New World Notes

Tilia Survey Results: New Payment Service/Personal Info Policy Won't Change Most SLers Linden Dollar Behavior - But 1 in 5 Say They Will

Here's the results of our not-so-scientific survey of SLers about Tilia, Linden Lab's new payment service company that they'll have to switch to this month -- while also having provide their social security number and other personal data, if they make cash-out transactions. With 112 responses, nearly 68% say these changes won't impact their usage of Linden Dollars. 

Somewhat concerning for Linden Lab, however, is that nearly 1 in 5 say these changes will likely cause them to use L$ less:

Survey: Will Switching to Tilia Change How You use Linden Dollars?

Now that SLers have had a few days to process Linden Lab's announcement of a new payment subsidiary they need to switch to by the end of this month, here's a survey to gauge how that change might impact their usage of Linden Dollars. As this is a quick temperature check, I've made the question and answers as open-ended as possible:

Is it Too Late to Curb SLers' Use of Badly Optimized Mesh Bodies?

The debate over badly optimized mesh bodies in Second Life continues in NWN comments, but Subversive Vavoom (love the name) argues that the debate is basically moot:

SL is mostly a shopping and sexual simulator if you pay attention to where the money is being spent. If wearing mesh bodies that are poorly optimized were only a couple years old, I could understand the outrage. We're way past that now. Every single major sales event is geared towards them, and has been for more than six years. When everything is being created for the top four mesh bodies including rigged accessories, you can't possibly think thousands of creators are just going to stop. It's as if the people saying this haven't really played SL very much in the last few years. Go to Uber, Fameshed, Collabor88, and look around. That's where the most money is being exchanged in-world on apparel. There's no stopping that kind of popularity, and frankly it just shows how out of touch you are with the platform if you think it could.

The popularity of poorly optimized mesh bodies has been well-known for quite some time, but in my opinion, assuming there's no way to address the bad externalities they cause (i.e. lag for everyone) is a mistake. Another reader, Summer Haas, suggests some changes that would allow people to keep their resource-heavy mesh in the privacy of their home/skybox, but nudge them to optimize better in social spaces:

Poorly Optimized Avatars Are the Pollution-Spewing SUVs of The Virtual World - Comment of the Week

The debate over poorly optimized mesh bodies which threaten Second Life's existence as a shared, virtual world, continues -- this time, with an apt metaphor from Soda Sullivan:

The official avatar needs a complete overhaul. It has been the subject of many debates fro years and years and let's face it, the verdict it in and this avatar was built wrong. It is too tall, it is ill-proportioned, and the improved mesh avis are complicated as hell to try to get a new user comfortable with customizing... This overhaul should have been done over a decade ago and now it is crucial.

Linden Lab wanting to keep "hands off" makes perfect sense in most cases, but not here.

Think of cars. Currently our roads are full of gas-powered mammoth vehicles that are literally killing us with their exhaust. So , the government wants people in electric cars. They [encourage] manufacturers in that direction with both carrot and stick. Governor Linden should act the same way with the avatar. Make a new basic avatar, and then set down some rules of the road for anyone who wants to make their own heads, bodies, etc.

Or to put it another way: Wearing a poorly optimized mesh body in public spaces is like driving a massive SUV with a busted catalytic converter around town. Enough people do that, and everyone just stays indoors.

Unless and until Linden Lab does do anything about this, there are alternatives. Reader Lelani Carver reminds readers there is a kind of Prius Hybrid of mesh bodies on the market:

Veteran SL Developer on Problems Plaguing Second Life as a Platform -- And Solutions to Improve It

Longtime SL content creator Joshua “Karsten Rutledge” May has a really interesting guest post on HyperGrid Business explaining key challenges of professionally developing in Second Life, then offers some solutions to improve it. For instance, content theft:

My wife was astounded when she started doing customer support for my business. “Is there always this much piracy?” she asked me. Yes, unfortunately. It’s one of our biggest customer service issues: People who’ve bought pirated games off of the Second Life Marketplace — 90 percent of them don’t even realize they didn’t buy it from me until they dig back through their order history to find out who they actually paid for the item. 

One way to address this problem? Karsten suggests a new permission system:

Survey Results: Tepid Interest in Attending Second Life's 16th Birthday

Not a scientific survey by any stretch but still worth talking about: With 101 readers responding, about 54% say they have "Somewhat" or no interest at all in attending Second Life's official 16th Birthday celebration. Reasons for the relative disinterest? Judging from reader comments, the main reason brought up most often is lag. However, "Cormoran" also alleges a loss in shared culture:

Philip Rosedale on What Libra & Bitcoin Can Learn from Linden Dollars

Above: Philip Rosedale's 2009 Slideshare for turning Linden Dollars into global currency

Great Medium post for cryptocurrency geeks by Philip Rosedale, who reveals his slide deck from 2009 -- back before hardly anyone knew about Bitcoin -- explaining his plan to turn Second Life's Linden Dollars into a global real world currency. As I never get tired of pointing out, Linden Dollars are still used for more daily transactions than Bitcoin, so Philip's analysis of that plan is worthwhile for crypto advocates -- and perhaps even more relevant to Facebook's plans to create a global cryptocurrency called Libra.

For instance, he talks about how Second Life's very international userbase shaped his approach, and compares that to the direction Libra is now taking:

Linden Lab Should Create an Official Optimized Avatar to Break the Monopoly of Resource Hogging Mesh Bodies (Comment of the Week)

Great conversation last week about how VRChat encourages optimized avatars with a ranking system, versus Second Life's hands-off policy, which has encouraged a nightmare of bad optimization. It's become so bad, as Amanda Magick points out on her blog, you can even come across avatars with over 8 million triangles: "It was almost like she was a virtual black hole sucking in everyone's frame rates from within about half a sim." (As pictured here, via Magick Thoughts.)

JohnC points out that this is due to Linden Lab enabling a handful of mesh body brands to effectively hold a monopoly on the entire SL experience:

Unfortunately they have allowed 2 or 3 badly optimized top bodies to become the standard. And now people have bought into these products, spending crazy amounts of money on them, they are not about to switch to something inferior out of the goodness of their hearts.  And why should they, when it is the responsibility of Linden Lab to provide a top quality avatar and sort out the lag for themselves, not leave it to the community. 

His solution? Break the monopoly from the top with an official, optimized mesh body:

Petition Against L$ Processing Fee Increase Slows, Draws Some Skepticism

The signatures to this online petition protesting Linden Lab's plan to increase the cost of processing Linden Dollars in Second Life recently passed over 2500 total total, but the numbers of new signees is noticeably slowing (most signed signed within the first couple days). Given that there's roughly 100,000 highly active Second Life users, it's likely that the vast majority don't have much incentive to sign on.

Also, since the petition went up, I've seen quite a number of skeptical comments from other SLers who have misgivings with the petition itself. For instance, it mentions (in a message to Linden Lab) "[S]hould you agree to have a direct conversation with representatives for those who have signed this petition, we will work with you to choose those delegates." But that brings up a potential problem:

Nearly 2000 SLers Sign Petition Against Linden Dollar Processing Fee Increase

This online petition suggests that the backlash to Linden Lab's recently announced pricing changes continue, even after the company reversed plans to limit group restrictions. Launched just two days ago, it's already attracted close to 2000 signatures from Second Life users. At issue is Linden's plan to increase the cost of processing Linden Dollars:

[We are] disheartened by the other changes that you have announced that are scheduled to be implemented this month, specifically the doubling of the processing fee from 2.5% to 5%. While we understand that Linden Lab is a business that needs to profit in order to thrive, we feel it is necessary to remind you that we are running businesses, too. As you know, many of us are more than just hobbyists, we rely on the money we earn in Second Life to pay our bills, feed our children, and survive. 

"The last time the fee was increased, it was promised that the cash out times would be faster, which never happened," one signee, content creator Mari Mitchell, tells me.

She also makes an allegation frequently raised by SLers: That the company is squeezing Second Life to benefit its new virtual world, Sansar: "Announcing that [fee increase] at the same week then removing the transaction fees from Sansar was disheartening to many of us," as she puts it, "making us wonder if Second Life creators are listened to or valued at all."

The petition claims that the signees "have a long list of innovative and insightful ideas of how Linden Lab might increase profits without relying on land and without creators having to bear such a severe financial burden." However, specifics on those ideas are intentionally vague: