New World Notes

How Much of Second Life's Economy Is an Oligopoly?

"It's interesting to see you use the term 'oligopoly'," writes "Bart", responding to last week's post debating how far (if at all) Second Life has fallen away from its original "Your World, Your Imagination" vision. "People have been saying this for years in SL and it's nice to hear you coming around to understanding its hindrance to diversity and uniqueness."

For the record, I referred to "the oligopoly of mesh avatar makers", as it's fair to assert that that particular market is dominated by a handful of brands. But that's just one of Second Life's largest industries (so to speak), and I don't know if others are also under oligopolic control. Bart, however, believes that's the case:

Bakes on Mesh Will Greatly Improve Second Life Performance -- If SLers, Viewers & Mesh Brands Adopt It

Left and right: Bakes on mesh when using the updated SL viewer... and a current 3rd party viewer (photos by Rhonda Huntress via this thread) 

Linden Lab just announced the official release of Bakes on Mesh [aka BOM], which aims to optimize mesh-based attachments. (Lack of mesh optimization has utterly crippled Second Life performance in recent years.) And while actual SL users are struggling to get it to work with their existing mesh and current viewers (see above), it does have great promise. NiranV, creator of the Black Dragon SL viewer and Second Life's sharpest critic of poor performance, is cautiously optimistic. 

"Bakes on Mesh idea is nice and it's a much needed thing, especially with onion layers," as he puts it to me. "This could potentially reduce texture memory usage by up to 75%, and polygon counts too." He's planning to merge BOM to his own viewer soon, and Firestorm, Second LIfe's most popular viewer, is already doing so.

One key challenge, however, is BOM's compatibility with existing mesh-based avatar content. It remains to be seen if the leading brands will update existing content for their customers -- or require them to buy new BOM-based mesh.

Linden Lab Should Show More Interest in Optimized SL Content... and Less Favoritism to Resource-Heavy Creation (Comment of the Week)

Massive discussion over last week's post about Linden Lab promoting Catwa, culminating in this rant by Soda Sullivan.

First, shame on you Wagner for simply dismissing in your lead paragraph the fact that Linden Lab though it was okay to put its finger on the scales of the market and promote a single creator of mesh heads over all the others.

The irony that they chose one of the baddest actors in polygon resource designs is ironic. It is basically a nice kick in the teeth for any content creator trying to make a less resource heavy product and get into the market.

For the record, I didn't "dismiss" that fact, but instead wrote "that's a very worthwhile debate for another time".  And by all means, I'm totally happy if "another time" is now!

Soda goes on to dismiss SLers who resist comparing Second Life to AAA games, which have better graphics and much better optimized mesh content -- and spares her chief ire for Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg:

Linden Lab Officially Promoting Resource-Heavy Second Life Content That Drastically Hurts SL User Experience

The official Second Life Facebook page recently featured this post promoting a user-made video tutorial for the Catwa Bento Mesh head, one of the most popular and bestselling user brands in Second Life. Some SLers have called this company favoritism and free promotion for content that has competition in the virtual world, and that's a very worthwhile debate for another time.

Perhaps even more notable, however, is this question: Why is Linden Lab promoting mesh-based content that is so resource-heavy, it substantially degrades the user experience for nearly every Second Life user? As reported last year, the top-selling mesh bodies in Second Life -- Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK -- are extremely resource-heavy, and tend to degrade performance of everyone around them, including the users wearing these bodies.

They're so resource-heavy, in fact, a former Linden Lab engineer once told me that using them is effectively like launching a DDOS attack inside Second Life. And now, Linden Lab is effectively promoting those attacks.

But wait, this is just a Facebook post about the Catwa head, not a whole body -- just the head can't be that bad, can it? I asked SL graphics expert NiranV, developer of the acclaimed, graphics-optimized Black Dragon SL viewer, to take a look in the Catwa shop. This is what he found:

 

Linden Lab Hit By Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Alleging Discrimination & Retaliation for Raising Concerns About Its New Payment Service, Tilia

Kavya Pearlman, an award-winning cybersecurity expert, just went public about a wrongful termination lawsuit she filed yesterday against Linden Lab, where she worked last year. A Muslim-American woman of color, Ms. Pearlman alleges the company discriminated against her, and retaliated against her after she raised security concerns related to Tilia, the company's new payment service which all Second Life users are required to register with by tomorrow.

Ms. Pearlman shared the full text of her legal complaint with me, and it contains a number of highly serious allegations. For instance this passage, summarizing the red flags related to Tilia that she claims she brought up with senior staff: 

In the last year of her employment with Linden Lab serving as the Director of Information Security, Kavya Pearlman raised concerns on multiple occasions to her supervisors, top company executives regarding security risks and possible violations of important laws she observed in Linden’s Second Life and Tilia currency program which prohibit money laundering, child pornography, pedophilia, compromise financial and data security, and other related laws.

She goes on to allege that the company did not respond to these issues, but went ahead with Tilia's launch as scheduled:

Crowdfunder Saves Second Life's Hangars Liquides from Imminent Extinction -- But Cyberpunk City's Long-Term Survival Still Not Assured

From left to right: Indiegogo donors Softparade Bing (China), Hangars creator Djehan Kidd, 5Sasha (Russia), Ruby Beta Sabaea (UK), Silverhaze Koenkamp (Japan), and Bixyl Shuftan (USA)

Good news: With just days left to go, Hangars Liquides, Second Life's masterpiece cyberpunk city -- scheduled to be dematerialized at the end of this month -- has been saved. An Indiegogo crowdfunder launched by its lead creator has raised over 50% of its target goal, enough to cover its immediate land tier expenses.

"I can send a wire transfer to Linden Lab on August 1st," Djehan Kidd tells me. "I'll keep fundraising until the final goal... It is a 'by the day' approach now, but this gives me more time to think about future funding methods in the medium term future."

Donors from around the world rallied to save Hangars Liquides, from across the European Union, Finland, Russia, China, Japan, Singapore, the United States, Costa Rica, and beyond. (Some of those donors depicted above.) "It is amazing," Djehan says. "They are amazing, I feel so grateful..."

However, this initial round will only keep Hangars Liquides operational for awhile:

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: