Merging the Second Life Adult and Teen Grids -- "Who's on first?"

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So what is going on with the idea of merging Second Life’s Teen Grid and Adult grid into one big happy world?

This is something that has been kicking around as a rumor since early last year. There are those who argue that the ghettoization of adult content into Zindra was in preparations for this (personally I think it was perhaps more directed at defeating the widespread perception that “SL is all about pixel poking” in order to help attract more business and education customers). Obviously, if they decide to do so, it’s going to be a real challenge to make that kind of merger work without killing what makes SL a remarkable and engaging place for people over the age of 18 (and I’m not talking about sex).

I began thinking about the possibility a lot more after “There” closed, because such a large part of the customer base in that particular virtual world seemed to be made up of the pre-18 demographic. Some of us suspect that the demise of that platform was at least partially brought about by “There’s" reliance on a market segment that injected only a relatively modest income stream into the economy of that world.

So the other day, when I had the chance to run some questions past T Linden (Tom Hale, LL’s Chief Product Officer), one of the questions I asked him was the following:

Diogenes Kuhr: “On the issue of what we can learn from "There" a big question is what is going to happen regarding younger players--there is some consensus that the nature of the demographics in "There" was part of what worked against them--their chief administrator said as much in his farewell post. You will find some persistent concern that SL is working towards an eventual incorporation of the teen grid into the main grid, a supposition that has been reinforced by the attempted isolation of adult content in Zindra and the combination of main and teen forums. Many people are worried that if this does in fact happen, it is going to have a negative impact on the viability of the platform and on the SL experience for both younger and older residents for a lot of reasons that we don't need to go into at the moment. But bottom line is, will SL continue to provide a separate experience for younger and older residents, even as the Lab works toward a broader adoption of the platform?”

And he replied:

T Linden: “While the success of kids and teen virtual worlds does highlight that there is a potential opportunity in that space, we do not have a plan to merge the grids. If we did have this plan, there are lots of regulatory and legal requirements, technical improvements (eg in terms of maturity ratings for content, chat moderation etc) that are much lower priority than our current list of "things to do". Of course, never say never... but it's not currently contemplated (my bold)."

Ok...cool. Seems pretty straightforward. Sounds good and reasonable in fact.

But then, I start seeing tweets about what M Linden (the BIG Boss) was saying in his speech at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference this weekend. And apparently he was saying that this kind of merger IS being contemplated.

I have not been able to find a transcript of what M actually said, so I could only go on what people were telling me they heard...or were told that someone else had heard. The best source I could find to this point is a brief mention in Grace McDunnough’s blog:

“When asked about merging the teen grid at the VWBPE conference M Linden confirmed that a combined adult/teen was a distant future dream, but would emerge slowly through ‘thoughtful evolution’."

To say the least, this left me utterly confuzzled. So what’s going on?

Some commentators on Twitter argued that M was perhaps trying to say things that he thought the educators “wanted to hear.’ My response to that was..”why would educators want to hear that the teen and adult grids were going to merge?” The kind and thoughtful Riven Homewood explained to to me thusly:

* Community colleges & tech schools typically have students ranging from 16 to late 20s, - 18 and over is hard for them.

* All colleges & universities find it hard to use SL for recruiting because of over 18 rule.

* I have no direct experience with the teen grid, but people I know have explored using it & decided it wasn't worth the hassle

*What I hear is that educators would like to be able to take students to the great builds on the main grid & hold mixed-age classes

*I suspect many of the people at M's talk were too new to really understand the issues. They all just wanted M bears :)

Ok....so that kind of made sense to me, although I'm not sure I’m still not really sure that the merger would be worth the effort. But then Riven came back at me with one more thought, after we talked about the new Media Consortium/LL joint project to develop “Hakone,” a “walled garden” environment that seems to be a variation of the "SL Enterprise" separate mini-grids, but designed specifically for education customers.

Riven further observed:

“...a mixed-age separate education grid might solve a lot of problems, but not the one of showing great main grid builds to students.”

And while I can see that yes, there are some cool things that could be shown to younger students on the main grid, wouldn’t a more important goal be to provide them with an active learning experience--rather than a passive one--on a safe, relatively grief and flying penis-proof independent grid, where they can really get engaged in world building on their own? Remember--”don’t just build a classroom, build an experience!”

And ultimately, even if some educators might be interested in getting their younger students mixed up in the main grid, has anyone actually talked to the students about it? I keep seeing serious and disturbing indications that younger people are not real comfortable about entering into life on the adult grid. For example, I have on several occasions encountered groups of obviously younger players in-world (we shall take a leap of faith that they were in fact over 18), who were all using voice, and when they found that I and the people I was talking with were NOT using voice, they became hostile and suspicious. They wanted to know why we weren’t on voice--what kind of twisted and evil truths were we trying to hid?

Now mind you, I hate using voice because: A.) it usually doesn’t function well for me; B.) I prefer the immersion of typed chat; and C.) I like having a copyable record of what gets said. Plus, voice just doesn't frakkin’ work for roleplaying, because so much of what you do in SL rp is to type out your “emotes”--descriptions of facial expressions and certain actions that can’t be represented with the avatar itself. So I got my reasons. But I don’t need some uppity kid giving me a hard time because I don’t use voice...

And this is even more interesting and disturbing because I am told that in “There,” voice was used a great deal, and that the numerous (and mostly younger) players “shunned” anyone who relied on typed chat.

That indicates to me that if even younger players than we have now were coming on to the SL main grid, they would perceive it to be an uncomfortable and semi-hostile environment. The ironic thing in all this is that I have read comments by many people who left “There” because they considered it a “perv-fest”--so maybe using voice really doesn’t give the younger players the assurances of safe social interaction that they’re looking for. Regardless of that, it would seem that SL just isn't the kind of environment that many of them will percieve to be agreeable to them.

And that lack of perceived comfort is a two-way street. Now I know this is going to make me sound like some old geezer yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her goddam lawn--but you know, I’m not sure that a lot of the current customer base--the majority of whom, of course, are not predators and creepy axe murderers--would be all that comfortable with an increased presence of younger players coming on as individuals (not in classes). I can’t tell you how often in the last five years or so, the bad behavior of some jerk de jour was explained away as “oh well...he’s young,” (meaning late teens or early 20s).

To be a successful and happy resident of SL--ie, one who does not piss off every sentient entity you encounter--takes not only a certain degree of technical proficiency, it also requires a certain level of socialization. And of course, before you bright young geniuses start lambasting the cranky oldtimer for painting you all with the same broad brush, yes, I know there are young people who are great to work with and who have oodles of maturity, and yes, there are older players who wallow in their own infantilism. It’s not all black or white. But there do seem to be certain tendencies among certain demographic segments that do seem to repeat themselves.

So that brings us back to the whole issue of should the two grids merge or not. My gut feeling is to say no--I really don’t think it would help the company make enough extra money in order to make it worth dealing with the extra issues...and yeah, face it, it would create a plethora of problems. Even with careful forethought like M was talking about, anything that is done to--or on--the platform usually becomes a jolly festival of unintended consequences.

Maybe they can plan like crazy and mitigate the potential quicksand puddles. Maybe. But in the meantime, they really kind of need to get their story straight.

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The Lindens plan to become art patrons

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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.

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The memes go on -- extreme ends of a spectrum in recent commentary on Second Life

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Here's a picture I took of my friend Aldo climbing Total Lunar Eclipse's magnificent Mt. St Helens model. yeah..It's a metaphor of some sort. Aspiring to something higher, or some such fucking nonsense.

In the last few days a couple of different pieces have shown up on the interpipes that to my mind typify the perceptions that are held at the extreme ends of the spectrum of opinion regarding what is going on in Second Life at present, and what its future holds.

In one of these pieces that I am referring to, the respected and beloved M Linden weighs in at the “happy shiny avatars holding hands” end of things in his New Year’s message to his partners on the grid. Meanwhile, a delightful gentleman named Barry Collins has trotted out yet another “Sl is dying” effort under the dreadfully misapplied tab “analysis” at PC Pro UK.

Cheese and crackers, boys and girls! I am going to have to talk to my British friend Headburro about why there seems to be an unfortunate pattern among the British bloggers to simply repeat the same sort of negative opinions without really seeking to actually investigate the circumstances in anything more than a very superficial way? They are entitled to their opinions, but it should be emphasize that whey=t they are generating is "opinion" and not "journalism." If someone wants to really see some serious journalism being done about SL, I highly recommend Randall Hand's excellent new new series of reports on VizWorld starting with this one:

http://www.vizworld.com/2010/01/state-union-vizworld-life/

Of course, the people who, like Mr. Hand, are thinking most clearly and realistically about the platform--and many related issues ranging from the development of virtual education opportunities, to the evolution of virtual economies, to the growth of virtual literature and the new publishing models--fall somewhere in the vast area in between the extreme views of SL. But there do seem to be an awful lot of folks drinking the kool-aid at the one end, or wallowing in the slough of despond at the other.

Why is that?

Well in M’s case, I think he jolly well has to, and I admire him for giving it a good shot. I would think he wasn’t doing his job if he didn’t believe things were getting better and try to sell that to the masses. He has to have that vision of a bright and grand future, because that’s what a guy in his position is supposed to do. Yeah, as Rostand’s Cyrano pointed out, tilting at windmills may cast you down into the mud, but their long arms also might launch you up among the stars.

"Excelsior!"

Look here, boys and girls, those of us who look at the platform realistically know that SL is a “festival of unintended consequences” (and yes, I am inordinately proud of that phrase, thank you very much). Whatever the residents or the Lindens do or try, the standard outcome is gonna be Something That We Didn’t Expect. So M might as well go ahead and preach his vision for a gorgeous, interconnected, massively-adopted future for SL, because, by golly, that outcome is probably as equally likely or unlikely as anything else any of the rest of us are envisioning at present.

That said, I just can’t say that I buy into a lot of what he’s testifyin’ to. But rather than picking at the bits that don’t make sense to me or quite ring true, I want to focus on two things he says that I think are kinda important.

First off I note that he says the following about their new trend in showing us “roadmaps” to addressing SL issues:

“So, what’s ahead in 2010? Before I jump into this, a caveat is in order. Linden Lab is not a traditional software company. Historically, roadmaps were simply not part of the Lab’s DNA. This kind of project planning is new for the Lab. That being said, we are trying to share our plans in advance, in the form of dialog with the community because we know many of you are building your businesses on our platform. “

Hold on a just a gol-danged minute there, Shirley! Are you tellin’ me the Labsters didn’t do project planning before this?

Well, that certainly explains a lot about why it always felt like they were jolly well makin’ it up as they went along. The old Linden way of doing business after the initial launch seemed to meander from being pathologically laissez faire to flailing around with knee-jerk reactions to the threatened lawsuit du jour. If there was a plan, it must have been some kind of mystical bushwah that required an oracle to decipher. Or maybe Phil really DID let all his secondary employees just do what ever gave them a Big Smile, and said "pooh" to the customers’ needs.

So if this is the case--that they are in fact actually thinking this stuff over before they do something, if they are actually moving towards a more proactive stance on issues, AND they are going to run things past us (even if it is just for shits and giggles)--I want to applaud this concept. Planning is sort of essential in most modern enterprises, and the idea of lettin’ your partners (ie, us customers) in on the plan and giving us a chance to react and share our thoughts is a pretty darn good idea.

There are many really thoughtful, creative people using the platform. Yeah, an awful lot of us are knuckle-draggin’ idiots and some of us have embraced the zen of being “less than genteel.” But all told, they could probably learn alot from the folks in the trenches. Even some of us who are not genteel.

The other thing that I was struck by was that in a couple of places M said the following kinds of things:

“We’ve also been working on improving the support we give to the ecosystem of content creators, merchants, landowners and solution providers since they/you are the lifeblood of Second Life. Finally, we’ve been working on platform projects to improve stability, reliability and quality of the Second Life experience which is top-of-mind for all Residents.”

And the final point under “So what's ahead in 2010:”

“Last but not least, 'Technical Must Dos' that improve inventory management, lag and other sources of Resident frustration through a global infrastructure, parallelization in the simulator, enhanced viewer to simulator data communication and improved caching.”

I hope this isn’t just lip service. I hope that M really believes this and he is doing the leadership thing 110% and making these priorities clear to all the his staff. The last year was characterized by a certain lack of leadership, reflected in what seemed to be happening around the middle of 2009 with lower level Lindens responding to the lack of direction by “going feral,” while the ones in the middle apparently started eating their young.

M, if you’re reading this piffle, then please, make a priority of that commitment to dealing with what we really want and need...and please kick some tookus and take names until the whole organization jolly well gets it.

And again, let me say that even if I ain’t sippin’ the Kool-aid like some folks, I have more empathy with M’s hopes and dreams--and I have more respect for his overly optimistic perspective--than I do for the utter piffle being spewed at the other end of the spectrum by people like this Barry Collins gentleman.

Here’s how an editor (or someone) introduced his “analysis” piece on Second Life:

“It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it’s raking in more cash than ever before.”

Frankly, I think the reason they write stuff like this piece is for sensationalism value--put sex in the promo blurb, get people's attention, and then they all get stirred up and all the Second Lifers will bump up your site traffic by coming to trash the post or to argue.

As far as I can tell, that kind of thinking is the only possible motivation for publishing a piece like this, because Mr. Collins really didn't have anything to say. (although unlike the last gentleman who flogged this sort of anti-hype, Mr. Collins actually had some screenshots from SL to illustrate his post.)

So basically what this gentleman tells us that is that SL is different from what it was like when he visited in 2006 (that should have been a real "aha" moment, Sherlock). But he never does get around to explaining or even exploring why “It’s raking in more cash than ever before.”

You know one of the things I found interesting in M’s new year’s post was his reflections on all the wacky and important things and stuff that have happened with our expansion into the virtual during the last ten years. The virtual evolves faster than any other context these days--cycles are more rapid and it’s an intellectual, social and entrepreneurial pressure cooker. Just about any moron would realize that after a few minutes reflection. But this Barry gentleman goes back to SL three years after his first visit and is all disappointed that the virtual pub he hung out at and his pub friends aren’t there any more?

This is a surprise?

I find the gentleman's lack of perspicacity somewhat remarkable.

It appears that at the heart of his perspective is the same old meme that is current among the brain-dead techies who produce nothing and add nothing to either the virtual or the physical world. All this guy seemed interested in was the pixel sex, and reinforcing another variation on the same pointless meme that people who have a virtual element to their lives need to “get a life. My goodness gracious. Talk about being out of touch with reality...did this Barry gentleman actually think the same people would be hanging around in the same spots, three years later?

The grid is a darn sight more dynamic than that. Golly...the sport of curling is more dynamic that that.

Ok. I will say this one more time, and with a little clarification:

There is no difference between first and second life. If you are doing it...is is life.

The clarification? Yes...life ideally has to have balance between its various parts. If you spend so much time on SL that you forget to get enough sleep and the cat is fighting with the baby over the last bowl of kibble on the floor, then your life is out of balance and it is NOT HEALTHY. But the same goes for anything:

You can work at your rl job so much that your life is out of balance and you never see your kids grow up. That ain’t healthy either.

You can spend so much time watching TV that your hindquarters fall asleep and your circulatory system shuts down. Nope, not good.

You can sit in the basement masturbating so much that you injure your naughty bits. Definitely not good.

But that’s not what I am talking about--I am talking about creating for yourself a balanced, healthy life that may include a virtual element to it. All other issues aside, that virtual element IS part of your life.

People need a balance of things in their lives, and a reasonable amount of time spent on the SL platform, like a lot of very cool recreational stuff on the web, can make your life richer, more fun, and more complex in a positive way.

The thing that I think Barry Collins missed--and I hope M is not missing as well--is that the real genius of the platform is that a certain part of the population always keeps getting motivated to do more...to go that next level, to do something different that broadens a horizon or two. What you do in your second month, or your second year, or your sixth year for that matter, will most likely be far different from what you were doing in-world early on.

Of course the people from 3 years ago aren’t sitting in the same pub talking about the same sex clubs or whatever they were taking about in 2006--it would be appalling if they were. By now they’ve either moved on to a new experience, or they’re working at making stuff, or rp’ing vampire chipmunks, or something. But I can pretty much assure you that if they are still in SL, they’re there because they chose to aspire to something higher and more challenging--and they did so on their own and of their own free will, not with guidance or direction from above.

An Addeundum, 1/18/2010:
I note there are a great many new readers stopping by, particularly from the UK, directed by a link from Mr. Collins' most recent article on SL. If you found this discussion of interest, I respectfully invite you to also see a follow-up piece on this blog at

http://ephemeralfrontier.blogspot.com/2010/01/further-thought-on-memes-at-extremes.html


Another Addendum, 1/21.2010:

This blog is not written for everyone. But since Mr. Collins chose to link to this and we've drawn a great many readers who seem to come from more genteel circumstances, I have elected to re-edit the article so that their eyeballs will not melt from their heads. Wherever you see words like "gentleman" feel free to put your own noun of choice back in. Oh, and I also put in a link to Randall Hand's article. I would like people to see what real journalism looks like.

"Are we there yet? I dunno...what does the roadmap say?"
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