The disappointment over the loss of Versu continues, with several people bemoaning the loss of what they consider to be a concept full of excellent potential. Now at this point it should be pointed out that excellent potential does not mean excellent delivery, but Versu certainly hit some right buttons. Here is a quote from an ex Linden :
The Versu underpinnings are genuinely revolutionary; my jaw dropped in the meeting where you explained how the engine works.
Inara Pey’s blog post : Could Versu live on links to an excellent article in the New Scientist : AI makes social game characters all too human.
The thing with Versu is that it wasn’t just about its functionality as an interactive fiction tool, people were very impressed with the artificial intelligence in the project, to quote that New Scientist article:
Claudio Pedica of the Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines at Reykjavik University is impressed by the way Versu models social practices. “Social rules create constraints on what actions an agent can do,” he says. “That’s a very powerful metaphor for human interaction.”
I can’t help feeling that Linden Lab have missed a trick here, because whether Versu was ultimately a success or a failure in the interactive fiction stakes, the artificial intelligence angle is something that would greatly benefit Linden Lab’s products as a whole, they would certainly benefit Second Life.
Personally, I was excited about the prospect of Versu as an interactive fiction tool, but the more I read about it, and receive comments from people about it, the more I realise the artificial intelligence concepts had the potential to influence all sorts of other projects.
Quite frankly this is starting to look like a greater loss than it initially did. I’m not sure why Linden Lab would want to let go of a project that they were apparently not spending much in terms of resources on, when it has so much potential, are there some silly political shenanigans going on here? If there are, really, Ebbe should slap them down because artificial intelligence and interactive fiction are areas that are likely to grow.
An AI project that could be applied to IF, games, virtual worlds etc. is worth its weight in gold. However if Linden Lab really do not want to touch this with a bargepole, then the right thing to do, for the good of people who will try and develop these concepts in the future, is to let someone else take on the development risks, or open source the project. People will thank Linden Lab for that. People won’t thank Linden Lab if they deeply bury a project with such wonderful potential.
I can understand that Linden Lab may not want this wonderful potential, but I would hope they could be big enough to allow someone else to see if that potential really exists.
Versu is actually, other than Blocksworld, the only one of these side projects I’ve heard any rumblings about, and what I heard was mostly good.
You’re right, interactive fiction is growing in importance and popularity: there are entire university programmes developing on the subject (and on what is now being called “transmedia storytelling”).
I don’t know anything really about the technology; I’d have thought that integrating this kind of interactive fiction into a 3D virtual world would be pretty interesting.But I certainly agree that, if they are not going to develop this, they should let someone take a shot at it who will.
I tried Dio and that initially had an interactive fiction angle to it, but they changed it later in the project and it seemed to struggle to make up its mind what it wanted to be.
The AI in Versu is apparently very good, the concepts should be able to be developed into a virtual world format but it would take a lot of work, it’s quite complex.
Although I never tried this, I did wonder if perhaps some of the parts used for these games might benefit SL.
Physics, AI, etc.
But has SL sold it off, gotten rid of it or have they just stopped selling it and supporting it?
If they still own them, they could still implement parts of them in SL.
Yes the AI could be the basis of something quite funky for SL but it wouldn’t be an easy fit.
Currently LL have stopped development and support. The website has been taken down and the latest title produced using the platform won’t be released.
The author of the latest title is interested in developing it further but at the moment there’s no word on whether LL will allow that to happen.
Seems to me that the new Lab CEO is cleaning out anything that looks like a niche market product and so the Versu baby probably got thrown out with the bath water. I think they are making a mistake too. Interactive fiction has huge potential and has not been ignored in Opensim grids. Nara Malone, a writer of romantic fiction who runs her own small grid that is home to the Greyville Writer’s Colony, has just launched OpenSim Interactive Fiction which is based on similar concepts to Versu. The author, Siobhan Muir, writing on her blog, said “Greyville is where you start all the stories. Once you log in, just find the park with all the books in it and you’re off.” A number of authors and coders are contributing and, already there are four books and virtual locations to explore as you follow the story and interact with it. The stories include Tina Glasneck’s suspense tale Letter to Charlie that takes you through Greyville Writer’s Colony, drop by Shara Lanel’s Good Karma Tarot shop, or trip across worlds (grids) to Nara Malone’s Blue Harbor. And if you like your stories a little more sensual and romantic, follow my Incubus Dream through Cloudburst, Colorado and beyond.
And we have discussed writing stories to stimulate role play in both Second Life and Opensim. Nara Malone, on her blog, said, “Transmedia story telling is taking the literary world by storm, and several authors have created short-fiction, ranging from 500 to 1300 words. These stories are deposited throughout the metaverse, and as the story unfolds, readers are able to be transported to the different areas, chosen by the authors, and often constructed and decorated according to the author’s desires.”
Thanks for the link. Apologies for the delay in your comment appearing, links in comments send the spam filter into overdrive and they land there more often than not.
I’ll have to take more of a look at Greyville, looks very interesting.
I understand why LL would drop Versu and Creatorverse. That’s not what they do and they weren’t doing it well.
I never understood why they picked these distractions up in the first place. I don’t think LL can afford Google’s “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” style of innovation. Google can afford that because they’ve got depth, breadth… and a cushy day job.
In the mobile game space, LL is going up against an army of over a million developers who are collectively the biggest wall toss the idea world has ever seen. I think Angry Birds outpaced LL revenue in its first year. Not bad for a team of… seven at the time?
If there’s value in Versu’s IP, I imagine LL will find a buyer. It’s not about being “big” it’s about making (or not losing) money.
I’m not sure what you mean by “That’s not what the do”, they do plenty of things these days. Versu was intended to be a publishing tool with people creating their own stories via it, so it certainly fits with creative spaces.
LL picked these distractions because Second Life is in decline, monthly tier revenue has dropped by over an estimated USD$1,000,000, so they were certainly in a position whereby they needed to consider other products for the long term good of Linden Lab.
However I agree with you that this is a business decision, LL have all the facts and figures as to how much it was costing, in the end it seems not very much according to Ebbe’s words but the project was not completed so maybe it was the amount of investment required to get the project finished that helped make LL’s decision.
How long did the VCs wait now for a nice return of their investment?
Is this maybe one of the reasons we hear all this news (new CEO(former Yahoo!), sell of CP(with the dev.-team to Yahoo!), take-down of Versu) all in this month?
On the other hand one could read more often Yahoo! in context with Linden Lab as in past.
But all this are speculations and nothing more.
I don’t think they gave Versu long enough, but we don’t know how the Versu project was sold to the LL board.
I can’t see Yahoo! touching SL … I hope they don’t anyway!