This post may be a bit rambly, is rambly even a word? This post is also likely to be a bit disjointed, but on with the show!
2012 has not been a good year, to be frank, and Frank isn’t my real name, it has been the worst year of my life. The Villa were crap, in a painful way, but that was put into perspective by a bigger personal tragedy for me that I’m struggling with and will continue to struggle with, which is why my blog has been a bit awol for the last couple of months, emotional pain scars and it leaves long lasting marks but that’s life and we all have to deal with things like this, no matter how painful it is, it comes to pretty much all of us.
The weather has been crap too, here in England it has been raining for two months and in a land where rain is not a surprise, this amount of rain is depressing, of course we also have a Tory Government and misery and Tory governments do go hand in hand, so there’s that to consider.
On the virtual world front, I’ve sort of lost my mojo this last year, the excitment has gone, that’s what happens I guess but I’m so out of the loop when it comes to socialising in Second Life. A performer handed me a notecard the other week asking if she could perform at my sim, it actually made me smile that someone made the effort to say they wanted to sing. I’ve always felt that LL have been missing a trick in not promoting Second Life as a live music venue.
Sure there’s the issue of small audiences but it gives independent artists a platform to display their wares, maybe if LL could find a way for artists to independently sell their original tunes and allow people to stream that purchased content in their sims, there would be more interest, there’s potential for musicians here.
What I sometimes wonder with Second Life is, where did the magic go? I can still remember when it was all so exciting, and now, it just doesn’t have that feel, although I hope it has that feel to new users, the lack of interaction from Linden Lab themself seems to have made it feel a much more clinical experience. I miss that enthusiasm, whether I’ll ever get it back I don’t know, I guess it’s a time issue and after a while people feel jaded by the experience, as they do with most experiences, even going to pubs and clubs when you were a lad, loses its appeal as you get older.
Giant Snail Racing used to be fun, it probably still is! I can still recall going to Club Crobar and meeting people, I never look for a club when I login now, where did it all go wrong? Part of the issue has been trying to do too much, the busier you get, the more you lose that loving feeling.
The thing is, Second Life remains such a great concept, with such great potential, yet always at the back of my mind I’ve had the feeling that Second Life will be the CP/M of virtual worlds and that eventually something else will come along with mass appeal that consigns Second Life to the dustbin of history as the close but no cigar venture, virtual worlds will grow, they will become part of our lives, will Second Life be remembered as the pioneering venture or will it be something that people talk of fondly but younger folk feel it basically sucked and the new virtual worlds were the real pioneers.
The whole thing needs a bit of oomph, a reboot even, just something to grab the headlines and move it all forward.
I have had many of the same thoughts over the past year. Two years ago, I was inworld 18+ hours a day and dreaming SL when asleep. There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm in the educational community.
I fell through a rabbit hole on the ISTE website and spent the summer with ISTE island as my “Home” while I met and explored SL with some really fun avatars.
Within the year, top LL minds left followed by elimination >30% of their staff. Many that had brought the excitement to this new world. Shortly afterwards, the remaining MBAs eliminated Teen Grid and the educational discounts, without acknowledging or thanking the hundreds of talented and creative educators that had created some of the most impressive builds. They were sent scurrying to new virtual worlds that would fit their budgets. Those of us that remain have repeatedly gone through the grieving process with the announcement of the demise of yet another educational and/or Arts sim, knowing the personalities that went into those sims will disperse into the metaverse, probably never to be encountered again.
Some of those incredibly talented people are achieving fame and accolades for their efforts in their new worlds. Metaverse travel is about as simple as post 9/11 international flight.
Hopefully, protocol standards will eventually make visiting old Friends as easy as an in sim teleport. Until then, we are left on our sim shores waving wistfully to those incredible explorers that have gone to create new and better worlds.
@Joasin
While not disputing your views vis-a-vis the elimination of educational support, I would point out the the June 2010 lay-offs – while undoubtedly a upset for those concerned – continue to be taken out of context with the history of Linden Lab, and used to paint an overly-bleak picture of the company / platform at the time.
This is simply because in referring to it, commentators the blogsphere over either ignore or miss the point that in the 18th months prior to the lay-offs, LL’s staffing levels actually increased by almost 50%.
That’s not an exaggeration. During his tenure, Mark Kingdon, with the blessings of the board, was responsible for hiring-in around 120 new staff.
However you look at it, that is a massive growth factor for a small company to go through (the Lab at that point having employed around 250 people). Given that it did not actually achieve anything in terms of either the company’s financial growth or the growth of Second Life, it was also an unsustainable increase.
As such, the lay-offs were pretty much as Philip Rosedale stated at the time: a means to re-focus the company on its core needs in supporting and developing Second Life. They weren’t indicative of any major financial crisis within the company (as some commentators elsewhere were oh-so-keen to paint), nor did they actually do any lasting harm to the company’s abilities vis-a-vis managing and enhancing SL.
Indeed, one might actually argue that they caused the company to resume hiring exactly the talent and skills needed in order to continue their development of the core product.
Metaverse travel, now that’s interesting because I’m currently pondering the Kitely pricing model v Linden Lab’s pricing model, both have pro’s and cons at opposite ends of the spectrum but if we could travel between the two, a happy medium may be found.
My involvement in SL has been a rollercoaster of late; I’m still in-world for a large number of hours, but I’m actually “doing” very little during those times that is SL-related, other than responding to IMs; my avatar is simply “parked” at me SL home while I get on with other things – prepping blog posts, responding to e-mails, working…
I think a part of this is simply that – like anything else – the shine does wear off as the years progress and, truth be told, SL remains so relatively “easy” to access we allow ourselves to become over-exposed. As such, I’m not so such that we need to look elsewhere – such as at LL’s continuing withdrawal from things – for feeling this way without also looking inwards and accepting the fact that as well as times a-changing, we’re changing as well.
While I’m not quite so engaged – so to speak – in SL as perhaps I was at the start of the year (other than when it comes to my own blog) – I am still somewhat fascinated in the various dynamics of the platform (as witnessed, I hope by my recent contributions on things like The Great Tier debate and my peripheral involvement in preparations for SL9B). As such, I am still optimistic about the future of SL, regardless of my personal involvement and my reservations around such things as LL’s ongoing inability to communicate with its users. I do firmly believe that things like the new experience tools (once the issues have been mastered) and pathfinding may well be to the good of the platform while the incorporation of various Havok capabilities could, if followed-through, lead to additional capabilities and visualisations within SL. I am also firmly of the opinion that the company itself is moving in the right direction in diversifying its product portfolio and that this, potentially more than anything else, will offer them the means to take a long, rational look at the issue of tier.
Even so, while I do remain optimistic, it is increasingly as an observer, rather than a participant. At this point in time, I’m not convinced that will change in the foreseeable future.
It’s an odd boat to be in, to be sure; but I have a feeling you and I, and a lot of “older timers” are possibly all in the same boat…