Second Life has in many ways been way ahead of the pack. Their free to play model was controversial when launched but has proven to be the right model and now many MMO’s follow this model. Second Life introduced user generated content to 3D worlds and whereas some of that content has definitely been controversial, Second Life trailblazed as a platform of creativity.
In terms of empowering content creators, Second Life has once again trailblazed, by allowing content creators a means to make real money from their creations, Second Life tapped into a massively underestimated market. Second Life has therefore been quite ground breaking in terms of bringing together these concepts, but now others are starting to take note, they are starting to see the potential and they are hoping to get their share of the pie. The people who make content creation tools are also seeing the massive opportunity that is knocking louder and louder, they are making their products more accessible by offering different payment options and making their tools free or cheaper.
The likes of EverQuest Next Landmark are already attracting attention and will allow content creators to build and have the opportunity to make real money from their creations. Others will be watching with interest to see how this pans out. There is without doubt fear about user generated content but the window of opportunity is wide open.
Then there are the tools, yesterday the Unreal Engine 4 was launched with a very affordable licensing model for pretty much anybody. The full engine and source is $19.95 a month and then 5% of any game sales, in games sales and advertising. The previous Unreal Engine was not an option for indie developers, in an article on Gamautra they quote Epic’s Tim Sweeney as saying:
it’s typically cost millions of dollars… negotiating has involved teams of lawyers, looking at the shape of the industry now we realize it’s an outdated model, looking at the possibilities for the engine, we started out from scratch. We came up with an entirely new business model for the Unreal Engine which we are announcing today.
Now, absolutely anybody can gain access to Unreal Engine 4 by subscribing to the engine for 19 dollars a month — and you get access to everything” .
Now it dangles there as an affordable option and it’s not just game developers being wooed, they are also chasing content creators:
To help you get started, we’re shipping lots of ready-made content, samples, and game templates. You’ll find it in the Marketplace in the Unreal Editor. Right now, it simply hosts free stuff from Epic, but its resemblance to the App Store is no coincidence: It will grow into a complete ecosystem for sharing community-created content, paid and free, and open for everyone’s participation!
These platforms, games, development engines etc. are stepping on Second Life’s toes and more of them will be stepping on their toes, will Second Life prosper?
In the short term the answer is most definitely yes, because Second Life is where it’s at in these areas. Second Life has got the people, Second Life has the content creators, Second Life has the functioning economy and Second Life is the ultimate sandbox, you’re not tied to quests and goals, you can make your own.
Longer term, Second Life may need to paddle faster to keep itself ahead of the game. Second Life isn’t getting any younger, there have been missed opportunities for Second Life to really kick on, such as shelving the C# scripting project. Second Life accepting more standard scripting languages would have been a real boost.
The tier pricing model will eventually bite Second Life very hard in the long term. Linden Lab absolutely have to grasp the tier issue for the longevity of the platform. They need to make a bold move, as Epic have with the Unreal Engine and bring the Second Life pricing model up to date.
However Second Life remains in a very strong position, that is something Linden Lab should value and realise, whereas others are coming, Second Life is already there and that is a very strong advantage.
Yes, the C# scripting and tier model: absolutely right.
The C# issue would have opened so many extra doors, having tools that people can apply a wide range of platforms makes it all the more appealing.
I have to completely disagree about C#. It would just be a different language. It would still be bound by the event driven nature of SL and come with all of the caveats that the current system. From an accessibility perspective, yes, people with C# skills would be able to code in SL with almost no effort, but then if you already have that skill then picking up another language is rather trivial, most programmers will use several languages over the course of a single day.
If you don’t have programming skill from outside of SL then, bad luck.
LSL and C# are not that different syntactically. So what would the possible benefit be ? object orientation perhaps.
This presents an often overlooked aspect of scripting in SL. You are limited to 64kb scripts and mono allocates bytecode in 512 byte chunks (half of 1 kb).
In practical terms this means that there is a very real penalty for writing properly structured code. Right now, everytime you create a function it costs you 512 bytes, even if your function isn’t that big (and most aren’t). Lots of functions and abstraction and you end up with large bloated code.
Unfortunately, This is how everyone is taught to code and often cited as the difference between skilled scripters and noobs writing bad scripts. In actuality, while a newbies code is harder to read, harder to debug and winning no prizes for style, it is almost always smaller and more efficient.
C# would make it even easier to fall into this trap, and writing code that didn’t trip up this issue would look almost identical to the LSL we have now, the calls to LSL function would be different but on its own that’s just shuffling the deck.
In short, it would be change for the sake of change and wouldn’t really give programmers tools to do things they couldn’t do already .. aside from new and interesting ways to burn bytecode.
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As for unreal, this is a old well beaten horse. They come with some pros and a lot of cons and limitations. Blue Mars makes for a cautionary tail when it comes to the hype that surrounds virtual worlds powered by “game engines”. SL is not a game with some creativity tacked on the side. It’s not even garrys mod. So while creative sandbox games will be massively popular they are not looking to present creativity as the product, creativity is the value add.
Well said/written Trinity.
Anyone coding in C could make the change to LSL with ease. Adding C would over-complicate things, and make it all harder to maintain.
Remember… KISS
@Ciaran Great article 🙂
Yes ‘intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regard our planet with envious eyes’, however competitors will come and go – but cannot compete with SL’s headstart (10+ years of content creators in the thousands, creating whatever they wanted).
A series of wanna-be’s have already come and gone, trying to imitate SL but missing the core drivers of our economy (like having an economy at all), and even our last few Ceos have clearly not understood it. Imho any potential competitor has a long, hard road to traverse.
Yes, the tier is a large problem, and LL’s stubborn refusal to address it does them no favors.
If only they would look back ‘learning lessons from their past’ and study the pricing and permissions (and decisions) of the “Homestead debacle” – when they had so much demand that M artificially limited it.
Land is boring if not decorated. Cheap tier/land would spur an increase in spending through the whole SL economy.
Growth = more curious ‘players’ = more growth.
My immediate hope is that the new Ceo will rethink the Premium Home regions. It does SL no good to push new Premium members into cloned, tightly clustered suburbs, where moving to mainland means you get ‘punished’ with less prims.
Premium homes is an interesting area, I’ve seen people commenting that they didn’t even realise there was a choice of whether to have a premium home or obtain an empty 512M. Premium homes are a choice users easily find, the other choice, is clearly not explained as well.
The head start Second Life has is a major advantage and so is the open ended creativity options, initially these sandbox worlds are not going to offer that open ended creativity, even if they offer more creativity than is traditional.
The economy is the other massive advantage, nobody really competes with it and it will be interesting to see if anyone can. Second Life still has a lot of miles in the tank.
You make some excellent points and one of the first things I came to Second Life with was a Java mindset of functions, I still like my functions .. I like my arrays too but that’s a different story.
However the advantage of C# or something more widely recognised is word of mouth advertising and additional use cases of Second Life as a whole.
People in C# communities would be asking for help for Second Life related projects, colleges and universities could teach courses where projects were demonstrated in Second Life with outcomes related to that area of study, in other words, it has the potential to greatly widen the reach of Second Life.
Second Life isn’t a game but you can create games within Second Life. People would enjoy such experiences, again adding use cases, but my point about Unreal engine was more to do with their bold change in their pricing policy and a recognition that user generated content is on the rise.