Philip Rosedale is Taking Input for Designing a "New World"

"In a virtual world," SL/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale recently asked on Twitter, "is showing tenure (age of account) bad or good?"

Which is an interesting thing to ask, and becomes even more intriguing when, after one follower wonders why Philip himself isn't answering his own question, he replies apologetically, "I don't want to dominate the conversation. Yes, designing for a new world."

So that's worth noting! I asked Philip for more details and will update this post if I get a reply. As for "new world" he may just be referring to the recent 3D audio-centric relaunch of High Fidelity. Or perhaps another world entirely? In any case, the thread is worth a read, here's some answers to his question:

In a virtual world, is showing tenure (age of account) bad or good?

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) September 28, 2020

 

Reputation is definitely important and newbies are definitely more likely to behave badly as they have nothing to lose and are trying to find boundaries. I'm not sure whether you should gamify reputation or let it happen naturally. Gamification likely creates distortions. - fellow ex-Linden Jim Purbrick

I only recently started to care about account age a bit more since it’s become an unfortunate common indicator of fake accounts or accounts of those created after having a first account banned. So I guess it would depend on how badly the account system of the platform is abused. -- Senior Graphics engineer Laura Reznikov

If you show it, it’ll be used to create status hierarchies, in-groups and out-groups. Maybe that’s a design goal that nudges users to aspire to achieve a tenure milestone (outcome: retention). But tenurocracies can also get out of hand and create a hostile environment for newbs. -- Vlad Coho

Much more here!

Comments

[Concerned]

Oh my.

[asd]

Once he left SL, i still haven't seen anything worth-looking-at he has delivered. Definitely no better SL alternative for sure.

[Joey1058]

There could be any number of reasons for what that topic means. If he IS planning another VR company, well I think he's going to spin his wheels again. The market is saturated. If he's going to create just a single sim, then he's going to nail it. I'd be curious where he would create the sim if that's what he means. He'd obviously want to select the VR with the fastest frame rate. And the widest options for interaction.

[asd]

Joey1058, yea yea.. he's a total tech geek, and reaching better numbers doesn't guarantee that you put a nice and enjoyable complete product at the end.

[Osiris indigo]

Easy... merge the one world and social aspects of there.com with the building capacity of second life, but grow them to the 21st century with new prim dev tools. Do not rely on third party imported mesh- that kills the social aspect. Then make it accessible with desktop, Mac, Linux, vr and web user interfaces. Keep it at 60fps or better and manage those damn avatars so people can’t have a million triangles in their face and boobs and jewlrey so small you can’t see it.