Survey Results: Linden Layoffs Overwhelmingly Make New World Notes Readers Pessimistic About Second Life's Future

Here's the results of last week's survey, asking readers if the layoff/Second Life-on-a-browser news has changed their perspective of Second Life's future. From a sample of 500 (extremely large for an NWN survey), over 71% said it made them more pessimistic. Of course these are early results taken during the heat of the news, and opinions may change if Linden Lab goes into more detail about their future plans. (In which case, I'll run another survey.)

Comments

[Hitomi Tiponi]

'opinions may change if Linden Lab goes into more detail about their future plans' - and this is what they need to do and soon, the residents need to have some hope that the Lab knows what it is doing and where it is going.

How about linking this in with the opening of SL7B next week - after all they sacked the Linden leading that as well!

[Lizzie Lexington]

I refuse to worry about it because it's something beyond my control. I am just going to enjoy what second life has to offer me for the moment and if it goes away then I will worry.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Of course, surveys with self-selected respondents aren't likely to give a representative sample--you get people motivated to respond, or even motivated to skew the results by nudging all their friends to come vote a certain way. (Then again, Shere Hite rode such surveys to fame, so I guess it worked for her.)

That said, I tend to think people indeed are more pessimistic at the news. I also agree with Hitomi-san, more information would help a lot.

[soror nishi]

Life is a sweet bowl of prims....no need to worry there are loads of grids out there.

[brinda allen]

See soror's comment....
And come visit Inworldz...believe it or not, there will be someone standing there on loggin to say, "Hello, welcome!". (It might be the creator,I've seen that happen)

[Galatea Gynoid]

Such pessimism is par for the course after such news. Reminds me of all the times I was told to start looking for a new computer because there'd been layoffs or setbacks and Apple would be going out of business soon. This started in grade school and continued into my college years, when people finally stopped bugging me about my Macintosh computer (they were too busy listening to their iPods).

People have been telling me SL would be dead soon since 2005. Every few months LL commits some grave error that everyone tells me is the certain death blow to SL. I should collect them all, all these posts, and store them on the hard drive of my Mac, but I'm not sure I have enough hard drive space, and it'd be foolish to invest in upgrading the hardware on a doomed computer, right? XD

[Little Lost Linden]

Unfortunately, as of late, all Linden Lab has been doing are things to make everyone pessimistic.

They seem to be unable to avoid it. I know I thought it was the lamest idea to turn SL into Business-SL. Thank the maker that didn't work out so well.

They need to really focus and put the customer first. Let's fix those sim crossings, the lag, IM caps, high CPU utilization, free up the bot space\performance issues, etc.

Give us another eyecandy treat again, like with Windlight. Remember how lame the water used to look before Windlight? I remember being entranced with the Windlight water for days. I would go float out on raft and just soak it all in. We need some treats because they are long overdue.

Little Lost Linden
http://www.thebotzone.net

[Paisley Beebe]

@ Lizzie Lexington, ha thats what I think about death...hmmmm

[Hitomi Tiponi]

@LittleLostLinden - some nice eye-candy is on it's way - make sure you have a decent graphics card handy. ;)

[Paisley Beebe]

@Hitomi Tiponi oh do tell!!!! pleeese we won't tell a soul! promise! actually contact me inworld I want the scoop before that damn Mitch Wagner gets it!

[Little Lost Linden]

Oh I do have a decent graphics card. I have an ATI HD5850 that I purchased just for running SL. You can imagine my dismay when I noticed only a 3 fps increase from my previous ATI HD3870.

The problem is that SL isn't programmed to use the GPU. If it were, I would get some rock solid performance. It's as if SL is programmed to only use the CPU and ignore 80% of your video card's GPU.

Could be just my settings but I really don't think so and I've read others that have witnessed the same exact thing. My quadcore system with the 5850 could can handle any other game on the market in very righ rezzes with very amazing framerates....except SL. SL brings it to its knees.

The reason it does this is because it just is not using the full potential of the video card. So for me, if SL could actually utilize a video card to its full potential, well that would be an amazing treat. And I don't want to have to rely on the SL competing datamining viewers. I know Kirstens might help on the GPU front, but I don't want even more of my data given away if I can help it.

[qarl]

> The problem is that SL isn't programmed to use the GPU.

that's just completely false.

the reason the graphics lag is because the in-world content has 10x the complexity of game content.

a co-worker today sent me a picture of someone's shoelaces. they had the same geometric detail as an entire level of half life.

[Little Lost Linden]

Well, when I monitor my video card performance, it is doing next to nothing when SL is running while the 4 CPU's are being trashed about.

It would be one thing if I was the only person experiencing this (low GPU utilization mixed with high CPU utilization). Unfortuantely, I know a lot of people with this very same issue and no way to resolve it.

Regardless of what causes it (complexity levels, etc.), SL should at least use a decent chunk of the GPU but it doesn't ever seem too. I've read numerous articles about it being programming issues. I'll try to dig them up.

[Ann Otoole]

What if LL is planning more rounds of layoffs without explaining what is going on? What will that do? People are already trying to cash out and it is devaluing the L$. LL is not trying to stop it. In fact LL appears to either not care or this is by design. It appears to me LL is closing SL down and may be doing wave layoffs to avoid the WARN Act problems. If LL did 2 more "just less than 50%" layoffs then there would be maybe 50 people left to run this thing. That would be rather telling wouldn't it.

Yes Mr. Kingdon needs to explain himself and if his job is to close SL then say so. Let people make their decisions. Of course with the demographics of SL as shown here: http://www.quantcast.com/secondlife.com then it would not surprise me if the "rich guys" on LL's Board consider the SL residents to be of little economic value. Given these demographics look like McDonald's demographics then it is small wonder the catch line is "Your World Your Way".

The future does not require shades at this point.

[LokiLoki]

they are always going on about future plans, cant they actually DO something instead?

[Arcadia Codesmith]

At the end of the day, Second Life is a hammer. You don't take a hammer into a meeting and decide that its purpose is to make boardrooms or strip joints or housing projects or country clubs. You just make the best hammer you can and leave the architecture and social planning to others.

Maybe that's what the King is coming to understand. Maybe.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

@Ann, those demographics make me want to drive nails into my (block)head.

57% of SLers in the US have "no college"? Even taking away the 29% who reported being age 3 to age 17....

How does Quantcast collect data?

[Little Lost Linden]

"At the end of the day, Second Life is a hammer."

I always thought SL was a slow moving, wet, sluggish sponge. And yet somehow, we have al become attached to that sponge in some way or another...