New World Notes

Do Most New Second Life Users Not Know It's Mostly User-Created?

The current SL account creation page with opt-out for e-mail updates

Reader Luther Weymann, who describes himself as a tech industry veteran who last ran a company with 1000 employees, describes his experiences using Second Life during his retirement years -- and his impression of new users, and what they have to cope with:

I started with my first avatar on January 1, 2004, while browsing the web waiting for the Rose Bowl to start on television. That's how I discovered SL. That was 16 years ago. Like many in SL over 16 years, there is nothing I have not done or tried. SecondLife became my only hobby.

So, during the last 8-9 months, I've been looking at the nearby avatar list wherever I go and finding lots of avatars that are one or two days old. I find them at Big Daddy's dance place wondering how to fit in and dance or in large retail stores, not really knowing how they got there or someone on the mainland just frozen, not knowing what to do or somehow on an island in the Blake Sea not understanding where they are.

And in all cases, I send an IM that says, "Hi, I see you're 1 day old, new to SL. It can be difficult getting started, is there anything I can do to help you?"

The response is immediate and heartfelt. They don't know what to do. None of them know how to rez a prim, or have ever heard of the SL Market where you can search for L$0 clothing, none of them know how to change clothes or why their feet stick out of their shoes, or part of their body is transparent or what a sandbox is or where to look if you give them something.

None of them, really none of them, know that everything they see except the sky and ground was made by SL Residents.

And every one of them will eventually ask this question "Is this worth it?" because they have never been told this is a do-it-yourself world with no support or help getting started and it just seems so impossible for them to understand what is going on.

This is somewhat anecdotal, but it is also my impression that most first-time users don't know Second Life is a user-created world, or even know about prims. I certainly haven't seen many (any?) recent ads for SL which promote prim-based creation, even though that's something that would immediately be appealing to tens of millions of former Minecraft players in search of a new game world to play in.

Again this is anecdotal, but Luther's sense is that most new users aren't joining SL to create, but in search of something more essential:

With Sansar Gone, Second Life Needs a New Vision -- And Strawberry Linden Appointed CEO (Comment of the Week)

Most readers weren't exactly enthused about Engadget's interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg talking about his company's defenestration of Sansar, his calling Second Life a "cash machine", or of his list of improvements to Second Life, such as moving its infrastructure to the cloud. It inspired this rant from reader "Anne Frank" (I sure hope that's her real name):

Color me skeptical. I have about as much faith in these plans as I do that the US is moving in a good economic direction. It just assumes that the little people are always going to be along for the ride.

Why should I care about "the cloud"? Why should I care that their power structure is preserved after their huge failure? Why should I care that moving some free WindLight settings might become a commodity? Let's all hold hands and get stupid together. I didn't hear anything about "names". I guess now is not the time to want anything more than making sure you don't get less. Yay for us.

This is an unimaginably horrible time in our history, but we can celebrate an uptick in SL business. It's all good, babe. We're here for you and we're not planning to do a damn thing to make your experience better in the future.

Did I hear about any generous economic incentives to actually encourage broken people to engage in their tired old game? What are they giving to the future?  They seem to be giving their own well-being and we're supposed to be happy about that and give them our resources.

If ever there was a time for vision, it's now. If ever there was a time to lay the foundation for a better world, it's now. My god, the message LL should be sending is one of hope and compassion to its users. It should be sending an invitation to rally the troops to build, network, and engage. LL should be engaging directly with its base and its world.

Speaking of vision, Anne ends with a pretty visionary proposal of her own:

In Coronavirus' Wake, Virtual World-Based Educator Using Both Zoom and Second Life to Teach Her Classes (Comment of the Week)

As educators discuss the appeal of Linden Lab's new post-Coronavirus land discount for schools, teacher and reader Kaylee West offers a unique perspective on using virtual worlds as a pedagogic tool now that her students can't be in the same room as her:

Like many other institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic we are using Zoom for live online classes, and Zoom and similar platforms are excellent for a lot of the teaching we need to do. However, they can't do what virtual worlds like Second Life can do (simulation and multiuser collaboration), so my SL lessons will continue.

For the first time, however, I won't be physically in the same computer lab as my students, but will use a combination of Zoom and SL to conduct the classes. Zoom, with its screen sharing capability, will enable me to brief students at the start of a lesson, and help them solve technical problems during the lesson, which is much easier if you can see their screen.

For me, this has been one big area that I would love to see better developed in SL -- some form of desktop or screen sharing. Maybe this takes development into a whole other technical area that Linden Lab can't support, but it would make the functionality of SL much greater for assisting students and newbies during lessons. Still, if LL wants SL to be able to compete with platforms like Zoom and Collaborate for certain types of interaction, they will need to look at features like screen sharing, etc.

Hopefully someone at Linden Lab notices that last request. Kaylee's been using Second Life as a teaching tool in her university for 12 years, and has noticed some interesting (and positive) advantages to that over the years:

The Coronavirus-Themed Fashion Event in Second Life Isn't Real -- But The Need to Joke In Dark Times Is (Comment of the Week)

Nylon Pinkney's latest comic about a Covid-19-themed fashion event in Second Life garnered some interesting responses, with some in Comments and many across social media (especially Facebook) accidentally assuming it was an actual virtual world event. So to clarify: No, the one described in her comic is not. However, that's not stopping other COVID-19 hijinks from ensuing online:

I mean, it's a joke. But as I was trying on demos for the [SL] Marketplace, I saw a sponsored ad for a Coronavirus 'bumper' - it sprays particles in the shape of COVID19 viruses if you bump the wearer. And someone in the club I dance at walked in with a Clorox Wipes holdable. -- Blaise Glendevon

Other readers found the comic (and other attempts at Coronavirus-themed humor) to be in bad taste. And while I can ultimately only speak for myself, I do think reader "Fionalein" speaks for many:

The Problems With "Updating Second Life" or Bridging It With Sansar (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Second Life in 2003 (Dark Life was a user-made mini-MMORPG)

Much interesting reader discussion around last week's post about why Linden Lab needed to develop something like Sansar (though in retrospect, should have taken a totally different direction.) "Alicia" explores this topic with some historical background:

Linden Lab were never real game developers. Case in point, their game engine specifically built for Second Life. That engine is very similar to what Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment - SOE) and Turbine Inc. (now part of Warner Bros. Games Boston circa 2018, while being bought originally by WB back in 2009) had out with EverQuest and Asheron's Call, both of which came out in 1999... the same year the engine for SL was created. Both companies never cosmetically upgraded their games due to the fact that the engines could never truly handle it.

That brings me back to the engine LL created for SL. That very engine, used with the same coding that was used to bring EQ and AC to life, was never meant to handle mesh and textures larger than it could handle. LL never understood that fact, and now people are bringing in textures larger than the engine can handle, mesh objects/bodies with entirely too many polygons, etc. Hell, even high end PCs lag with Second Life because of how everything is uncompressed and unoptimized.

Yes, SL IS 17 yrs. old this year and has many great updates, however, people need to realize that the truth... the truth is that ALL game developer companies have to try and put out successors to the original. They have to. Yes, Sansar was an utter flop, and there's no denying that. The problem LL now has with SL is that there's not much it can do to update it anymore. When games get past a certain age, they become that much harder to update. This is fact. Games either end up entering maintenance mode (gamer speak for eventual shutdown), or they simply shut down entirely.

I'd make a small interjection here. Second Life's engine was, in fact, lead developed by someone from the game industry: Founding Linden CTO Cory Ondrejka was a game developer at Acclaim and THQ before joining Linden Lab. (He even lead developed an oldschool, coin-operated arcade game; for a time, a playable unit stood, plugged in, in the Linden lobby.) In any case, to Alicia's point, co-founder/CEO Philip Rosedale very much wasn't from the game industry and when it came time to upgrade to mesh, Cory was long gone from the company.

Alicia goes on to explain the problem (as some have suggested) of "bridging" Second Life to Sansar:

If You Like Second Life, You'll Like the Black Dragon Viewer (Comment of the Week #2)

From Ellapinellapin's retired but indispensable Flickr devoted to untouched Black Dragon screenshots

My plea to support via Patreon pledges future updates to Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer created by NiranV, was as fine as it goes -- but reader "Lone Dubratt" expressed it more elegant than me in Comments:

If you like Second Life you like Black Dragon.

I've always seen it as that second viewer. The camera and UI is different, and for people set in their ways that's a bad thing. That's not what Black Dragon is about, though. Black Dragon is an alternative, THE alternative to a stagnant SL viewer. It's cutting edge, ground breaking, everything the SL viewer (for some absurd reason) isn't.

Firestorm is most popular, it's the middle ground. Some neat features atop ye olde reliable SL viewer. There'd be no future for SL without a cutting edge, Niran's work has at times dragged Second Life forward when nothing else will. It's the second viewer you use when you want to see things at their prettiest. When you want things to run at their fastest. When you want a taste of what SL can, and should be. It's your holiday from the comfort of the simple and known. Your view into what future SL or Firestorm viewers [could] or at times should become. Very often, it very much is the future (by which I mean, other viewers 'acquire' from Niran's open source code, perhaps without so much as a mention they used his work).

And really that first line nails it. Second Life's graphics and architecture have been showing its age for well over a decade, and the UI and UX remaining vexing as fuck. But it's also open enough that a lone individual --and it's often one person, and they're often cranky or at the least eccentric!) -- can dig into its guts, look at it like no one else has before, and create miracles.

It's why Black Dragon is an ongoing project that reminds me of Second Life in its glory days:

As Second Life Ages, Linden Lab Had to Try Something Like Sansar (Comment of the Week)

While there's still much anger among the Second Life community about the end of Sansar as a Linden Lab-sponsored project, some readers also make a more positive point: Since Second Life is still based on an ancient graphics engine and server architecture from nearly two decades (!) ago, the company really did (and does) need to invest in developing new platforms while keeping the original one operational. As "Pulsar" puts it:

Linden Lab dumped no working product (Second Life). What's to be "dumped" here -- actually being sold -- is the branch that gave no fruits... Earlier you realize it, the better. Selling it is the right thing to do, in order to not lose further money and getting something back. It's even possible (but I won't bet it) that Sansar, under a different company with a clear plan and finally reworked, other than rebranded, could find a niche.

I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if Sansar does find a suitor -- for instance, a Chinese company that wants a VR-optimized virtual world to deploy behind the Great Firewall. In any case, as Pulsar goes on, Linden Lab was never trying to "abandon" the Second Life customer base, but attempting to grow a new, somewhat overlapping audience with a new product:

Sansar's End as Linden Lab Project Angers Second Life Users Who Feel Short-Shrifted (Comments of the Week)

As this video tribute to Sansar by Daisy Winthorpe suggests -- published to YouTube a few days before Linden Lab announced the virtual world's end as a Linden Lab-sponsored project and since seen nearly 10,000 times -- it does have (had?) some passionate supporters. To judge by the overwhelming barrage of reader comments about the news, however, Sansar also has quite a few detractors from the Second Life user community who feel short-shrifted by Linden Lab. Just a small sampling of the more civil comments (relatively speaking):

Manticore Lays Out "Creator Revolution for Games" Vision for CORE

Many readers jumped on last week's alpha tester invite offer for CORE (now over, alas), the Unreal-based "digital playground and community" from startup Manticore. At the time, I didn't know many details about Manticore's vision for CORE, other than their intent to offer monetization options for creators. Fortunately, reader "vwfan" points to a Manticore blog post published during last December's holiday dead zone, which actually lays out that vision quite a lot:

Immersive Power of Mouth Tracking in Social VR (Comment of the Week)

Many readers were seriously impressed by NeosVR's new mouth tracking feature, and longtime metaverse developer Max Graf expressed its value in a social VR context:

I have to say, out of all the things that that Linden Lab tried to accomplish with Sansar, one of the things they actually got exactly right (and even pushed the boundaries of the technology in general) was the VR voice and facial symmetry they developed, very similar to what Neos has done here.

I only got to experience it a few times in there with an actual VR rig on, but when I did this was one of the things I specifically wanted to check out, knowing how much they put into it. It was not just the mouth moving when sound was present, it adapted to variations in phonetics, volume and emphasis to change the facial mesh in a very accurate way.

This is definitely among the several features that Sansar really innovated on, and I hope something can be done to this technology, notwithstanding Sansar's current limbo state. Max says the overall effect was transformative: