Creating Second Life Content Offline "Intrinsically Reduces One's Attachment" to Second Life (Comment of the Day)

Last week's post on how mesh has changed the nature of Second Life as a creativity platform provoked some really interesting comments I want to highlight throughout this week -- today, starting from these thoughts from veteran Second Life scripter Ordinal Malaprop, who was creating seriously cool SL hacks back in 2007:

"I remember saying this when sculpties started to appear. Of course they weren't the first content item that required an external tool—skins and animations always have, and scripting might as well be an external tool for all the connection it has to anything else (I used to script in a text editor and paste the results into the script box in-world). But they all required that one interacted to see the results, observe those, make changes and round and round."

Ms. Malaprop argues that offline creation creates a psychological distance on the subjective level, and on the objective front, makes it more difficult to justify using SL versus another mesh-compatible platform:

"Being able to do the entire creation outside of SL and import it as the last step intrinsically reduces one's attachment, and there are far more alternatives nowadays. If I wanted to build something interactive for general access, and needed to use Blender etc. anyway, and only send the final result to SL at the last minute, why not just use Unity?"

A very good question, though I suppose you could argue that it's not either-or -- why not upload to both for the benefit of both communities (not to mention monetization from each)?

More thoughts soon!

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Comments

[Scarp Godenot]

There is much to be said about outside mesh building creating less sl involvement.

First and most obviously is the enormous learning curve. This has the unintended consequence of making obsolete those who are unwilling or more importantly unable to make the huge commitment to learning new tools. In the general population, I'm guessing that those with the correct abilities are quite rare. Long time builders give up their shops and just quit the entire enterprise.

And let's not discount the social aspect of building things inside of SL. Many an old build was built on site by two to several working side by side.

There is also something now which I refer to as 'mesh prejudice' and that is the myth that anything imported as a mesh object is superior to everything built with in world tools.

People building perfectly good things inside of SL have been intimidated by this idea and have quit. And I'm not just referring to store owners, but also artists. They feel like their stuff just isn't good enough when that just isn't true.

Hopefully project Sansar will involve some sort of inworld building tools. It is this that in my opinion made SL attractive to so many back in the day. The fact that anyone could create anything with simple tools that were easy to learn.

This is what drives the massive success of minecraft. Empowering the little people, the masses.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

SL doesn't have in-world paint brushes, pens, or printers. Does having to use GIMP, Photoshop, or some other program offline to create textures reduce one's attachment to Second Life, or, to reference a famous old canard, create an elite/FIC? Linden Lab doesn't have the resources to create in-world tools as capable as third-party tools, be they 2D graphics programs, 3D graphics programs, or programming languages. Better to do what they can do well.

[Lindal Kidd]

While I agree with Ms. Yeuxdoux that better tools are available outside of SL, I also strongly agree with Mr. Godenot! I have dabbled with powerful creation tools like Photoshop and LightWave3D, but the toolset that I can get my mind around and actually use to MAKE things is the SL primbuilding toolset.

Empower the residents, and they'll create up a storm. Limit it to an elite, and you limit your creative population and the ultimate popularity of your world.

[Tankgirl]

Can you include as a source someone that has created more recently then 8 years ago next time maybe? Or go wild, included a second source one time!

[Orca Flotta]

As nifty as the old primbuilding tool was, and as good for SKL since people needed to be online in order to create and as wonderfully democratic it was since all resis had the same tools on hand, as impractical it would be nowadays. Times have changed, everything became more professional and nobody would buy my primbuilds even if they were beautiful.

But I guess a far more devastating blow for SL was the fukn Marketplace. Sending your users offline to do stuff that was intended to be purely a inworld activity was the worstest idea ever. Results are well-known: less ppl in world and empty malls. After LL had bought the other shopping platform they should have binned the whole "mail-order" idea, never to be mentioned again.

[Cyberserenity]

My happiest time in SL was in the beginning and i was in world all the time building.

[A.J.]

Orca is right about Marketplace being far more responsible for reducing inworld attachment.

It's all been a long time coming. The swift flow of money became the decision maker for everything. Leadership was based on profit as opposed to any kind of long term vision. Detachment has just trickled down from the top.

Then we end up with a company that can't get far enough away from it's customers and then cries because they don't have enough people to use.

So obviously, what we need is a new world that is more detached.

[Chuck Baggett]

What does "SKL" mean in "As nifty as the old primbuilding tool was, and as good for SKL" in Orca Flotta's comment? A typo for "SL"?

[irihapeti]

I think that we sometimes forget that the biggest group of people are them who mod and mount

like yesterday I spend 2 hours inworld modding a tail for my neko. I never made the components of the tail. Some prim. Some sculpt. Some mesh. Or made the textures even. Or the scripts

I just took 2 dif tails and modded them into a new one. And combined with a bow that I got off something else

+

then today I spend nearly 3 hours modding these sculpt boots I got. So I can fit my mesh leggings inside them and not have them stick out the sides. Then I spend another hour modding these unrigged mesh sneakers I got so the tops can fit inside mesh jeans

+

is heaps of us do this every day inworld. Not just on attachments/clothes but also mounting / modding our homes and furnitures