Erick Schonfeld caught up with Philip Rosedale on the beach, where he was either checking out the surf or actually attending a, um, Fortune Brainstorm conference. He asked Philip to comment on whether he thought small Web-based worlds such as Google’s Lively were a threat to Second Life.
Philip sort of stumbles around the response, saying
“We’re not worried about it, we’re actually. we’re trying to push it forward as fast as we can. We open sourced the Second Life client with the hope that it would get generalized by the different companies and types of people that are using it uh as quickly as possible into a you know a standardized, an approach to immersing yourself as a…with a client in a 3D world as possible.”
Um, meaning I guess: Web-based worlds, embedded in an open and standardized system of browsers and Flash plug-ins, need to be pushed forward as fast as possible. So, Second Life needs to be generalized.
Now, he goes on to explain that what he means by that, is that the ubiquity of 3D worlds is a priority to Linden Lab, it’s just that the road to accomplishing that is through interoperability.
“I think that, you know, as a company we’re probably a little bit AHEAD of that curve, because we’re trying to anticipate the future and trying to anticipate the standards process on say uh making avatars, you know accounts, interoperable BETWEEN virtual worlds, open sourcing the software so people can extend it, if anything I think the only argument you can make at this point is that maybe we were just EARLY to be doing that but I think long term, without that kind of an open standard that you know, the Internet has already happened, people know how this movie goes, and so if virtual worlds are going to become the 3D version of the Internet they’re going to absolutely have to be open uh and opened up and standardized extremely fast.”
Meaning, I guess, that Second Life is far ahead of the curve predicting tomorrow, but we’d better get there extremely quickly (we’re running out of time before the singularity I suppose).
The interviewer ask Philip whether that’s a sort of “siloed version”. Philip sort of scrunches up as he considers the question:
The interview uses the word “why” in his question, but Philip jumps on the “inside the browser versus client issue”.
And here, for me, is the crux of the Lab’s problem, primarily because of what’s missing in his response:
“Virtual worlds to achieve the immersive properties that are key technologically to the experience they create REQUIRE a piece of client software in the same way you know that you had to download Mosaic and Netscape in the early days to experience the Internet. I, so…but I think that the problem of say getting those bundled onto machines or making that download very small and very easy is a VERY straight-forward problem.”
Can anyone please point me to a “why?”
And this is the issue. Philip is asked “what about all those easily accessible 3D rooms embedded in browsers and Facebook and whatever” and his response is “we’re developing standards, and the technology will get easier to install.”
But PLEASE Philip: WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE??????
Why are immersive properties key not technologically but to the USER? What fricking DIFFERENCE does it make?
Seriously, if Linden Lab can’t express clearly and concisely why Second Life and virtual worlds REQUIRE a client in the first place, who CARES whether you can teleport between Second Life and Open Sim?
On a browser-based version of Second Life, he says they’re working on it the best they can but that there are challenges:
“The completely browser based ways of looking into the virtual world do not provide very much in the…experientially, and so it’s difficult…you kind of have to look at use model to use model. There are people today who have used the Second Life open source code and they’ve ACTUALLY written um, for example chat-based clients.”
On asked what you CAN’T do in a Web-based world?
“In a browser you can’t render a 3D environment with sound, lighting, shadows, the actual sort of World of Warcraft like…you know uh most people have seen that…the real 3D rendered experience.”
And again: WHY does this matter???
The folks at the Lab had better get their value proposition down. Because answers like this give me no faith that they even know how critical it is to communicate why Second Life is important.
Why is everyone apparently so desperate to shove everything into a web-browser? Why is that better than having a separate purpose-built client?
Are they preparing us for some hideous future where we’ll all be sitting in front of dumb web terminals with no meaningful access to the computer running behind the scenes?
Or does some idiot actually think that there would be a point to sitting in front of Firefox running a portal into SL in which you can see a prim with a webpage being displayed on it?
Wouldn’t that be the virtual world equivalent of disappearing up your own ***?
Tell you what…
Go look at the ones you can embed in a browser and then go look at Second Life. I can embed something that looks slightly interesting for 2 minutes in a browser or I can head into Second Life and have a world that looks far more interesting for hours, days, weeks, months and years. I tried WoW and although the game play wasn’t for me, the world looked shed-loads better than Lively, Small Worlds etc. and the ways to interact were more organic too. No-one thinks it’s odd to down the WoW client, why should they think it’s odd to download the SL client?
I might not be in the majority here, time will doubtless tell, but in this day and age, what’s the problem with downloading a client?
I agree Eloise and I think Philip makes that point. But I also think that the Lab needs to make a compelling case for, as you say, a world that’s “far more interesting” other than that it generates shadows and light don’t you think? Because Philip is put in the hot seat here and he can’t come up with a nice crisp way of saying something along the following lines:
“3D environments in a browser are not worlds. Lively is not competition to Second Life, it’s a chat client with elements of 3D. Second Life and the grids it will connect to are worlds. The advantage of being in a world is that it provides a rich cultural context for working, socializing and networking with people, and offers deep tools for visualizing content, creating new dynamics for education and collaboration, and is a LOT more fun to boot.
“Now - I have no problem with the idea of SL in a browser and we’re working on that. And kudos to Lively for letting people decorate their rooms and to chat, it will be interesting to see whether their ad-based model is intrusive or not to the user.
But my BELIEF is that only in a true 3D world as compared to a thin chat client with a few 3D properties, do we see the emergence of networked communities of PEOPLE who are able to create a huge range of environments and activities. Just as hyperlinking pages created a new way of thinking about how to access content when the Web was born, 3D worlds are creating a new way of thinking about how people connect, share, create and develop value.”
Ah, Dusan, you’re becoming Toby Ziegler to Philip’s PoTUS…
I do get your point - but it’s also true that virtual worlds will be judged by a mainstream audience (the audience they crave so badly) on how ‘realistic’ they appear to be. It’s not the only criteria but it will be one of the biggest. Otherwise it’s just a ‘game’ or a cartoon to many people.
It’s why Windlight was (ultimately) the best thing to do and why shadows will be too - and I’m not ignoring the technical difficulties or the elitism they create, my computer really struggles with Windlight too.
It might be boring or frustrating to some people but ‘real’ will sell - you don’t have to explain ‘real’.
OMG….I’m becoming Toby? OK. I quit.
But still - explain why ‘real’ matters again?
How do we know that ‘real’ sells? Or does LL have a hammer so they’re determined to make SL a nail?
Incoherent communication can mean the communicator is unskilled. It can also mean the content of the communication is itself incoherent.
The push for real drives the requirement for higher and higher system requirements. That’s more than faintly weird strategy for a company that’s already hit a concurrency ceiling, that claims to have a focus on education, and that claims to value its existing user base.
A friend recently rezzed an avatar. She spent about a week putting in serious SL time. She’s tech-savvy and -friendly, probably the upper end of the middle income group. I have her email this morning saying she’s deleted her account because her year-old computer barely meets the system requirements now and she’s not prepared to replace it to meet the system requirements one or two months down the road. She’d rather buy a new boat.
A light client has now been promised forever. Where is it? And what is the evidence that a static, or even shrinking, user base is asking for real?
I’m not exactly saying that there’s an audience baying for ‘real’ right now - I’m suggesting a future mainstream audience will take ‘real’ as a given, otherwise they’ll just (continue to) see SL as some kind of aimless game for losers. We’re promising them a virtual WORLD, so they’ll expect it to look and act like The World.
I read a quote the other day about UI design - I forgot who said it - but it was basically “The best interface is the one the user already knows” or in other words, don’t re-invent the wheel. The best experience for new users in virtual worlds is one that closely mimics the real world we’re already in because it needs little explanation, they already know most of the rules.
Whether we like it or not (i’m personally not a big fan!) there are a lot of people running around in SL trying to dignify the whole thing and make it seem more serious and business-like than it actually is. Whether it’s giving their suit-wearing avatar a briefcase or spewing pretentious faux-analysis the drive to ‘real’ is very real!
Are shadows a big part of that? Not in themselves, but the more real SL (or any virtual world) looks the more you notice the things that are missing. Sooner or (probably) later, the shadows will appear and we’ll all complain about the client lag they cause - but we’ll leave them switched on anyway…
I could disagree more, Eris. ‘because it will fly in the media’ is not a particularly good reason to do anything, let alone ground the strategy of a company’s long-term growth. Moreover, there’s no real evidence that photorealism, which is what I think you mean by looking real, is a persuasive media strategy anyway or that games, a sector showing a growth that is both explosive and sad contrast with SL, somehow suffer universal deprecation. There’s also the distinct problem that the kinds of marginal ‘reality gains’ that LL is offering don’t address the fundamental problems of the codebase.
The education’s sector cannot afford ever-increasing investments to keep up to spec. Business can, but they are not going to accept the existing crash rates or anything anywhere near the existing crash rates. The average user, presumably as opposed to fools like us, is even less likely to meet spec than we are.
I’ll prolly keep shadows switched on as well. My worry is whether the shadowy strtaregy will lead to someone having to turn out the last light.
Put it this way, assume there is a number of potential users who will driven away by ever-growing system requirements, the people who’d prefer a new boat. If that number is larger than the number of users looking for windlight or shadows then LL is, to put it mildly, in deep doodoo. I suspect my number is larger than LL’s number, but the problem is that the company does not even appear to be considering anything apart from more of the same. And that’s why we get these bizarre messages from the company.
When Mitch Kapor gave his good-bye and thanks for all the fish speech at the close of SLB5 he did an admirable job or precisely the defining the group who keep their computers up to spec no matter what,. He said adios to them and eagerly welcomed in the education, business and ‘average user’ audiences. Incomprehensible messages can mean the content is strange, or that the messenger is uncomprehending.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing about LL’s garbled message, whether it stumbles from the lips of Philip Rosedale or Mitch Kapor. You’ve highlighted the problems of their education strategy - try to flog SL to the sector least likely to have the necessary hardware. I agree that there’s no evidence that photo-realism sells games or VW’s - quite a lot of evidence to the contrary given the success of Wii.
But I still think that the drive to photo-realism (much better term for it) is probably inevitable and unstoppable - if only because we don’t know what else to do! I don’t think it’s much to do with marketing strategy, but I do think that an eventual mainstream audience will assume stability (as u said) and photo-realism are givens. They won’t ask for them - but they’ll ask why they’re missing.
Maybe there’s one strategy that might just answer some of this - Second Life running on game consoles? They have the horsepower, the broadband connection, the user-base, the hardware is the same for everyone, is relatively affordable and it only changes every 5 years. It’ll need some work on the control system but it’s do-able, in theory at least.
What if computers stayed the creative platform for SL and consoles became the recreative one? So we early-adopter content-creating freaks stay crazy - keep buying graphics cards instead of boats and make the places, clothes and objects that console-toting future residents come to visit, wear and buy?
Wouldn’t that work? We could even kid ourselves that the killer app’ ISN’T photo-real cybersex!
So the release of Lively has stirred up much talk about embedding 3D worlds and that it’s posing much competition for Second Life not being embeddable. Google’s approach is to push everything into the web that used to be in the desktop. Why pay for Microsoft Office? Google Docs are free and much easier to share. Now they want people to think, why download and install a huge client when I can use a simple plug-in like Lively.
I agree with the first comment, not everyone wants to use a web-based 3D world, and second of all, when you compare the quality of the Lively plug-in to SL, you can tell which is more attractive to users.
In any case, you can see what Google’s approach is, whether or not Second Life wants to compete with that is their choice, there are still many users that will want to download a client for a better experience. Perhaps SL will have both available, a web interface for users not concerned too much about quality, or are maybe traveling and just want to logon real quick or for a short time, and the basic large client for normal use.
The look, feel and rendering speed of a virtual world is just the same when running in a browser as it is when running as a stand alone client. The advantage of a virtual world running in a browser is that actions on the hosting Web page such as button clicks can be sent to the virtual world and actions in the virtual world can be sent to the Web page, so one can drive the other. This provides strong integration between the Web and virtual worlds. Things such as moving between different virtual worlds from different vendors while still staying on the same Web page can also be supported. This approach provides a universal mechanism for accessing virtual worlds.
http://www.pelicancrossing.com/inDualityInfo.htm
There may be room for an embedded version of Sl. By light client I was meaning a viewer that would run with reasonable stability and without a lot of bells and whistles. The frustration with LL’s current management is that they have a passion for imposed strategies. You will adopt Dazzle and like it. You will use a voice-enabled client whether you like it or not. A light client would resolve many of their problems with the education sector. It would also resolve a lot of user-base problems because they would not be pushing the line that you will have a graphics card not less than 14 days old or else.
Announcing these dikats in language that would embarrass a first year university composition class, usually accompanied by historical, philosophical and bog Zen allusions that survive any informed examination for about 15 seconds just exacerbates the sense of frustration.
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All I have to add is:
He said, what????
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There are two separate issues to consider here: The Content versus the Delivery. The Second Life(TM) environment is a product that certainly requires a platform on which to exist, but it can be viewed as existing independently of the client. The Second Life world, made up of its prims, people, communities, businesses, events etc. could exist in different platforms. The specific software platform on which it stands (and that could be a web browser, a stand-alone client, a java-based app or whatever else) is, in essence, a delivery system.
Linden Lab(R) are really working with two products; a virtual world and a software client. It is possible for these two to be divorced and for Linden Lab to farm out the platform work to others. What they need to do is continue to define the nature, scope, and content of the Second Life virtual world, which will, in turn, drive the development of the client.
This model suggests that the issue LL needs to focus on is maintaining the content. I ;m not suggesting the platform is not important - without it you can’t have your Second Life existence - but customers don’t sign up for Second Life because they want software but because they want to experience the virtual world. You may have the slickest, fastest, most stable software on the planet, but if the VR you visit is a dull as the Barbie Girl(TM) virtual world, you won’t stay. It is worth remembering that current SL residents still stay with the experience despite the flaky software. Ultimately I suggest VR experience is more important than the software platform - web-based or otherwise.
For a discussion of some of what I consider the four key elements of a successful virtual world, check out my article in “SLentrepreneur Magazine” entitled “The 4C’s of 3D’s.” http:/www.slentre.com (due out on September 3rd, 2008).
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