New World Notes

How to Connect Second Life to Sansar: It's Not the Engine, It's the Community (Comment of the Week)

Interesting conversation on the feasibility of upgrading Second Life to the modern age, potentially via Unity. Reader "Seph" proposes an alternative that Linden Lab should seriously consider: Instead of updating the Second Life engine, give the SL community some specific reasons to transition much of their activity into Sansar:  

There's a lot easier ways for Linden Lab to automatically integrate existing Second Life users into a newer, updated platform. They already have Sansar that they could repurpose.

Make it so that all Second Life landowners get as a part of their tier, land/experiences in Sansar as well.

Make it so that premium Second Life members earn perks in Sansar as well.

Have L$ and the Lindex be the one currency and exchange between Second Life and Sansar.

Have a single account, single login between both worlds. Build a 'Linden Lab' launcher that can install and launch the official SL viewer (and third party viewers) and Sansar.

Stop paying Levi's, NASA, Intel, Twitch streamers, Marvelous Designer, eSports organizations, EDM record labels, etc. and redirect that money into offsetting the risks Second Life creators and entertainers would have to take in moving an idea to Sansar. I'm sure they've spent millions on these fruitless things; give a million instead to Relay For Life. In exchange, [Relay for Life] risks less donations by hosting some of their events in Sansar instead.

Just do things to make it easy and obvious instead of intentionally alienating SL users from Sansar, and then SL won't need an updated graphics platform. One's already built, just integrate it.

This all makes sense to me, and I like the last idea in particular. I understand why Linden Lab wants to keep the SL and Sansar brands separate, and to emphasize that Sansar is safe for major real world brands. (No excessive trolling , weird porn, IP theft, etc!) But for some 15 years, the Second Life community has actively and directly supported one of the most well-known and respected real world brands out there:

Could Second Life Slowly Migrate to Unity? Maybe, Says Veteran Developer Adam Frisby, But Here's Why That'd Be a Massive Undertaking

 

Last week in our conversation about whether Second Life should upgrade to a modern 3D engine, I suggested that Linden Lab could slowly shift toward Unity, the world's most used 3D game engine. But there's what might work in theory, and what is actually feasible. Developer Adam Frisby has been working on a new virtual world platform based on Unity for years, and has a long history developing with Second Life -- he's also a co-founder of OpenSim --  so I asked him to explain if my idea was even worthwhile.

"SL is a very unique beast," Adam tells. "And frankly, they'd gain very little switching to Unity, and lose a lot. It's already a mature product, and SL relies on doing a ridiculous number of very simple things, very fast. Whereas most games rely on doing a lot of very complex things, but at a reasonable pace.

"I think SL has something like a total of 5? very simple GPU shaders. The average game probably has no less than 100-200 complex ones on screen at any one time. The moment you open the potential for any kind of complexity, and SL's performance would tank even harder. Because no one has ever optimized anything, and the only reason it could ever even think of running at all, is because the rendering complexity is somewhere between 'jack squat' and 'nothing'."

But my specific proposal is to add Unity inside the Second Life viewer -- and only switch from SL's legacy OpenGL-based graphics to Unity, whenever a user teleports to a new, Unity-compatible island or continent: 

Linden Lab Lays Off Over 20 Members of Sansar Team, Confirm Insiders; Social VR Platform to Continue Operating With Skeleton Crew

Confirming a blog post from Ryan Schultz (along with some ominous rumblings I heard last Friday), some insiders tell me that Linden Lab has recently laid off over 20 staffers working on Sansar, the company's social VR platform. Even more tragically, the layoffs include some longtime Lindens who got their start working on Second Life, Linden Lab's core profitable product, but who were moved to the Sansar team.

Asked to comment on these layoff reports, a Linden Lab spokesperson just sent me this response, in its entirety:

"We have no comment at this time, but we're continuing to develop both Second Life and Sansar, and we're excited about the many new partnerships and features on tap for 2020!"

This move is not at all surprising, and follows a round of Linden Lab layoffs last year; more key, Sansar has steadfastly refused to grow its user numbers, with peak concurrency remaining in the low hundreds at most, despite marketing campaigns with major brands like Hello Kitty, Spielberg's Ready Player One, and top esports groups.

My understanding is Sansar will not be closed down, or sold, but will continue operating with a skeleton crew, and in all likelihood, eventually be run as a spinoff company and product separate from Linden Lab. 

In any case, this is a sad turn for a project that began under the leadership of former Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble, when Sansar was conceived as a spiritual successor to Second Life. But between Humble stepping down and Ebbe Altberg taking the reigns at CEO, some management decisions shifted Sansar's direction:

Linden Lab Hiring Compliance Analyst to Monitor Sansar Virtual World Economy for Real World Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing

Linden Lab is hiring a Senior Compliance Analyst for Sansar, and the job description vividly illustrates just how deadly serious a job like that has become. Used to be that a role like this might focus mainly on everyday consumer issues like credit card fraud/misuse (i.e. kids secretly using their parents' cards to buy virtual gold). Nowadays, however, it reads like a job description for someone in the FBI:

The ideal candidate for this position will be responsible for supporting and maintaining various compliance activities and programs, including the Customer Identification program and associated vendor management processes. Responsible for monitoring and assessing compliance issues concerning the patterns and trends associated with money laundering and other potential compliance-related risks. Assist with mitigating money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud related risks, and gathering data and documents for state exams.

Yes -- actual terrorism in the virtual world:

New for Nintendo Switch: Hexagroove, "Tactical DJ" Game by Linden Lab Alum

If you own a Nintendo Switch, Hexagroove is a new game you should check out, another ambitious project created by former Linden Lab developers. (In this case, from folks mainly on the Blocksworld team.) As befitting a game from Linden alum, Hexagroove is a mash-up of many genres, with a core focus on player creativity -- specifically, it's a "tactical DJ" game:

Posts Critical of Second Life On Blogger Network OK, Says Linden Lab

From "Fighting the Front", New World Notes' story on a Second Life battle between real world fascists and anti-fascists

After announcing the official Second Life Blogger Network, Linden Lab posted an FAQ that attempts to address some questions SL bloggers have raised about it -- including mine, regarding this specific criterion on what user blog posts the company plans to promote:

"The blog post highlights a positive implementation of the Second Life experience, with well-written text and high-quality imagery."

Does this mean blog posts about non-positive uses of Second Life don't qualify for promotion? The FAQ says, "we’ll still consider posts from blogs that are often critical of Second Life". But would that include posts that report on bad or controversial community behavior -- for example, a blog post reporting on racist behavior or content in SL?

Adult Content is "Under 5%" of Second Life's Revenue, Says Linden Lab Staffer -- And Don't Expect Adult Content in Sansar Anytime Soon

Linden Lab developers on the Sansar team, Lacie and Galileo Linden, just hosted an Ask Me Anything on Reddit which is bursting with pretty fascinating questions and answers. (Many of them, unsurprisingly, are actually about Second Life.) One notable thread started by "May_I_Be_Frank" delves into a topic the company is usually very reluctant to talk about -- virtual porn:

Is Sansar still taking the position that it won't allow adult content? My understanding of Second Life is that the vast majority of its stable income stream is from adult activity - either directly or indirectly. Is that wrong? If it's not wrong, what market is Sansar after here that other platforms don't already provide?

Lacie at first replies with an answer from the SL team at Linden Lab, "While adult activity is popular in Second Life, it only accounts for a fraction of the overall economic and social ecosystem"... but when pressed to be more specific, comes back with this from the Second Life staff:

So, there are many ways to look at this, so it’s hard to give a true split. In the narrowest definition, it’s under 5% of our revenues. Of course, there are lots of ways to consider adult content’s indirect impact, and that could probably be a larger share of revenues. 

So that "Under 5%" comes with a heavy caveat. For instance, 25% of the entire Second Life land mass is Adult-rated to allow extreme sex and violence,which is a whole other topic. Presumably "under 5%" refers to genitals for avatars, sex animations, and all the other necessary particulars for pixel sex -- i.e., all the items which inevitably led to the unfair branding of Second Life as a game for people who can't have sex in real life.

Speaking of which, Linden Lab's team was pretty adamant that adult content is not coming to Sansar anytime soon -- in part because Sansar has established relationships with major corporations:

People Keep Shouting Into the Void of My YouTube Interview With Linden Lab's CEO from Some 6 Months Ago

I'm not sure how often this happens with interviews of other CEOs of other game companies, but I continue watching in fascination as random Internet people keep showing up on my YouTube page to post Comments directed at Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg or at no one particular in response to my interview with him that was published nearly half a year ago. Here's a recent sample:

Linden Lab & Its Users Have Strayed Far From "Your World, Your Imagination" (Comment of the Week)

Passionate reader conversation in this post about the drastic changes to Sansar's default avatar -- which to John C, removes some fundamental creativity options for most people who might use Sansar:

The Avatar is all the average person has to express themselves in a virtual world. Like in reality, how you appear to others matters, if it is the way in which you express yourself.

When I meet another Avatar I see two things, either an Avatar that creates beyond the "look" and those who create with their look. There are of course those who do both, but they are rare. So the creator of a virtual world must give the “people”, as defined by the average user, the chance to be something very special in this world. This is all they have, and virtual worlds are supposed to be about, another life, something “more” than what they have in the real world.  

 Clara Seller expands on that point:

JohnC is talking to the heart of what is failing both Sansar and SL. The importance of an avatar can't be stressed enough. Linden Lab has strayed so far from their foundation of "Your World, Your Imagination" that they don't know who they are anymore. Unfortunately, I think they've also taken a good portion of their remaining customers with them.

But Clara says the blame isn't solely with the company:

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: