In recent weeks, New World Notes has been inundated by increasingly uncivil comments that fall well outside this blog's guidelines, culminating with three posts about Second Life and Project Sansar starting last Monday and then mounting last Wednesday. Typically comments like these are filtered out immediately, but partly due to the Thanksgiving holidays and partly due to the blocking software being on the fritz, the rancor spun out of control -- especially against Linden Lab and Linden Lab's CEO, with trolls accusing them without evidence of fraud, theft, and worse. These posts' threads have been frozen and trimmed, and I apologize to readers that they became such a cesspool.
To restate NWN's existing policy in more specific terms: Making untrue and/or unsubstantiated comments that accuse Linden Lab staff of patently unethical or immoral behavior are grounds for permanent banning.
And no, this doesn't have anything to do with Linden Lab's updated Terms of Service which now has a similar clause -- but it's probably a response to the same small group of disgruntled SLers. For NWN readers, I have this request and recommendation:
The request: If you do encounter an anti-SL/LL/Sansar troll, please don't engage with them, but instead, let me know, ideally on Twitter, which gets the fastest results.
The recommendation: If you do want to criticize Second Life, Sansar, Linden Lab staff, be sure your criticisms are properly sourced, and stay focused on the policy, not the person behind them.
We are fast approaching a crucial turning point for both platforms, and people are liable to be passionate and even angry about the risks involved, but our concerns are best addressed with civil discourse, not paranoia and finger-pointing.
Thanks.
Please share this post:
I feel your pain, well a lot less of it, but I've had to censure a couple of comments on my own blog, not because they are critical, I welcome open discourse. However unsubstantiated claims are something I cannot let stand, for my own sake as well as the person making those claims.
Criticism is fine, but please don't make comments that are possibly libellous, try and stay constructive with your criticism.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Wednesday, December 02, 2015 at 04:11 PM
My gut instincts on Sansar go various ways often depending on the topic.
I see a lot of unfounded radical speculation though. People seem to want to see insane evil motives in all kinds of things of late. Is this the nature of the internet.
Did my parents generation have people sitting around the Poker table talking about the government coming to take away the cats of anyone the Sears Catalog managed to record the financial info on through placing phone orders for cyanide laced Fondue kits to call centers in Norad run by Kenyan Soviet agents...
Or is this kind of thinking new?
Its not limited to SL... I go around other internet communities and see it also. It is more common in SL. In 'randomgeekery.com' it might be a couple people 'over there', but in SL, the people NOT doing it are the couple people over there...
Sometimes when we get out of hand, we need to step back, chill out, cool off, move away from this or that forum or blog for a bit, and try to return to rational. I've had my outburts in places before, so I know that - the longer you keep at it in a given venue, the less rational you get. And it can linger around you like an Albatross for years if you manage to let yourself slip into the deep end of the pool...
At this point in regards to Sansar we don't know very much at all...
So while speculation might be fun, its also not very productive. But we should try to be hopeful on it if for no other reason than that the future of the thing we love - the virtual world that is SL, is basically on the line. It is not on the line because Sansar has put it there, its on the line because LL's future is on the line, and that future requires products that can stand up to the market.
SL is old...
LLs needs more diversity of products so that they can afford to stabilize the ones they have. The results of doing nothing are only failure. The results of doing something might be failure, or might not.
So its just better to be hopeful...
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Wednesday, December 02, 2015 at 05:24 PM
Noticed that and it was out of hand. The Ebbe comments particularly. I know you're an advocate but please don't throw honest feedback under the bus.
For instance I can say that I'm somewhat disgruntled because LL gave me the runaround on upping my cashout limit, among other things.
I've been following your blog for many years, and sometimes it borders on condescending toward valid complaining. Just don't lose that ability to portray both sides of the story.
The world is declining, painting it as perfect won't do it justice and isn't honest.
Every one that complains isn't necessarily a "whackadoodle" either.
Personally I think in the interest of longevity you might want to also branch into other areas that relate such as the popular game engines and their creators.
The line between virtual worlds and the ability for game creators to create world-like experiences gets more blurred every day as the technology evolves.
For instance, building something like Sansar isn't that difficult for game creators because Sansar has a lower barrier to entry for developers these days. And that trend will continue.
SL isn't the only creative space any longer unless your focus is just user spaces like SL and Minecraft.
Either way I'll continue to sometimes be critical in the interest of hoping that LL listens and corrects a pattern that is only resulting in decline.
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | Wednesday, December 02, 2015 at 07:33 PM
Ebbe openly admitted on cannibalising SL for the sake of Sansar, needlessly putting both platforms and his company on risk of failure and bankrupcy. This is the worst management practice I've ever seen, promoting one thing without telling us what it is, while publically doing anti-promotion for SL. He's kinda crying out "Hate us please! Don't touch any of our products!"
It will end in tears, and deservedly so.
One doesn't need to be a whackadoodle to come to the same conclusion when the bloody facts are laid out so clearly to see.
Yey, Hamlet, I see an anti-SL anti-LL troll and hater. His name is Ebbe. But why shouldn't I engagage with him? And what would it help to engage with you ... on some medium I have no clue - and ergo no use - for?
Twitter? Wouldn't I need a smartphone for that stuff? Sorry, not gonna waste my good money on a useless toy in the first place.
Posted by: Orca Flotta | Wednesday, December 02, 2015 at 09:40 PM
Using the term troll as meaning freedom fighter on my viewpoint.
Big difference between being a so-called troll & just complain for change on valid issues.
linden lab is known to make changes if enough people complain.
Several times i was the only one last month who stood up to phone***ebbe & alts while others even encouraged it.while i pointed out & attempted to make the troll realize how silly they were in my counter comments while everyone else just stood by having having popcorn.
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I defended ebbe here as login hero so please stop thinking all posts were that persons. as some of my comments were not attacking and removed 'cries'
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/10/second-life-survey-.html#comments
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I have very valid criticism of linden lab for years. the only thing Ebbe has done for mainland is save a big boat while laying off all the moles! in over two years.
but to attack his real life or create propaganda only would hurt my cause to get linden lab to be a real company and fix issues inworld or sell SL off like they did Desura or even crowd source a buyout.
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I can troll Ebbe for his lack of fixing inworld issues that's all credible facts without attacking his past or real life & i hate twitter and Facebook while never using them period.
And for now on he is E.Linden
"like M.Linden but Better"
I've been making comments on here for years with my valid concerns regarding linden lab without being undisruptive 'cries'
please do not group me together with this other troll who invaded the soapbox with butthurt feelings
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my agenda is tough love with linden lab while letting the fetted inner core know its not over. until its over!
who cares what ebbe did before second life it only matters what he has done since cashing his first paycheck from battery st.
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defending myself since several of my posts were removed as if i was the crazy poster who is someone else 'not me' and not a friend of mine.
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Please publish this so i can have closure here as if these are the new rules regarding linden lab and not being able to express critical viewpoints then its best if you allow me this one last post please.
Posted by: Login Hero | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 12:42 AM
So a sim being serviceable for over 8 months for PAYING customers isn't fraud and/or theft?
Posted by: Nope | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 01:00 AM
I don't think the majority condones the personal attacks but there a lot of relevant gripes that get lost in the shuffle and are branded as trolling.
For an example, the seemingly endemic corruption within the Lab must be seen for what it is. Your job as a relevant media source is to expose this for the good of everyone.
There was recently a post a couple of blogs back about one of the more well known creators being a daughter of a linden lab employee and getting four free sims in addition to getting other perks that gives her an advantage over other creators (such as perhaps access to sansar).
Why shouldn't this allegation be further explored to verify whether or not it is true instead of being buried under the illusions that it is trolling?
Anyone who runs a enterprising venture and competes with other users in that same virtual world while benefiting from secret backroom deals and arrangements because of family ties in Linden Lab must be exposed. It is in everyone's interests.
Posted by: Eyes that see | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 01:42 AM
And the Turkey Buzzard says hiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssss…
Very interesting development concerning the TOS. Especially the part about “harassment”. Would it be considered “harassment” to point out the following? In my opinion, Ebbe is just the latest in a very long line of LL employees that just cannot be straight with their customers. I consider that lying. And people who do that I consider to be liars.
1. Failure to disclose to land customers that some people are getting huge discounts on their monthly land tier(taxes). Grandfathered regions – 33.3% discount, Atlas Land program even larger. Most customers over the past 9 years purchase land/pay setup fees/pay tier believing they are operating on the same playing field that everyone else is. When LL operating as the “government” of SL set Tier(Tax Rate) the same for everyone, ran the Lindex, and stayed out of the content “marketplace” SL boomed! Since 2006 one bad decision after another from my point of view and opinion.
Tier is too high. I agree with that. But it is the way LL tilts the playing field to advantage certain “players” – land owners and content creators that keeps people like me and millions of others from investing in this platform or Sansar. Had LL stayed out of the way like they did prior to fall 2006 SL would be something to see now. I can only imagine the thousands of never to be seen “experiences”. And all those long lost regions that would still be on the grid. And would still be there to be enjoyed. LL, the board, and every CEO screwed up. And they cannot admit it. Sad… ;)
So, if telling the world what happened in the past concerning SL and LL and what we all think about it is considered harassment by ole Eb’s then so be it. BAN AWAY!!! ;)
Posted by: Cathartes Aura | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 04:00 AM
This time LL will have a large competition in Virtual Reality, if they make a mistake other competitors will destroy them, but after so many years of experience building a virtual world on top of a platform they have created in 2003 they should be the right person for the job.
Some mistakes are irreversible as they would destroy SL and cannot be fixed, and some things simply cannot be done in SL due to the limitations.
With this much VR hype Sansar cannot die, majority of creators from SL are or should be interested into it, which means there will be content creation at the start and LL already has alpha testers creating something.
As for SL, I do see it surviving several years, mostly because Sansar won't have as much content and -that- will ensure it lives for some years longer. Those who hear of Sansar will hear they were behind SL as well, which might get us some new users, and VR gear working with SL.
Certainly they are not perfect or near it, they did a lot of mistakes and some could even be fixed yet they don't do it, but when you have a 12 year old product which outlived so many others, you (should) have the potential for something great.
Currently my concern on both SL and Sansar is, Ebbe mentioned on labchat that marketplace regulation (team?) is doing a good job. There are ton of copybotted skins being sold and ripped assets. That is not a good job, and it is something fixable.
Posted by: Nethya Emor | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 04:58 AM
I've never commented on anything here before, but I feel like I should
First, kind of glad to see that some sane people not going "RAWWER PHONEZECKS EBBE IS KILLING SL 11!!!1" are still around
I've been a content developer in SL for around 8 years now, learned to script in LSL, learned to use outside 3d software for sculpties, and whenever mesh came around I was already somewhat prepared for it because of the time I took to learn how to sculpt, and actually managed to cash out some decent money just from building what I liked to build.
After all the news and people going crazy about Sansar cannibalizing SL and etc... all I can think of is "alright, I'm fine with that" for quite a simple reason
SL is old, I'd say ancient even, even with graphics on ultra it still looks worse than most games from 2008, and what goes on graphics is even worse on pretty much everything else
Sure, there are plenty of beautiful places in SL, nicely done animations, but the amount of time, knowledge and work it takes for you to make something even "okay" to nowadays standards is insane
shaders are just horrible, that's one of the reasons whenever you see a gamerip in SL it looks 10 times worse than the actual game model, Oh! And also the fact that it supports textures only as large as 1024x1024, most of the details just vanish on compression
all of that not even coming close to mention performance wise issues, which still is the bigger problem with SL, but I can see that happen when you are running a 12 year old engine just throwing things on top of it to try and make it look "shinnier"
There's just so many wrong things with it that at least in my view the best thing to do would be burning it to the ground and making a new one, and that has been a feeling a lot of my fellow creator friends share even before sansar was announced.
as a creator I can say the overall picture I get of Sansar is a kind of "VR internet", different locations would have different themes and you would be limited to do what the moderator lets you do on it, kind of like different websites (it's already been said that the experience moderator will be able to limit your AV choices), pretty much a game engine with lots of games in a single engine
Now, in case it doesn't have any "general experience type" where you can go dressed as whatever you like to do whatever you want, I don't see it as being even close to similar to SL
If my guess is right and that's what Sansar turns out to be I'd still say it's interesting in a creators point of view, you would be able to make your own little games and experiences on a general platform and have people hopping from one experience to the other whenever they feel like it
As long as the "land" fees are not ridiculously high (300 dollars is just straight on insane) I'll very probably be trying it out, on the sole idea of "one would have to work VERY hard to make something more annoying than what SL is for creation right now"
I'm pretty aware that the creation of Sansar might very well kill both of them, but I don't really see how SL would have much of a future in the next couple of years trying to go up against all other metaverses being created now (kind of hard running a 12 year old engine against anything nowadays and expecting better results) and I think that's what Ebbe meant when he said "if we won't do it someone else will"
what thoughts do you guys have for SL/Sansar, High fidelity, and all other metaverse platforms coming soon from a player perspective?
(if you could comment without going full "BURN THE LINDENS!" I would appreciate, it's getting pretty fucking boring by now)
I apologize for any grammar/punctuation mistakes, english is not my main language, but I would really like to know your views on the future from here, so if you could comment that would be neat!
Posted by: P. Gibbs | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 06:54 AM
@P. Gibbs
That's not bad, perhaps you should comment more often :)
"what thoughts do you guys have for SL/Sansar, High fidelity, and all other metaverse platforms coming soon from a player perspective?"
I'm not sure if those others are quite an apples to apples comparison to Sansar, although High Fidelity? No, just no.
That mainly because Rosedale brings too much ideology and hair tonic to the table as a mask for the monetization bits.
From a weird culture in early LL employees to trying to monetize his own employees with the Love Machine, to an attempt to monetize "everyone" with a failed Coffee and Power to High Fidelity, just no. I think he was responsible for many of the things gone bad with SL in the first place.
As in "don't worry, it'll scale" to "there will be no rewrites" and friends. For me High Fidelity just isn't on the table.
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 07:51 AM
I agree with you Dartagan Shepherd but luckily Hf is not only PR.
Posted by: zz bottom | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 09:01 AM
And to be sure, i'm not a LL hater, far from that, i'm premium since i opened an account, my life is spent all days, even if only for a few minutes, in SL, not on any other grid/game, my joy is Sl and nothing else in Vr, that is why i suffer, to see so many errors being made that could easily be avoided, some so amateurish that i feel that those who are in charge don't share the same lvel of commitment for SL that many users do (as i don't think i an exception but just one of many that share the same joy and love).
Posted by: zz bottom | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 10:27 AM
@Dartagan, clearly you never felt the Love from the Machine.
"Rosedale brings too much ideology and hair tonic to the table as a mask for the monetization bits."
Loud "hurrahs" sound from the Riff-Raff gallery. You've pegged it. Ebbe is trying to save a company, or something. Philip is trying that Steve-Jobs move of putting a dent in the universe, no matter what. Remember Coffee &
SweatshopPower?Posted by: Iggy | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 10:56 AM
https://lannorrasion.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/more-changes-phantom-rose-sl/
What can one say more, then feel sadness, to see some gone, even if to another virtual world.
Posted by: zz bottom | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 11:09 AM
I can't help but question how many alarms does it take a Board of Directors to notice that their building is on fire?
I understand the need for civility, but a public policy to stifle the voices of angry paying customers sounds like a "ding ding ding" to me.
Posted by: Clara Seller | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 01:58 PM
It's perfectly possible to raise alarms while remaining civil. In fact, civil complaints are far more likely to be taken seriously, while extremely inflammatory comments with unproven claims or conspiracy theories are far more likely to be dismissed out of hand.
Posted by: Wagner James Au | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 02:47 PM
@Hamlet But that's my question. Civil I understand, inflammatory is sometimes subjective, the unproven claims I have a problem with.
I had some issues with support. Do I need to send you an affidavit to say that on a blog comment?
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 03:45 PM
I think people are reading this whole thing wrong.
Say you are a hypothetical employee of a California company. A customer gets your name, and then proceeds to serially harass you, while the boss ignores it. Do you...
a) Just live with it, or,
b) Contact the California Labour Board and report your employer's inaction, which under California law they may be held liable if the employer turns a blind eye toward your harassment in the workplace. Even if a client is doing the actual harassing.
I don't think it's even possible to make real money (CEO wages &c) in this state without being occasionally cussed out. But everyone I know in that situation simply laughs it off, all the way to the bank. It's when you have someone in the vicinity of minimum wage and taking abuse for corporate profits, that is where things get sticky.
* * * * *
I doubt this has anything to do with negative PR or spin control or any of that stuff. Banning a critic is sort of like striking down Obi Wan Kenobi. It just martyrs the critic, making him invincible and utterly fearless. As it is, even a hot dog stand can refuse service to anyone; they already had this in place.
As they say in showbiz: a bad review in the papers with a picture, is far better than a good review without a picture. If there's anything to really worry about vis a vis corporate image, it's silence.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 11:37 PM
>>"And no, this doesn't have anything to do with Linden Lab's updated Terms of Service which now has a similar clause "
Ok, this is what I get for posting with a glass of wine already in me... I was talking about the Linden policy, rather than Hamlet's policies. Hamlet, your blog, your show. But I must confess I find some of the trolls amusing at times. Not so much what they say, but that such people exist, and are so far off into the weeds as to render everyone else relatively reasonable and sane.
I like seeing trolls now and then. It's a sign that we are on the free world's internet, and the environment isn't too heavily sanitised.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | Thursday, December 03, 2015 at 11:45 PM
Applauds Desmond, a wise post is so refreshing to read.
Posted by: zz bottom | Friday, December 04, 2015 at 05:22 AM
@ P. Gibbs
Your arguments are mostly off track.
Yes, agreed, SL does not "look as good" as most pro coded and designed games. But not because of the shaders or it´s age or whatever you mention.
It´s because there are almost no pro game designers at work in Second Life, maybe a handful. These people never will join any kind of "user created VR circuit" in sufficient numbers, just because they have steady jobs/contracts and better things to do than competing with a bunch of skilled dilettants and amateurs on a market which is as complex and complicated and unpredictable as wall street in your darkest nightmare. Moreover, someone able to handle 3DS or Maya isn´t necessarily a scriptor, nor an advertisement or sales person nor does he have a clue on demand in Second Life. Basic knowledge on all of this is a MUST if you want to break even in Second life - and this costs time and money. Or the Maya freak must colaborate with a scriptor and an animator in order to give his creations a life in a VR environment. And learn how to promote and sell.In fact, there never were more than a max of 50 people in SL a year who made a notable RL income by being "creators/scriptors/animators" in the widest sense - and there never will be more. And 45 out of these 50 never heard of VR before they spent some time in SL. Not because of the shaders and textures, ya kno.
I strongly doubt that any kind of user created VR environment will ever "look as good" as something entirely created and run by pure professionalism. If Sansar will be based on the "user created content" scheme it might look slightly better - but only slightly. Better shaders, maybe.
On the other hand: Show me a pro game which offers such an amazing amount of content and versatility as SL offers. There is none. Average user created content never can be of professional quality, neither by looks nor by functionality.
Second Life generates piles of pop art trash and a few shiny jewels, based on the pure imagination and creativity of the average internet user. Therefore it is a LOT more interesting, edgy, ugly, beautiful, thrilling and HONEST as most of the "good looking", carefully designed mainstream pro 3D games are - in my opinion.
Minecraft - not really Second Life - is the most consequent, minimalist model of a "user created content" environment - with striking sucess. It´s the proof that you, P. Gibbs, and all those who complain on the "uglyness" and "age" of Second Life have no clue on what really makes a user created content based VR a success - it´s not the pre-manufactured beauty designed by a few elitists as you demand it. It´s the beauty of the average mind and imagination of the many, the less skilled and less talented and their perception and definition of what "VR" is. Second Life never was as consequent as Minecraft there, it always was compromising somewhere between minimalism and complexity. Maybe that´s the reason for SL never hitting the roof as Minecraft did.
I have no idea where LL will go to with Sansar, but a few things thing for sure: If they neglect the psychological and social impact of truly user created content, it will go to nowhere. If they insist on a Sansar looking "as good as modern games" it will go to nowhere. If they don´t offer users to truly create, not UPLOAD or CONSUME, their own imaginative and intuitive model of a world, it will go to nowhere. If they insist on (at least) semi-professional 3D suite and coding skills it will go to nowhere.
Let´s wait and see if there is at least something Linden Lab got right after 10 years.
Posted by: Vivienne Schell | Friday, December 04, 2015 at 09:56 AM
Vivienne wrote "Second Life generates piles of pop art trash and a few shiny jewels, based on the pure imagination and creativity of the average internet user. Therefore it is a LOT more interesting, edgy, ugly, beautiful, thrilling and HONEST"
and wrote: "the beauty of the average mind and imagination of the many, the less skilled and less talented and their perception and definition of what "VR" is"
you spot on Vivienne about this. Has been quite a while now since somebody made a sound argument for the magic of UGC
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i also agree that if is no creator tools in the Sansar user box and we have to create everything externally, unload and mount it. And everything we can buy is no-mod (which we seeing more of in SL as it get more meshy) then unless the Sansar Experiences are as good as or better than 3D commercial games then Sansar as a business is pretty much stuffed I think
Posted by: irihapeti | Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 04:47 AM
»when you have a 12 year old product which outlived so many others, you (should) have the potential for something great.«
Hmmm, I'd say SL outlived many others since 12 years not because they have the potential but for a very very faithful client base, suffering the lab's many knuckleheaded management decisons. So it's not because of the lab but despite the lab that SL still exists.
And, ok, call me a troll but I see Ebbe's latest statements as a major attack on the lab's biggest and best product. SL is LL's only cash cow. Ebbe might hate it but it's like it is so he better learns to live with it and the wonky, whimsical users. If I had a seat on the board I'd fire Ebbe's uncouth @$$.
LL doesn't need Sansar, and LL doesn't need Ebbe but LL needs SL!
Posted by: Orca Flotta | Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 06:26 AM
@Vivienne Schell
damn, didn't expect such fierce defense coming towards SL
just let me get some things out of the way.
I love SL, you really gotta like something to spend 8 years of your life loging in daily on it, learning to create, perfecting your modeling, learning a new programming language and everything else that comes along with it to be a successful builder
user created content IS the key in SL, I am a user and I create content, I love to visit other peoples sims, check out their own creations and pretty much the whole experience with "be what you want, do what you want"
but as it helped me grow as a creator (it drove me to study 3Ds, blender, photoshop, gimp and a bunch of other softwares for years) it didn't follow along the growth rate, and every minute studying just helped to notice how harder it was to make something nice for SL than anywhere else
If you ever work with UDK, Unreal 4, even unity you will know that it's much easier to get something there to look and behave as you intended than it is in SL, and that is hell to content creation
the reason minecraft works so well is because content creation on it is EXTREMELY easy and in some senses even less restricted than SL is (if you want to make a door that opens with a lever you just place a door and a lever next to it and YAY it works, in SL you need to study LSL for 2 months to even grasp the basics of how to make 2 objects interact with each other, how to make the door rotate and etc... of course you can use someone else's script, but chances are that as soon as you rotate the door to fit another hole in the wall it will break the way the script was intended to work)
I speak mostly of the graphics limitations because that's my main area of work, but as I said, those limitations spread everywhere else, you can't program something as simple as "Press E to enter this car" because there are no key bindings (unless you actually give gestures to someone binded to the E key, tell them how gestures works and how to activate them, not the most "noob friendly" way), nor you can force someone to sit somewhere via scripts (disregarding RLV here, which is already bad for begginers and even worse for programers)
This simplicity is what make user content creation work, if you think about 2007/2008 mostly everything was prim built, and I do gotta say that prims are awesome, and those are considered the golden years of SL
Everything was pretty much uniform, all builds around the same level of professionalism, and extremely easy for anyone to build, if you searched for a "how to build in SL?" wiki page or video you would be set in 10 minutes to start. Then the Sculpties nation attacked
sculpties "broke" the uniformity, you had much more control over what you were doing, and because of that better looking things started to appear. People would go as far as make sculptie cubes just to make the edges smoother, you have a new and better tech, everyone goes for it
sculpties already were beginning to set things apart between new builders and experienced ones, you already needed outside software to use, but not really that much more experience
when mesh came it completely broke the whole "easy to make" part of the content creation. If nowadays a new player came to me and was like "HEY, that looks nice, how do I build something like that?" I would go "sighs... you study modelling, unwrapping, rendering, texturing, animation and programming for 5 years and who knows, you might get there..."
And minecraft actually looks pretty good, it's not about the graphics, but about the uniformity of it, everything is a square, you can make something so big that it would look like a circle, but in the end, it's all a bunch of squares, SL is not even close to uniform anymore, specially avatar wise, if you get a main non mesh avatar with a basic skin next to a mesh one you just go "wtf?", and that actually happens a lot
Now to some things I think you need some clarification on
I speak of shaders because they add uniformity, since SL doesn't support shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion very well (all the lag) you have to prebake them into your creations to make them look how you want to, that makes buildings look good, but under one specific lighting condition, that's why some mesh houses have such nice shadows, but when you put something on top of the floor it looks completely out of place.
now the real thing with shaders is, if they were decent enough, they could make prims have a second life (bad pun, I know...) as a building material, since you wouldn't need to prebake shadows and reflections on your mesh objects, everything would just fit in better with each other, that's kind of what the "project materials" could have brought to SL, but I'd say more than half of the users don't even play with the damn thing on because it lags them, and it's still FAR from perfect.
now, I have to say it, there are builders in SL (and that I don't mean 5 or 6, but a whole fucking bunch of them) that would make any game developer from triple A studios cry over their own inadequacy (you have no idea how good shading saves a bad model, and believe me that they have a LOT of bad models in big games, specially when you start payin attention to static meshes), good place to check that out is looking for mesh avatars, there are some things that are simply insanely good detailed (if you want to make something detailed you pretty much have to model it,since SL support for normal maps is just bad),textured(to make something with a nice texture you have to slice your model appart in several pieces so it supports multiple 1024x1024 maps),and animated (for you to make mesh avatar have facial expression you have to export a model for pretty much every single frame of the expression, just because SL doesn't support different bone rigs than it's own) or go to mars in insilico, it doesn't even feel like you are playing SL just because of how amazingly well things are put together, they actually managed to make a place feel like a game inside SL, and I tell you this, if you ever see something that looks somewhat close to game quality in SL, know that it takes 10 times the effort it does to make them look good in a game, because you have to render everything that the engine is not doing for you
now if you ever talk about SL good builders not being as good as game company ones I am going to slap you, you have no idea how much more work we have to put into something just to compensate for this engine that offers pretty much nothing (yet we still love)
I guess they could make SL viable as a creation platform again if they made something like "building 2.0" but kind of like minecraft most people are already bored of it already, that's one of the problems that comes along with simplicity, you still gotta keep it complex enough to last for a while, this was complex enough to last 12 years, I guess it went pretty well
as of what they are going to do with Sansar, no idea either, but if their goal is to actually democratize VR, they will really need something as good as prims, in any case I'm already prepared and pretty sure I'll be able to create some fun stuff there
and that's all I guess
-P.G.
Posted by: P. Gibbs | Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 06:50 AM
and sorry for this bible of text, I get carried away writing down stuff
Posted by: P. Gibbs | Saturday, December 05, 2015 at 06:53 AM