"Rectangles R Us"--content creation for the clinically inept

~~~

I love Dusan Writer's blog. Even with the qualification that a good 30% of what he has to say goes completely over my head, I love to read his stuff. In the parts that I am able to comprehend, I always find something illuminating, thought-provoking, or just beautifully phrased. For example, I really enjoyed a piece he did back in late November about the idea that companies that are involved with "participant media" and building "digital communities" (such as Linden Lab does with Second Life) should value, engage, and jolly well make sure they retain the "clever people" among their customer base. He argues that particularly in a product like Second Life, the people who have the motivation, creativity and skills to create high quality content are vital to the health of the enterprise.

Sadly, however, Dusan concludes:

"...that Linden Lab has abandoned its 'clever people'.

The Lab turned its back on 'Your World, Your Imagination,' as Philip clearly did (and told me so, when I interviewed him at SLCC) and as others at the Lab continue to do.

In the discussions about mesh import, for example, Jack Linden made the point that 'there are very few creators' in response to my question about the cultural implications of mesh. This implies that the number is significant, and equates a one-to-one relationship between how many people there are and the influence they have on the culture of an online community.

Jack (and others) would say that mesh changes very little, it doesn’t shift the emphasis out of the in-world experience, because the number of creators is very small....But the larger significance is that the Lab’s principle concern is with a volume of people – that it’s the larger 'casual users' who matter, the users who haven’t even arrived yet. Philip said to me: “And most of them will never rez a prim, so it’s not really ‘Your World, Your Imagination’ because for them, they’re just shopping and hanging out.'

Which may be true (although I’d argue that you enter a world of your own imagination no matter WHO you are, when you arrive in Second Life and many other online platforms) but places a certain literal faith in the power of numbers alone."

I'm really glad there are bright people like Dusan who actually get to talk with the folks at the Lab, and who can come back with something for the rest of us to chew on. What is really fascinating to me in this particular discussion is the idea that it seems there are only two groups being focused on--the small minority that has wild skills and the hyper-creative warp drive to make really awesome shit, and the large majority of "casual users."

The thing that doesn't quite fit for me in that world view, however, is that I really believe that the majority--the big lumpy pile of avatar flesh and blingy bits called "casual users"--is actually more diverse and complex than the Labsters seem willing to acknowledge. I find it curious (and disturbingly revealing ) that Philip argued that in the case of the common garden variety boobis avataris, "most of them will never rez a prim."

Perhaps that was only hyperbole. I hope it was, because it is a view that misses the fact that there are a great many of us who might be considered causal users because we lack the skills to make wonderful content, but by golly, that certainly doesn't keep us from using at least some of the tools provided by the platform to make all kinds of crazy crap.

Let me offer up myself as an example:

I am utter and inescapably digitally challenged; a recovering cyber-luddite with a limited range of skills. Yet that has not stopped me from being a sort of content creator in my own right. OK...yes, admittedly it is often pretty retarded stuff, but I have a hell of a lot of fun making simple bits and bobs and using them to enhance my experience and personalize my environment in-world. In fact, my friend September Blasidale (who has a similar skill level to mine in the content creation department) and I have decided to embrace our ineptitude and opened a vendor space in the Deadwood OOC area to hawk some of the less awful junk we have caused to appear in the pixelated vale of tears.

We have named our enterprise "Rectangles R Us"--because that's pretty much what we can handle: books, posters and pictures, a Hudson bay trade blanket, cigar boxes, ammo boxes....you get the picture. I have even produced a piece of furniture--a dry sink. In short, if it can be made from rectangular prims, we can pretty much deal with it without too much trouble. Sort of.

September and I at our booth in the Deadwood vendor area. And yes, rectangles are the predominant form of prim on the premises.

Look, I won't blow any smoke up yer hoohoo about it. I know my limitations. Sculpties scare me. Torturing a prim is torture for me. Hell's britches, it took me about a year to get around to putting a decent "squatting cross-legged" animation into that mashugana trade blanket, and even then I could only do it with guidance from Clay.

But I like the stuff I create. I have a great time either taking pictures of real-world stuff that I or my friends have (such as ammo boxes, antique beer ads, or the labels on vintage cigar boxes), or finding public domain images, and turning them into unique textures for what I want to make.

And the thing is, if I really put my mind to it, I probably could learn to make more sophisticated stuff--it's just that it would be an ugly and unappetizing process (think "making sausage"). Because let's face it, when it comes down to the bubble and squeak of creating content, I am a "casual user"...but it's certainly not a case of being someone who "will never rez a prim."

I believe that the creative potential of the platform is very important to me and people like me. No, we will never be super-duper "clever people." But I am convinced there are an astonishing number of us who fall into this sizable category that lies in between "the makers of really cool shit" and the folks who want to just hang out and shop (by the way, I fucking loathe shopping in SL almost as much as I do irl--but that's another story for another time).

I just hope that if Dusan is ever able to talk LL into not abandoning the "clever people," he might also convince them to not forget those of us who are among the "cheerfully inept."

~~~

Rod Humble comes to LL: we got a new guy to break in

~~~

Linden Lab announced today that they have a new CEO coming on board in January: Rod Humble, who will be leaving a vice president post at Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the Sims brand.

So what does this mean for us, the surviving residents of SL, the unpaid part of the equation that creates the content that makes the platform an attractive and viable product?

Well boils and gurls, I ain't sure. My inclination is to say that it's a good sign, suggesting that LL isn't getting ready to pull the plug on SL anytime soon. And I like the idea that the guy comes from a background that actually involves games and online communal activity (he had a role in Sony's Everquest before going to EA). But I've been wrong before. You're welcome to ask any of my former spouses--I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you in detail exactly how much I have been wrong before. So here's some random evidence I have collected, which I invite you to review and consider, and then we can try to arrive at some conclusions together:

First off, here is a picture of Mr. Humble in his work space:

photo from Kotaku.com

You will note that not only is Mr. Humble not a terribly pretentious looking dude, he's got toys on his desk--there's a little tank and some ships, and other crap, not unlike the crap I have in my office. So he's human--that kind of bodes well...maybe.

I also found a blurb from when he was made a VP at EA back in October 2008:

"Humble will be responsible for The Sims Label, which develops and markets life-simulation games and online communities with an emphasis on creativity, community and humor."

I like the fact that when he was moving up the food chain at EA, among the things they mentioned about the brand he would be managing was the emphasis on community and humor. Those are things I value highly, and hopefully he actually has s commitment to both of those ideals.

That said, I must admit I find it mildly disturbing that he worked for EA. I haven't had anything to do with that particular company since the days of The Sims Online, but when I did have some dealings with them, the people I was interacting with were a mixed bag--some were decent, straight-shooting types; others were consistently condescending, manipulative pukes. So it could go either way.

I will admit to having been a bit confused about when Mr. Humble actually joined EA--it turns out he went there in 2004, but it is unclear to me as to how much he was involved with TSO before it was killed off in August '08. He seems to have been more directly associated with the various offline manifestations of "The Sims" franchise, so hopefully he isn't burdened with any of the responsibility for the incandescent three-ring cluster-fuck that was EA's mismanagement of TSO. That is, however, only my impression of the circumstances. I'd love to get to ask him if he had any hand in what happened to TSO, and what kinds of lessons he thinks might have been learned from that particular adventure.

For that matter, it would be fun to talk with him about what kinds of things he discovered overseeing "The Sims" lable from late 2008 until the present. If you read the comments made by "community members" on Sims forums, many of them don't seem to have thought very highly of Mr. Humble. Again that could bode either ill or good--the things that they seemed to have issues with were an alleged interest on the part of Mr. Humble to introduce "rpg" elements into The Sims, and downplay some of the more supernatural aspects of that game brand.

To be honest, I have no idea what the frenchfriedfuck those people are talking about, but hey, maybe it's important. Myself, I could see some real benefit coming the addition of "rpg elements" into "The Sims," even though back when I played it, mostly I just liked to build shit.

The key thing here is that as far as I can tell, Mr. Humble isn't a bean counter like M was supposed to be. That could be a bad thing if he's into the whole hippy-dippy, do what feels good, oh "we don't need things like deadlines" philosophy that made Phil Rosedale such a a mixed blessing. The last thing we need is another CEO who doesn't establish clear goals and standards for his staff and insist that they be responsible and productive.

On the other hand, as a person who apparently comes from the creative side rather than the bean counter clan, maybe...just maybe, there is a chance that Mr. Humble could be the sort of CEO who will listen to and appreciate the customer base that pays the bills. Maybe he won't be afraid of us and embarrassed by us like Philip and his minions seemed to be...maybe he will actually come down from the Linden ivory tower and walk forth among the residents and find out how we could all work together to keep SL healthy and profitable and fun...

...and maybe Santa will finally bring me that fucking pony for Christmas.

That education thing in SL

~~~

Sooner or later I was going to need to write about the total goat screw on ice that is the current situation regarding the future of education and non-profit activity in Second Life. Most of you know that I have a great deal of enthusiasm for the various manifestations of learning that take place in SL, but I have never been impressed by the "Education" that goes on in-world. And I am not alone in that holding that point of view. For example, one of my academic friends who has been heavily involved in virtual educational projects--and wound up being extremely frustrated in the process--recently summed up her perspective on things with the statement "education in Second Life has not lived up to its potential."

She puts it so much more politely than I tend to, but I think we have a similar degree of dissatisfaction with the quality and outcomes we're seeing from many education projects in SL.

Nonetheless, I initially was somewhat disappointed when Linden lab made its recent announcement that they would be ending the 50% discount for education and non-profit customers. Even though I hold the personal opinion that the majority of educational projects in SL are mediocrities at best and dismal failures at worst, I still felt that it was important for the Labsters to continue to provide some kind of encouragement to people who are trying to use the platform for something more than pixel pokin'. Why? Well, mostly because I have really enjoyed learning things in Second Life, and I hope that other people will be open to the idea of making that happen. As my frustrated professor friend was pointing out, the educational potential of the platform is in fact immense and still largely unrealized.

Simply put, it didn't make a great deal of sense to me that LL had made this decision. I really hoped there was some kind of rational reasoning behind it...because that's just the kind of spit-dribbling, wild-eyed optimist that I am. So, I very much wanted to talk to someone about what had happened, but unfortunately, the people I used to talk to--such as Tom Hale and Claudia Linden--ain't around no more. By the way, if you will indulge me in going off on a tangent, I would like to state for the record right now that when I think about the fact that hard-working, intelligent people like Claudia have been let go, and a feckless, slack-jawed, incompetent like Wallace Linden is still there, I am utterly fucking gobsmacked. Do they somehow think that this brainless donkey turd of a wally has some special kind of understanding of how to communicate with the social user segment of SL's customer base, or is he simply blowing somebody in HR?

And please don't tell me that I might gain some insight into what is going on by looking at what the former Pathfinder Linden has to say. Totally aside from the fact that I have yet to meet any serious educator who actually derived any real practical benefit from trying to work with Pathfinder (please let me know if you have a verifiable example of something that would help me revise my view of that self absorbed, self-promoting douche), I can only conclude that Pathfinder was a naive simpleton who didn't realize that something like this was going to happen to the customers he brought in, OR he was aware and just conveniently neglected to mention that SL was likely to change it's policies towards educators. Consequently, I don't put much stock in his self-righteous pronouncements at this stage and wish he would just pretty much shut the fuck up.

But I digress.

The fact was, I hoped I could talk to someone and get a reasonable explanation from LL, but that wasn't going to happen. So all I can offer is some speculation based on what I have seen, especially now that Linden lab has kinda sorta backtracked and is going to phase out the discount over a little longer period of time.

Here's my thought: I wonder if the labsters had initially thought of the education/non-profit discount as a temporary incentive--get the teachy, feel-good folks in up front on the cheap so they could learn first-hand what the platform could be used for. It could also have been an opportunity for the creative educators to get something started that they could then show doubtful administrators, and be able to justify continuing their experiments.

Hey, if that was the case, I could really understand the whole thing. It would make sense to me. Plenty of companies give you an introductory rate to get you hooked on using their product: it is a standard rational type of business strategy. It's just that if this was what LL was doing, they didn't do a terribly good job of communicating about it with their customers, or their own staff people in certain areas for that matter. And they're still not communicating very well about it. But hey that's what they do--it's not like we should expect them to suddenly start doing communication right--not when they have a wally like Wally "managing conversations."

Ok...so let's assume that this was the strategy: get the educators in and doing cool stuff, and then eventually phase out the discount that encouraged them to start. Unfortunately, what happened was that the discount seems in many cases to have become something that enabled mediocre and failed projects to live on well beyond the point at which plugs should have been pulled. So maybe that's one of the silver linings in this particular ongoing chimp-and-weasel clusterfuck. People who should have looked at cutting back on their sim expenditures or moving to alternate grids long before this, will now be motivated to think more carefully about where they are going and what the hell they are doing. Plenty of very bright people have already made their moves (Heritage Key being one of the highest quality and possibly most successful examples)...

So boys and girls, now there's no excuse for other groups and institutions to not do the same. And yes, in many cases, when some of these institutions start asking themselves the hard question, the answer is going to be "screw it--the virtual world isn't ready for us and/or we're not ready for it." But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the best thing you learn from an experiment is what doesn't work.

The ironic thing to me, as I reflected on this, was that this whole mess doesn't affect many great places in SL because the non-profit discount didn't apply to some of the best learning/teaching environments I have experienced in SL. Lots of places have done great stuff, but because the people putting the project together didn't happen to be associated with a school or have a 501(c)(3) letter from Uncle Sugar, they had to pay full price all along.

So does that mean that with the change in pricing, it is going to make things more of a level playing field for educational, informational and cultural projects regardless of who is behind the effort? No, it's just going to mean that life is going to be equally unfair. But--and I think this is the good part--it may also mean that schools and non-profits that do still see the potential in experimenting on SL will think really goddamn carefully about what they are doing, who will be doing it, and what outcomes they hope to achieve, before they move ahead or continue with a project.

While that is probably not the pay-off that LL was expecting or looking for with this pricing change, I think you can argue that it'll be a good thing if it does work out this way with fewer--but potentially better--education projects taking place on the platform. Hey, like Papaw used to say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.

~~~

Second Life and the layoffs: is that a Rubenesque soprano I hear singing?

~~~

My oh my. Some interesting stuff going on. The Linden prize is given to an operation that treats the grid as a simple tool for museum exhibit prototyping. And the Lab lays off almost a third of its staff and closes overseas offices as it consolidates its functions.

Do I think this is the beginning of the end for SL; does it portend terrible events to come?! IS SL CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT ABOUT TO FINALLY DIE THE PATHETIC DEMISE THAT VIRTUAL "JOURNALISTS" HAVE BEEN PREDICTING FOR SO LONG?!!

Do you really want to know what I think?

Well, bucko, if you actually do want to know my opinion, what I think is this:

I don't think any of these things really mean all that much one way or the other.

Yes, I as I stated--I think these two developments are "interesting," but are they reflections of anything going on that will actually change things for us very much?

I'm guessing no.

As usual, as far as I can tell, what is going on with the Lindens really doesn't have much meaning or impact for the vast majority of us on the grid. As I have said before--and as many others have opined of late--the bulk of what the Lindens do, think , feel or say is pretty much irrelevant for most of us who actually use their flagship product.

Mind you, I do feel bad for all the folks who are getting laid off. Getting laid off is no fun--even when you find something to go over to relatively quickly, the process still chips away at your self esteem a bit. But ultimately, in this case it seems like this really isn't about whether or not people have been doing a good, bad, or indifferent job--the Lab is simply letting go of almost everyone who is in the business development side of things. And maybe it just comes down to the fact that those aspects of the operation have been too large and expensive compared to the amount of business they were bringing in. That's possible--I'm not really sure--but again, it doesn't really matter.

What the Linden Gods do on their tin-plated Mt. Olympus by the Bay simply doesn't touch me and most of the people I associate with in SL, unless it affects the functionality and reliability of the grid.

That of course, is a rather significant qualification. But at present, my personal reality is that SL does tend to run pretty well in the areas that I frequent. Yeah, there are still a lot of things broken or goofed up--but not so badly that I can't do what I want or need to do with the platform.

And that's the thing about all this--when I do occasionally get mildly curious about the direction LL is taking and I bother to speculate about what will be the outcome, I start to suspect that they are focusing on treating the grid as nothing more than a tool. It's not a world, it's not something that is going to actually change the human condition, or rewrite history, or make us all live better lives.

Nope. It's just a product that people can use--something that we can choose to play with, be creative and make stuff with, and have a great deal of fun with--or use in practical ways: for meetings and communicating, and even prototyping. That's why I think it's interesting that they gave the Linden prize not to some spectacularly warm and fuzzy charitable thingy or high minded NGO or anything like that. They gave it to a dull, rather pedestrian operation that uses the grid as a tool to generate and test mediocre exhibit concepts that may or not get translated into something in meatspace. Yeah, the outcomes may be unremarkable, but at least thanks to the prototyping capabilities of the platform, a whole lot of time and real-life resources won't have been pissed away in the effort to produce those unremarkable real life outcomes.

It's as if they are saying, "hey, we finally realized it's just a big lump of software on some servers--it's up to you guys to do with it what you want. We'll try to keep it running for you as long as its profitable and you give us money in return for using it to do whatever it is that you weirdos are doing with our product." And so they have gone ahead and got rid of the expensive and often temperamental staff people who were trying to help make it into something more than that.

Yes, I know I am being selfish and narrow minded here in my outlook. I know there are many people who try to use SL for activities that don't work so well with the platform in its current moderately frakked-up state. There are undoubtedly people who are hoping for fixes to happen on the grid that now will never happen, thanks to the departure of some coder guys who were supposed to do the fixing. And my heart goes out to those people, just as it does to the labsters who got dumped.

But do I really see this as the final rumblings of the chorus as the tomb is sealed, along with the fate of the hapless lovers within? Nah. I think there's still a couple more acts and at least one intermission to go.

~~~

Linden Lab and selling the fantasy

~~~

Iggy O has posted on the “In a Strange Land” blog regarding a recent Linden Lab marketing piece that evidently appeared on the SL web site. I’m unclear if it has shown up in other contexts as well. But it certainly is “interesting” for a number of reasons. I don’t know if it will beget a reaction from potential new customers...but it certainly got a reaction from many existing ones.

Iggy’s reaction was, I think, representative of what many thought:

“So this vision is the best that Linden Lab can do for us today? This is pretty far from what creative residents have built on Linden Lab's infrastructure. The Lab currently seems to be casting about, wildly, for customers. The campaigns flail back and forth, from the far slicker and interesting 'put some steam in your punk' images that ran a couple of weeks back to...this.

It's The Sims....”

My own initial response, which I posted on the “Strange Land” blog was an extension of this:

“...it is rather suggestive of something I have always suspected about the Lindens--even back in the "Philip" era.

The people at the company simply don't "get" the majority of us. It is not just that they don't understand or appreciate the diverse majority of their customer base--they seem to be downright embarrassed by us. They may even be a little bit afraid of us. Otherwise, I believe they would have followed a strategy encouraging their staff to more aggressively engage with the residents on their own turf rather than from the safety of "office" hours.

Yes, back in Rosedale days, someone at the lab had a more sincere appreciation for a certain element of the artsy-freaksy cool creator class people, but they still seemed confused, unsettled and uncertain with regards to the rest of us loonies, especially in the historical/literary/rp based communities. They weren't terribly supportive of us, and certainly never acknowledged us.

So is this new focus on marketing to "norms" all that different from the days when they focused on celebrating and recognizing (they really didn't do marketing in those days) a different particular limited class of people?

I think I feel a Dio Rant coming on.”

Basically, I think that reactions of people like me and Iggy come from a sense that what happens in SL--and the majority of the people you will encounter on the grid--are not represented in that advertisement. I have spent a lot of years in this goddam pixelated vale o’ tears and covered a shitload o’ territory in my time, but by Gawd, I don’t think I have ever seen a happy white suburban family quite like those photoshopped folks in the picture...not even as a parody, or in some kind of bizarre John Cheever-esque vision of suburban hell.

That just isn’t us. Those people are not in SL, at least not in the places I’ve explored.

So I was ready to let go with both barrels and have some fun with it. But then...instead of spewing the usual verbal pyrotechnics framed within the context of my SOP of “shoot first and then maybe think about it a decade or so later,” I thought, "well, maybe there’s some rational reason for this." I tried to think about it as if I was a marketing person, and look at the situation through the filter of that peculiar world view. And yeah, I could see how you would design marketing pieces that feature what isn’t on the grid as an element of your efforts to broaden your customer base. You don’t market to the people who are already here, you market to the folks who ain’t.

Now just to be sure, I thought it would be nice if I could get someone from the Lab to confirm my suspicions on this. So I wrote to T Linden the following:

“Hi Tom,

I would very much like to have a comment from a Linden about the recent trend in LL marketing that seems to de-emphasize the creative aspects of life on the platform, and instead pursues a market segment that appears to be more "The Sims" type of audience, as is suggested by the recent marketing piece showing a happy nuclear family in front of a boxy suburban house.

I would assume that part of the strategy here is to try to go after a market segment that you have not already significantly engaged--as you currently have with the existing "creative" type resident population. I could argue that it makes sense for you to put your marketing emphasis into going after people who aren't already in the fold. But it would be nice to have someone from the company to actually state that...or whatever the strategy might actually be.”

And bless his heart he wrote right back to me:

“Our marketing strategy contemplates *both* creatives (with the value
propositions of "create your world" and "make money from your
creations") and to consumers (what you might call the "sims"
demographic) who need to buy/consume the experiences and products that creatives create.

One dynamic here is that b/c the ratio of consumers to content
creators in SL today is something like 20:1, and in the broader world
is probably something like 100:1, we have to spend disproportionately
to acquire consumers. As a result, that marketing and message is much
more visible, so I can understand where you are getting the impression
that is our focus.

Later this year, when we ship Mesh import (enabling a whole new set of
content creators, content, effects, and experiences) I expect we'll
lean our marketing mix towards acquiring new creatives - as there are
100s of thousands of users of 3D studio and Maya for whom SL is a bit
of a black box today, with unfamiliar tools, characteristics, etc.”

So yeah, it was about what I figured.

But I also found T’s reply interesting with his distinction between “consumers” and “creatives”--especially as I consider myself a mixture of both: one of those people who is a probably considered a “creative” in terms of social/educational situations and interaction (rather than much actual stuff-type content), but who relies on other content creators for most of the virtual buildings and artifacts I use to enhance and augment the situations and interactions I help organize. At the same time, even with my limited building skills, I do enjoy sometimes making stuff if no one else is making something I want or need. So it’s not always clear who is a creative versus a consumer.

And just a thought...if the lab is going to try attracting more of the “consumer” market segment, are they perhaps selling those folks short by offering things like a jolly, idealized, whitebread suburban lifestyle as the product to be consumed? Yes I know, that old white picket fence ideal is a powerful mythology these days, as economic, socio-political and environmental considerations make that lifestyle even less of an attainable reality than it was in the post-WWII “good ol’ daze.” For many people it is as much of a far-off fantasy as Battlestar Galactica, Hogwarts, or 1870s Deadwood.

Nonetheless, I would hope that as the Lab seeks to engage these “consumers” who are needed to grow the population in-world, they balance this one sort of fantasy with the others that can be attained on the platform. Even the “consumers” have the potential to be “creatives,” not only of stuff, but even more so, of shared narrative. Don’t just assume they’re all boobis americanis, longing to settle in a virtual Levitttown and crank out 2.5 prim babies.

Don’t sell them short. Show them more of the different “lifestyles” that people in world have evolved--historical and futuristic, literary and arts-themed, mechanoid and fur-covered.

Oh, and one other thing, before we wander off onto other subjects: while I get the whole idea about marketing to the people who aren’t your customers yet, there still is the need to keep the existing customer base happy.

In other words: you provide exciting, engaging marketing materials to hook the people you don’t have in the fold yet...

...and you provide good responsive customer service to hold the people who are already in your camp.

Please remember LL, that you need both new and existing customers. Don’t hide in those offices--there’s a world out there that isn’t as scary as it seems. And you really don't have to be embarrassed by us.

~~~

The Lindens plan to become art patrons

~~~

Lorenzo de Medici, Italian merchant prince and patron of the arts

Evidently, someone at the Lab has been reading Aristotle and Machiavelli. Today, Niko Linden made an announcement that LL would be starting "a Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) program which will help support, encourage, and highlight Second Life artists and their work."

So....the Lab is taking on the role of Renaissance prince: who knew that "M" stood for "Medici" Linden? Here's a key bit from Niko's blog post:

"The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) program's goal is twofold:

To create an immersive space for artists to share their art, build connections, and prosper in the Second Life community

To provide a new way for artwork to live on within our ever-changing virtual world.

While still under design, this program will be a partnership between Linden Lab and Second Life artists, with the additional objective of gathering, displaying, and maintaining art at an inworld Arts Hub. We are currently building the LEA organizing committee, which will include members of the Second Life artist community and Linden Lab employees, to guide the program's management. Under the creative direction, organization and guidance of the LEA committee, we will hold biannual art exhibitions, highlighting the most creative artwork happening inworld."

It seems that the Lab is looking at two key strategies: to create a "hub" or concentration of Linden-supported artistic endeavor; and to have its employees--including M--take a direct role in managing the program.

Niko's blog has already generated some interesting comments (as well as the usual banalities). One of my favorites so far was posted by a resident named Escape Unplugged:

"Live music. Dance. Drama. Storytelling. Performance art. Machinima.

All arts that are happening in SL. Quite possibly they're all happening right now. The endowment HAS to include these other artistic expressions in SL if it truly to "create an immersive space for artists to share their art, build connections, and prosper in the Second Life community"

I'm fortunate enough to have an involvement in most of those creative and artistic mediums in SL (including rezable art) but to think that friends and/or artists I admire would be excluded simply because they don't create the "right type" of art is concerning.

Please can you clarify this Niko?"

Here's my own response, which builds on Escape's comment:

" Escape: Glad to see that you included storytelling in the list of art forms. As for your including "drama" in the list, my initial reaction was, "ah yes, we do have a number of residents who have raised their drama-making to the level of an art form."

But seriously, yes, I know what you meant, I just couldn't help but think of it the other way.

Niko, I do think this is an intriguing possibility, but your piece immediately brings up a couple questions:

What precisely is meant by creating "an immersive space for artists to share their art, build connections, and prosper in the Second Life community?"

Are you proposing a Linden-controlled arts venue that will in essence concentrate the Linden supported artistic endeavor in a ghetto? What about those artists and arts groups who wish to continue to carry out their activities in environments and venues over which they have more control, and which function in an organic way that is interconnected with one of the diverse communities that already are thriving on the grid?

Will the artists or groups who don't wish to confine themselves within the official Linden-supported arts "immersive space" still be eligible to apply for support of their projects and programming that they present in the independent, resident-controlled spaces?

Somewhat related to that, you also talk about "highlighting the most creative artwork happening inworld." That makes me really curious. So who will decide what qualifies as "the most creative artwork?"

There certainly have been serious disagreements in the past between Lindens and residents as to what constitutes "creative" as well as what is considered "quality" in the arts. I trust that you do realize that you are entering sensitive territory and that there will be issues that require careful consideration with genuine participation from a wide range of interested resident stakeholders, and not just the "usual suspects."

I am curious about what the larger goal is here: to keep artists from leaving SL for other platforms? To ensure that the diversity of artistic activity? To make more of the residents--and potential residents--aware of this aspect of life on the grid, and to encourage them to appreciate and support what is going on...or maybe even to encourage more residents to take their own shot at expressing themselves through art?

I sincerely hope it will take a more inclusive approach, rather than overly selective and elitist. After all, one of the beauties of the platform has always been that anyone and everyone can try to use it as a tool of artistic self-expression."

I really do wonder what the ultimate goal is here, because what Niko describes as "goals" arguably qualify more as "strategies" than underlying reasons for executing this plan.

They want to "create an immersive space to facilitate artists sharing their work (getting people to see it), building connections (With other artists? Or a broader audience? Not sure about that one), and prospering. They also want a way for "artwork to live on within our ever-changing virtual world. I assume what they mean by that is LL wants to develop a system to preserve Cool Stuff and make it so that someone's artwork doesn't just disappear when they can't afford to pay their rent or tier, or they decide to go to Blue Mars.

So why would do the Labsters want to do these things--to help artists build audiences and prosper and for their art to have more permanence?

One real good possibility is that they want to create greater awareness of the arts in SL as part of their new marketing efforts. A lot of folks do a lot of way cool creative stuff in-world, and one of the frustrations with all the half-assed articles that drip with the "SL is dead" meme is that they focus on the lurid, sexy stuff and not much else. That has got to be driving the Lab folks foam-at-the-mouth, whacko crazy as much as it pisses off those of us who are trying to do creative non-salacious things with the platform. Supporting--and highlighting--arts activities in-world would go a long way towards polishing up the image of SL as something that has more purpose than facilitating masturbatory fantasies.

Preserving in-world artisitic works would also help head off the embarrassment that happens when you tell some new guy, "hey you gotta see this artistically awesome amalgamation of utter awesomeness"...

...and they go to see it and it's gone because the artist/resident pulled up stakes and got the fuck out of Dodge. And then Disappointed New Guy thinks you're a eye-rolling idiot.

So yeah, if that is one of the goals, to make more people aware that we got something besides pixel-poking going on, and give some longevity to Cool Stuff in order to reinforce that positive impression, I'm on board.

And myabe I'm just a spit dribbling idealist, but I also hope another goal for this is to foster the idea that SL can enable artistic self-expression by everyone and anyone who wants to do so, then this becomes a powerful marketing tool for the lab. Promote the idea of SL as a place where anyone can make art happen, and it could conceivably draw in folks who haven't tried SL yet, but who will want to give it a shot when they realize what they do with it.

That is another goal that I heartily endorse. Unfortuantley I'm not so sure that is what the Labsters have in mind--people who want to actively create, rather than passivley consume, are not the massive Facebook-type demographic that the Lab seems to be hoping to attract. But hey, if the strategy draws in new creative blood as an unintended consequence of larger marketing plans, I won't be unhappy.

So, yes, I hope this works. And yeah, I do have a lot of concerns about the idea. I do worry that it could be an elitist clusterfuck with the usual suspects and sycophants getting all the benefits and the accolades--and the Linden largess--while other hard-working people get dissed or ignored. It isn't like it hasn't happened before--one example that leaps to mind was the situation when "Shakespeare in SL" was looked upon by certain Lindens as not sufficiently hip, or forward-thinking, or innovative or something, in order for it to be included in one of those SL birthday things.

I find it intriguing that they call this new initiative the "Linden Endowment for the Arts." I assume they will not literally establish an "endowment" (a fund that is invested to generate income to be disbursed in the form of grants or to support a non-profit endeavor). I suspect why they picked the name was because they hope to emulate a system like the National Endowment for the Arts in which arts organizations and some individuals (in very restricted, specific categories) compete for grants and the applications are evaluated by peer review. It's supposed to fair and democratic, and ideally the LEA should be as well. To work in that fashion, it definitely will require participation by a diverse sampling of the grid's creative types. I think I'm going to encourage some of my artsy SL friends to apply for membership as resident representatives on the LEA committee.

There have to be some DaVincis on the team to balance out the Medicis if this thing is gonna fly.

~~~

I am Spartacus -- linking real life identities to SL personas

~~~

I've been tryin' to be a good virtual citizen and actually read the Linden blogs...still can't force myself to look at other things there like the bleedin' forums, but hey, I tend to work up to things slowly. I've even taken to commenting now and then...including a comment on this thread in which the new Conversations Manager Wallace Linden brought up the issue of linking our identities..particularly that of the SL avatar and the real identity of the "typist." he said:

"I want to open a conversation about some of the issues surrounding identity and how it gets handled online. (That's my job, after all, to start some conversations.) We show up in the digital realm under so many different guises now, it has become difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to separate the real from the imagined, and the actual from the virtual....as Web and mobile services continue to work their way into all corners of our lives, these aspects will continue to proliferate -- and as they do, we'll start facing important questions about how we handle these collections of selves....And the choices we make as individuals in these contexts can have a surprising impact on who we are -- in "real life" -- and who we can become.

The thing not to miss here -- and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds -- is what all these online "identities" have in common. At the center of them all, the hub that ties all these personae together, is the very real, non-virtual, analog and offline "you." Whether the connections are public or not, your Second Life avatar, your World of Warcraft toon, your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn employment history -- all of these and more are just different aspects of a single entity: the person reading these words. They are all already connected to each other, via you.

The question we now face, both as people and as organizations, is how we handle these connections, how we handle these collections of selves. "

A lot of people responded and joined in this conversation...and rather took it from the theoretical into the very practical question that is on many people's minds: would it be desirable to have Linden Lab facilitate a direct connection between your real life identity and your SL persona, and enhance connections to social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, which is something they seem very interested in. So, not wanting to be a bad citizen, I figured I would go ahead and add my opinion to the overall Philip Glass-like symphony of verbiage.

Being as the comments on the thread have really stretched out and one's opinion can kind of get lost--and because I am feeling lazy today and didn't feel up to writing something else for this pile of turkey turds, here's the comment I contributed:

"Ok Wally, I'll bite. I will go ahead and assume for the moment that the Labsters actually want to know what we think about things and offer you my perspective, although the general pattern of your responses does sadly suggest there is a predetermined outcome. If I am incorrect about that, I'll ask you to forgive my doubting nature, but alas, I feel what I feel, and I see what I see.

Regardless, if you do actually care for input from some longtime users of the platform, allow me to add my voice to the cacophony...which in general--other than the occasional straw man--has been, I think quite thoughtful and eloquently expressed (gee, the things people can say when not limited to 140 characters, eh?).

Frankly, I believe that the concept of openly connecting my rl identity to the "Dio Kuhr" persona would prove not only superfluous but counterproductive.

Yes, there are situations in which I willingly share rl information with certain people in-world, but it is on a case-by-case basis. It is something that I find it advantageous to have control over, to implement as I get to know people by talking and working with them, and finding common ground and shared interests. I have done some worthwhile networking within SL, but it is something that I don't need or want the Lab to be helping me with.

I can do it very handily myself, thank you very much. And in fact, if a significant number of people were contacting me out of the blue because of some public presentation of my rl information, I would find the usefulness of being on SL greatly diminished. Yes, there may be the occasional serendipitous making of a productive connection, but on the whole the signal to noise ratio in those uncontrolled conversations is not good--you can just get bogged down wading through all the shallow slop.

That, in fact, is why on Facebook and Twitter, I keep a very tight control over friends and followers, and strictly limit who I follow in turn.

Facebook in particular is--as far as I am concerned--an egregious waste of bandwidth. I do have a FB account that is based upon my physical space information. At this point, it has displayed some utility as a means for keeping in touch with dispersed family and reconnecting with some old friends. But generally, like many people, I have the account but simply don't do much with it.

With Twitter on the other hand, where I have an account for Dio Kuhr, I do find it to be a practical and often enjoyable means of sharing information with a very focused group that is primarily made up of a few educators and other sl people. It is a handy way for those of us who are writers to notify each other when we have new posts up on our blogs, and some people I follow are really great about providing links to articles on numerous topics that I would not know about if they weren't passing on the scuttlebutt. And thanks to Second Lie's tweets I no longer feel quite so disconnected from the more Kafka-esque aspects of life on the grid. Simply put, I am not convinced that having this function more integrated with SL would do anything other than serve as a distraction. And having "real life" information associated with it--even just a name--would not be an improvement. If anything, it would simply open up another avenue for potential harassment to migrate from virtual to physical spaces.

As for your contention that "The more people you're connected to, and the more people they're connected to, the more useful the network becomes," I agree with those who have already suggested that in arguing thus, you have made an assumption that may be based more upon wishful thinking and anecdotal evidence than any actual quantifiable reality. Another possibility is that your contention may hold true for some people in certain circumstance, but not for others. For example, in your line of work, it may in fact be useful. In mine, however, mass connection just increases the garbage ratio. So maybe we're both right.

However, it is important to not impose your own focused context in trying to determine what is useful or deleterious to the rest of us.

And yes...I know this is supposedly going to be purely optional. You say that no one is going to force me to put up my real life identity in connection with this pseudonymous identity, correct? Ok, cool. But that does bring up the question that so many people have already explored, the idea that SL will develop a class system. When I use my account that is not labeled with my real-life identity, will I become a second class citizen and be ostracized from various locations, shunned by the elite "real people?"

All I have to say to that is..."No...I am Spartacus."

I--and probably others--will cheerfully embrace that status as a member of a class that cherishes privacy and the maintenance of careful control over our connections and our relationships and our identity. If you don't want me to come into your club because I'm not parading the true and real name of my typist over my head, then fine. I probably didn't want to come to your bloody club anyway. A form of reverse-classism will undoubtedly kick in. So I'll be fine, jack--no worries.

But people with in-world businesses...yeah they will be boned, big time. Especially if having the real name made public becomes any part of an "approval" system for vendors and content creators. And yes, there are jolly good reasons why someone doing business in SL would want to keep their real life identity to themselves. Have you ever dealt with an SL customer base? Most people are great, most people are cool, but there is that certain number of stalky-freaky-psycho idiots who think just because they saw your name on something they bought, they are now your best friend--or worst enemy. Things are bad enough when they are continually badgering an anonymous avatar, but if they have your real name too? Belay that. Life is already hard enough for our in-world business folks. But what will you say to content creators who might someday find themselves boycotted by the elite "real people" because they won't display their real names?

Does the Lab really want to take another dump in the content creators' collective chapeau?"

Oh, and one other thought from Wallace's post that struck me:

"For many, using the word "virtual" in regard to online worlds and other digital contexts has become nearly meaningless. To me, there's nothing virtual at all about my presence in various online contexts. Like many people, I have a handful of email addresses, a Flickr username, an XboxLive gamertag, and more than one Second Life account. Each of these represents an aspect of my identity, one of the various ways I express myself online."

Is it just me or is that another variation of my on-going argument that we shouldn't be so black and white in distinguishing between the virtual and the physical: that it's not about having a "first and a second life," but is just about living your life?

*********

And of course, as soon as I posted my feeble expression of opinion, I have found that there are other people writing like mad about this subject at length--and certainly doing a much better job of it than I. Among the damned good pieces out there are one by Prokofy Neva, another by Dusan Writer and finally, a real corker by Emilly Orr, written as commentary on Dusan's piece.

It's all worth reading, but as usual, I found Emilly's thoughts to be particularly meaningful to me, with an eloquence built on a foundation of emotion and experience, as well as intellect.

~~~

Do you love me? do you loathe me? do you even know I exist? -- our dichotomous relationship with Linden Lab

~~~

I go back and forth between sometimes being incredibly disappointed with Linden Lab, and other times feelin’ kinda sorta positive about those folks: feeling like...well, at least they’re trying to get things right. So, in between saying mean and snarky things, and threatening to kick poor old Phillip Linden square in the balls if I ever meet him, I do make an effort to give them credit when I think it is due, and say encouraging things when they seem to be giving it the old college try.

Happily wallowing in Caledon's "courtesy and old-world charm"

Like this recent development in which the Lab is trying to come up with a means to address the problem of misappropriation of creative content in world.

I won’t go into the whole explanation of the process that they are experimenting with--suffice to say that as I understand it, the idea is that when it becomes established that someone’s texture or object design has been misappropriated and used to create other stuff in-world, LL will pretty much nuke the offending material, turning objects into plywood spheres, and textures into monochromatic disappointments.

Is this a perfect solution? No of course not. I am well past thinking there are perfect solutions to any issue, whether in SL or real life.

Does it have a lot of potential for things to go wrong and make people unhappy?.

Oh, you bet. I call your attention to Emilly Orr’s well thought-out post on this subject. Emilly is a hell of a lot smarter than I am, and has a mind that focuses in ways that I always find intriguing. And I think she has a lot of really good points in her post. But are the negative outcomes she envisions inevitable, rather than simply being possible?

Hecate’s drawers, y'all, I got no freakin’ idea.

It is entirely possible that things will turn out with the results Emilly suggests...or it could be something entirely different. One thing we do know for sure about the grid is that it is a festival of unintended consequences. Hell, it is even possible that this plan the Lab is working on could actually discourage the misappropriation of other people's content. There is a good chance that the nuking of content which is based on misappropriated materials would not happen all that often, so the collateral damage to unsuspecting buyers might not be all that dreadful. It’s hard to say. After all, I can never shake the sensation that we are in an extended beta phase here, and anything we customers or the folks at Lab do is still in the realm of mad scientist experimentation.

Hey, pretty much, both us and them, we’re all just making this shit up as we go along.

But whatever the outcome...whether it’s more positive than negative, or wallows somewhere in the vast range in between, I gotta hand it to the Lab with regards to one key aspect of this: they caught on that this issue is important to a lot of folks and they are trying to do something about it.

Look at this quote from Pink Linden’s Dec. 9 announcement about this concept:

“As we said in our recent Content Management Roadmap blog post, we believe that Resident-created content is the heart and soul of Second Life, and we want to help everyone continue to benefit from the amazing creativity that has been displayed by our Residents inworld. When content creators are successful, Second Life is a better world for all of us--more inspiring, more spontaneous, and more fun!

Today we are pleased to announce continued forward progress along this roadmap: a pilot program to test some early improvements to our intellectual property complaint process. The goal of this program is to make the process more convenient and streamlined for Residents, and to empower content creators to better control their content.”

Yeah, to some extent, she is saying “the content-making population is necessary for our product to remain appealing to the customers and is therefore necessary for us labbies to continue getting our paychecks.” But it is also a recognition that there is an issue here that makes residents’ stomachs churn and their angst to increase. "Content theft" as it is commonly known, is something that matters to a lot of us who create, who have friends who create, or who rely on the continued productivity and happiness of the creators in order to be able to do all the wacky nonsense we love to do in-world.

In the past, the Lab has been known to turn away from big issues like this, or even to cheerfully embrace the perpetrators who were making the trouble, rather than responding to the wishes and interests of the majority of residents. The Lab has been known to say when something was fucked up, “hey, it’s up to you residents to fix things that have gotten fucked up--remember, “your world, your imagination...your problem.” Linden Lab in the past has given many of us the impression of being laissez faire, lazy, and uninterested--they often used the excuse, “well, there just isn’t any way of making a technical fix for that problem," or "we just can't keep everybody happy, so we just can’t--or won’t--do anything at all...Have a nice Second Life, fuckers.”

But this time, they are actually trying to do something.

Yeah, it may blow up in the their faces, it may do bizarre things we’ll all regret. But it’s something. It suggests to us that, hey, maybe there is someone on the other side of the equation that actually cares enough to try.

And I think they deserve some credit for that.

Because, after all, one of the other things many of us have felt for a long time is that the Labsters doesn't really understand us or really want to know who we are and what we want and need. It has seemed to many of us that who we are and what we do makes them...uncomfortable.

It has been a long time since they used the old tag line, “Your World, Your Imagination.” But it often seemed that if your imagination wasn’t focused on some largely human-centric, shiny futurist utopia or standard post-apocalyptic dystopia, sexy-youthful contemporary shopaholicism, or hippy-dippy Burning Man-style artistic range of visions, they just didn’t fucking get it. And more to the point, they didn’t seem to want to. If what you were doing was focused on something like exploring the historical past (or an imagined alternative past), or pursuing neo-traditional literary and artistic interests, or something that was non-human-centric or that they found embarrassing like furries, tinies, Gor, elves and so on--they seemed to try to ignore it as much as possible.

This impression was reinforced by situations like what happened back at the time of SL6B, when Ina Centaur’s Shakespeare in SL project was rejected for inclusion in the SL birthday exhibits as not fitting in with the theme of “the future of the Metaverse.” I know that whole situation was incredibly complex and confusing, but at the heart of it, it simply seems that there was a major difference of opinion within the Lab about what should be seen as representative of the “future,” as Ina’s Skin Encyclopedia was accepted, but Shakespeare was not.

Well, dammit, the “future” is not just about new stuff: it also can be about continuity with the past and the present, and a re-imagining of the framework in which we explore our existing cultural, artistic and intellectual heritage. It can be about sharing our diverse histories with each other in new and creative ways though the medium of the continually evolving technology.

And--again, trying to be fair to the Lab--maybe there ARE some people in the organization who do get it...who in effect, get us. I found it interesting that yes, Shakespeare in SL wasn’t deemed appropriate for SL6B, but does show up in the new SL promos about “what is SL?"

In the slideshow, under the category "Start Exploring," there is a screen entitled "Get Cultured" which features this text:

"Looking for culture? Second Life is full of museums, art exhibits, book clubs and theater. A virtual Shakespeare acting troop routinely presents the best of the Bard, while the Smithsonian recently launched the Latino Virtual Museum." (my bolding)

Actually I think looking through this whole new promotional explanation of SL is quite illuminating. I believe it can be seen as being suggestive of how the company generally understands it's customer base and their interests--as well as how they perhaps would like it to be.

The presentation is still primarily human-centric. In the machinama portion of "What is SL?" the avatars shown are primarily young, contemporary-looking humans. There's even a guy in a suit with a briefcase (he really doesn't look like he's much fun to hang around with, and if I was going to be really coarse about it, I would suggest that he appears to desperately need to get laid). At the very end, you see some tinies and some furries, but damn, you better look fast or you'll miss em. Some people are shown in period clothing, but they obviously are just going to dress-up costume parties--not roleplaying.

In fact, nowhere in all of this is there anything about combat-oriented sims, or roleplaying of any sort, or storytelling or the virtual literature movement in any of its manifestations. Well...maybe there is something implied by captions such as "free yourself" and "free your mind," while other captions suggest you can "change your look" and "change your mind." But it's hard to say. And I certainly don't think the casual touron looking at this promotional peice is going to say, "Change my look? Free my mind? Whoa! dude! I could develop a persona as a lady cop in working-class Berlin of the Weimar Republic era, and interact with other people who are interested in that!"

It's like how in the "Showcase" category for "places" they include Caledon. And you go, "Wow, hey! Cool!" But here's the description:

"Step back in time to the 19th Century. Caledon is a vibrant Victorian-themed community within Second Life. If it’s courtesy and old world charm you’re seeking, look no further. Put on your best Victorian suit or dress, and join Caledonians at their annual Harvest Festival- or become a member of this ever-growing online community."

I don't think that really helps you understand the opportunities for roleplay...and yes, I know Caledon is not specifically an "rp community" but rp certainly does happen there. And no mention of steampunk...

It's great they highlight Caledon. But at the same time, you get the feeling that their understanding of that complex arrangement of communities is extremely superficial. Oh, I suppose if they really tried to explain it with any degree of accuracy, it might just confound and possibly frighten the average casual visitor, but it it does feel rather...weak.

But, still, I have to give them some credit..because it feels like they are trying. Another example is when Blue Linden's SL travel blog featured a post about the ironclad battles that are organized by Hotspur O'Toole and his fellow proponents of nautical mayhem. That suggests a certain open-mindedness. I thought it was pretty cool that a Linden seems to have actually gone and watched a battle and talked to the folks involved to get a sense of what the fuck was going on. Likewise, I have also seen a post in which Blue visited the tinies of Raglan Shire, AND put on a tiny av to fit in. Those kinds of things are really encouraging.

But you know...I have been in SL since late 2004. Dio has existed since May 2005. And the only time I ever met a Linden (that I knew was a Linden, anyway) was when a number of years ago I applied for a liaison job and got an interview. It didn't go all that well. Nothing really wrong with how they approached it--it just was obvious that they were looking for someone different from me...someone focused more on the technical side of helping people, rather than the social aspects. At the time I knew relatively little about building or trouble-shooting, and if that was what they wanted, then they were right not to hire me.

But otherwise, I really haven't experienced much contact with people from the company. And yes, I will freely admit that the lack of contact was a two-way street. Yeah, they never wander through the kinds of places that I live in, but it's also true that I have only gone to a few of their office hour things, and then I gave up on it after getting frustrated with the challenges of communication in that kind of situation. Nor have I posted on the SL forums (as is true for about 80% of the SL user base). I guess I got burned out on company sounding boards after dealing with the Electronic Arts TSO forums, which were dominated by the obnoxious, condescending lumptards who represented EA, and their witless sycophants.

Yeah...I know, I know, I just need to fuckin' get over that.

So anyhow, people like me probably could do a better job of trying to get our perspective across to LL. That's one thing that really struck me as I looked at the current "What is SL" promo. It can't ALL be LL's fault that they don't understand us, that they don't know who we are.

Maybe a lot of us have been too insular. For so long, I never bothered to connect with anyone from the Lab because they simply seemed irrelevant within the context of what I was doing. And the other thing that struck me, looking at the subtle hints and sub-texts within the promotional blurbs and the showcase: the people within LL must be a good bit less homogeneous in background and point of view than some of us have thought. Just like they seem to have not done a good job of comprehending the true diversity of the resident population, we haven't really understood how diverse they probably are as well.

I don't know if any of them will read this. The only time I know for sure that Linden Lab people have read this blog was when I did the spoof on their "economic model," comparing their leadership to the ancient Easter Islanders who committed the island population to building hundreds of giant stone heads. Statcounter data indicated that in fact a fair number of people from Linden Lab looked at that one...which I find a little frustrating as there certainly have been other things I have written that were not nearly so goddamn silly and self-indulgent. Sometimes I think I have written some stuff that might actually be of interest or value to the labbites, but... oh well, that's how life works sometimes.

When some of us were heavily involved in The Sims Online (TSO), Will Wright used to regularly wander around in the game (using an alt, of course) and he interacted directly with a lot of the people who were doing unexpected, wild and woolly things with his creation. Maybe the Lab could do well to have some more folks wandering in the same way, and not just to generate a "travel guide" like Blue's, but to actually develop a first-hand awareness of what is going on and what people want and need to do what they are doing. And on the other side of the equation, maybe I'll try again with going to some office hours.

~~~

Well, everyone else has, so I might as well too...Xstreet

~~~

My good buddy Headburro has added his concise two cents worth regarding LL's fumbled handling of the Xstreet changes. He concludes that he doesn't like greed, and I responded, at some length (as I am wont to do). I've been think some more, and I decided that I wanted to expand on what I wrote, in part to try prune out some of the profanity (I'm trying, Rhia, I'm really trying). But I also want to be as fair as I could to the Lab, because after all, they are a necessary partner with us in making the platform what it is. The staff at LL obviously includes individuals of good intent, who work very hard trying to keep something running that is by now probably the coders' equivalent of Rube Goldberg's steampowered back-scratcher and catbox-cleaning device, Mk II. The bottom line is they need to make this turkey as profitable as it possibly can be.

So as far as greed, well....you know, in a lot of ways, I’m ok with greed. It’s a wonderful basic human motivator. To a great extent I am much more conformable with LL displaying signs of good old fashioned, cold, hard avarice than I ever was with their whole laissez-faire, hippy-dippy love machine philosophy where they seemed to ignore or even buddy up with griefers, and evidently let key staff focus on their own priorities rather than focusing on what the customer base wanted or needed. Improvements, as often as not, were not something the general population really wanted or needed. Sometimes, yes they were great...but just as frequently, they broke something else when they were put into play.

This Xstreet thing is a bit different from those artistic and structural improvments that may or may not have enhanced the product itself. These changes may in fact actually serve to reduce clutter on the Xstreet catalog of content, and make looking for something more efficient. But is it really something the population was asking for? Or was it simply a move calculated to increase the profitability of the operation? Clearly the Lab folks did not handle this well from a customer relations point of view.

Look, I really have no big issue with them trying to maximize profits--HOWEVER, if they are going to embrace the Dark Side and try to squeeze the population for all the turnip blood they can drink, they really need to make sure that platform also runs reliably and smoothly, and issues with inventory etc. are resolved as well as possible. Otherwise all the turnips will eventually give up and go do something else in some other turnip patch.

Quite simply, an increase in the cost of utilizing the platform must be accompanied by at least some incremental improvement in how it functions, or eventually even the most hardy, dedicated customers will get frustrated and discouraged, and they shall migrate to bright, shiny new lands.

Go ahead and embrace your greed, but by golly, give me something in return.

Mind you, I say that with the qualification that this Xstreet fiasco is something that affects me in a largely symbolic way, rather than the very real way that it affects my friends and acquaintances who are content creators and who actually try to sell their products there. In fact, I personally always found Xstreet of little use as anything other than a convenient product catalog to search for objects that I couldn’t locate using SL’s wretched search function.

My usual pattern was this: I’d think something like, "Hmm I sure could use an anvil and forge," (just because a girl needs to treat herself to something pretty now and then). So I'd go to the in-world SL "search" function, looking for something like “Blacksmith” or "forge" in the classified and places sections. After I would end up sufficiently irritated and annoyed, I would then proceed to Xstreet, put "blacksmith forge" into the search box, get a long list of stuff, and sort through it. Once I had found some actual blacksmith equipment, I'd get the info about who made the examples worth considering, and then go look at them in-world. Finally, I would buy one directly from the maker’s store or vending gizmo.

But, If something I wanted was only sold on Xstreet, then I’d say the heck with it, I don’t need it badly enough to fiddle around with actually using the meshugga thing to buy something.

Well, with one recent exception.

The only thing I ever bought off Xstreet was, ironically enough, a freebie: Gigs Taggert's target overlay, a handy gizmo which allows you to make anything into an handy adjunct to shooting practice. I understood from various people you could possibly locate these in-world somewhere, but by golly, I never could find them. It was the only case where I actually really needed something that I could only find on Xstreet–and it just happened to be a freebie. If it had cost something, you know, I probably would have still gone ahead and coughed up the lindens for it. I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with giving folks who spend their time building and scripting something in return for efforts. But I really don't like buying things on Xstreet. I prefer seeing what I am purchasing in-world and thinking it over. This target gizmo really was an exception.

And as for the Lindens--just like I want to see success and profits for all the content creators, even people who make stuff I don't particularly like or care about--I want to see LL succeed. I want to see them attract and retain oodles of happy, shiny recreational users, like me and all my literary and rp buds. I hope LL finds huge stinking piles of lovely corporate clients who will buy their "corporate silo in a box" packages, so they can hold lots and lots of lovely meetings where the participants are able to go take a dump and get coffee in rl, while their avatars sit there and help create the illusion that someone actually gives a rat's tookus about what Lois from marketing is droning on about.

But if the Lindens are going to succeed, they need to be more thoughtful and less arrogant about how they deal with us, and how they look at their product and their customers. I have said it before and I will say it again up until my avatar's de-rezzing day: they need to genuinely and sincerely try to get in touch with who their customers are, and seek to understand what we want and need, and to grasp how we are seeking to make the most of their product.

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The Linden Lab economic model

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The ebullient Hotspur O'Toole, on his blog Hibernia on the Skids, recently asked the question as to "what economic school the Lindens emulate."

His query lead me to post the following response, which I am re-posting here, being as I think it is worth consideration. I replied to his question in the following manner:

Personally I think LL's economic theory is based on the historic Rapa Nui model--picture a meeting, about 800 years ago on the island we now call Easter Island...

"Thanks for coming to this special strategic planning team meeting, everyone. Bob from the Divination and Ancestor Worship department has developed a concept that the elders in senior management thought you should all hear about. OK, Bob, you're up. Give it to 'em in a nutshell."

"Thanks, Chief. Basically I am proposing that we replace the sticks and piles of rocks that we currently use around the island for predicting and tracking celestial events with something that has much more presence--that's more impactful. And I wanted something that could multi-purpose and really hit one out of the park in honoring the Ancestors, as well as building the Rapa Nui brand."

*the other team members look intrigued. Lois from marketing/storytelling and mythology pipes up*

"What specifically do you have in mind?"

"I'm glad you asked that, Lois."

*Bob unveils a drawing of a giant Moai*

"Wow, Bob, how big is that thing?"

"I'm thinking for an average one, about 4 meters. But just to really make a statement, we could do some of them in the 10 meter range."

"Darn impressive concept, Bob. How many are you thinking we should do?"

"Oh maybe eight or nine hundred. As they say, Make no small plans, and all that"

*there is a pause*

"Umm...so Bob, have you done a preliminary cost analysis on this yet?"

"Oh you bet. I figure that it's going to completely exhaust all the island's resources by the time we're done."

"Ah....ok...and when do you know that the project is done?"

"Easy...when all the island's resources are exhausted."

*the strategic planning team is in deep thought for a moment. Finally Wally from the Rock Carving department speaks up*

"Well, I gotta tell you, I see some real positives in the short term, especially for my department--we'll need to expand the whole rock-carving operation, and there are some pretty darn good stone-whackers I'd love to hire away from the islands back in Polynesia. A project like this has the kind of sex appeal that I think would get 'em to jump ship and make that long voyage to join us. But the long-term makes me a little nervous. When's the big payout?"

*Bob smiles*

"Oh, I estimate that in about 500 years after project completion we're gonna be going gangbusters in the archaeologist/anthropologist market, and the basic tourist segment won't be anything to sneeze at either."

*the Chief stands up and pats Bob on the back*

"Well, I think you've really thought this one through, Bob. I like what it's going to do for our Rapa Nui brand, and I know that just eight centuries from now, we're going to have more archaeology and anthropology guys runnin' around than our descendants will be able to deal with. I do have a concern about the basic tourist audience, but hey, if the island offers them a positive initial experience, say like in the first six hours, it'll work. And we can just let our descendants puzzle that one out, anyway. So, all in favor of including Bob's big stone thing concept in the Island Strategic Plan, raise your hands."

~~~