New World Notes

Why Elder Scrolls Online's Bugs Are More Enraging Than Bugs in... Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Lots of conversation last week around what it would take to upgrade 17 year old Second Life, with an intriguing point of comparison made by longtime virtual world user Jumpman Lane, who contrasts SL's performance with that of a 6 year old virtual world:

I just recently returned to Second Life after 3 years of playing The Elder Scrolls Online (fun game). I'll say this about the performance of SL vs that of ESO:

I really don't mind SL's issues, lag, whatever.

In ESO I [played] player vs player and it was a highly competitive environment. Death is frowned upon to say the very least. Killing someone involved tbagging, hours of arguing, 1v1's, and feuds that lasted YEARS.

But that's not why he's taking a break from Elder Scrolls Online for SL. Here's why:

What It Would Take to Truly Upgrade Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Fascinating conversation in response to Luther Weymann's somber analysis of Second Life's prospects under new ownership, featuring many comments by readers who seem to be longtime veterans of the game/tech industry, or at least write with that level of expertise.

Among them is  Russell Skyther, who wrote this really sharp breakdown of what it would take to upgrade Second Life. It's partly a response to an earlier comment arguing that "Updating SL isn't really all that hard cause they have done it is how we got mesh and rigged mesh and now animesh. They can continue to keep layering new content and it'll work just fine."

Skyther argues otherwise:

The issue isn't that you can't update Second Life's code. or even rewrite it from scratch. BOTH have been done, see: OpenSimulator, an Open-Source clone of SL functionality that's close enough [that] most 3rd party clients support it out of the box.

But ability isn't the same thing as willingness. And far from being 'not all that hard' as the above comment states, each one of the examples features: Mesh, Rigged, animesh, and now Bakes on Mesh are all hacks onto an engine that wasn't designed for it. Now you can do that, and they did. But that incurs a serious performance penalty unless you redo the entire graphics pipeline (which they didn't). That's what this guy's talking about. It's not that you can't update or rewrite SL, it's that it's not cost effective to do so on a level that would give you acceptable performance.

To better explain SL's codebase issues. This is what I would consider a minimum for a true SL-like game in 2020 (VR Chat isn't really SL-like, but more of a Sansar that worked):

SL Enthusiast & Veteran Tech Exec Predicts Dark Future for Virtual World

You read the optimistic view of Second Life's future from a top SL brand owner, now here's a necessary counterpoint from longtime reader Luther Weymann, a retired technology industry veteran who last ran a company with 1000 employees, and is an eloquent supporter of SL's creative power. Despite his love for the virtual world, his view as an experienced tech exec is quite bleak: 

The software that runs SL cannot be radically changed or updated, too much will break and the time it takes to fix massive changes only results in more problems. This is the inherent problem with very old software that a lot of people have worked on and the code is now very difficult. Happens to many legacy software that never gets a full rewrite every four or so years to stay competitive.

SL is not a growth business and any review of the user base will tell a good business person that diluting their investment so they can raise the capital to rewrite a new SL from scratch for use by the current user base is not good business. It's better to take the current profit and don't rock the boat.

That in mind, here's the scenario for SL that Luther sees coming down the road:

The Economics of Fifty Linden Fridays -- Or, Why Dozens of SL Merchants Willingly Sell Items for the L$ Equivalent of Twenty Cents

The legendary Fifty Linden Fridays shopping extravaganza, in which top SL brands offer select items for a mere L$50 (i.e. about 20 cents), has been running since 2009.  But it only just occurred to me recently: How the hell does this even make any economic sense?

Or as regular reader Patchouli Woolhara recently commented:

After the initial costs of tier, tooling, marketing, blogotex access, customer support, and hours worked, the marginal cost of these products is close to zero on the merchant's side if the sale is done purely in-world. 

Probably a lot less than zero, actually -- surely most merchants must lose money from FLF?

Not exactly, according to FLF creator and manager OMGWTF Barbecue (whose avatar name I just goddamn adore).

"Partly, FLF brings people to their mainstores," she tells me via Discord. "People might be discovering their store for the first time, and checking out their other products, which is super valuable! On top of that, it's a little special treat for people who are already your customers, something to look forward to. The creator might reduce the price to L$50, but it's likely they'll be able to sell more based on the co-op nature of the event."

She's talking about the power of cross-promotion across brands:

Sansar's Fat Boy Slim Show a Success for Wookey, Says Longtime Virtual World Creator (Comment of the Week)

Fatboy's Lost Horizon set in Sansar via Tim A's Twitter

I don't have a PC/VR rig powerful enough to catch the Fatboy Slim/Lost Horizon show staged on Sansar under its new owner Wookey, but longtime virtual world user/creator Tim A did, and here's his take:

I checked it out - I love Fatboy Slim, and it was a lot of fun to see him. It was pretty impressive -- the avatar moved in real-time, with the movements matching what was shown on the video screen. Things have come a long, long way since the "U2 in SL" days. Wookey had set up a ton of NPCs, so it was hard to get a good count, but from folks I was talking to in the area, probably about 50 folks hanging out.

Sansar hit a peak concurrency on Steam of 180 during the Lost Horizon show, so I bet overall attendance was much more than 50 -- probably upwards of 500, I'd estimate.

The show didn't go off without a hitch, however, Tim continues:

Second Life Usage Now Higher Than Its 2007 Hype Level Period?

Interesting comment from Amanda Dallin, reflecting on SL's recently reported "pandemic boost": 

If the definition of a monthly active user has remained the same then the comparison to the peak in 2007 is valid. Actually there were likely more than 350,000 new registered users a month in 2007 when SL hit the peak of 1.1 million MAU so the number of returning users could be about the same or higher than in 2007 using your math and logic.

This sounds right. 2007 saw a lot more churn due to massively promoted events like a cross-over experience for the television show CSI, mostly from people who were unable to install the program or get past the orientation. However, the definition of a monthly active user has definitely changed since 2007 -- back then, Linden Lab would mainly refer to "Total Residents", i.e. anyone who signed up for an account, whether or not they even installed the program and went in-world.

The definition that hasn't changed is the amount of concurrent users, and that is indisputably much larger now than it was in 2007:

Readers Review the Alchemy Viewer for SL

Demo video by Pepe Kuno, who notes: "Finally smooth. Firestorm was killing me with the lag.

Last week's most socially shared post by far is this one on the third party SL viewer known as Alchemy, which suggests to me that many are looking for an alternative to the popular Firestorm viewer. Readers weigh in on the pros and cons:

I decided to give the Alchemy beta release a try-out after watching Luca's [demo] video. (I'm on a 2017 iMac 27".) It is definitely more responsive in large areas, as texture loading seems to be handled better compared to Firestorm. And my FPS have been higher in the areas I usually visit. While it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Firestorm - and is missing some Firestorm features like parcel-level WindLights and the built-in pose stand - overall I've had no problems using it as my primary viewer for Second Life. Sadly, there are fewer options for Mac users these days, with Kokua being the only other relatively up-to-date option besides Firestorm and the official SL Viewer. - Posted by: Spiffy Voxel 

Contrary to that, a reader named "Lemmy" reports: "I tried using my recent MacBook Pro, and I’m getting half the framerate I would using Firestorm." So apparently Mac mileage may vary.

Another reader has some tips on using Alchemy on a PC:

Star Citizen Dissenters & Loyalists Debate Worth of the Still-in-Alpha MMO

The comment thread to last week's "Why Do So Many Gamers Passionately Want Star Citizen To Fail?" was definitely more civil and thoughtful than the brigade of Star Citizen hate that my first post on Chris Robert's crowdfunded MMO attracted. While the level of rage remains a mystery to me, I do have some more insight on its critics. For instance, from this comment by gaming YouTuber "Bootcha":

There have been very few people who have been financially invested in the Star Citizen project (I would know, I was one, I'm in the now-conspicuously-missing picture of "The Pledge" with Roberts and everyone back in 2012.). Everyone else is just a customer. Emotionally invested is a different matter. We are certainly witnessing a different brand of futurism. The game-ification of crowdfunding, as described by Roberts, if you will.

I don't question that the possibilities dreamt by the Star Citizen project are exciting, and no doubt they would be appealing to a customer or potential designer hire looking to do something new. However, I would wonder what the reaction of a programmer or engineer friend would be if you asked them about the project's technical needs. Nearly all of them give the same chuckle, the one where they're thankful they're not on the hook to deliver such massive needs. We of course have that one friend who is brilliant enough to try on the condition they're in charge of every little detail, or unwise enough to try for the sake of showing off.

The dialogue of either someone proselytizing for the project or condemning it to burn is only tangentially interesting, like watching two grackles fight over a piece of bread on the sidewalk. And if you want to study that in a sociological framework, I'm all for that. But if that's not your intent, what squabbles the fans and critics have distracts from the stranger situation of a company run by [allegations of questionable corporate governance that I'm unable to fact check at press time and so will just elide - WJA ] , all while the product of both side's concerns constantly faces years of technical delays and even media "editorial issue" problems that create an inconsistent narrative of what work is being done, during a reported funding explosion entering unprecedented territory.

Now, THAT'S an interesting story.

I definitely agree the behind-the-scenes of Star Citizen's development is one very interesting story to tell. But a story of corporate bungling would not necessarily mean the final product is a failure.

To make a movie comparison, the production of Mad Max: Fury Road -- which cost about as much to produce and market as Star Citizen -- was beset by cost overruns, ridiculous unforced errors by the studio, corporate politics and in-fighting, and delayed for years. And yet in the end, Fury Road still went on to become a modest hit -- and critically, one of the most acclaimed Hollywood movies of all time.

The other interesting story is why Bootcha's thoughtful opinion can co-exist with opinions like this one, below:

Why Do So Many Gamers Passionately Want Star Citizen to Fail?

When I wrote about the latest update to Star Citizen, Chris Roberts' highly-ambitious, massively crowdfunded MMO -- with over $250 million pledged so far -- I expected it to be received as some interesting insights into an online world that many people haven't thought about much lately.

What I didn't expect at all was a religious war.

But a text-based one more or less broke out in Comments, the first wave led by Star Citizen apostates unleashed by an online community devoted to hating Star Citizen. (Yes, that's a thing.) Some of the milder comments:

lol scam citizen. How much Chris paid you to publish this bullshit?

Scam Citizen the list of excuses why they keep missing their own deadlines continues. But fortunately the Roberts Family and his friends are now millionaires for selling you your own dreams and changing it last minute...

Well I never heard of this blog until now, and based on this article I can see the blog is shit...

I wonder how much Crobblers paid for this disinformation... It will never be released, because if it ever is, the money stream from fleeced rubes would suddenly end and the game would be publicly reviewed as a finished product, which is something the Crobblers will never allow...

"Crobblers", I guess, being a portmanteau for "Chris Roberts promoters". Which is witty! But it's the level of conspiratorial rage that's totally fascinating to me. Why do so many gamers actively, hungrily want this one indie game project to be a sham, and fail? 

"I'll be the first to say I've had and continue to have frustrations with Star Citizen," my colleague Joshua May told me, after reading the responses to my interview with him on the game. "That's just life. Things I want got delayed, things I didn't care about got implemented instead, everyone wants something different out of it. Everyone has a different idea of what the final game should be and gets disappointed if they don't think [Roberts' company] Cloud Imperium Games is going in that direction."

An indie game developer himself, May speculates that some of the anger is based confusion over what's required to publish an online world so ambitious.

"It can't make everyone 100% happy, because everyone disagrees on the end product," as he puts it. "That's the nature of any video game, especially MMOs. People just aren't accustomed to seeing the sausage made and most of them don't understand it."

Surely many Star Citizen detractors are angry because they've pledged money to Roberts' project over the years, and now feel buyers' remorse, because it's still far from complete. But last year, crowdfunding increased, while more and more content has been added to the project. Despite that -- or perhaps because of that -- many detractors still insist it must all be a scam.  

"Skepticism is healthy, but it's increasingly getting far enough along in development that the skepticism is less and less warranted," notes May.

But if Star Citizen has its detractors, it also has its defenders -- for instance, this reader comment that apparently came in via a pro Star Citizen community:

The Problem With a 12,000 x 12,000 Second Life Display -- And With Asking for It From an Unpaid Third Party Viewer Developer (Comment of the Week)

Last week's most popular post by far is this one about how the Black Dragon viewer now has a setting to take 12,000 by 12,000 images of Second Life. So clearly many were interested in that option. However, this also provoked reader comments like "4K is generally good enough for screenshots" and, of course, "Why?" (The obvious answer to the latter being, of course, Why the hell not?)

Black Dragon creator NiranV posted a comment going deep into his own sense of Why:

I did it because people wanted it and it was literally a 10 second number change that doesn't impact the Viewer in any way and doesn't add any bloat and fits into what the Viewer is aimed at.

I told people that it's quite pointless but some peeps were like, "but more pixels!"

But what do you need to pixels for?

"More pixels!"

Yea well that's fine and all but what for, 4K + FXAA is perfectly fine.

"But i already run the Viewer at 4K natively, it looks like trash."

NiranV proceeds to unleash a hilarious rant that's also an insight into a day in the life of a third party viewer developer attempting to serve the needs of their user community