I was reading recently that the family of the man who wrote the song “It’s a long way to Tipperary” still receive £30,000 a year in royalties. Obviously by now that’s going to be quite an extended family. I’ll expand on this later in the post.
Two blog posts from Emily Short identify some pain from the closure of Versu by Linden Lab. The first post actually has nothing at all to do with Versu initially, the conversation regarding Versu appears in the comments. The first post is about general examples of what can be achieved from Interactive Fiction : A (Mostly Recentish) IF List, For Breadth. That post excited me purely because it mentions Sorcery! by Steve Jackson and Finkle. I played the fighting fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone when I was a lad! I loved those books.
However it’s in the comments where Versu gets a mention with a commenter suggesting Versu should be added to the list and Emily replying:
Versu I’m not listing here because there isn’t currently anything that people can pick up and try: Linden is no longer supporting it, has not released Blood and Laurels, and has taken down the older Versu app. I am investigating whether there is a way for me to regain ownership of the IP and carry the project forward on my own, but I don’t have concrete information to share about that at the moment. I made a pitch for Linden to open source the project as it currently stands, but did not succeed.
I suggested that Linden Lab might want to consider open sourcing Versu or handing the IP to Emily Short, Richard Evans or some other interested party in my recent post about the closure of Versu.
Emily followed up on that comment with a blog post about the closure of Versu : Post-Linden. In this post Emily explains about the closure of Versu. Emily also mentions how she would like to see people who may have started working on Versu in academic environments being able to publish their work in some form. Emily also says:
I am currently trying to see whether I can get back the IP for Versu and the apps that we built that Linden did not release, including Blood and Laurels.
Blood and Laurels was Emily’s about to be released Versu title which has for the time being, been shelved, obviously. So here’s the situation, Linden Lab don’t want Versu, Emily Short does. Surely something can be worked out here. I remain a fan of the concept behind Versu, even if it hasn’t made it to the android yet.
However maybe a solution can be reached whereby Linden Lab don’t lose all control, maybe Linden Lab could build a royalties factor into releasing the Versu tools to Emily. That way, if it does one day become a raging success, Linden Lab get a small cut. This wouldn’t be an easy solution to reach, but there is room for that sort of negotiation.
Linden Lab did put time and money into Versu, how much we don’t know, but they no longer want it, Emily and maybe other people do, an agreement can surely be reached to allow Versu to live on in a post Linden universe.
I think the concept is solid and should not die. However, I am not sure that it is solid as a stand-alone. It could add dramatic depth to nearly any video game where you interact with other characters. Leaving it as-is strongly limits its potential uses. Integrating it into a type of AI for characters could be a powerful and profitable pivot.
Thanks for that input Mike, that certainly adds some depth and some very interesting possibilities. Richard Evans who was behind the project certainly has a reputation as an AI specialist, so there is a lot of exciting possibilities if the AI can be extended to other areas.
There are lots of reasons applications can’t be open sourced. They may include proprietary libraries, or work by people who won’t release rights. Emily hints that Humble capitalized the project — that sure makes it sound like the work of more than two Lindens in a quiet corner.
But let’s put these cancellations (forgive me, Emily) at a 30,000 perspective.
All these projects were an EA exec’s pipedreams, bleeding money, focus, Lindens and Linden time and Linden hires and coding — away from SL.
At the time, you complained of the neglect.
This is what the correction likely has to look like for some combination of legal and internal political/management/shareholder-pique reasons.
Sentimentality aside, this is a move back to a Lab focused on SL.
Emily’s got more than one story, and this is SV — what she should be doing is calling Humble and asking — now that they could do it right — who would fund it, and get out without a non-compete in exchange for stopping bleeding in public.
If she’s a smart writer of drama scripts, it’s what she’s doing now.
I welcomed Linden Lab’s expansion via projects such as Dio and Versu. I felt that Linden Lab needed to expand, however it was clear for some time that Dio was being neglected and didn’t look likely to last.
I don’t think it’s fair to point the neglect finger at Rod Humble during his time at Linden Lab, Second Life itself underwent its largest ever capital expenditure, hardware was upgraded and improvements were made.
However Second Life continued on the downward trajectory and is likely to continue in that direction, although it has much mileage left in the tank.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that Open Sourcing is not a straight forward issue and that Linden Lab did indeed spend money on Versu, Emily has most definitely made that point and Emily was a Linden Lab employee, as was Richard Evans who also worked on the project. However this was an acqui-hire in a similar fashion to how Yahoo! have hired the Cloud Party team, I’m not sure how many other Lindens were working on Versu, even Linden Lab’s own website didn’t promote the venture much but the team would have been larger than Emily and Richard.
For the longevity of Linden Lab, they need to do more than Second Life. They still have Blocksworld and they still have Desura, the latter may be their growth area.