Comment of the Week: No, Linden Lab Hadn't Stopped Updating Second Life Before Yesterday's Big Announcement

Interesting reader response to Linden Lab's announcement yesterday of major updates to SL coming soon, redolent with the snarky skepticism or outright cynicism that make longtime SLers so lovable. (I mean that!) Some readers suggest that Second Life is only being updated because Sansar has failed to take off, and the company is desperate to keep the SL cash cow from collapsing. One sample:

[W]hat took so long to announce this? They pretty much let the customer base get the impression that they were done upgrading SL. I left the platform for good when they made it fairly obvious that the SL platform would stop evolving and become a dead end. A lot of my investment in SL was with the belief there was a future there and when it become obvious that there wasn't, I left for good. 

Which isn't quite fair, as reader Chic Aeon (she took that lovely SL pic above) points out:

Tons of new things have been achieved and are still being worked on. Bento for one and animated mesh (in the works for a long while now). Lindens are back inworld again and talk to folks on a regular basis via the SL Forums, framerates (I have seen mine at 220) are higher than ever before and the list goes on. Many technical issues have been solved and are working better than in years past. Some of the things announced were already public knowledge for those attending open community meetings. Some new announcements are slightly vague but hopefully will be positive steps.

That sounds right. If anything, the announcement was likely made to dispel any misperception going around (and it certain,y is) that the company has abandoned Second Life. As for Sansar, while it's definitely not an overnight success like, say, Minecraft, I doubt any of Linden Lab's investors were expecting that, and were totally prepared for slow growth at the start. It's going to take a year or even two before its success or failure can be fairly assessed.

Update, 6:50pm: Bumped up for evening discussion!

Comments

[metacam oh]

Ok so my comment was a bit of a generalization about the tech side but I am not wrong. Just because they did a few things in 5 years does not mean that they didnt give off the impression that SL was a dead end, and if I'm incorrect in that perception, who's fault is that? If you knew how much money I had sunk into SL for the 6 or so years I was there you would vomit. Not once did I ever feel like Linden Lab valued me as a customer. In fact it was quite the opposite. Without getting into all the dirty details they literally used me in a battle of leverage and screwed me over when they got what they wanted. But that is beside the point, I still stuck around after that because the platform is what I loved and invested in, but it became too hard to ignore that the platform and the inept soulless company are the same thing. That's just the personal part.

I mean shall we go on? The virtual land prices, even now are still insane. They did not once in all that time ever recognize that their product was ridiculously overpriced and not once laid out some sort of road map to fix that. So when sims are disappearing people are leaving all of this is readily apparent and Linden says nah we cant fix the pricing structure but oh btw we are developing Sansa. I mean read between the lines people.

[Pulsar]

Compared to 6 years ago, SL changed really a lot. In early 2011 there weren't even shadows, avatar physics (but in some TPV), "Mesh"... I remember some outfits and avatars that you had to add a bunch of sculpties, now you need just a single mesh to put on. Then they added "Direct Delivery", so you no longer need a marketplace box. "Server Side Backing" made avatar textures loading quicker and better; but now you won't see it much anymore: it was introduced "Fitmesh" too, so many people have better detailed mesh bodies now and even mesh heads - On the other hand, those bodies are less user-friendly (still ok to me, but I know they are) and slower to load. - "Bento" is an overhaul of the skeleton, not only it made mesh heads and hands much better animated, not to mention tails, wings and cat ears, but you should try a bento horse to ride. Meanwhile there were numerous other changes, such as materials.

What didn't change much was pricing indeed, well just a bit and they allowed more prims per area. LL is a company, they make money, lowering prices would be a loss if it isn't compensated by enough extra costumers. But if people leave, you have less places to see, less people to meet, etc. It may be not so easy to balance.

Moreover they still have those unscheduled maintenances, starting them anytime and giving you zero warning inworld. You rez your no-copy stuff unaware, and you lose it forever. They don't have backups and wouldn't refund you for their own mess. A grid-wide warning would be so helpful!
And people still lose avatar parts and accessories on tp or region crossing AKA [BUG-11633] and [BUG-7761]. Since they introduced those in 2015, they never fixed it or rolled it back.
These and other things may give the feeling they don't care so much.

[Zoey]

except even before bento came out they did change pricing for land they even increased not decreased the amount of prims you get by a lot it went from 15k pre sim to 25k and you can even get 30k with is double the amount of prims you use to get. so in reallity they half the price per sim. and looks like from my reading of this announcement and the moving of assets tot he cloud which means less servers less server maintenance less money spent that we could be in for another round of price decreases on land which would be amazing ...i know when i got my land i use to pay 1l per prim , im currently paying .50L for prim so my renting price is half of what it use to be and i now have double the land i use to.

[TG]

As long as Sansar doesn't support Mac AND Linux and the ToS is as poor as that of SL, Sansar a huge failure for me.

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks for the photo credit. That was a pretty picture. Not new and I had forgotten.

I think it would only be fair to say that the less than abundant applause at Sansar's opening had "something" to do with the latest well-written PR announcement. Long time SL residents are a given. Most of us are going nowhere (many it seems not to Sansar either :D).

While the lab announced its plan to keep improving Second Life way back when the devs meandered to the new "Wordpress" platform, a lot of folks weren't listening. Some people are never happy, always wanting more and are able to complain even in the midst of bounty.

Linden Lab has made its share of bad decisions over time, mostly because they didn't listen to what the populous wanted. The Lab believed they knew better (many times) and they did not. But failures are also learning experiences and it seems like they have learn along the way.

Some of the newness announced this week was already public knowledge; some revelations have instigated a guessing game of possible details. I suspect that all will be revealed fairly soon. In the meantime there is plenty to be thankful for. I saw 220 fps the other day. I had to blink twice at that!

Progress is sometimes hard fought but it is good when it is realized.

[Second Life Veteran]

Sansar is a huge failure and it will not take off. They need to realize that before they abandon SL which is what their money comes from.

[melponeme_k]

I thought it was very risky of LL to take profits from SL and push it into Sansar. Especially when VR hasn't taken off in any large, popular demographic. It only seems to be popular in areas that actually need programs that benefit from simulation such as military and medical fields.

The rest of us? We don't really need to put on goggle masks just to talk with a neighbor.

In regards to SL, I think LL (and the industry as a whole) thought that they were going to change the human animal. That VR was going to some massive transcendental event. When really what it did was confirm what and who we are as humans. They failed to appreciate what they stumbled into.

Just think, in a simulated world that the creators thought was ephemeral and malleable (including the humans using it), WE the players created value. Like in the physical, material world,humans make land the lasting value along with precious metals. Isn't fascinating that we turned virtual land into the lasting value. And how right it was that we should do so. Because the land is physical! The only physical element in SL itself! It is based on servers. Actual equipment. Actual equipment based on REAL LAND in the world.

LL pays rent and/or tax on this land where their servers rest. So as long as they need real land and real architecture to house their IP world, virtual land will always have value and they MUST charge real rates for it. They tried to decouple value from this model. Oh how they tried. And it has led to a severe collapse each time. Which is why they very carefully tip toe around it now.

[Just Say'n]

Anyone ever consider SL has been getting updates ever since Ebbe took over with all the real bad choices having been made by lindens who left to create high fidelity.

So what if linden lab created Sansar? so what everyone acts like a bunch of jealous kids you never hear them whine about Blocksworld.

Sansar is here to stay and improved as time goes forward.

If linden lab has new unannounced projects and products besides the three it has then get over those too when they are released!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM

[haw]

Sure LL has been updating SL for years. They updated their discounts for schools and chased them away. They updated their TOS and chased the real artists and creators away. The list goes on...

Oh thank you for all your wonderful updates LL!

[metacam oh]

But no one is mentioning that Sansar is what looks and appears to be a platform that if it were created by Random Company B this blog would be talking about it as a Second Life competitor. So you cant just create a product that looks like the successor to your main product and expect people not to read between the lines. Now when they see they have built this entire platform in secret for years and release it and no one is interested. So now they are back to thinking damn we need to keep milking the SL Cow and the usual suspects here that kiss Linden ass constantly are acting like people are absurd for feeling that Sansar was going to be what Linden would focus on and they would "maintain" SL because of course it is still profitable charging people 200 bucks for 1 core of a computer thats 10 years old somewhere.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

If a swan looks like it's swimming serenely, it's because you haven't seen how hard af it's paddling.

Anyone who was in the Viewer and Development group meetings Linden Lab regularly hosts for interested residents to link with Lindens assigned to SL primarily will point out that at no point was SL starved of necessary resources for maintenance and development, even if it had less extra to throw around as R&D on Sansar continued to require its share. Only a fool starves one duck to turn another into foie gras.

[Ciaran Laval]

I'm not sure why people ever had the impression that Second Life was not going to get updates. I can understand that people had the impression that fewer resources were being thrown at Second Life because of Sansar development, the Lab had said that this was pretty much the case, but they repeatedly said they were still working on Second Life.

[Clara Seller]

Will SL get the energy, resources, and enthusiasm that the pet project Sansar has received for the last few years? Will the CEO of LL publicly sell it and value it's customers? Some of us think that SL deserved this energy before it was thrown at Sansar. Now, as the dust settles, it's looking like an overhaul of SL was a much wiser move than the one LL chose to make.

LL never said that they would stop feeding Second Life, but people are being a little disingenuous when they suggest that SL was or was always intended to be their favorite pet. Maybe they want to gloss over some of those public floggings that old dog had to take to show the world that the new doggy was where the bets were to be placed. Well, the new dog isn't doing tricks. Oops.

"Who needs loyalty?" is the latest spin being pitch by some who still have ink on their hands from those rolled up newspapers they've been carrying around. The old dog is just expected to come out of the cage wagging it's tail, fetch, and play nice. Maybe the old dog is saying that there needs to be accountability and consequences before we just return to Dumbland again.

[Phantom Republic]

Honestly, i wouldn't be surprised if Sansar doesn't have a failsafe switch known only to upper management to be used only when Sansar completely collapses (since there wasn't really a market for 3D "experiences") that turns Sansar into contiguous and perpetual 3D planet to compete head on with SL (which it would at that time). This was the initial brainstorm (rebuilding was cheaper than overhauling the architecture) ... just saying ... wouldn't be surprised if we see an announcement from LL in the upcoming months about the direction of Sansar.