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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

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Dartagan Shepherd

If the research ends up bearing this out, yes it's a beautiful thing.

I've said elsewhere that its only redeeming value has been to change lives by providing incomes and creating jobs.

Something it has managed to do quite well for some people for some years now, although less so as it declines.

Cube Republic

I suffer from trigeminal neuralgia. It's a debilitating pain disorder. I really like SL as an escape from this. x

Arcadia Codesmith

A broad virtual world won't be as efficient at a particular task as a tool narrowly dedicated to that task. There are always trade-offs between specialization and generalization.

That's no excuse not to strive for excellence in every aspect of your virtual world. SL should always have the goal of being just as good as the best specialized tools, even if that goal is ultimately impractical. "Good enough" never is.

Push hard enough, and you might find that although the best specialized tools are more powerful, your less-powerful tools are much more widely used because they're easier to access.

Shockwave Yareach

Arcadia: you have to accept "Good enough" as a stepping stone to "better and better". Because perfection, like Shangrila, can never be reached -- only pursued. If you never deploy anything until it's perfect, you'll never deploy anything.

And I know a number of disabled folks in SL. They are land owners and creators there, and are able to enjoy their lives with others in SL by throwing off the limitations of Distance and disability. By simply turning on a program, they have a good body again, their friends aren't a thousand miles away like in RL, and they can make some income using their skills.

Such a shame LL has driven these folks out too, with their overpricing and their attitude that "none of you really own anything in SL anymore" that started last year. You know, if I buy a car, I expect to own it. If I lease a car then I know I don't own it and don't expect to own it. But you can't sell me a car and then tell me I was leasing -- that's crooked. Either I own the sim and the stuff I create, or I do not. And a simple solution to the CYA worries of the lawyers is to just say that we own our property in SL, and that said property can only exist in SL -- if SL ceases to exist then so does the property within it.

Arcadia Codesmith

Shockwave, I'm seeing more and more virtual worlds release "good enough" systems that, with just a little more development time, could have been great systems. To be honest, I'm at the point where I rejoice whenever an announced feature is held back for further work, because it shows the dev team is more concerned about the quality of the release than meeting an arbitrary schedule.

Some of the "good enough" systems do eventually evolve into great systems, but others fade into the background because the players are indifferent to them... they only see what the system is, not what it has the potential to become.

There's a balance, of course. Features that sit in development limbo for months or years are almost as bad. But it's the opposite problem I'm seeing most often in the field.

Shockwave Yareach

I first came into SL in 2006 knowing that the problems were just the sort of problems one expects with first generation solutions. I fully expected that as hardware power increased and LL redesigned a number of critical things (a single asset cluster and the simcrossing faults come to mind) that SL would become an incredible system allowing people all over the world to be able to throw off the shackles of distance and infirmity. A brave new world was about to be born.

It's 7 years later. We are still waiting...

Good enough is not the stopping point. Better and Better is supposed to be how things work. But LL has no reason to fix the bugs in the architecture, so Good enough is all we will get until the cash cow is dried up and LL pulls the plug.

Ceiling Cat is watching you

No, just no, please, no. It is enough that SL has a rep for being a delusional refuge for the socially awkward, lonely and biggest losers. So please, LL, don't even think about marketing SL as a tool for the disabled and socially unable to find a "way to communicate". That is awful. Just no! But since LL doesn't bother to market SL at all, I am only a little worried.

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