Survey: What Kind of Second Life Patriot Are You?

Happy Independence Day, all you fellow Americans now reading this. On this July 4th, I entertained the following thought: Second Life inspires in its users a kind of patriotism very similar to the kind of patriotism Americans feel for the United States. You can see that in the way they often talk about SL, less like a game or social Internet platform, and more like an actual place founded on very real ideals. But just as there are many varieties of American patriotism, depending on personal and political background, there are many varieties of Second Life patriotism. Below are many sentiments I often encounter, and not coincidentally, they may remind you of things people say about the US. Please choose the three which most closely reflect your own sense of SL, and discuss in Comments:

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Image from Second Life's patriotic tax revolt of 2003.

Comments

[Khannea Suntzu]

Second Life is a mess. But even with all it's fault it is drifting towards a number of incredible opportunities. These opportunities hinge on

- hardware increases over time
- new software solutions as they emerge
- demographic change in how people work and play
- crowd-sourced solutions inside SL (addons, plugins, skins)
- synergies with other emerging technological trends
- worldwide economical and financial trends
- new markets opening up (architecture, products depiction, stores, collaborative design)
- new interface hardware as it emerges (better keyboards, datagloves, 3D screens, HUDs, etc.)
- a substantially easier interface
- SL evolving in a desktop system interface (unlikely) running 3D user applications.

If SL jumps most of these hoops, there is no reason that by 2020 SL (or a derivative) wouldn't be bigger than Facebook is right now.

Right now SL is growing at a steady pace. It takes just a few changes and SL will start growing exponentially. But this is far from certain.

And eventually SL may fail if a competitor steps into a gap left by LL. Or maybe SL might end up 'bought' by a big player. Also SL has enemies - and it wouldn't be hard to engineer a 'crash' where a small group of IT people intentionally attack and destroy the current business model.

I know at least four ways to do this - LL should take steps to protect itself from such an attack.

[Chaffro]

I sometimes wonder why some people even bother logging in anymore. I love Second Life and my day-to-day experiences with it are wholly positive. Eat that, suckas!

[nexus burbclave]

I am the type of SL patriot that uses FireFox and is having trouble with the survey cutting off in my primary browser. :)

It works fine in Safari though, so I completed the survey there.

[nexus burbclave]

Regarding my selection of other, it is because I once strongly agreed with "SL was once great but its owners have mostly forgotten the values and people that made it that way". I honestly felt slighted when Linden Lab distanced itself from "your world, your imagination" because it was that promise that had attracted me to Second Life in the first place.

It feels like Linden Lab is finding their way again after 40 years in the wilderness (in internet time). Rod Humble deserves a lot of credit for this turn around, as do all of the Lindens that fought the good fight through the M Linden era. As a customer, I feel like I have a partner again. There is a lot of work to do, but I feel better about Second Life's prospects than I have in a long time.

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks for enduring your survey strife, Nexus!

[Marianne McCann]

I'm right there with you, @nexus. I *hope* were beyond some of the ill treatment and such that marked 2008-2010. There's a LOT of trust that needs to be rebuilt.

[Jjccc]

Ive been crashed spat at pissed on griefed shot at kicked caged bumped abuse lied to, forced to look grey and many other things but i keep coming back so i guess yes i am an SL patriot

[Sterling Wright]

I still love SecondLife, but I have to admit that I am feeling very captured by the Unity3D and JIBE mash-up I am now working with. What mostly attracts me about this option is 1)the ability to recreate ANY visual style, since the models and graphics can be produced in any standard graphic or modelling application. 2) The ability to deliver the 3D worlds in the browser and embedded on my webpage/blog or (if I used it) my Facebook page.

I love SL for its social quality, but from a creative perspective and from the standpoint of ushering in the 3D immersive internete as a tech-evolutionary whole, I love VWs on the open-web even more.

I have no ill feelings at all toward LL or SL, and voted "SL is still an inspirational example...." I am quite disappointed, however, by the nastiness I have seen emerge through comments on this blog and in other places over the last year or so. SL used to be such a high-brow and delightful community. What happened????

I still think Hamlet does a terrific job!

[Tateru Nino]

Personally, I find the word "patriot" to be insulting. While I may feel positive about such things, I'd never want that particular label applied to me.

[pixels sideways]

SL should always remain "Your world, your imagination" since the content is created by the residents/participants who do indeed make it "their world' with content created from "their imaginations."

The only thing LL supplies is the infrastructure: the servers, software, tools and support and hopefully, upgrades to better technolgies -- just like my web host does. Without the content created by the residents/users, SL wouldn't exist.

So having read the rebranding blog post, I disagree with the sterile SL3D concept which makes SL seem robotic and boring and facebookish. I think something more along the lines of a DIY concept is far more engaging. There's way too much passive crap on the net.

And for those who are not DIY minded, they still get the benefit of all the content created in SL made by SL users/residents.

And as noted above, new technologies will continue to emerge and some are and will be integrated into SL and there will be crossover to other platforms but the content in SL (as in all other VR or 3D online environments) will always be made by the users/residents whether it's amazing immersive environments and works of art or craptacular shite.

But in order to keep the truly innovative and talented content makers coming back, LL has to make sims affordable.

When LL doubled the fees for edu and non-profits, and this during hard economic times when money for institutions is tight, a lot of institutions left or significantly dialed back their investments in SL and started looking elsewhere in places like Open Sim that cost considerably less.

Many of SL's most innovative and creative content creators came through those sims and left when they got jacked. I continue to see folks scaling back as well as a continuing exodus.

LL has to figure out a way to make sims affordable and certainly consider dialing back down the fees for those non profit and edu institutions who were not reaping profits from SL but instead, helping LL reap profits by making freely accessible content that provided SL residents with thoughtful, fun and engaging experiences beyond shopping centers, Zindra and RP sims.

And let's not forget that LL charges for EVERY SINGLE TEXTURE, SOUND AND ANIMATION uploaded so everything the content creators made and still make on the non-profit and edu sims adds more $$ to LL's take in addition to the sim fees.

As does every upload all other content creators pay for no matter what they make and what they ultimately choose to do with their content creations.

I think SL has a lot of potential if it can be made more affordable.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue LL might consider. Like creating another Xstreet style online content delivery service that would work with Open sims in conjunction with an independent inventory storage config that would allow SL users/residents to use their inventories on Open sims outside of SL. Ideally, this would insure that all the "perms" and creator creds remain intact.

Make that magic happen and I'll get the SL logo tattooed on my toe. :-)

[Pandora Outlets]

Nice, and thanks for sharing this info with us.Good Luck!