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 :<\/p>\n
The Versu underpinnings are genuinely revolutionary; my jaw dropped in the meeting where you explained how the engine works.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Inara Pey’s blog post : Could Versu live on<\/a>\u00a0links to an excellent article in the New Scientist :\u00a0AI makes social game characters all too human<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
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.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n