Now That Game Exec Bing Gordon is on Linden Lab's Board, I Sure Hope They Add Game Systems to Second Life & Sansar

Bing! It's the sound your smartphone makes when the system demands your attention, and just as pertinent, the nickname of game industry legend William Gordon, formerly Electronic Arts' Chief Creative Officer, now CPO at venture capitalist giant Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB), a board member of mobile game publisher Ngmoco, social game publisher Zynga... and now, also board member at Linden Lab:

“We’re honored to have Bing join our board of directors and work with our team,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “He’s helped to bring to life some of the most influential entertainment experiences in recent memory, and as we prepare to open Sansar for all creators, his insights, expertise, and counsel will prove invaluable.”

“Linden Lab has a wonderful legacy and future, based on its technical excellence and forward vision,” said Gordon. “Over the past 14 years, Second Life has proven the value of user-created virtual experiences, and enabling people to create their own social VR experiences is a massive opportunity for which no company is better positioned than Linden Lab is with Sansar. I’ve been spending a lot of time working with Ebbe and the team over the past six months, and it’s an exciting time to officially join Linden’s board.”

I can tell you from copious personal experience that corporate press releases are carefully massaged and edited, so it's notable that this is how this press release positions what Bing is bringing to Linden Lab's table:

At KPCB, Gordon works with companies focused on consumer engagement and gamification in industries ranging from education and health to commerce and media.

In fact, Bing is a passionate advocate of gaming systems to drive engagement. So hopefully this means he's going to advocate for adding game systems to both Second Life and now Sansar, something many Linden Lab staff want, but are unable to push forward without more support from management. Because without any game mechanics, Sansar is destined to meet the same fate as SL:

It's been a recurring theme on New World Notes for years, but basically, one key reason Second Life stopped growing around 2006-2007 is that millions of prospective new users didn't immediately see structured motivations and mechanics which gently structured their activity in SL. And Linden Lab, confused by their mistaken belief that they were building a 3D Internet platform (when the vast majority of users treated it as a social game), didn't address this lack of mechanics. The same thing seems to be happening with Sansar, with the CEO calling it WordPress for VR. But Sansar must first succeed as a play space before it could ever hope to succeed as a platform for work. Fortunately Bing understands that very well:

"If you're going to build a company, you have to do it like a World of Warcraft guild leader builds guilds," Gordon explained. "You build a weekly calendar, with check-ins, you come up with a system and process to split up the loot, and hope that they don't try to kill the boss," he joked. "This is something the civilians don't understand," he added, "is that the most powerful part of gaming isn't the competition, it's cooperation. So you develop a structure where cooperation is rewarding. In MMO parties, it turns out with a party of five, even if it's strangers in what's called a 'pick-up group,' what you come to expect is that each individual is around 20 percent more productive, using overlapping skills."

More here. Hopefully we start seeing more of that thinking in both SL and Sansar.

Comments

[Amanda Dallin]

When I joined SL in November 2006, it had some gaming systems such as the ability to rate other avatars on various things. They became meaningless because they were "gamed" by some to artificially inflate their scores. Also a lot of people attracted to SL just didn't care about such things. The Average SL user today might appreciate them more than back in 2006-7.

Gamification could be a good thing for SL and Sansar but only if it's option and not forced on people.

[Dirran Skytower]

I am in two minds. While I love sailing in SL I accept that there are always going to be much much better sailing simulators outside SL. That is always going to be true because building a standalone sailing simulator will always be easier than building a virtual world that includes mechanisms for sailing. That lies to almost every game.

At the same time Sl suffers significantly from being intellectually isolated from the gaming world. I suspect that is more at the den of management than the engineering staff. Building an avatar is so much simpler in most games and doesn't require you to run multiple additional HUDs and read constant messages about the complexity of your avatar. Contemporary games do not have 1995 vintage inventory systems. Avatar-making is the first step in entering Sl and it is a bewildering process, even (perhaps especially) to seasoned gamers.

Planning for SANSAR would also benefit from a closer engagement with precisely how well VR games are actually doing on platforms like Steam.

A more intuitive way to build avatars would be a major step towards raising retention rates and clearly SL management needs Bing's expertise on that and other subjects.

[cyberserenity]

I suspect that Linden lab wants all the very talented creators in Second life to do gaming experiences in Sansar. As i said befor. When Sansar fail i hope a lot of the software get used in Second life.

[Carlos Loff]

They need migrants to flock to Sansar so I doubt they bring improvement to SL, but it would be very nice, let´s pray

[Dirran Skytower]

I just cannot see Sansar as a successful gaming platform. Steam already exists and Linden Labs shows no sign of the agility or gaming smarts needed to supplant it.

[nameinthisbox]

Easy, I will do this for LL and you can send me the budget for the toilet paper and towels the executive office will use and fire many of the board and use the money to create stable SL etc. My cut is a few dollars, so I can pay for a wacom tablet and they save money. Now, since I am a man of action that needs no contracts and will do this on the "honor system." SO here is the master plan, right here and it is ALL yours. More or less for free, because I don't even put my address in here!

Step 1. Study tropeish game mechanics, what are the basic elements of game mechanics. Make the script/programming system do this stuff.

Step 2. Make it very easy for people to click objects, be it cornchips (tri based thingies) or some other building system. Maybe just nano bots mine metals, produce chemicals and they take pre-made mesh objects they produce and then into a magic factory maker thingy. Viola, objects pop out that they need.

OK STEP 2 AGAIN. From the top. Easy to make objects with powers (game mechanic based thingies) that can help fight off creatures, forces (sure, why not magic! Works well with the particle system right?) and natural occurences (oh yes, windlightforce...a new system that has forces and can dehydrate, push with wind, rain and flood...why not volcanoes every now and then...but only as a HUGE surprise for a few sandboxish locations etc.)

Step 3. Work terrain/world generating system that generates a percentage of hard terrain and percent of medium and percent of easy to tame areas. No mining needed, some story about mining nanobots etc. Materials and powers are used to create items that help to keep the avatar alive, so he doesn't lose is place. no purchased items are lost, so they lose no money. Just time to use the items and make it not devestating, so they don't walk off feeling hurt. Some areas can be protected with NO scripted items after they are done with protection program the darn sim to have that area as a safe zone. Please, lower the lag by not running so many script. The mechanics to keep creatures, water and magic away (or harness them) are only to achieve, just autopilot it easily after that.

Step 6. Let people NOT have to do all this BS. Because some do NOT want Minecraft on Steroids. Some may, but others will simply learn things that can be possible IF they learned to code a little, mesh a little or animate a little. A lot can do much more, which they may encounter in other areas found in the destination guides "Games" section. If they choose to chill at a bar, true open world style they can do nothing much if they wish, so be it.

See, it's easy. In fact, if a person in world makes game peices that are customizable (a scripter would be the one in SL to do this) they could build a business selling code and mayeb services to those with dream game projects. They bring the design, maybe some mesh skills, and they have what they always wanted. See, LL doesn't even have to do this. They just need to host, they don't need a guy with gamification but for his contacts to help contractors and to gain PR for Sansar, LL, AND the company is connected to cutting edge VR trends (SEO dare I say, "top of mind" awareness in the early adopter/influencer market even?)

Yeah, connections and inside knowledge of the marketing jazz LL would do sounds about right. I know nothing though, just some nobody on the net. So, maybe nothing at all here to see.

[Adam]

Sl has had many games within it since it's launch. Linden lab gamification of the platform would kill it. It is a virtual world. Linden lab created gaming sims like linden realms failed. As for sansar, it makes even less sense to gamify the platform. It is not even going to be a connected world. It will really only serve as a backend for individual experiences essentially. Think of it as a virtual reality based WordPress. You can use sansar to express your ideas in a sort of 3d blog. Your space with no bearing on the rest. It'll be up to you to gamify your space, if you have the capability.

[Fred]

Gamification got the reputation to be the magic dust you sprinkle on something and voila it becomes a success. It's really a lot of really hard work trying to figure out extrensic and intrinsic reward schemes for the different type of players. I'm not saying it's a bad idea though, SL would have needed some kind of game mechanic to ease the onboarding process with rewards and direct feedback to give the residents a confirmation they are onto the right track, the article touching this subject is spot on. So I'm cautiously optimistic about this one, as long as it's done right, and it's optional, and not like Linden Realms.

[rvw]

Mark my words: this dude will be absolute toxicity to all things LL related.

(Besides, nothing good ever came out of anything with a name like 'bing' attached to it.)

Game over.