships, the question immediately becomes what such a service offers in added value to the customer that isn’t already available to the overall community without that level of premium access. To this point, Linden Lab is still seemingly scratching their heads with the addition of Linden Homes, Premium Gifts (furniture, etc) and even adding customer service into the mix as an incentive. None of these things are a proper match for why anyone should pay for a premium membership, and it is no surprise that none of these things has really increased the uptake of premium membership purchases.

 

 

 

Sandboxes, homes, furniture, and customer service aren’t added value. 

 

 

After all, we’re focusing on the platform but not the reality of the content agnostics. Without a premium membership there is a fairly healthy land rental ecosystem by which anyone can merely rent land and set up their own house which they can readily purchase on the marketplace. Premium gifts aren’t much of an incentive either if countless items which are similar are also available to non-premium members for purchase and use. The question becomes, then, what exactly are the real added value things which a premium membership actually offers that are not available without it?

 

We can evaluate this from a truly agnostic viewpoint and consider that the ability to actually purchase land as opposed to renting it is a viable added value for having a premium membership, as well as the ability to increase your L$ purchase and selling limits. This is a beginning to understanding what a premium membership is actually good for, while premium gifts, Linden Homes, and other inconsequential things should be discarded (at least metaphorically).

 

While it does play into the mentality of new users who wouldn’t otherwise know where to look for those same things, I must stress that this isn’t necessarily a good thing, mainly because it is essentially preying on a new user’s inability to know there are alternatives, not to mention deliberately undermining the existing systems and community which are already in place (ie: Committing the cardinal sin by going out of their way to violate the most important rule of virtual worlds: Work Within The System). To me, this seems like a very shaky revenue stream (P.T. Barnum mentality) to pursue in that it relies entirely on the ignorance of new users to sustain. This in and of itself explains a lot of the business focus of Linden Lab in looking for avenues by which they can increase total concurrent users through outside means – maybe internal projects which somehow utilize the Skylight in-browser viewer in a Facebook page.

 

 

 

Why exactly does anyone actually need a Linden Home? It undermines the existing community.

 

 

Now that we’ve identified the base added value for Premium Memberships, we can also assume that customer service itself should never be a premium service. A customer is a customer whether they are paying you outright for a premium membership or whether they are readily subsidizing a revenue stream through the in-world marketplace and transactions. After all, a system such as SecondLife is literally built on the premise of user generated content and in-world currency transactions, and the marketplace itself should be earning a healthy revenue stream through transaction fees to Linden Lab for the countless transactions which occur daily.

 

When we sort these things out concerning Premium Memberships, one pile which says Added Value and the other essentially being a Discard Pile, we’re left with the truest form of a premium membership and the associations which actually have added value and incentive by which a person should want to pay for it. What we’re also left with is an uncluttered view of what a Premium Membership should be offering as further added value without delving into gimmicks and shady practices.

 

A Premium Membership in SecondLife/OpenSim offers what should be recognized as a fundamental interoperability component.

 

When you sign up for a premium membership, you are divulging personally identifiable information for that account in order to allow both accountability and secure payment. This, in and of itself, is the holy grail for interoperability if it were ever utilized effectively. The idea of a premium membership which is tied to a trusted authority of identification, trusted enough to allow higher purchasing limits and the purchase of actual server space and regions, should also be considered the added value of a Trusted Identity in terms of assets and an avatar passport in the virtual world.

 

Going back to the content aspect, trusted authorities, and the ability to have access to agnostic digital content which you are legally able to access, we can see that a trusted identity is a major added value for a Premium Membership in SecondLife in that if you have that trusted identity, you should pair that with trusted certificates on the server side of operations in order to allow trusted simulators to participate in the greater Metaverse in conjunction with Direct Delivery built into the viewer.

 

In the same manner, paying for a Premium Membership, and being granted the level of Trusted Identity (an Avatar Passport), you should then be able to use the same login credentials across all trusted simulators and grids, and subsequently have access to all inventory content you have purchased automatically on any of those trusted simulators. In the end, it’s a matter of adding the trusted identity and trusted grid authentication into the mix which immediately solves a greater interoperability dilemma while also solving a big question for Linden Lab (and even OpenSim grids) as to what truly is added value as an incentive for offering Premium Memberships.

 

This approach doesn’t undermine existing OpenSim efforts for similar practices, either, and if anything should strengthen it. For instance, if we were to look at SpotOn3D and their Double Dutch Delivery system, would it not make more sense for them to instead be on board with a trusted identity and trusted grid interoperability, participating in the overall structure by becoming a trusted grid with their own certificate, and then switching their focus over to offering their own Premium Memberships which then allow their own users to have Trusted Identities which are available everywhere? The difference between this and what they are currently trying to establish is that with trusted certificates for grids, there isn’t a biased commercial entity controlling them for their own singular benefit.

 

Where one proprietary solution is closed off, another revenue stream opens up with much wider appeal and benefit. The idea of a trusted identity and trusted grid certificate isn’t necessarily centralized in the hands of Linden Lab to control, in that it would apply to asset servers and other grids as well in practice. For instance, a trusted identity from SpotOn3D (somebody paying for premium membership in SpotOn3D) would be able to link their account to other grids under the trusted authority; In this instance let us say InWorldz, SpotOn3D, ReactionGrid, Avination, etc all would have a certificate of trust for their grids, and my single premium membership would act as my passport across the interoperable Metaverse. I should only be paying one instance for a Premium Membership, which then becomes agnostic across the entire Hypergrid and even SecondLife.

 

Let’s say I am paying Linden Lab for a Premium Membership, which then grants me a Trusted Identity in the greater Metaverse. I go to log into SpotOn3D, InWorldz, Avination, or ReactionGrid and find that my Trusted Identity which I am paying Premium Membership for in SecondLife is now an acceptable set of login credentials for the entire Hypergrid.

 

Any number of trusted certificate grids would query the other trusted Grids to check my “Passport” for verification – a one time authentication, by which that information is then associated to me on that particular grid for immediate use going forward. After that authentication, my inventory then becomes agnostic across the entire trusted Hypergrid as a result, with purchases from places like Marketplace delivering to my inventory across the trusted hypergrid as well. This is much more preferable than to have a dozen competing marketplace systems, proprietary methodologies that only work within the confines of proprietary systems, and a slew of walled gardens competing against each other.

 

It is better to facilitate the ability to offer platform agnostic content which propagates across countless virtual environment spaces than to delude yourself into thinking it is both profitable and sustainable to remain a walled garden indefinitely.

 

This brings me to yet another point in the discussion for interoperability, as well as a fine example of the previously mentioned domino effect of changing one aspect and how it cascades into greater or lesser things down the line.

 

Work Within The System

 

Wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community. This admonition applies to both the technical and the sociological aspects of the system.

 

 The existing system which is defined by SecondLife actually constitutes a wealth of revenue streams if only the rule above were to be acknowledged and respected. As it stands today, Linden Lab seems to be doing quite a lot to buck the hard learned lesson and run in the opposite direction.

 

Of course, I am talking about the potential for focusing on Marketplace and the user-generated content and in-world transactions. This is what open ended virtual environments such as SecondLife were built for, yet time and again I see these walled garden mentalities sabotaging a perfectly good source of wildly successful revenue models.

 

Let’s look back at the prior lesson for a moment, with the inclusion of the Trusted Identity tied to Premium Membership, trusted grid certificates, and a universal inventory access.

 

The obvious incentive to move forward with this course of action is the interoperability foundation aspect, however, from a purely commercial standpoint there exists countless revenue generation potential for doing so as well. Within the framework of the experiential level we see a wholly unfulfilled need for branded content within the virtual environment, despite the foundation for such to exist quite profitably for all involved. There is a disturbing lack of real world brand crossover into the virtual environment spectrum which has persisted since as far back as I can remember, and this isn’t a focus of merely SecondLife, but most walled gardens in the open content creation sandbox environments over the course of the entire industry.

 

On one hand, we have a perfectly capable content delivery platform in Marketplace as well as in-world, yet it is boggling to see that even today there are no real-world brands working within that system, nor is there any real protocol enabled from the company end (Linden Lab) in order to focus on and facilitate such to happen. Would it not make perfect sense to enable your own content delivery platform to allow an easy and legitimate channel for real world brands to participate under the guise of marketing in a verified manner?

 

 

 

How can Linden Lab marketing look at this picture and not see a million dollar revenue stream?

 

 

There is a wealth of opportunity here being squandered, and it is very disconcerting to see this continue the way it has since the mid-1990s. I’m sure there have been real world brands participating in virtual environments in one way or another, but the focus is officially supporting this channel within the system itself instead of putting the onus of responsibility on outside companies as middle-men to make those connections independently. The other point to be made here involves working within the system itself in that there is still a lack of meaningful acknowledgement or inclusion for the prosumers which open ended content creation environments have given rise to.

 

Instead, what we see are countless “third party” knock-off and counterfeit brand look-a-likes available in these virtual environments. This alone tells me that there is a fundamental need by the community to have these brands available, and that few if any are being met. If anything, this demand is being met with hostility and possible legal action which in and of itself is a sure sign of a broken approach to handling what could be a very profitable revenue stream for all.

 

In terms of trusted identities, trusted grid certificates and universal inventories, when we add to that the idea that there now becomes a widespread appeal for real world brands to participate appropriately within the work within the system rule (Marketplace), we see content agnostic approaches which can not only proliferate known brands within the confines of SecondLife but also across the greater Metaverse as a whole.

 

These few fundamental changes quickly show how both a level of interoperability can be achieved, while exploding the opportunity for revenue generation across the board. The idea of trusted identity, grid certificates, universal inventory, and branded merchandise channels on Marketplace have collectively solved a lion’s share of current issues, at least in theory, showing how it can be wildly beneficial to focus on them versus the current situation of segmentation and walled gardens whereby we see nothing but frustration and countless tedious hours of manual export and import of content which in turn stifles and suppresses what an interoperable Metaverse construct could offer.

 

Trying to convince content creators to adopt a new OpenSim platform and set up shop there is tedious, time consuming, and costly. Offering proprietary delivery systems which only a handful of grids can benefit from doesn’t do much in the way of solving the root of the problem, either. Instead we’re only masking the underlying problem and benefiting only a few who control those proprietary delivery channels.

 

There is a definite need for interoperability and sociological understanding of the platforms when it comes to virtual environments. Sadly, after more than twenty years since the first graphical MMO (Habitat) and even despite blatant documentation of the lessons learned from that system to pass on to future generations, neither mainstream interoperability nor sociological understanding of the Metaverse exist. Only a handful of professionals seem to actually “get it”, and clearly those aren’t the people in charge.

 

Make SecondLife into a Facebook game, stripped down and only vaguely resembling the actual experience. Build it for attention deficit mentality and to make a quick buck off of people who don’t know any better. Ignore the long term components or blatantly obvious revenue streams to chase whatever buzzword is on the Internet at this moment. It’s not that hard to really sum up what they’re doing over at Linden Lab, and it’s very obvious they still don’t get it. I don’t even think they want to get it, either.  

 

Admit it… you expected a company which is amassing high profile gaming names and marketing to have some flipping idea what they’re working with. Don’t feel bad, I’ve perpetually had that feeling since 1994.

 

For what it’s worth, you’re not alone.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

Crossworlds with Mal Burns

I’ll be a guest tonight to talk about kittens & ninjas | #SecondLife

 

 

 

 

I've been invited to attend the show Crossworlds with +Mal Burns tonight in #SecondLife as a guest. We'll be talking about IEEE Virtual World Standard Group and Interoperability in Virtual Worlds. Mostly, though, we'll be focusing on what matters: Ninjas and Kittens

 

Show starts at 3PM SLT (Pacific) | 6PM EST
Live stream available here: http://metaversetv.com/live
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Metaverse%20Island/163/146/113

 

 

 

The sim doesn't open up until 2PM SLT - so grab a tent and camp on the outskirts to get a good seat :) By all means.. come down and join us.

 

You never know what sort of crazy stuff we’ll talk about.

Taking Diaspora Seriously

Why social is a large part of our virtual future. #IEEE #SecondLife

 

 

I’m a strong advocate of privacy and our ability to choose individually what level of privacy we believe is adequate for ourselves. Sure, there are constant arguments over how anonymous representation can lead to bad behavior in many, but I’m a realist about the entire situation. I see the glass as neither half empty or half full, because there is equal potential for both good and bad in everything we do.

 

In the case of Diaspora, I won’t say that they are the end-all to be-all social network. They may or may not have a long standing chance in the grand scheme of things – especially when facing giants like Google+ or well established social networks like Facebook, both of which have far more clout and resources to throw around to gain favor. However, that being said – I do absolutely believe in the power of privacy, choice and above all else, that just like the Internet itself, a virtual environment collective would make up the very thing which we today consider a Metaverse.

 

In order for a virtual environment standard to really take hold and be beneficial to all, it must be addressed from the standpoint that all will be involved or affected by it. I’ve played a part in many virtual environments in my life, and have seen some truly amazing things whether it’s creative content from individuals or truly innovative paradigms from research initiatives.

 

One of the research initiatives that really helped cement and shape my beliefs on virtual environments for the future was one called Solipsis Decentralized Metaverse (INRIA), and while they went with the notion of a fully decentralized architecture, I immediately recognized then that even if it was technically feasible, the reality would be more of a hybrid approach.

 

 

An early look at Solipsis from 4 years ago

 

 

I keep this understanding today during my tenure as object interoperability lead for IEEE Virtual World Standard Workgroup, in that in order to truly foster in a full Metaverse, we must take into account that no single entity should be holding the keys to the entire kingdom.

 

Whether this is concerning the underlying technology, the components, or a myriad of other aspects which are bound to interoperate with the ecosystem that is a virtual environment, I take these ideals into account in that it’s never as simple as defining a single thing when it comes to the Metaverse.

 

A Metaverse, for the most part, is the conglomeration of many types of technologies, filetypes (assets) and protocols that come together in a hyper-media environment that even transcends the web today. There is no simple answer for what components make up a Metaverse, because the further you scrutinize in detail the more obscure it becomes. What number of image formats could we support for textures? Are we taking into account emerging standards that are dynamic like procedural methodologies? Will centralized servers really play a role in future iterations or will a more decentralized approach reign supreme? How many protocols for simple text message transfer are there, and then what about VoIP traffic protocols? What sort of protocols and techniques should be used for the social media facing aspect of a virtual environment?

 

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered, and that’s exactly what the IEEE Virtual World Standard Workgroup is aiming to do, to the best of our abilities. I imagine the Metaverse as a hybrid of decentralization nodes – each system on a common standard, even if internally they are all very different. Walled garden mentality, in my mind, really is a hindrance to a truly open Metaverve – but if they must continue to exist, then they should at least be willing to offer some sort of compliancy to the overall network of virtual environments if they wish to retain any semblance of standards.

 

Being a de-facto standard isn’t enough, because in the end it’s self-serving to the company or entity that holds that de-facto, but offers little in the way of worldwide benefit in the grand scheme of things. Much like the days of AOL, Prodigy and other such services, the walled gardens are doomed to be eclipsed by bigger and better things (in this case it was the world wide web), and it was only reluctance and willfully keeping their clients ignorant of the things that are bigger and better than their own walled garden service that kept those services around as long as they were.

 

We live in a similar age today but have the benefit of hindsight where we can look back at those early walled gardens before the true explosion of the world wide web came about, and we benefit today from that evolution into open standards. Virtual environments today are much the same, in that they mostly are closed and walled gardens – nobody is interested in talking to each other from virtual environment to another, because it simply is not in their best interest.

 

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

We have hindsight now, and we know that walled gardens are only the precursor to a global standard which will foster a revolution and explosion of a new paradigm. Nobody really holds the keys to the Internet, not even Google. There are countless services and products, billions of sites and pages for all manner of things (good and bad).

 

Remember, this is all from the standpoint of a decentralized methodology we call the Internet. No single entity owns all of the servers of the Internet, and no single entity owns all of the content. Everyone is free to make their own space as they see fit, and by and large it has been an overwhelming boon to human society as a result.

 

A Metaverse Standard for all, holds the ability to foster similar results in the synthetic environment age. This is why I officially acknowledge such endeavors as Diaspora on the metaversestandards.org wiki, and as a legitimate social network to be taken serious.

 

It isn’t because I believe Diaspora itself is an end-all to be-all winner, but more because the ideology and methodologies behind that system are the ideal brass ring we should all be acknowledging for every aspect of our virtual environment going forward. I acknowledge Diaspora officially in whatever capacity I may be allowed, simply because it is the paradigm shift which I believe will foster in a better generation of privacy, decentralization and methodologies which are beneficial to all.

 

Diaspora tells you that you are free to start your own node as part of the entire network, that you own the content and information that is yours. They tell you that they respect your privacy, and want to help you protect it – even saying they respect your right to personally decide if being anonymous, pseudonymous or completely authentic (as in using your real name) suits you. They do not believe in a single entity being the only option, and in fact make their source code open to everyone, while actively encouraging everyone to start their own “pods”. They respect not only you, but the very foundation that made the Internet amazing – and for this the least I could do is tip my hat to them, and the many hard working people behind it. Their ideals and goals are in line with those of the IEEE Virtual World Standard Workgroup; what they want for a social network, we want also for a virtual world standard, and I highly believe social networking is an integral part of the entire virtual world construct.

 

I acknowledge Diaspora because I believe in the paradigm and ideals which they stand for. In a world where Facebook is being sued because they still track you even after you log out of their system, and Google insists you don’t have a choice in whether or not you must divulge your real name, it is refreshing to see there is a beneficial alternative for all – where everyone is on a level playing field with access as they see fit.

 

If anyone deserves my praise for upholding the values set forth in the creation of the Internet, then I gladly give that praise and recognition to Diaspora. Clearly, among the countless ‘nyms and their avatars, so do you.

 

An Island Unto Themselves

#Marketing in the Prosumer Culture

For many of you, this post will seem a bit dull, but the implications from it are far reaching and profound. I'd like to state up front that this sort of topic is my forte' and I regularly advise on this to what often seems like an entirely baffled room full of executives (not to mention lawyers who are ready to grab pitchforks and torches) - but as I've often said in those situations: Bare with me, because what I'm about to say is probably the most important thing you could hear on the matter.


We live in a digital culture of sharing and mashup, where 1's and 0's are interchangeable and cheap. It doesn't matter to the prosumer culture whether those ones and zeros are configured in a manner that yields a photo, mp3 or streaming video - what matters is the sharing of ideas and media that pertain to their topic of interest at that moment.

On the subject matter, the best advice I can give stems from what I like to refer to as the Gospel of Virtual Environments, but for most you would know it as Lessons Learned From Lucasfilm's Habitat. Written by Chip Morningstar and F. Randal Farmer in 1991, this synopsis addressed the lessons they learned from running a massive multi-user virtual environment in the late 1980's on the Commodore system known as Habitat, and while the graphics were definitely paltry by today's standards, the lessons are just as important today as they ever were - because they address the underlying nature of technology as well as the attitudes of people that use those types of systems.


One of the most important lessons from that synopsis was simply:

Work within the system

And while this lesson is open to interpretation, the story that accompanied it really set the stage for understanding how not to address prosumers in a digital age if your goal is to protect IP, or system type mechanics/rules.

I won't go into the entire story here (it’s available at the end of the post as a link for reading), but I will address the fundamental understandings that came out it, and how they still apply today in the digital world context.

Essentially what it boils down to is this:

If you are a company with a brand and IP to protect, you have more options today in order to enforce it than you did twenty years ago utilizing traditional methods. The landscape has changed quite a bit, and the 1's and 0's of today are agnostic, while the mentality of the prosumers is that of simply sharing for the sake of conversation or furtherance of devotion to a particular brand or image. In modern context, this still holds true on a much wider basis than it did twenty years ago, and so our defacto arsenal of "cease and desist" and litigation often times is met with an outstanding backlash in the wider sphere of digital culture, causing more damage and loss than had the entity utilized the "Work within the system" lesson.

No better example of this sort of backlash (humorously named the Streisand Effect) can be given than that of the RIAA and MPAA with many years of fighting and litigation efforts to curb or eliminate the acts of piracy among Peer2Peer networks. It is now over ten years later and such an approach has not only cost those entities more than it's worth to enforce, but has had the opposite effect to curbing the "violations" worldwide - eliminating single file P2P systems like Napster, Limewire, etc but giving rise to massive file collection P2P systems like BitTorrent where no longer single files are shared but large quantities of files as a single "set".

Where the RIAA wanted to stop music piracy by shutting down places like Napster which offered single tracks per download, they ended up fostering a worldwide backlash that is BitTorrent where finding a single track is unlikely versus searching for the entire discography of the artist for download. Clearly, this is throwing gasoline on the fire and acting surprised that the fire did not go out.

The interesting thing about all of this is simply the fact that digital culture and mashup mentality often do a much better job at proliferation of ideas and content than even multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, creating new content from multiple sources that transcend the originals – beneficial to multiple entities all at the same time, as we see in the Gwen Stefani vs Britney Spears music mashup below titled “Tick-Toxic”.

Whatcha’ waiting, whatcha waiting, whatcha waiting for? Prosumers aren’t as Toxic as you think.

Working within the system entails an unorthodox methodology, in that the proper approach to "infringement" no longer is a black or white scenario, but instead many shades of grey for the negative approaches (and in methods that offer mutual gain, 16.7 million colors of awesome) - often entirely dependent on the situational context. While cease and desist options and litigation are still a part of that arsenal of enforcement, it no longer constitutes the cut and dry option, and in fact should be the absolute last option to be enacted - instead of the first or only.

When you find yourself looking to protect IP or a brand, the first question that should be asked is no longer "How do we stop this infringement?" but instead should be "How do we monetize this situation, foster its growth and make it work for our own benefit?" - aka: Working within the system.

Working within the system entails a willingness to work with the people involved in that system on the same grounds and foundation that those people utilize within that particular system, whether that be business or individuals (prosumers) in order to foster a mutually beneficial situation while limiting the constraints that would cause a backlash and do widespread harm. Think of it like trying to disarm a nuclear weapon - you wouldn't go in and bash it with a sledgehammer for fear that you could cause a massive explosion. Instead you handle it delicately and with foresight for the bigger picture. Cease and Desist (litigation) is your sledgehammer, and should only be used as a last resort.

Instead we should first think about ways to work within the system at hand, for our own benefit (because we are still self-interested as companies) but also in a way that addresses the underlying and fundamental need of the prosumer mentality to spread and share IP, Brands and derivatives of those properties.

One of those many shades of grey happens to be simply allowing the proliferation of the IP or brand to continue while adding only monetization or supplemental marketing to the situation. This can be seen today in the general approach by Youtube where music in the user created videos is now more likely to come with a link saying who the artist is, the name of the song, and a direct link to purchase that music. This, in turn, offers a solution to working within the system and IP infringement in that the question answered was no longer "How do we stop this infringement?" and instead "How do we utilize this infringement to our own and their benefit?".

In the case of Youtube, however, while the approach is sound there is still no method to actually handle the mashup and derivative offerings that spawn in abundance from this culture – as we can see from the Tick Toxic video where both Tick Tock from Gwen Stefani and Toxic from Britney Spears is put together for a new take on two songs, Youtube only recognizes the Gwen Stefani part as the music to tag and offer for purchase (catching only half of the potential).

In the long run, prosumer integration of your IP or brand in derivatives or outright is the best form of free marketing for your brand or IP that you could ever hope for. You would never think to shoot down free marketing on your behalf, especially when things like videos on Youtube have this wonderful habit of "going viral" wherein hundreds of thousands if not millions of people share and view those videos, giving the brand or IP massive amounts of free exposure. The trick to all of this is to look at it from a marketing perspective and not a legal perspective.

Prosumer culture is the predominant force in the digital age, and we are best served by allowing that system of understanding to proliferate with little or no negative intervention. While this flies in the face of the crack legal team on call at most companies who want nothing more than to fight the good fight, the benefits far outweigh the costs in the long run - and only serve to offer additional revenue models, and widespread marketing and goodwill among this global system if approached properly with complete understanding.

What we have today are companies that essentially shoot first, and ask questions later (if they bother asking at all) with their DMCAs, Cease and Desists and litigation. This is detrimental on the whole because of the prior notion of the Streisand Effect, moreso because it fosters an "island unto yourself" mentality, cutting you off from the system in ways that would otherwise be beneficial on a massive scale, turning instead to a methodology that actually harms you and your brand/IP.

In order to succeed in the digital age, we must understand that we are not an island unto ourselves. This is true not only in social media of all types, but in the greater scope of the digital culture we rely on today. The rules of engagement here are different than we were taught traditionally, and we need to be willing to think creatively and innovate if we want to truly excel. While cease and desist, as well as possibility of litigation still remains, we need to keep our perspectives in check, resorting to that route only when all other possibilities are exhausted and explored in context.

Remember: Prosumers aren’t as Toxic as you think they are. They could very well be the fountain of youth to invigorate your brand and IP on a global scale.


Further Reading
Lessons Learned From Lucasfilm's Habitat: http://bit.ly/oPbUdr
The Streisand Effect (Wikipedia): http://bit.ly/r5FY8L
Prosumer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#Producer_and_consumer

Unconventional Conventions

When chaos theory applies, only those who seek heretics win out. #SecondLife @Rodvik |

 

Years ago when I was the CTO of VR5 Online, my boss at the time came to me with an interesting and possibly impossible challenge. At the time, I answered to the CEO of the company who was Mr. Clark, and he was an interesting and sly individual. One of the major purposes of VR5 Online was to explore and research methods in virtual environments while taking extensive notes on the outcomes for future applications. During that time we were engaged with ActiveWorlds as a technology, running our own world called VR5 | City of Nidus for which this blog is originally named (cityofnidus.blogspot.com).

 

 

 

 

There is a deeper story behind the name City of Nidus, in that the original project was run by @AdamFrisby (who went by the name Gwala). As far as I can remember, it was originally a world owned by ActiveWorlds called Flagg007, named after the AWI employee who provided the world for experimentation – Flagg (the community leader of AW). Now, Gwala at the time was experimenting with different ideas in AW with the Flagg007 world such as ideas for design and lighting, and a little bit of modeling too. There were a handful of people in that project, specifically hand-selected to participate purely for the ability to innovate ideas in a virtual sense. At that time, I remember I was invited to work in Nidus with Gwala and I brought along a friend Wesley Seay (whom to this day I call Capri).

 

Capri was a name I came up with because when he was a kid (he started using virtual environments when he was around 13 or so) his nickname was Liquid Cool, and my first impression was to say “You mean like Capri Sun drinks?”. Well, the nickname stuck and over the years he just kept it which is in many way how I came to use the Darian Knight nickname – I originally chose Aeonix as a nickname back in 1996 but I became known among my friends in real life for watching way too much Sailor Moon (and to be fair, it was the only thing remotely interesting on television when I was getting ready for school) so I ended up with my nickname being Darian out of habit, versus Aeonix.

 

This is still related to the post, by the way… it’s just a bit of context and backstory.

 

But I Digress

 

When my boss at the time, Mr. Clark, proposed some research at VR5 Online, he came to the conclusion that I should run a virtual world in ActiveWorlds by which he would give me a list of things I had to accomplish and research each year in order to validate another year renewal for that project. That went on for a few years before it was decided to close the project, but in the beginning of it, I was to find the best ways to do certain things on that list.

 

 

 

 

Now, as a professional you would normally see things in a manner which excludes all of your options. This is your scope and vision, more or less.  Some of us have a wider scope than others, while in many cases we become specialized and thus myopic in our scope. There is a place for both types of thinking and scope but we first have to understand that a limited scope and ability can be detrimental to a project or endeavor if we aren’t careful to identify that ahead of time.

 

I remember one of the points on the list for Nidus was simply to launch a behavioral study and utilize it toward marketing in virtual environments. The “impossible” aspect that he threw in was that I had to do so in a manner in which nobody would ever realize they were being studied, in effect I had to blend it all together as if it was perfectly natural.

 

What I came up with was pretty ingenious, even to this day.

 

It was a small town, and it had lots of different stores and aspects. But then on a more minute detail there were other studies and aspects underlying and they all worked together. The important part about this is the team that put it together.

 

It was a motley crew of individuals, and I’m proud of them to this day – many of them went on to become successful media designers, while others remained rogues and unconventional assets to projects. The most interesting part was that many of them were teenagers, or recent high school graduates who had simply accumulated years of experience in a virtual environment and how to create within them. I intentionally saw the merit of experience versus traditional education and decided that the experience of the individuals far surpassed the qualitative assets they could have brought to the project if they were simply of traditional education. It was a voluntary basis, and its own little community, and those teens ran circles around even ActiveWorlds Inc as a company.

 

 

 

 

Now, when I say they ran circles around AWI, I’m talking to a point where they put ActiveWorlds to shame as a company with the things they could do versus what the company itself was doing with their own technology. To this day I’m proud of their accomplishments, and I learned quite a lot over those years as to the best manner to work within a virtual environment setting. Years later, the things that were discovered and innovated in VR5 | Nidus continue to shape the direction of ActiveWorlds and even contribute to virtual environments as an industry.

 

This is what I like to call “Unconventional Conventions” in that the best approach, and the best way to get deeper insight and progress is often times (in virtual environments and elsewhere) to abandon our preconceived notions of scope and ability. I could have put in a budget request to my boss in order to hire a staff related to the project, but I wouldn’t have progressed anything. The band of rogues did things that to this day are extraordinary and pretty amazing, and they did so because they wanted the challenge, and furthermore knew that I was a hard-ass that would push them above and beyond to do better. In the end, they did things that to this day have yet to be replicated in an open ended virtual environment like SecondLife or ActiveWorlds in any official capacity.

 

 

 

 

Oh, they often hated me when I was telling them they could do better, or when I pointed out flaws. But they learned over time that the best compliment for a job well done is when somebody like me says “This is fantastic!” or when the rest of the community looked up to them as innovators, however much a set of rogues they were. Nothing said that more than when we put together a live concert, not once but twice in ActiveWorlds with the band Aztech Rising.

 

The first concert pushed the limits of conventional ideas for “events” in ActiveWorlds by introducing the idea that a live concert could be played in a virtual environment on a large scale, while on the second concert a year later we revamped the entire stadium with particle effects and a custom arena, complete with a fireworks show and lasers. The latter concert took it a step further by introducing the idea that a virtual event can be linked to real life merchandise, and as a result, a shop was available at the stadium during the concert to allow the concert goers to get real life swag such as concert t-shirts, hats and more. Remember, this is an innovation that came out of the minds of wild card prosumers and not traditional education.

 

 

 

 

Later on in places like SecondLife, we take these sorts of ideas for granted. We have events and giveaways, and there are plenty of live performers on a nightly basis. But in those early days, this was totally unconventional, let alone the idea of selling real life merchandise in conjunction with a virtual concert. In an unofficial capacity, this idea continued to blossom, but in a conventional and official capacity that is Linden Lab themselves, the idea has yet to catch on. If anything, the wild cards are still innovating despite Linden Lab constantly trying to put on the brakes.

 

Full footage of the first concert can be watched here on the Aztech Rising archive. 

 

The idea here is that even to this day, the rule of unconventional conventions continues to work with the same brilliant results as they did in the late 1990s and through to 2007 when Nidus reached its end goal and shut down.

 

Recently with IEEE Virtual World Standards  there has been an ongoing project among the group to create demonstrations for the public in order to show the ideas of interoperability. The original idea for this demonstration was to build a multi-universe game of PONG where you’d hit a ball in maybe SecondLife and have it go down the play area, and at the halfway point, disappear and show up in say, ActiveWorlds for instance to be hit back to SecondLife.

 

Now, the people in IEEE Virtual World Standards are some extremely talented and brilliant men and women. However the case may be, I still had an inkling ahead of time that a game of PONG between multiple virtual universes may be entirely outside of their scope. Initially, it should come as no surprise that I asked Jon Bee to contribute on my team in the IEEE group to make this happen, after all he was also one of the people in Nidus and even today he contributes in Andromeda Media Group. I knew this man would be the unconventional convention that was needed.

 

After a number of weeks (maybe a month or two) the group wholly decided it really was outside of their ability to create a PONG game across universes, but luckily for myself and Jon, neither of us attended that meeting to hear a collective defeat. Instead, on a random day the following week, he spent a few hours doing what some of the brightest men and women in virtual environments just recently washed their hands of out of frustration. In a few hours, Jon Bee, the rogue aspect to the high professional aspects of the group, sped through and had a working demonstration of PONG, and later that night he began the link-up between SecondLife and ActiveWorlds.

 

When the early demonstration was given to Tom Starai to show the initial stride in progress, I remember that he was impressed but also assumed that such a stride in progress must have taken a lot more time to accomplish than it did. In his scope of understanding, and based on the efforts prior by the rest of the group, he was under the impression that such an advancement must have interfered with real life endeavors and projects over a longer period that the rest of the group simply could not afford to give attention to, but in the scope of Jon Bee and our unconventional conventions approach what seemed like it should take a few weeks of constant work actually took a few hours in one night.

 

By choosing an unconventional convention, or wild card, the promise of an inter-universe game of PONG was given life in a short amount of time, thus advancing the group as a whole forward where they previously had given up on the idea.

 

Why is this unconventional convention idea so important? Well, by widening the scope and being willing to look for unconventional solutions and people who may not fit our preconceived notions to solve our problems, we often find a wealth of untapped talent and insight. What would seem like an insurmountable challenge becomes trivial, and often with wildly successful outcomes.

 

We find determination, drive and persistence but most of all we find people who aren’t blinded by preconceived notions, training or scope. This is crucial, and ultimately so when we deal with virtual environments like SecondLife or ActiveWorlds.

 

Unconventional SecondLife

 

The reason I’m writing all of this is to lead up to a current conversation I had with one of the Phoenix Team developers recently about why what Linden Lab has been doing all these years actually makes perfect sense when you understand the limited scope of operations they are restricted to.

 

For instance, it seemingly makes no sense to fire Philip Rosedale and replace him with Mark Kingdon, only to fire Mark Kingdon and put Philip back in place, only to replace Philip again with Rod Humble. All of the interim maneuvers that Linden Lab has taken during this constant changeup seems like a company without a clear understanding of virtual environments, and this is ultimately true but for reasons many don’t realize.

 

For instance, Philip Rosedale was more of a visionary than a business leader. He had the charisma and cult of personality aspect down pat, but in business he likely did not speak the same language as those which Linden Lab are indebted to. He looked at things in a manner which would say “This is good for people” but likely had little to say in describing how it was good for the bottom line or how a long tail approach would balance the scales of business versus community.

 

In that frustration, and lack of communication, we saw the introduction of Mark Kingdon who is arguably of a high business pedigree – and his scope for business was shown immediately as he began to shift Linden Lab away from a community aspect and into an Enterprise aspect. I don’t fault Mark Kingdon, because he was merely working within the constraints of his scope, and he really didn’t know the intricacies of a virtual environment ecosystem, nowhere near as well as Philip Rosedale.

 

The problem was that Philip spoke as a visionary but not as a business person. Mark Kingdon spoke as a business person but not as a visionary. When Mark took a lateral step aside and Philip resumed where he left off, we had a visionary at the helm again – but those who Linden Lab are indebted to wanted faster ROI and expansion, even if that meant cannibalizing the ecosystem to make it happen. Philip likely had a crisis of conscience which led him to leave again, being replaced by Rod Humble, who speaks the business of Video Games.

 

Rod is the closest we get to a hybrid of business and visionary, but there is still a lack of ecosystem understanding, and that is very dangerous for Linden Lab in the long run. His scope is video games, and while video games are close to what virtual environments like Second Life are, it isn’t a good enough match to apply the same methodologies, because ultimately the things that work for a video game scope will backfire if applied to a virtual environment scope like Second Life.

 

 

Subtractive Value

 

An excellent example is the recent announcement of the new benefits for Premium membership in SecondLife where you get a free “exclusive” gift and access to Premium Sandboxes to build in. The problem is that the “exclusive” gifts have no added value when free users have access to a plethora of content from the community both free and paid for, and likely those in a free membership would have half a dozen similar sets in their inventory by the time they decided to upgrade to Premium.

 

The other issue is the Sandboxes because this is yet another indication that @Rodvik and those in the marketing group are clearly outside of their scope of understanding. One of the reasons people upgrade to Premium accounts is for the ability to purchase land of their own, which immediately negates the usefulness of a Premium Sandbox. Even as a free user, the private sandbox idea is all but a moot offering in that even free users can rent land, and that again negates the private sandbox idea if even free users can rent their own land, effectively eliminating most of the need for a sandbox up front.

 

The same issue applies to giving Premium Members their own premade “Linden Homes”, in that whatever Linden Lab is offering in that aspect is a pale shadow to what a free or premium user could get on their own. Prefab houses and skyboxes are plentiful on Marketplace, making the selection that Linden Lab offers for Linden Homes look like a joke to the community.

 

 

 

 

Again, if the major added value to a Premium membership is the ability to purchase and sell land, then Linden Homes become a moot offering. Even as a free member you can rent more land and have more options than Linden Lab gives you as an added incentive to become a Premium user. What makes this worse is that leveraging access to legitimate support as a Premium user “added value” tells each and every new user with a free account that you simply don’t give a toss about them, and the last time I checked, that’s a horrendous first impression to be making.

 

So we have Linden Homes being an attempt at relevancy in the already existing homes, land and accessories markets maintained by the userbase ecosystem of prosumers. Sandboxes that miss the underlying understanding that Premium accounts can buy and sell land, making premium sandboxes an error in judgment. Even free users can rent land, and nearly eliminate the need to use sandboxes. Giving “exclusive” gifts is also a moot point since nobody really cares about an exclusive furniture set when they have a mountain of options otherwise, free user or premium.

 

More importantly, however, is that while this does show that their scope is extremely myopic at best, and their understanding is lacking, the worst part about all of this is that these seemingly innocent mistakes in succession have lasting and long term negative effects on the ecosystem that is Second Life. At every step of the way, Linden Lab continually turns in on itself to cannibalize the ecosystem and that’s a very bad thing for not just you and I, but for Linden Lab itself.

 

What we have here, is failure to communicate.

 

I don’t mean that @Rodvik isn’t listening to the community. No, he’s doing an excellent job on that front. However, there is a difference between listening to the community and actually knowing how to interpret what you are hearing into actionable outcomes that foster a balance of understanding for the ecosystem that is Second Life.

 

I do not suspect that even @Rodvik is in a position to be effective at that part, and it’s not a negative thing. Of course it’s not necessarily a positive thing either. What it is, is a lack of proper context in overall fashion of this system.

 

@Rodvik has a lot of business insight pertaining to video games. He’s not a virtual worlds visionary like Philip was, and he’s surely no Chip Morningstar, F. Randal Farmer, or Jaron Lanier.

 

However, that’s what is missing from the equation. This is precisely why Linden Lab continues to falter. You need balance… you need a sound business mind who at least partially understands virtual environments running the place, but you also need a visionary to guide that leader.

 

The visionary, or advisor, shouldn’t be the CEO in this case. No, that job is taken and should be held by somebody who knows business scope. The advisor or visionary position, guides and acts as a mediator between the chaos that is a virtual environment system like Second Life, and the business sense that is traditional thinking and scope. They are the person who can read the tea leaves and explain to the CEO. It’s also the sort of person that is comfortable doing that in reverse as well, as in interpreting the business scope into the ecosystem of the virtual environment.

 

It’s a complimentary sort of role, and nobody needs to be fired to make that happen.

 

I could argue that Philip Rosedale holds some sort of advisory position on the board for Linden Lab, but I doubt it’s an active involvement. If anything, it’s simply a courtesy sort of thing and Philip is likely wanting to put SecondLife behind him and concentrate on his other projects, like Coffee & Power.

 

So what we are left with is the understanding that what is needed to bring balance and healthy expansion back to Second Life is an unconventional convention. There are often times when conventional scopes have little impact, or even negative outcomes when applied, and these are the times when it is prudent to start looking for a rogue to guide you.

 

When we broaden the scope and start looking at unconventional conventions, we eliminate the artificial narrowing of scope we apply out of preconceived bias, and we find solutions that would normally be outright rejected under conventional means, but suddenly offer wildly successful outcomes as a result.

 

Just like a rag-tag group of teenagers can run circles around a corporation using their own technology, and how a wild card user can do what some some of the best in technology collectively wash their hands of in defeat, the solution of introducing a wild card into the mix is our unconventional convention for Linden Lab.

 

You’re not likely to find those wild cards through traditional methods, either. Looking through resumes that dictate traditional education instead of hands-on experience and real-world application will get you people who are classically trained to be blind to the proper solutions. They are trained to think inside the box, so to speak – and there is really nothing wrong with that when in proper context, just like there is nothing wrong with Rodvik, Mark Kingdon, and Philip Rosedale all having a narrow scope which excludes seeing the bigger picture. Those scopes are specialized and have a very important purpose, but without balance – without our wild cards, those narrow scopes change from being an asset to a dangerous destructive force.

 

The day Linden Lab effectively fills an advisory position with a true wildcard that isn’t traditionally educated, but brings a wealth of insight and hands-on experience with virtual environments (not video games) is the day that you’ll see the balance return, and Linden Lab surge ahead in to a second golden age.

 

A second life, for Second Life.