Business in Virtual Worlds, Second Life

3D London in Second Life – Google Virtual Should Be Here Already, and why SL Should Act Like a Gaming Platform

A fascinating and noteworthy bit of work by Dr. Andrew Hudson-Smith, from UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, who rezzed a 3D model of London across a scrolling map. It looks like the map may have been using the AC3D translator which takes 3D object files and converts them into triangles – prim heavy but it works.

Thanks to Francis Anderson for pointing this project out.

According to the blog entry’s update, however, the powers that be in London had the map removed from SL – security reasons? IP ownerships issues?

Early user-hacked prototype of Google Earth: Interoperability
If this project had been accomplished using SketchUp models from Google, overlaid like it was on a “real world” geography, supported and encouraged by Linden, and then publicized along with lessons learned and a “guide book” for others who want to import real world georgraphy and models into SL, it would be hailed as an important early indicator that SL already HAS the platform to sustain a Google Earth Virtual World. Instead, the project will be a prototype, quickly launched, taken down, and observed as an interesting experiment because of the power of YouTube.

It showed that the Holy Grail of interoperability, though still clunky, is being accomplished through various work-around strategies and hacks of the code. Already, there are a number of parallel viewers running ahead of the main SL viewer, primarily because the JIRA is continually proving to be an ineffective way to determine priorities for bug fixes. It showed that you can work around the serious roadblocks to importing external data into SL. It showed that there are users passionate and committed to using SL to do serious work beyond role playing, failed links to CSI episodes, and flying genitalia.

The Year of Virtual Worlds
2008 will be the year of virtual worlds. Moves by Microsoft into the Serious Games market with their possible expansion into environments with wider concurrent sessions, the anticipated launch of a Google Earth virtual world strategy, and a glut of new worlds in the pipeline and venture capitalists on their heels will see wider acceptance of 3D environments as a standard component to Web communication platforms – 3D add-ons to Facebook, mySpace, and various imitators and improvements on SL including the formal launch of HiPiHi and Twinity out of Beta will add to the noise. The launch of Metaplace in the spring will put the development of 3D games (and serious games) into the hands of the masses.

These platforms don’t have what SL does, however – namely billions of user-generated objects, millions of lines of code, and a small but influential core group of users. However, many of the competing platforms make a virtue of cross-platform compatibility. Having recently experienced working with a Maya developer on sculpts for SL, I’ve seen first-hand that SL has a wall around it – the documentation is terrible, hard to find, and is aimed inwards rather than outwards. Importing sculpts or models shouldn’t be so painful, especially since this was such a vaunted feature officially launched by the Lindens themselves.

Linden’s Lack of Priorities
Linden has been trying to stick a finger in the dam by publicizing its focus on grid stability. For more experienced users, lack of stability is a way of life, although unacceptable in some ways. For others, grid failure during a sponsored event or while giving a client tour can be an unacceptable business risk. But grid stability is also navel-gazing. New users don’t consider entering SL and then say “oh, but I heard the grid is unstable” and walk away – they might get frustrated with TP crashes or grid outages, but if they’re lucky enough to stumble on the right build or group of people they’ll stick it out (thus why newcomer orientation is soooo important). Lack of stability is the final straw that drives users out of SL – they’re not entirely sure why they came in the first place, orientation can be confusing, and they can’t figure out how to meet those 50,000 people online hanging out on private islands.

However, try waiting for a teleport on Twinity (admittedly in beta) – it may be stable, but it takes forever and it feels like that frustrating wait while levels load in a game – just as you’re immersed in an environment, you have to wait for the computer to chug away and load data. I’m more likely to leave because of consistent waits for content to fully load before rezzing than the occassional TP crash.

Stakeholder Focus
Linden’s much-publicized focus on grid stability needs to be accompanied by an equally vocal communication strategy that reaches out to the 3D development community, game developers, Maya sculptors, educators, and aggregate the work of users to develop materials, guides, code libraries, and resources that truly help these stakeholder groups. It should then revamp the JIRA and the support portal. It should stop talking about interoperability and make it a priority – open up the architecture to whatever degree its business model can sustain, and embed proper coding structures for importing external objects. Linden also needs to show some executive moxie and stop letting the programmers choose what bugs and enhancements are chosen – set a course and an agenda and show leadership.

The greatest evidence for Linden’s lack of focus is the SecondLifeGrid.net. This was a much-publicized resource for businesses looking to use SL as a platform for communication, experimentation, education and prototyping. As best I can tell, it has barely been updated since it was launched – the case studies are the same, the resource listings, the documentation.

I don’t know enough about Linden’s inner workings, but it seems to me that it has divided its tasks into internally and platform-focused groups. Philip Rosedale said in his blog posting that there was a team devoted to embedding Web objects in SL, and another focused on Havok. Again, these are navel-gazing ways of organizing. Community and stakeholder relations shouldn’t be the purview of a special group, they should be everyone’s responsibility. SL should more aggressively structure its efforts around working with stakeholder groups towards improving the USER experience, including the experience of people who want to develop on SL. Each stakeholder “node” within Linden should include customer service and support, programming, sales and marketing, and in-world liaison staff.

Linden wants SL to be a PLATFORM for connecting everyone to virtual worlds. But if Second Life was a platform like Nintendo or X-Box, it would know that its success as a paltform is as dependent on supporting, encouraging, working with, and providing technical assistance to third-party developers as it is on what its render rate is, and that those third parties would also be looking to the platform’s commitment to advertisement, promotion, and marketing to evaluate whether it’s a suitable platform on which to develop.

Documentation and Orientation
There’s been a lot of talk about user orientation and help. While important, it’s again a finger in the dam. The best orientation experiences are now being run by outside parties whether for private corporate builds or wider commercial applications. Linden should instead be worrying about orientation experiences for third parties, whether schools, businesses, 3D developers, gamers, or others.

In my own experiences I’ve made numerous requests and applications through the Linden support portal for various business-related issues including basic things like billing and have been appalled at the lack of response.

I’d like to be able to say to Linden “I have an educational project sponsored by a university/commercial partner” and receive a package, follow-up e-mail, maybe even a phone call. The package would include best practices, links to properly documented libraries of code, suggestions on how to find developers and where to buy “supplies”, examples and case studies, and measurement tools and suggestions for monitoring return on investment. As my build progressed, SL would make proactive efforts to link me with others with an interest in the field, and would request that I briefly document my experiences so that others can build on my successes and failures.

This would go a long way to reducing the learning curve for new companies and institutions wanting to enter SL.

Game Platform vs ISP
I’m not sure if SL thinks it can be the Apple of Virtual Worlds and is smart enough to craft its own technology, documentation, user experiences and marketing without help from outsiders. Based on grid issues, lack of growth in the user base, attrition and poor press, I’d guess the consensus is they can’t.

Second Life needs to be treated like a gaming platform rather than an ISP. Linden may have a far-reaching vision to connect everyone to the grid, but that’s the vision of an Internet Service Provider, and positions it to increasingly simply be a commodity provider.

“We’ll get your private island server up and running, we’ll make it look nice through Windlight, and then we’ll try to keep it stable through Havok and other fixes. After that….well, you can always go to Amazon and buy the new Aimee Weber book, or check the blogs, surely there’s some tips out there somewhere. We’re more interested in whether our crash rate is improving.”

Instead, SL should act like a gaming platform.

“We want to sell our platform and our platform will sell because our engine is used to create a stellar, immersive, creative, engaging, well-promoted, and stable suite of experiences. These experiences will be created through partnership with a constellation of studios, individuals, institutions, and companies who feel they have bought into making the kinds of commitments needed because they’ve seen how we have their interests at heart. We will celebrate the “titles” that use our platform, and we’ll make improvements because our partners help to translate user need through their experience as developers. We will actively promote, evangelize and market what we do and we will stop thinking like a technical provider and START thinking like a customer experience company. THEN, our vision of connecting everyone to virtual worlds will become reality, because people will WANT to be there.”

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