...and another one bites the dust -- the closing of There.com

~~~

There soon won't be any "There" there. Say goodbye to the waving couple from the intro page at There.com


I heard today through twitter that the virtual world of There.com would have its plug pulled on March 9, 2010. I may be a sentimental old broad at times, but in this case, to be perfectly honest, I’m not feeling particularly mournful about this turn of events. My friend Aldo once commented about Second Life that he looked on it “not just as a product in transition, but also as a transitional product,” and I think that is a reality that applies to all virtual worlds. They are like organic entities and they have a lifespan: they are born, they grow and develop, and eventually, they either die or evolve into something new. According to the announcement by the guys who run “There,” the bad economy finally caught up with them and it was no longer financially viable.

That may be true...or at least part of the truth. It also may be that “There” is a platform that can no longer successfully compete in the current market because of its limitations and/or somewhat uninspiring graphics. It may simply be obsolete. I can’t really say, because I have no direct firsthand knowledge of what has been going on in that particular VW. “There” was a platform that I never utilized, or even tried out, as far as I can remember. To be honest, I may have given it a shot a long, long time ago. But obviously, if I did try it, the experience didn’t make much of an impression on me.

At same time, I would like to point out that I was very much aware of it in its early days. “There” came out of Beta in October 2003, and was starting to attract users around the time I was getting pretty heavily involved in “The Sims Online,” another pioneering version of a virtual world. I thoroughly enjoyed TSO until the fall of 2004, when I decided to go try something else. My choices were either Second Life or “There.” They both seemed like they offered significant advances over TSO, and they both offered the opportunity to escape from the oppressive feudalism of life with Electronic Arts, the hateful, turnip-squeezing, Borg-like corporate collective that had taken control of The Sims Online. I picked Second Life only because most of my TSO friends who jumped ship had chosen to go to that platform. I wanted to be where my friends were, and if they preferred SL, that was good enough for me. And hell’s britches, anything was better than remaining in the evil, despotic clutches of EA.

For many other people, however, I think “There” represented an important transitional product from a highly structured and overly-controlled world like TSO, to the more open-ended environment of Second Life. For one thing, there was user-created content in “There,” but the process was overseen by the company, which very strictly vetted user-made content before it showed up in-world. I understand there was far less roleplaying in “There,” as it was promoted--and functioned--primarily as a multi-dimensional social platform. This focus was reinforced by developments such as the 2008 launch of ThereConnect, which enabled There.com members to display their in-world profiles, skills, groups and upcoming events on their Facebook pages. Around the same time, “There” introduced ThereIM, an instant messaging client that allowed Therians to communicate with other members’ avatars, whether or not they were signed into the virtual world. Furthermore, the business model for “There” was based on the idea that the nature of the technology would make it a more easily and generally accessible virtual world than something like SL. The company trumpeted the idea that you didn’t need an expensive high-end computer or even a super-fast connection to use “There.” Never having spent time in “There,” I can’t tell you if this meant that while anyone could get into the world, they were going to have a shitty experience if they had a less powerful machine and basic service. But I guess if you just going to use “There” as little more than an animated chat room, any such issues probably didn’t matter so much.

Nonetheless, it would seem that the creators of "There" believe that this strategic choice is at the heart of what brought about the imminent demise of there VW. Here’s how the “There” guys explained it on their site :

“Unlike other products, There was designed from the beginning to be a welcoming and comfortable place for everyone - not just gamers, not just people over 18, not just people with high end computers, and not just people on broadband.... We believe that all of this together made a world which was, well, like "real life", with just the right level of unreality thrown in. Standards for speech, interaction, avatar dress, and even the amount of "blood and gore" were pretty much what you'd expect in the real world, and we believe that it's one of the many things which made There special, accessible, and attractive to people from all over the United States and the world -- not just the privileged with high-end machines and broadband connections.

Unfortunately, this also meant that There.com's customers were hardest hit by the recession, and, so was There. While our membership numbers and the number of people in the world have continued to grow, there has been a marked decrease in revenue, which, in these economic times, is no surprise.

Throughout the last year and this quarter, we have fought the good fight by churning out new features and revisions as fast as we possibly could. Our hats have to go off to the team, which have in a very short time introduced a whole new suite of casual games, a completely new foundation for our user interface, improved internal efficiencies for the product, real estate, a whole new level of Community Involvement, etc, etc. On top of that, we've revised our first user experience several times, making the whole process for registering and getting into the world (and continued to be amused when the same features appeared in other worlds).

But, at the end of the day, we can't cure the recession, and at some point we have to stop writing checks to keep the world open. There's nothing more we would like to avoid this, but There is a business, and a business that can't support itself doesn't work. Before the recession hit, we were incredibly confident and all indicators were "directionally correct" and we had every reason to believe growth would continue. But, as many of you know personally, the downturn has been prolonged and severe, and ultimately pervasive.”

So basically, these guys are saying they tried their darndest to make this world into something that was broadly appealing, easily accessible and connected to social media, and so, consequently, ripe for mass adoption. But they couldn’t make it pay in the end--according to them because their target audience got walloped the hardest by the recession.

OK. I think I can kind of go along with the concept that the economy can be seen as a factor. But I have to admit I’m thinking there is more to this than just the idea that their primary audience has less disposable income and therefore had to cut back on something, and so are spending less on things like online amusements. That’s a sorta kinda good theory, but at the same time, there are reports that online gaming activity in general is not declining. In fact, as happened with the Great Depression, people seem to have been looking for cost effective forms of entertainment and that spending is actually up in areas such as toys and gaming.

So what’s really killing “There?” Has its time simply come? Did the attempt to go for mass adoption hasten the process of natural selection? I just don’t have the time or energy to really pick it apart. But I sure as hell hope our friends at the Lab are carefully analyzing what happened to “There.” The Lindens have an opportunity here to do a case study of a virtual world that took a path to extinction rather than evolution. I hope they take it very seriously and learn some things that will keep them from making SL go dodo before its time.

I will say this: I am convinced that a key difference between these two worlds is that Second Life residents have so much more freedom in what they choose to create. So many of our various experiments in education and the arts, so much of our roleplay and community building, so much of our resident-based commercial activity grew out of people being able to say, ”hey, I want to to make this or that” without first having to run it through some vetting process.

But again, that’s just my gut feeling. I would be curious what some of you who had more experience with “There” thought of it, and what you think killed it.
~~~

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.

~~~