There were two places that convinced me of the power of Second Life as a platform: Svarga (recently up for sale – and I’m not sure if it still is, but if nothing else it needs to be preserved by Linden Lab) and Black Swan Rezzable.
Svarga convinced me that Second Life supported a quality of storytelling and immersion that would have, well, game-changing implications for how we experience things on-line. And Black Swan convinced me of the emotional and, I’ll say it, spiritual potential of the immersive experience.
The third place, and equally important, was my first little plot of land, stuck between a giant mega prim hiding a mall on the one side, and a beach house on the other populated by a seemingly endless stream of Germans. And the third place was important not because it was land, but because it was land on which I could rez my first prim. Little did I know that one prim would lead to investing thousands of hours rezzing other prims, and then trying to write about it…this blog was merely a place to keep notes, I didn’t expect to stay for very long.
But now, Rezzable has announced that it’s closing up all of its sims other than Greenies Home, and with it, will be shuttering Black Swan, which I can only describe as, well, a tragic loss – although frankly, I gave up going after Starax (or Light Wave as he was reincarnated) did that really weird sky box thing with the fascist imagery or whatever it was supposed to be – I took it as either creative frustration or a comment on humanity, or Linden Lab, or the Grid, or all of it. But Light Waves made prim magic, and it moved me, it made me want to somehow combine the creative impulse with the rest of my life – to make my work more like SL and to make SL a part of my work.
See, I kept looked to Rezzable for guidance. They had some of the smartest people on the Grid over there, rezzing prims, making magic. Greenies was – well, it was fun, although I kept wondering whether I was part of a story or part of a post card, it was fun to walk through a comic book, but I didn’t understand what MY character was supposed to be, and in Second Life we are all the stars of our own adventures.
But forget about Greenies – the whole set of Rezzable sims, 40 of them over the years by Rezzable’s count….well, I figured that with all that magic and all those visitors and all of those folks building, and sand boxes, and fashion shows, and art at the Cannery and whatever – that it all masked a plan, and that if we could only decipher the plan, we could all hop on board and ride the wave to the future, the Lab wasn’t much help, we’d need to construct it together.
What Was the Plan?
I used to spend countless hours speculating. I’d wander the Rezzable sims to try to figure out what they were up to: at Surfline, I’d look for a signal that maybe they were going to sell beach houses and land, but there was no such signal, and I couldn’t even find a decent bathing suit; then, there was that mountain thing with the cars under it, and I figured they’d be selling STUFF, like cars or whatever, and sure they sold a few things but it was hardly an uber-mall, and I distrusted the object economy in any case, as it relied on an endless flow of either new goods or new customers, the first of which is labor-intensive, and the second of which relies on factors outside our control, like the Lab promoting and marketing or whatever.
For a while, I figured they would try to own the new user experience, and thus their ‘consumption pathway’ or something, they had some sort of orientation hub in an old temple or something, but it never seemed to get finished, and I never saw noobs there.
But then one day I had a big deflating moment, and it was when Rezzable started charging admission. And it suddenly dawned on me that maybe they don’t really HAVE a plan, or the plan was the same plan as I was pitched in 1997 or 98 or whenever it was, and the plan went something like this: “Jump on this band wagon, it’s growing, aggregate eyeballs, it’s a network effect, and if you can be the one to grab the eyeballs FIRST then all the ones that follow will be yours” or, put it another way, the plan was the same as the Internet hype (and the resulting collapse) that killed a thousand blooming flowers a decade or so ago, the lesson of which was “The first wave is the dangerous wave, wait until it settles down and we’ve learned a few things.”
What I REALLY hoped was that I’d see some sort of synergy with brands or something, but then we were still in the post-CSI days, and the brands had sort of lost interest and wandered off to populate Facebook with widgets.
Now, Rezzable held faith when the brands had left, and that was a good thing. And frankly, I had hoped that they might do what Linden, at the time, could not: bring some sort of coherence to how the Grid might be shaped. I wrote:
“It’s time (for Rezzable) to stop just showing and start sending out some beacons for the rest of us. Some sculpted prims and a Garden of Delights will go a long way in convincing the people like myself who stayed in SL because of Svarga, or because of Starax….but what goes further is a feeling that it underpins a deeper vision of what next. Because surely we’re not finding it in Linden Lab. And as much as we mope and pine about the land market, it doesn’t seem like the overlords particularly care. And as much as “education and collaboration” is the next thing, a lot of those folks are decamping for Wonderland and Open Sim.
So we turn inward and look for a few hints of people who see a roadmap of their own, and wonder, and wander, and hope that someone has a clue or two, because there’s enough evidence that there’s a lot of heart and passion and talent and a few boundless dreams, enough to go around at least.”
But it turned out that Rezzable didn’t have a road map. Or, rather, they had one, but it relied on Linden Lab to deliver something (10 million new users comes to mind) that they never said they would, and that all evidence suggested wasn’t possible.
The strange thing in all this is that it turns out that it’s Linden Lab who has a road map. And Rezzable has openSim.
HTTP-In
Now, I’ve long been interested in OpenSim, which is where Rezzable is headed, and it held the promise of being able to do things that were problems in SL.
See, at some point I figured that you actually COULD make money in virtual worlds, and I’ve been proven right. And the key to that, for me in any case, is that virtual worlds are not some separate thing, they are and will be integrated into all the other media and tools and technologies that help to make stuff happen.
But Second Life had problems: all that pesky adult oriented content, lack of a firewall option, lack of customized registration, inability to share desktops and integrate with Web-side content. And OpenSim promised that it HAD those things….and it also promised that with its “modular architecture” that it would be somehow, well, more innovative. So far, at least, it isn’t. You can change the physics and fiddle with the controls, but it’s still primarily a reverse-engineer.
On the other hand, the road map that the new(ish) crew at Linden Lab have placed out is, so far, being FOLLOWED (with a few mis-steps and corrections along the way, mainly the debacle of the homesteads), and I like being able to understand what’s coming next. In any case, just as Rezzable is leaving, Linden Lab is finally delivering against what I’ve long asked for: a coherent sense of a road map with milestones and deliverables and a team that understands how to build products and services as compared to code.
Now…don’t get me wrong, I still hedge my bets a little, primarily because I produce stuff for clients across other media, and just as my “meetings and conferences” business is a little slow these days because of the economy, my virtual business is up, and maybe next year that will change and I’ll be back to trudging through airports every week.
HTTP-IN, which has been on the map for a long time, is one of those quiet advances that is pushing Second Life along, and opening up new ways to innovate that, sure, are maybe being done on OpenSim but in this case they’re being built on a platform with stability, and a user base, and an economy, and all of the other stuff that has taken the Lab 7 years to build and (mostly) stabilize. And with HTML on a prim not far behind, and a new viewer on the horizon (am I the only one, by the way, who believes that the new viewer will be CLOSED source?), and new Web-side initiatives that I personally think rock, there’s some steam left in the engine, and there’s a company running the show that’s making money (which isn’t to say Adam Frisby or whoever isn’t making money, but it’s for himself, not for the “OpenSim product” like SL is the product of Linden Lab).
Which is to say that OpenSim holds promise, but I personally don’t think it’s entirely ready for prime time.
Look – these are all brave new worlds, and we’ll look back at the trials and tests and compare them with what we have 5 years from now and we’ll wonder why we thought it was such a big deal. I don’t have my little plot of land any more – for all I know, it’s empty, or someone else is there rezzing their first prim. And I’ll leave other sims behind as well, and maybe hope that this time, if nothing else, I’ll learn from my plan, just as I’m sure Rezzable has learned from theirs – but will try, and try very hard, not to blame anyone else if something goes wrong, and instead just head off to my next adventure.
long tails.. short expense accounts.
a decade redux.
The way I see it people who are creative and jazzed by the 3-D world opportunity get into an “if you build it then they will come” frame of mind, mixed with an “and they will appreciate what we’ve (or I’ve) done and will toss us some donations” expectation.
The problems begin when they realize that 99.5% of the thousands who visit their region have no intention of contributing a single penny, let alone helping them meet the horrific relentless tier costs. They just want it for free, they think they are entitiled to it for free.
Eventually the novelty wears off and the resentment toward all those freeloaders using the space to amuse themselves without paying gets tiresome. Artistic enthusiasm doesn’t last forever, eventually somebody has to cough up all that dough. So they pack up and split.
Has happened over and over to date and will continue to happen. If you don’t charge admission or don’t generate revenue with sales or rentals you are going in the hole. People will never pay for what they can take from you for nothing.
“try very hard not to blame anyone else if something goes wrong”
Good advice, Dusan. As an observer – not a business person – it appears to take a unique idea and lots of hard work to make any operation inside any grid a paying proposition.
Corcosman, you are exactly right. The unfortunate part of that though is that most people will invest thousands and then find that out the hard way. SL is still marketed and seen as the place where you can make money, and it’s just not that true, there are a very small handful of people actually withdrawing real money worth noting.
Even some people make money in ponzi/pyramid schemes, but does that make it legal? Some people made money in the Madoff scam, same question.
The real question is whether or not Linden Lab is a giant ponzi scheme. Sure you CAN make money, but only if 95% of the population LOSES money. All the money flows nicely up to the top of pyramid
Hell you even have to pay a fee to Linden just to withdraw money. To add to that, they are receiving over 1000 USD a month per server they use due to the fact that they split Sims, 4 per server. That’s highway robbery if you ask me.
There will be a time where that price has no choice but to come down.
But, is Linden Lab a ponzi. I’d like someone with more intelligence than myself to take a deeper look.
Well said Dusan. Agree 100%.
And I believe we all have a future in SL and what ever other VWs can link to and build on the large growing network of avatars/people. Community is all, stand-alone is a lose/lose proposition.
I was having a discussion with a friend early in my Second Life about the ridiculously high cost of “land” in-world and making note of the fact that we not only purchase the servers FOR Linden Labs (servers cost them nothing, only leasing space for the server racks upon racks and, of course, bandwidth) but then we pay through-the-nose monthly for the privilege of being allowed access to the server we “bought.” And when we leave, they keep it all and “sell” it again.
His only comment was, “So what you’re saying is we are all just suckers.”
And my answer was (and still is) yes, but WILLING suckers … for now.
@Metacam, you might be interested in this article on Second Life’s Ponzi-ness.
His conclusion? “No, SecondLife is a classic pyramid scheme. Or, more of an Amway-like pyramid: partially legitimate, partially ponzi.”
I hope the guy would eventually learn some anatomy and hand-drawing because the tied angel statue on Black Swan was more than hilarious and the ballerina had masculine face. So quite a lol after all.
no big surprise in his 2007 “pyramid” article since AMWAY itself via its “new” names and business shells came into SL to “mall franchise” during the hype of 2006.
just more fodder for the virtual economy of the real world and the slow realization that the virtualization of money has run its course.
any real economist will tell you money is only about “trust” and that systems that by nature, dont offer “trust” cant offer any actual virtualizations of money- aka an economy.
so much for casanova and metanomicons.;) EVE has a economist on staff, dosent it? and the latest run of its bank by a medical paying dad playing a “pirate” certianly put all that “virtualization” of others peoples money and time into clear perspective.
Las Vegas casino have economists too, right?>
Anyhow, Rezzables story is nothing new from the internet and 15 years of its virtualization dreams and falsehoods.
I think the thing we learned is now, artist people like Rezzable need to learn how to be greedy fucks.
C3 – um, ok. Glad to have your continual reminders of stuff that happened 15 years ago.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with your virtualization of money comment, because I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying. You have that cryptic way about you hahaha.
In any case, ‘pyramid’ post to follow, feels like a good one for the weekend.
Metacam – I disagree. Artists are a different story. Rezzable was clearly a business, not a patron of the arts, although it happened to provide patronage as part of its wider business model.
There were artists working for Rezzable, and Rezzable supported art on its sims. But Rezzable was a business first and its the business side of what its doing that’s the issue at hand.
yes. well im not paid to answer any questions in blogs:)
and Im either a Yogi Berra or an Einstein in my comments..lol..Prok and You all can decide.
suggest you watch “The Ascent of Money” on PBS….”virtualization” becomes more of a history lesson after a view than any metablogs futurism;)
Also why not look up PONZI… he fed on his own, as did Madoff, as does the SF tech valley types. But as the virtualization of Money went more and more “electric” and digital the collatoral damage that could be done in the shortest accelerated time became larger and larger.
What will also be obvious to many soon, 15 years late, is that Artists/ IP creators need to own tools and own their works. Almost NONE of the current Virtualization of 3d, storage, or media has that in mind. Either control is being taken away by large investment corporations via “service medias growth meme”, or by “free” content metachildren “meme” that are of course funded by the large vested financial interests anyway.
Banks virtualized money- and now they own all the land- property- and even your cars;)
Google and others are virtualizing IP, and who do you think will own it all by 2050.?
Rezzable learned what Protozoa and others;) did 15 years ago. – google it, before google decides to remove the past listings– they can do that you know;)
BTW- as yourself- what will be left of this blog in 15 years?
I think they’re brilliant – Immersion 2.0… via Rezzable?
http://davidcheney.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/immersion-2-0-via-rezzable/
I hope to God that the new viewer will be closed source. That would be a real victory for common sense and business pragmatism and also put an end to all these screwy hacked viewers that are used both to grief and to confuse newbies. In fact, maybe LL could say, “Go on using all those hacked screwy viewers if you like, but if you want X or Y feature, it will only be in this new viewer.” A lot of things went wrong when the Lindens caved to the opensource thuggery and opensourced their viewer. They could set it right by closing up the next one.
Of course, closing up the viewer could be accompanied by increased moves to formalize and “legalize” content creation by residents to the point that amateur content will be heavily discouraged if not outlawed.
Dusan, I count on you to be one of the few smart people in SL. So when you say that you “stayed in SL for Svarga and Starax,” I have to grimace.
Starax is wonderful and all that, but…it’s kitsch. It’s Disney’s fantasia. His earlier years were better. The Black Swan thing, that looked like a lot of poured tar for my money, was hideous. I kept looking in the sky and the water for this other cool thing that he supposedly made — never saw it. My recollection of Starax was him throwing a tantrum and leaving SL because the Lindens broke his famous wand — but then not returning even when they fixed it, and coming back on a secretive alt that only seemed to serve to make his statues insanely priced on the market of resales.
Svarga? I’ve written reams about the essential socialist claptrap around Svarga, and this manipulative posture that Lauk has taken time and again saying “the community” or “the Lindens” must “save Svarga,” but then…winds up selling it. Or saying she’ll sell it, but not with the scripts.
I used to be a huge fan of Lauk’s. No more, for all the reasons I’ve outlined in my blogs about her posturing around the land sales in Orwood and with Svarga. But…take it on its own merits. What’s the big deal? It has artwork that is matched or exceeded by Straylight and other natural sims — and Straylight makes tons of money,most likely, for its creator. There is absolutely no reason why Svarga couldn’t have had way more content sales, much more advertising, and more tier paid. It was only ideology that hobbled it.
It is absolutely NOT imperative to have the Lindens preserve it. They should do no such thing. People that stubbornly refuse to engage even in a non-profit style business plan that helps cover costs and sustain the creativity deserve scorn, not another coin in the hat passed. I never “got” what was so fabulous about the AI, either. It’s not as if there aren’t other groups working on AI and making creatures and flowers realistic, too. The world has turned on its axis since Lauk and Starax, the beta-era oldbies, came and conquered. There are new creators doing as wonderful work and even more interesting work, so it’s time to thank them for their services, write an encyclopedia page on them, and move on.
As for Rezzable — meh. I’ve said my piece on that bog and my own blog. I keep asking what will happen to all those artists the led on and kept paid for quite a while and now will suddenly dump.
Again, I don’t know what you are talking about, intellectually, Dusan, and critically. Disney, all over again. The Borrowers Meets Toy Story. It’s a scene that reduces you, the viewer, to a, well, audience, not an interactive part. Nothing to click on, hardly. Nothing to buy. Not even a t-shirt readily available to take home unless you figure out to TP to the sky. These people sit on traffic and don’t provide the basic gift store that a RL museum would have to cover its rent. It’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful not because it’s amateurish or bad business, that could almost be forgiven, but because it’s ideological. Rezzable joined the big Chris Anderson Free train. Give everything away for free…except charge sometimes…except sell a perfume ad…except wait for a lecture fee. Oops, Chris Anderson can get lecture fees to sustain his lifestyle as he goes around evangelizing “Free,” but Rezzable’s Himoff couldn’t likely get his way paid to appear on a VW conference somewhere.
Again — frustrating sims. Cliches. Junkyards. Urban post-apocalypse. Carnivals of doom. To be sure, things like Toxic Gardens had a lot of punch to them. But…Himoff was hugely reluctant to rent out a single thing, even an ad board or store. Insane. You cannot have land in SL and not develop it for rent or resale. it is a brutal fact. It also creates sterility when you never interact with other businesses.
As for those whining about the expense of Linden servers and whining that we help the Lindens buy servers, I can only reiterate what i say to all such whiners: they are not just servers. They are such stuff as dreams are made of. All the interactivity, the content of others, the serendipity — that is what you pay for. Understanding it as mere rack space is the sort of nerdy literalism that people in SL, even tekkie wikinistas, should have left behind by now.
And that brings us to OpenSim. Huh? Why do you think OpenSim is where it’s at? No one ever reports anything happening in OS because…it doesn’t. It is a lot of people playing in their garages…
Google — the ad agency that provides search as a loss-leader — already owns a lot of stuff and you won’t have to wait 50 years.
Prok:
I need to do a little digging. Open source licenses completely confuse me. I was thinking about the way the SL viewer includes components that are closed – the sound library, for example. I’m wondering if there’s a way to release the new viewer with “base code” that’s open source, but plug-ins that are closed. I wonder this, because I wonder whether you can put the genie back in the bottle so to speak – like you say, whether they can release the viewer with components that you can’t copy, that are proprietary. It sounds really messy to me however.
I wonder if this explains Snowglobe – a shift to a closed, or more closed viewer, while Philip continues to support an open source version of the “old viewer”.
By the way, don’t get me wrong about Svarga. It was one of the reasons I stayed because it was the first sim I ever visited that was a fully built environment that was ‘professional’. Up until then, all I had seen was mainland and a few immersion sims like Midian I think, the Hobo place, but I didn’t realize that the content in SL could look as good as a game, say. Svarga seemed like a fully built, professionally done sim with a narrative potential that I hadn’t seen anywhere else.
Having said that, the “ecosystem” thing they had going confused me – I didn’t see the flowers growing and bees pollinating or whatever they were supposed to be doing, I kept thinking maybe it wasn’t working. However, what I did see was that you could build out a full environment with narrative potential. I was left stumped, however, by the business model but at the time I didn’t care.
I don’t disagree that it was Disney-ish, same with Greenies. On the other hand, I am a believer that there’s room in the world for curated experiences, and that there’s funding available for such experiences. Greenies and Black Swan and Svarga were all curated experiences, but….well, no one seemed to be paying for them, or I couldn’t figure out how paying for them was leading to revenue.
[...] had me re-thinking what it takes to build a business in Second Life, or maybe it was more the comments on my post, most of which seemed to express one of two thoughts: “yeah, it was never clear what Rezzable [...]
[...] which recently announced that it was (mostly) departing Second Life for the promise of OpenSim, developed a tool which [...]