Philip Rosedale Issues Metaverse Challenge: What Virtual World Besides Second Life Has Collaborative, Dynamic, Complex Content Creation?

Here's a great Twitter thread: Second Life/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale challenging people to name a virtual world besides Second Life that enables collaborative dynamic creation of "interesting things" while users inhabit the same space as avatars. Based on his follow-ups, "interesting things" means it must enable complex scripting/interaction and 3D objects. So not just simple building blocks but, for exaxmple, a fully interactive 3D recreation of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", as in in this classic machinima above.

On that view, Minecraft wouldn't count by Philip's lights: "Love Minecraft, but: Can't build together without elaborate specific permission from admins. Can't build many important things (jointed objects, curved surface)."

Second Life is the only virtual world that allows people to build interesting things while also being together in one place. Despite being 17 years old, no other game or world has yet fully achieved that goal. Agree? Have at me.

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) January 17, 2021

Also, by one "place", he means a single shard world that many thousands of users can inhabit at the same time, and not instanced mini-worlds or rooms: "Try making a pocket world like Anyland or Horizons or VRChat seamless," as he explains. "Very difficult issues with asset transfer, serialization, load balancing (for example)."

Do any come close to meeting this criterion? A few standout candidates:

Possibly Rec Room:

"All Rec Room creation happens in game / in one place with artists, designers, and programmers (circuits system), sound designers, and musicians all working together to create their room or game," one of Rec Room's lead developers, Sean Whiting, says. "Most groups are voice chatting and hanging out the entire time they build." And content can be moved from one scene to another: "Yeah you can definitely move your creations around or distribute them to the community for free or sell them. Entire rooms or games can be cloned, creations or rooms can be put into an 'invention' that you can list on the market."

However, Rec Room's blocky graphics may limit the "interesting" requirement, as would its lack of a single shard.

I suggested Dual Universe as a possible candidate, as it allows in-world prim-based (i.e. voxel) building and scripting that's collaborative. I guess one could make the argument that it's not as "interesting" as it could be, in the sense that anything built in Dual Universe must fit within its fictional sci-fi reality. (Something I discussed with the lead developer here.)

My own take is more meta: The keen irony is while dynamic collaborative 3D content creation remains unique to Second Life, it’s little used by the current user base nor promoted by the company. I seriously think most newer SL users have never even seen a prim, let alone know how to rez one.

I really mean that: Searching YouTube just now, I cannot find any recent user-made video depicting collaborative, dynamic, complex content creation in SL. Literally none that's recent. ("Watch the World" is great, but it's from 2008, and only features a single creator.)

And that might be the most frustrating if not most tragic thing: The aspect that still makes Second Life most unique is not that well known, even by its own users. 

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

NeosVR.

[irihapeti]

while we can build with prims ourselves from scratch, we can also build with mesh objects made by others

and given that most mountable objects made by others are modify permissions, and we can allow others to modify/edit our own mounted objects then I think this meets the collaborative requirement

on the larger scale. People working together to build out a region for example

others working together to build out an entire living estate. Moles building the Bellissaria estate for example. Bellissaria residents furnishing their homes and gardens. 100s and 100s of people can be present on the Bellissaria estate at the same time, all beavering away mounting, editing, scripting and modifying stuff

[Vivienne Schell]

Fits into Phil´s old mantra, and I agree with him. I think that Second Life´s initial success was tied to in-world, collaborative content creation offering in-world tools. Leaving the Prim (do it by yourself) path and quitting further development on that field caused much of the decline SL went through after Sculpties and later Mesh became predominant.

The virtual sandbox has turned into a consumer world mostly, where many people pay money to a few people for creating some kind of "multiple social frameworks", but much of the original thrill which keeps Minecraft big (and made SL big) is gone. As a result Second Life has turned into a self centered universe, where the latest mesh head or the latest body or the latest whatever shiny has become the most important issue for a core of die-hard users. That may be enough for a certain amount of people to log in, but it isn´t - by far - enough to attract a broader audience.

[Chrix]

Very interesting topic! I think there are still people in Second Life that are great Digital Artist and build things using a mix of Prim and Mesh. I found that photography as a 2D art creation also takes a big space in the arts scene in SL.

I personally join Second Life a few months ago and that what really attracted me: be able to build wat ever I want! The thing is, I think that if you really want to build advanced stuff you need to work with external tools such as Blender or Photoshop. Prim feel a bit outdated now in 2021 IMO but still, people can do great stuff with it.

Note: I start making videos of some of the nice things a saw in SL as well as my little projects. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-kPuiWgz1dXln07OyHKpYg

[Pete McDonald]

So the author searched YouTube, well done. Try actually entering the SL space and joining in with some of the classes in-world that are set up and provided by the 'players' at places such as 'Blender Benders', 'Builder's Brewery' etc and see what people are creating or more importantly, learning. Go to Hanging Gardens of Babylon to see what a collaboration of 'owner, host, builder and landscapers' can produce. People who have managed to supplement their RL incomes, or replaced them, with their businesses in-world, selling their creations. Some of them it's been a life saver due to loss of work in the real world or worse, loss of health.
In the past couple of years an event has been held in June 'in-world' to coincide with the real world 'Sailstice' a celebration of all things sailing, its aim was to provide real world sailors an alternative to life in lockdown but to also bring together sailors in-world. Builders to showcase their boats, clubs to promote, schools to enroll students and sailors to socialise.... and that's just within SL. Go in, get a sailor from one of the established clubs to take you on sail through the Sailor's Cove Rainforest region and see some of the world.
Last night I listened to a talented live singer give a performance while I worked on a project in real life, all via the platform of Second Life.
Later I watched a video of so-called serious panel of experts from the likes of CNET & Microsoft give thier judgement on SL. It was evident that none had been 'in-world' recently for this discussion as thier opinions and recollections were at least ten years out of date. Poor journalism by them or poor production research.