The Second Life fashion community was hit by some shocking new year's news, when Slink creator Siddean Munroe announced she was closing down her line of high quality avatar mesh enhancements for painful real life reasons:
Following two stressful years of pandemic which I am sure we have all been affected by in one way or the other, I suddenly lost my mother in September of 2021, my grandmother in January of 2022 and my cat Cleo in June. I have been unwell and enduring a lot of chronic pain. I have to be very honest, my spark has dimmed a little and I no longer have the energy to pour into this business like I once did.
I’ve done a lot of soul searching over the last 18 months and have come to the very difficult decision that for my own physical and mental wellbeing, I need to move on from Second Life. I am starting something new, and can only hope it will be half as much fun and as fulfilling as my time in Second Life has been.
This is also a blow to the technical performance of the Second Life community: Slink was one of the few leading mesh body brands that are well-optimized. When I last checked, many of the market leaders, by contrast, are grotesquely lag-inducing.
In any case, a mutual friend helped me reach out to Siddean, because I was curious about her future. She sent along these answers:
Would you be willing to sell Slink to another brand or even Linden Lab?
I am not selling Slink. I haven't yet decided what I will do with the thousands of assets that I created over my time in SL. I still need some time to regroup. The assets are and will always be my intellectual property and I haven't given anyone permission to sell them in SL post closure of my store.
What do you recommend Slink owners do who need help with their bodies?
I am satisfied that they are feature rich and free of show stopping bugs. The bodies have been around for over 8 years now so I think I can be confident about that. We spent a lot of time and effort over the years to make the user experience as streamlined and optimal as possible given the complexity of the product. They have extensive documentation included, and I will keep the blog, and YouTube tutorials open for anyone who cares to take a look.
If something breaks with the body parts then I recommend what I have always recommended - keep the box, and unpack a fresh copy. It will work fresh out of the box. Unless Linden Lab massively changes something with the scripts, there's no reason the products won't keep working for a long time without my presence.
Slink is famous for its highly optimized bodies where the leading bodies are not. Are there alternatives you recommend with Slink gone?
I can't really give one, I'm sorry. I never really looked in depth at what other body creators were doing, with Slink being as all consuming as it was for so long, and all I can recommend is that people read blogs which care about such things as rendering cost and polygon count and do a little research into their purchase before they make it.
You can see the rendering cost via the advanced menu in the Second Life viewer and it's something I've always felt strongly about and think more people should really consider when making purchasing decisions.
Some writers I like that blog about these things are Nalates, Freyja, Beq Janus and of course your work at New World Notes.
I wish the Siddean the best, and am hopeful she'll return to the Metaverse in some form. I definitely hope her dedication to optimized mesh is taken up by other creators.
In the meantime, is there another well-optimized mesh brand out there for people to embrace?
It's sad to see Siddean leave SL. And her reasons just make it all sadder. I commented about this over on Inara Pey's blog. Since you've brought up Render Cost in your article, let's think about that for a moment.
I've always been confused on Polygons, Render Cost, and everything lag inducing. I'll read one article that Legacy or some other body has 10x more polygons or ARC or Complexity than Lara or some other body. And then the next article I read says that those numbers are entirely meaningless. That the LL this or that number has been famously unreliable and uncoordinated with actual performance for X years now.
As avatars we're constantly told that we need to care about these things. And equally frequently told that the numbers don't mean anything and that there's pretty much no way to know. SL is a magical world with shit performance. If I knew with certainty that this brand of body or that brand of clothing made a real difference, I'd use those brands. But all I can ever find on these seemingly critical topics is the opposite of clarity.
Posted by: Kate Nova | Wednesday, January 04, 2023 at 05:22 PM
I can say it truly sad story about Siddean,I hope she be well and that she'll come back one day. When she feels she's ready she is a great Creator love her work always may peace, love, Harmony to be with her.
Posted by: Aaliay Nirvana | Wednesday, January 04, 2023 at 08:14 PM
What's with the "And the Market's Uncertain Future" part of the title that is never mentioned in the article. Just clickbait?
Posted by: Giggli | Thursday, January 05, 2023 at 04:57 AM
Thank you Siddean for all you created and gave to SL. We wouldn't be the beautiful avatars we are today without you paving the way back in the day. So sorry for your losses and your difficulties. Best of luck in RL future endeavors.
Posted by: Valentina Kendal | Thursday, January 05, 2023 at 02:38 PM
You want less lag in SL? Update your damn computer!!!!
Posted by: scoundrel clarity | Thursday, January 05, 2023 at 02:50 PM
The problem here is that she pulled a body off of the market that could've benefitted new users, with a massive base of supported clothing. She could've stuck it up there for cheap on the marketplace and let new users have a body as a base that has literally millions of clothing items that function with it. Removing it is a really strange choice. It's a bit selfish. You don't make something with such a profound impact on a market and then remove it so fast. Sure, it wasn't trending among the popular bodies but I know plenty of people who used it. And plenty of new users would've been grateful to have a body that had SO MANY supported items off the bat for cheaper than the mainstream bodies that are currently on the market. I understand the need to move on but leaving it on the market for passive income or as a contribution to the game seems like a much better idea. It's just a sad waste. I think about all of the designers who poured their time into making items for it and because she pulled the body completely, it's useless. It's pretty demoralizing and depressing.
Posted by: Katykat | Thursday, January 05, 2023 at 09:38 PM
Siddean doesn't owe anyone else a damn thing. If the new user bodies aren't already adequate, it's a Linden Lab problem, not hers. Her contribution to the ongoing SL experience as a whole is already vastly more than 98% of other users. Aside from building and maintaining her own brand, she has supported countless other content creators over the years by generously sharing her knowledge, time, and skills. Whatever she chooses to do with her assets going forward, the only feeling we should be left with upon her exit, is gratitude.
Posted by: Evie | Friday, January 06, 2023 at 12:42 AM
The minute she removes her contribution from the world it becomes irrelevant essentially so who cares in the long run, literally all the benefits of her optimization disappear anyways as fewer and fewer people create for it people will just stop using the bodies so yeah it is selfish and impacts the market
And to be honest in the last few years slink use has been trending down anyways I doubt any new users in the last 3 years would be using it much
Posted by: Zalpha | Friday, January 27, 2023 at 07:39 AM
@Katykat "You don't make something with such a profound impact on a market and then remove it so fast."
Ouch! I'm reminded of my old TMP body and the $5,000L it cost me, not to mention the speed with which it disappeared (only to be replaced after a suitable mourning period by the remarkably similar $5,000L Legacy body for which TMP purchasers got zero relief).
PS. I sometimes wonder if there's not a private invite, Davos-style SL event where the economic elites gather to hobnob whilst divvying up virtual life.
Posted by: Ganymede | Monday, January 30, 2023 at 10:19 AM
I do kind of wonder myself what makes a body "optimized"? I read a lot of conflicting articles and feel no more sure then before. I use to hear all kinds of stuff on how bad Maitreya was, and how much lag it caused. So much that I avoided it for quite some time. Then the body I had liked, Kalhene Analexa, stopped getting support about a little over a year ago and I suddenly needed a new one, since it had used Maitreya clothing and many of my favorite stores mostly created for Maitreya by this point, I ended up getting it, but the numbers (if you can even trust them, which yes, no? I don't even know this point), don't seem to be the huge lag inducing amount people say they are. The script using is only 160kb, not even close to the near 700kb ish that my latest version of Analexa had, or the 900 ish kb of Altamura Juliet. I'v yet to notice any lag while wearing the body, any more or less then other bodies. The only thing I notice, is the triangle count given is a bit higher [176.37k with out head] then a few bodies like ruth, or Analexa, both if I recall right were around 80k ish, but still by no means the highest I've encountered. That honor goes to Altamura Juliet which was nearly 300k. So I mean I'm completely confused, while I'm sure it's not the most optimized body, it's certainly not the worst, nor does it seem to be the lag monster everyone warned me it was. So I'm genuinely confused.
Posted by: MissSweetViolet | Wednesday, February 01, 2023 at 03:04 PM