New World Notes

SL Should Adopt VRChat's Avatar Rankings -- And SLers Should Be Less Like Barbie, More Like Elizabeth Warren (Comment of the Week #2)

Great conversation in this post praising VRChat's new avatar optimization rankings (from Excellent down to Very Poor, for avatars over 70,000 triangles) -- including this great comment from reader "Finni Graves", who agrees with reader "Cake" that Second Life should adopt these rankings:

I've invested a lot of my SL esteem in the whole crazy avatar adornment scene. Then one day, after trying to navigate a horrible shopping event, I've got to stop being so selfish and hogging so much resource. What's the point of looking good, if I don't feel good? These ridiculous mesh bodies, heads, hair. clothes, and accessories are literally sucking the life out of our SL. We must simplify ourselves because this whole hamster wheel isn't working.

Cake is right. All of us need to be graded harshly and it is our duty to ask ourselves, " do I really need this?". It's also the duty of content creators to make consumers aware of the optimization of their products and to guarantee it. They should have to be graded too, at least on Marketplace. 

Finni says SL's many fashion bloggers should advocate optimized avatars and stop promoting resource heavy avatars which degrade the performance for everyone around them. And then, notably, likens these reforms to the plans put forth by the US Presidential candidate who's leading the charge to reform the American economy by penalizing people whose greed hurts society and the environment:

Linden Lab Needs a Prominently Placed FAQ for Second Life Users (Comment of the Week #1)

My interview with a famed YouTuber turned Linden Lab staffer Strawberry Singh provoked some reader complaints that the company is not very responsive to SL user feedback. As reader "Mac" points out, there's an easy way to partly address that problem:

People need context to understand. Just as important, however, this context needs to be accessible and available.

My suggestion: Have Linden Lab make a bullet point FAQ list. '20 Top Misunderstandings Explained' -- something like that. Put this list up on the Forums and PIN IT, so it stays up there and people are forced to see it. Pinning it will also help with (formerly answered) questions that keep coming up, such as "Why won't LL tell us the exact time when they're going to do big maintenance?" [Linden Lab community forum staffer] Grumpity (I think), has answered that several times, but without a pinned answer, her attempts have vanished into the ether. Add to, and update, this list when necessary.

One great thing about having a prominent FAQ is it encourages oldtimers to point to it, when noobies ask a basic question. It's why RTFFAQ is a commonly used acronym. And as Mac continues, it helps convey more transparency:

Why VRChat Players Love Looking at Themselves in VRChat-Based Mirrors

In case you were wondering what inspired Nylon Pinkney's latest comic about VRChat, reader "Cake" has some more context for you in Comments:

The mirror is a big social area in your typical VRChat room. People stand in front of it and talk like they would if they were primping with friends in a bathroom. Shaders also look slightly different in different maps depending on what you're using--so even if you have one set for your avatar, you still go to the mirror to check out what you look like on that particular map.

That's actually a fascinating analogy, and does a lot to help explain VRChat's popularity:

Good Virtual Communities Need Good Moderators (Comment of the Week)

"Goodbye Chouchou" by Loverdag

News that Chouchou plans to leave Second Life due to rampant user-to-user harassment that the owners were unable to curb provoked this blithe, "shit happens" comment from a reader:

There's no such thing as an interactive space open to the public where someone will not be offended by something. Some people are simply unpleasant and others are simply impossible to please. The only way to change this is to change human nature itself, and if you start actively trying to figure out how to do that: you are part of the problem.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of thin skinned people out there.

Han Held's reply to that is worth considering -- not just for Second Life or virtual worlds in general, but pretty much any virtual community:

There's a lot to unpack here, most of it wrong.

1) In the real world, if you "troll" in a club or an art gallery, you will be escorted out. It's the same for most forums; any forum worth spending time on is moderated.

2) Some people are simply unpleasant and others are simply impossible to please.

The first group can -and should- be shown the door, and there's a world of difference between 'impossible to please' versus 'wanting polite, adult behavior in the space we pay $300/USD a month in'.

Frankly, someone paying as much as $300/month deserves 24/7, on-call armed response security from the company. (Premium real world home security systems charge less -- $100/month!)

In any case, Han Held is just getting started:

Linden Staff Need to Meet More Linden Customers (Comment of the Week)

Last week we were talking about the trouble of seeking Second Life user feedback when few actual users beyond the most hardcore users are willing/available to give that feedback in a survey or in-game meeting; reader Soda Sullivan suggests a better way:

[I]n six years I have met one Linden employee in-world. One. We actually had several long conversations and he was fascinated with how I spent my time, why my home was like, how did DJ-ing in SL work, what were relationships like, etc. He was curious why I would never consider living on the mainland (poor zoning laws and shitty grass textures). He had no concept of sales events and their popularity, or how outfit folders where actually used by residents. He usual response was "I am just a coder, but this is interesting".

That is the conversation more Lindens need to be REQUIRED to have. No meetings, just log in and walk around talk with someone. And yes, analytics are VERY important. Crucial in fact! But with a world that really has no clear objectives and guidelines, I think they need to be tied to first hand evidence as well. A previous CEO apparently cut back on allowing Linden staff in world. To me that was a travesty. Good riddance. [Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg] seems to be a bit better. He will drop in once in a while, take some abuse and the leave.

As it happens, some Lindens have told me that the previous CEO and his executive team discouraged extensive interaction with Second Life users by staff, primarily to avoid misinformation and liability concerns. In any case, I've also heard Altberg reversed that policy, and encourages more Linden to SLer interaction. 

Ms. Sullivan believes it should be mandatory:

Linden Lab's Trouble With Talking to Users to Get Usable User Feedback

Reader Soda Sullivan wasn't happy with this example of Linden Lab responding to Second Life user needs, and feels the company isn't doing enough:

I would like to see the Lindens become less reactive to us residents and more PROactive and maybe try to get out in front of things. Talk to people. Don't poll them, TALK to them and see what they are looking for. 

The proactive point is definitely true, and it does seem the company doesn't do enough of that. At the same time, many Linden Lab staffers do hold regular SL-based meetings for users.

However, there's a downside to direct conversations like this, and it's a problem we talked about a lot during my Linden days:

Readers on Slack & High Fidelity's Shift from VR; Philip Rosedale Q&A Soon!

Last Friday I had a great chat with Philip Rosedale over High Fidelity's recent layoffs and shift away from being so VR-focused in the short term, in order to build a kind of Slack-meets-Zoom-meets-virtual worlds for work app -- I'll run the full conversation in coming days. Until then, here's some reader responses to those moves (and my replies to those replies):

I'll say it before and I'll say it again. "Will it play in Peoria?" and "How does it work for/appeal to people who AREN'T the technorati/valleywags" matter... And why do you valleywags use slack? it's proprietary and duplicates functionality that exists in already-existing standards...like e-mail, jabber and IRC. Standards exist for reasons. - CronoCloud Creeggan 

In point of fact, Slack interoperates with a lot of common existing services, unifying them into a single shared virtual work space. And nowadays, it's hardly limited to Silicon Valley employees: It now counts over 10 million daily active users and is used by groups in 65 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Another update from Slack's blog, in opposition to another reader saying, "Maybe Philip opening up an office in Tokyo while seeing the world from a different perspective would help him and the project." The implication being High Fidelity's new move is coming from the Valley bubble. But as it happens:

Lumiya Update: Android App for SL Unpublished from Google Play Due to Sudden Terms of Service Changes, Dev Team Now Working to Republish

Important update for Android users and owners of Lumiya, the popular SL viewer for Android devices, which was recently removed for unknown reasons from Google Play -- as pointed out by reader/Lumiya user Mondy:

According to the notice sent through the Lumiya in-world group, the reason for the delisting on Google play was because of a change in SMS policy from Google. Lumiya has a backup feature for chat so if it uses SMS to send those then that's probably what it refers to. I know a lot of popular apps that use SMS also got hit recently for the same kind of thing and without being updated in time apps get removed automatically. According to the notice they're working on getting re-published as soon as they can.

Screengrab of that group message update above. And indeed, Google did announce some policy changes to Android apps last month related to apps and the use of SMS.

And as Lumiya's group manager says, until Lumiya is restored to Google Play, the recommended download channel for Lumiya is from the SlideMe Android market.

Hello Kitty Content May Be Licensed in Second Life Simply Because Sanrio is a Licensing Behemoth (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Hello Kitty patch promoted as "Officially Licensed" by an Etsy vendor

Clearly my Hello Kitty knowledge needs to be beefed up, because while it appears to be true that licensed Hello Kitty content is now on sale in Second Life, reader "Galatea" points out the ubiquity of licensed Hello Kitty products:

[Responding to another reader saying, "I am not seeing such a big company like that coming into Second Life for a couple of cents on each item"]:

Yes, but that's putting the relationship backwards. It probably would never occur to Sanrio to "come into SL", but Sanrio itself doesn't make much stuff -- it is, on the other hand, the world's 12th largest licensor. [And among the top ten a few years ago. - WJA]

So rather an Sanrio coming into SL, what's more likely is an SL creator reaching out to Sanrio to obtain a non-exclusive license, something Sanrio loves to give out, even to "micro" markets (they're happy to license to small Etsy creators, too, for example).  

That last point is definitely true, as there is lots of Hello Kitty content on sale from Etsy vendors that's also promoted as "officially licensed", as here, and here, and here. So barring more clarity from Sanrio or the SL brand using Hello Kitty, Astralia, what Galatea says seems the most likely relationship we're dealing with here.

However, even if that's the case, it's still news that Sanrio approved the license for Hello Kitty-branded Second Life content:

Philip Rosedale & Other Readers Ponder the Appeal of "Living, Breathing" Simulated Worlds

Great conversation that spun out of last week's great podcast interview with Philip Rosedale by ex-Linden Melinda Byerley, spinning off from my comment that "I'm a bit sad that he talks so much about how in the beginning, the focus was on making Second Life a living, breathing world with a simulated ecosystem and realistic ocean, sun and moon cycles, and so on... [when] both Second Life and High Fidelity, which now look, feel, and operate far more like interconnected 3D chat rooms."

To that point, Philip comments:

I so much agree about the magical appeal of the 'living, breathing world' - but why is it so appealing? I think about this a lot, and although I feel it in the most passionate way, I still wonder where the feeling comes from.

To that question, Mac speculates:

It may be because we, in our 'real', breathing lives, live in a vast ecology. We live on the ground (even if our feet are in an apartment 20 stories high). We exist in a network, invisible to us though it may be. We are solidly of our earth (and will return to it!). We are alive within an unimaginable connection which we evolved through and grew up in, through countless generations and millennia.

That may be why a series of discrete 'interconnected 3D chat rooms', as Wagner puts it, feels unnatural. The 'imagined reality' of these rooms technically and practically ends at their borders, unlike physical reality (in the physical reality of our world, you cannot get to the end of reality; you can't reach out and find that it has ceased. There is always something beyond your reach, be it air, space, vacuum, the rest of the universe. You cannot get to a point of 'nothing'). A teleport between rooms isn't quite the same as a physical tunnel. Discrete 3D chat rooms push against an internal fundamental knowledge that the world is still 'of a piece' even though it has become many pieces, many places, many communities. I would imagine that this feeling (analogous to the uncanny valley) will fade over time as we get used to non-geographically-designed digital landscapes: people can, have, and will adapt to situations which seem uncomfortable or unsuitable at the start. We are, after all, discursive and negotiable creatures. These are still teething times for the digital human.

In other words, he's arguing that it's a feeling we can evolve away from. Melinda herself makes a comment which suggests it's a feeling mainly confined to childhood: