As part of Second Life’s 13th birthday celebrations an inworld Q&A session called Meet The Lindens takes place. Last night it was the turn of Linden Lab CEO to sit on the couch and answer questions.

SL Newser reporter Bixyl Shuftan reported on the event yesterday and as part of his report he wrote :

Ebbe was then asked if users of Sansar would have the option to chose their own names for their avatars, or would they be having to use real-life identities. Ebbe answered he was leaning to the latter, “I think what’s best for Sansar is real names. … anonymous identities makes things confusing.”

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes picked up on this and blogged : Project Sansar May Require RL Names, Suggests CEO. The comments on Hamlet’s post suggested that many people were not exactly enamoured by this news. Fortunately, Ebbe didn’t say that real names would be required for Project Sansar and this simply seems to have been a matter of crossed wires.

Inara Pey has the posted the full transcript and audio : SL13B: Ebbe on the Lab, Second Life, Sansar and more. Here we can see that Ebbe mentions that Linden Lab have been discussing issues of identity for Project Sansar and that real names are being discussed :

I have a preference, some other team players have slightly different preferences, so we’ll see where it ends up. But I think what would be best for Sansar would be real names, and then the ability to have personas underneath that.

This should not be taken in isolation, reading the full transcript we can see that Ebbe isn’t saying that everyone should have to display real names, but he feels it might be ideal if Linden Lab know your real name and that in certain circumstances you may well be in a setting where real names are a better option :

So I could go into a role-playing, or into an experience as an anonymous user in that context. But to the platform, I am not anonymous. And so, without making that too complicated and confusing, is that the right answer? We’ll see. But I think to, it would certainly help with griefing and other things. And it also supports a lot of interesting use-cases where anonymity is actually just really confusing, and actually gets in the way.

You can think of a lot of professional use-cases where there are teachers and students and professionals having meetings where these anonymous identities makes things really confusing; “I know Bob, I want to talk to Bob. Who the hell is this Jumping Jack guy?”

So we’re still debating this, and I’m pushing in one way, and people are pushing in different ways, and we’ll see where we end up. I mean, unfortunately, to implement real names is also really complicated. Do you hitch a ride with Facebook, or do you have to somehow build your own real name system.

There’s more, a lot more and I urge people to read it in full. If you want to go straight to this part of the transcript go here. The important things to note are that Linden Lab have not yet made a decision but it looks as if they are talking about the possibility of using your real name or a pseudonym depending upon the experience you’re visiting. This is not a new discussion at Linden Lab and has been going on since well before Ebbe Altberg joined the company.

I can see, from reading the transcript, how Bixyl came to report the matter as he did. Bixyl has been reporting on Second Life for quite some time and provides an excellent service. This is a simple misunderstanding.

The discussion also raises more questions about identity in virtual worlds and, as we move forward in a more immersive virtual reality environment. Ebbe states :

It’s definitely something we’re thinking a lot about. but do I want that people in Sansar should be able to walk around anonymously? Absolutely! You can in the physical world. I don’t have to have a name tag on myself and show my ID to every person I approach on the street. not that I’m trying to hide anything, but I also don’t think everybody should know what the hell I’m doing all the time. It’s none of your business; it’s my business.

So I totally want to have that mix of, we know who you are but you can also be whoever you want to be, and still have a somewhat functional society going on within that. So we’ll see where we end up.

This is interesting because it brings something new to the table in terms of identity. In a more immersive environment, name tags may actually get in the way and we do not all walk around in the physical world with name tags on display. I wear a badge at work but I don’t wear it when I get home or go shopping.

How, as we move forward, are we going to tackle the issues of identifying each other in a virtual environment. Will we require a virtual ID card that we hold in our virtual pockets? I’m being serious here, a more immersive environment is likely to change the way we identify each other, there will be more physical and vocal recognition in a more immersive environment, it will be interesting to see how companies tackle this.

Will name tags become obsolete? Will our UUID or similar become the de-facto ID for reports to the authorities who run the virtual reality experiences we engage with? I do feel that name tags will become less useful as we get more immersive. This has pros and cons.

The more immediate issue, Ebbe hasn’t said we will need real names for Project Sansar, he hasn’t said they won’t be required in some form, but it seems that we won’t all be asked to walk around in Project Sansar with our real names on display to all and sundry.

I’m actually a fan of the system Ebbe hints at, one where Linden Lab know who I am but I can choose the name I enter the virtual world with. That adds a degree of accountability but also allows me to have the degree of freedom to explore and interact with my identity as I best see fit.

One thing I would suggest to Linden Lab is, whatever they do, whatever identity system they implement to identify people by real names, if indeed they go down the route, please do not involve Facebook in the process in any way, any shape, or any form. Facebook are not the identity droids Linden Lab should be looking for.

Meet The Lindens continues today at 3pm SLT with Pete Linden (Peter Gray) Linden Lab’s Senior Director of Global Communications and Xiola Linden, Linden Lab’s Lead Community Manager … I think that’s still Xiola’s job, she hasn’t offered me a tuna fish sandwich for a while so she may have changed roles since the last time I spoke to her.

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SL13B%20Astound/98/145/22/