New World Notes

Is There No Way to Impress Young Gamers With Second Life Graphics?

The controversy over Adult-rated content in Second Life last week brought up an equally interesting comment in a totally different direction. The original point of the risque SL machinima, as its 3D visuals creator put it, was to show how great Second Life graphics can be. ("SL takes so much flak for having bad graphics when that is rubbish," as he put it.)

But a reader calling themselves "Gosh-Darned Millenial" (LOL) had a totally different reaction to that:

What struck me about the previous article on this video wasn't so much the sexual content, but the idea expressed that this is the sort of thing that one could show to gamers, other tech-savvy young people, to show off how cool and not-ugly Second Life is. To be absolutely clear, I mean no disrespect to the hard work or the artistic vision of the creators of this video. But I don't think the people expressing how good the machinima looks really understand just how dated and limited Second Life appears. When the model's hair waved in the wind at about four frames per second, and when she did that stiff run with a fixed dead-eye stare, I cringed a little. Second Life just doesn't look that great, especially in comparison with modern video games. If I showed my gamer friends this, they would laugh at the robotic movements, dull lighting and blurry textures.

Again, I understand that this video is a great technical achievement for SL. I can see the artistry that went into it. But I know a lot of people wonder why younger, tech-savvy people and gamers aren't so interested in SL, and I think part of the reason is this gap between the technical expectations of the SL userbase and this demographic. "Good for something from SL" is damning with faint praise. I repeat, I am not trying to denigrate the machinima makers, or the thousands of artists who create for the platform. I am simply saying that there are limitations which will be very obvious to anyone into modern gaming, limitations which highlight just how old and creaky the platform is.

This is all very valid, and is probably why Second Life looks its best in screenshots -- see Cajsa's column for voluminous examples -- while SL's graphics engine quickly shows its age when it comes to animation. (Unless the video is captured with an extremely high end desktop PC running a third party viewer optimized for graphics, like Black Dragon, and the 3D models are all mesh and properly textured, etc. etc.)

As a counterpoint, however, it's not actually true that gamers demand the best, latest graphics:

Does Sexual Content Enforce a Negative Stereotype of Second Life? (Comments of the Week)

Interesting conversation over the SL machinima I posted last week, which I warned readers ahead of time: "While it has no graphic nudity, it's very male gazey throughout and gets decidedly porny toward the end." For the record, I asked the creators if they had a less porny version, but failing that, decided the visual quality was so good, and showed how great SL content can look, it deserved an audience here.  Reader Taylor had a terse reply to that:

...wants to show that SL isn't what people think it is
...turns into softcore porn

Stereotype affirmed!

Reader JohnC  pointed out a larger issue of branding:

This is a great problem that Second Life has. This sim and all others, are personal experiences created within the platform called second life. It is up to anyone who creates there to create whatever they desire. This freedom is what makes SL special, far more special than the restrictive RL world of games. If someone creates a porn game with Unreal Engine people do not label Epic with a porn label. SL is a free space for anyone to create what they will...

That's a pretty good analogy. However, Unreal, Unity, and other 3D engines are better able to distance themselves from sexual content created with their tools, since after all, unlike Second Life, that content isn't hosted on their company-owned servers.

Reader Madeline Blackbart points out how this has hurt SL's reputation in the public eye:

Founding Linden Lab Engineer Explains Why Last Names for Second Life Avatars Were Removed

Responding to the news that Linden Lab is returning last names to Second Life after a 7 year absence, reader Dartagan Shepherd recalls a Linden staffer telling him that they were removed because "they were losing a massive amount of signups at the point where people had to choose a last name." Founding Linden engineer James Cook also stopped by comments to confirm just that:

One of the last features I worked on before leaving Linden Lab was the removal of last names. Dartagan Shepherd is right -- whenever you have a registration flow for any service you lose signups for each additional step. Picking a last name from a list is unusual for an online service. Potential new users were pretty confused: "Why can't I just use the username I use everywhere else?" and/or "Why can't I just use my real name?". Of course, I worked at Linden when we added last names (dunno who actually wrote that code). So we've come full full full circle. 

I think the real problem is that the original naming system didn't include an option to change the last name at least once, and onscreen text explaining that during set-up: "Choose your last name to start -- you can change this later." This would have nudged new users to think about their avatar identity as something unique and special, and create the name in relation with the existing SL community. People asking, "Why can't I just use the username I use everywhere else?", is exactly why so many new users wound up typing in their AOL handle or other inappropriate username into the first name option, leading to thousands of avatars named "Bobbie_Joe_73 Midnight" and suchlike -- who were then treated as clueless noobs by the established community. 

By the way, when I say James Cook is a "founding Linden engineer",  I mean that -- he started at Linden Lab when the startup was still on Linden Street in San Francisco, and helped create (and did the voiceover) for this early, early, early demo from 2001 of what eventually became Second Life:

Why Do So Many People in Second Life Decline to Have Much of One? (Comment of the Week)

Interesting conversation over this post about how some men roleplay as female avatars in order to befriend a woman in hopes of revealing their actual gender and starting a real life heterosexual relationship. To which phenomenon, "JohnC" observes:

As interesting as this conversation is, and I have lived it from both sides for many years, I often wonder why we have it at all. We go to a place called Second Life where, as I understand it from the name, the idea is to live a virtual life of your choice, whatever that may be, and to live it if you wish totally disconnected from your RL. For many it is an escape from RL in fact. And that does not always mean you are having a bad first life, you just have other parts of yourself that maybe cannot be expressed openly in your otherwise fine RL.

But all around in SL you find people who just don't get it at all. People who have a chance to be something else, anything they wish, and they just create an avatar that looks exactly like them in RL. Or people who are all for creating a new self but, “Hang on I didn't mean being weird and pretending to be a woman”.

To me that seems a bit like being granted three wishes for anything you desire and asking for a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. Of course it is up to anyone in SL to play it the way they wish. Just seems a bit of a waste of opportunity.

Which inspires JohnC to think about an odd user interface that's been part of Second Life from its inception, that seems to contradict its branding -- which, he argues, then distorts our expectations when it comes to avatar-based relationships: 

Second Life Land Revenue is a "Necessary Evil" But Linden Lab Should Use It to Fundamentally Improve Second Life (Comment of the Week)

It's a unique irony: Linden Lab's Sansar is currently getting lots of press for projects like its official Ready Player One tie-in, but while the social VR platform is mostly subsidized by Second Life land revenue, very few SLers themselves seem to be interested in using Sansar. A reader named Gaga Gracious graciously riffs off that fact, and makes an interesting point about the high land costs that Second Life users perennially complain about:

Perhaps I wouldn't mind the high cost of Second Life if a big investment was being made in the platform itself rather than Sansar which I suspect is doomed to fail anyway (Sansar centralized while everything seems to be moving towards decentralization and blockchain).

However, that said, I have reluctantly come to accept the land-focused business model of Second Life as a necessary evil (coughs!) that actually helps SL limit the amount of land available and thus keeps land barons in business, another necessary evil if users would rather not commit to a high setup fee and can drop the land anytime without loss. At the same time I can see why OpenSim never really took off either, and this is a lesson for Linden Lab too! Land costs have often been cited as good reason to move to OpenSim but what seems partly to have prevented SL residents from doing that in any great numbers is that they have too much invested in Second Life inventories and well established relationships.

Even the fact Second Life is expensive still hasn't caused an exodus to Sansar either and likely never will given the widely held view that SL users are being ripped off to finance other platforms while they can only hope Linden Lab will continue to support SL, let alone improve it.

I hear all the time that SL and OS can't be improved much more now or perhaps the developers just don't want to work on it any more (the article quoted would suggest that) but, together, SL and OS still has a big user base that are not showing signs of going anywhere.

The solution? Ms. Gracious argues that Second Life's paying user base deserves a dramatic change to the platform:

Dell Stopped Accepting Bitcoin Payments Last Year But the Bitcoin-Euphoric Press Barely Noticed

Hey remember that nice infographic showing the 100+ major companies and organizations which accept Bitcoin as payment? Important update via a comment from longtime NWN reader Laura Pevehouse, who works for Dell:

Dell's pilot with Bitcoin ended last year. As I noted in an update to our original announcement, we demand was too low to make it viable in the long run.

Evidently, Dell's processing costs didn't outweigh the revenue Dell was getting from Bitcoin. I'm somewhat surprised, because it at least makes a little more sense to buy a $3500 gaming laptop with Bitcoin than spend Bitcoin to buy, say, a $50 game from Steam. (Which also recently discontinued Bitcoin payments.) I deeply suspect other companies besides Dell have discontinued their experiment with Bitcoin.

I'm sorry I missed Dell's original discontinuation notice, but then again, Googling "Dell discontinued Bitcoin payments" shows little or now media coverage -- even though Dell is one of the biggest companies to attempt trading in Bitcoin.

Why so little coverage? Probably because media outlets are still publishing stories like this one:

Sansar Can't Succeed Without Event Promotion (Comment of the Week)

Kate Miranda of Music Island Online, made a very good point about content creation in Sansar:

"Without social and cultural experiences in Sansar, no one will be there long to buy furnishings or clothing. As one of the longtime live music event organizers in Second Life I'm not aware of any attempt to reach out to folks like me or events like I organize. I was passed up as a beta-tester as apparently soft content like music events wasn't 'content creation' in their minds."

This seems to be right from a social media perspective at least -- Sansar's official Twitter account has not promoted a single Sansar-based event since December 15th. (For the official Star Wars art museum.) This despite the fact that there's been many prominent Sansar events since then, such as the launch of a new cyberpunk city last weekend.

Kate argues that declining Linden Lab support for events in Second Life has also hurt that virtual world:

What Challenges Must Sansar Overcome to Succeed as a Virtual World Fashion Platform?

Longtime NWN reader Chic Aeon raised some smart points last week on the challenges that Linden Lab will need to overcome, in order to grow Sansar into a successful virtual world fashion platform. And while you may not agree with them, they're worth discussing -- and hopefully, will encourage other content creators to describe additional challenges too:

High Complexity of User-Created Fashion

IF they figured out a way to import from Marvelous Designer and keep the "avatar complexity settings" low, then great, as lots of folks that make clothes like MD. HOWEVER, Marvelous Designer is the number one "issue" on the SL Forums for uploading problems for mesh clothes. The problem is almost always the very HIGH COMPLEXITY of the garment. It certainly may ("may") be possible to keep that complexity low, but since Sansar is going to be user- generated content, we are going to have to assume that the same issues from hobbiest designers will flow over into that platform. I don't see how this is going to help what seems to be the number one complaint with Sansar -- the half hour load times. Again, not my area of expertise, just what I see on the forums, so perhaps someone with more knowledge can reply here.

Responding to reports that Sansar clothing still needs to be adjusted after being put on an avatar, Chic brought up another challenge:

Six Huge Second Life-Themed Flickr Groups to Follow

Caroline Apollo very kindly shared her list of Second Life-related groups on Flickr, and they're considerably larger than the ones I previously listed:

• Flickrites of Secondlife, 19631 subscribers
• Second Life - Avatars, 13138 subscribers
• SecondLife, 12643 subscribers
• i ❥ Second Life, 12578 subscribers
• Second Life Fashion, 11207 subscribers
• Avatars with Attitude!, 10278 subscribers
• Photographers of Secondlife, 10046 subscribers

Any others in the five or six-figure subscriber range readers should know about?

The Linden Dollar Exchange Rate Dipped When Sansar Launched (Comment of the Week)

The loss of private sims in Second Life has slowed this year, likely in part due to the launch of Sansar, renewing interest and confidence in virtual worlds and Linden Lab. But reader "Pulsar" points out another notable data point -- the Linden Dollar exchange rate significantly dropped after Sansar's launch:

I think it's true that Sansar renewed some interest for Second Life, indirectly (and among outsiders and ex-SLers). Inside SL instead, it looks like it had the opposite effect, when it was launched. [See chart] It looks like people in SL were cashing out scared (the red line is the moment when Sansar was released). The subsequent Linden Lab announcement of SL updates may have helped to reassure the crowd. But the launch renewed the interest for virtual words and other LL products indeed ("So Linden Lab released a new virtual world? Ah, LL from Second Life? Is that one still around?"), so journalists wrote various new articles about SL, which may have helped a little.

It's possible Linden Lab made last Summer's announcement of updating Second Life in response to this Linden Dollar dip. Pulsar doesn't buy my theory that the company's grid-wide new Glytches game also helped slow the sim loss, especially compared with other factors: