It is the community that will win the Metaverse…
Overview
I see an inevitable migration on the horizon of residents from SecondLife to Opensim
based grids. There are two main forces at work: the decline of Linden Labs, and the
ascendency of the OpenSim.
- Linden Labs has been making a series of moves that are alienating the users. They are neither leaders in policy, nor technology. Not even meshes will save them.
- OpenSim is the clear technical leader, is rapidly making strides to stability, and the variety of grids springing up will assure that every community will have a strong home. OpenSim is much like X11 in the sense that it provides “mechanism, not policy”. Grid Operators take on the role of policy.
The Decline Of Linden Labs
Just since the time of SLCC (August 13-15, 2010), I can point to no less than four Linden Lab missteps which have upset various parts of the community:
1) Display Names – with over 1000 comments on blog, the Lindens appear to be intent on going live with a very ill-conceived plan to allow anyone to choose almost anything as a display name. What’s the problem with that? They are not providing a means for users to protect their names from abuse. While it may be true that a click or two will always reveal a true user name, it is still not clear what (Display Name? User Name? Both?) will be written to chat and IM logs. It is also not clear what the IM logfile names will be. This is a huge worry for anyone who is concerned about identity and reputation.
The Lindens take the view that people can file Abuse Reports. I note that this approach
attempts to address a symptom, but is no cure. With all the layoffs that the Lindens have been through, and the recent reduction in support hours, do they have the staff to handle the increase in ARs that will be generated by Display Name abuse? It would cost them less
to provide a control to prevent others from using your name as their display name. It would also go over with the community a lot better.
2) Teen Grid Closing - I can understand the economics of closing the Teen Grid. It costs a lot to run, and has a mere sliver of the main grid population. What has a lot of people up in arms is the misguided idea of migrating 16 and 17 year olds to the main grid. They would be better served by migrating to a grid that has been proven to be more focused on education (Reaction Grid comes to mind).
3) Customer Service Cutback – The short of it: same tiers, less service. Combine this with a slew of new problems (numerous ARs occuring from Display Name abuse, and legal/customer service issues arising from the presence of teens on what used to be a strictly adult grid). The hours are also incredibly USA centric. This will be one more factor that drives European and Asian users towards grids based in their regions.
4) Snowstorm, Do We Care?
Wizard of Oz: [in a booming voice] Step forward, Tin Man!
Tin Woodsman: [terrified, steps forward] Ohhhh!
Wizard of Oz: [still in a booming voice] You DARE to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of kaligenous junk!
Although SnowStorm is a great concept, in that there will be one viewer source code stream internally and externally, I sense that much of the developer community will focus their efforts elsewhere. The Wizard of Oz Linden (who, as far as I can tell [1], has only
been in SL for 4 months) has declared:
“Don’t waste everyones time suggesting that we throw away Viewer 2, or that we revert the UI to Viewer 1. It is absolutely not going to happen, and any suggestion to that effect will be ignored.”
Since the overwhelming majority of the community uses third party viewers, and does not like the 2.x UI, sensible developers are going to focus their efforts on giving the community what it wants. The Linden Lab attempt at outsourcing some of their viewer development for free, while at the same time insisting on the 2.x UI, will not get much traction. There is some limited cachet in being able to say that you contributed to the mainstream SL viewer, but if its usage is eclipsed by the offerings of several third parties, is it the best use of your valuable developer time?
The Ascendency Of OpenSim
I’ve touched on just some of the factors that are upsetting the SL community. It’s time to shift to the positive. We should be very glad that we are seeing the rise of a viable alternative!
As I have written before, and as others (such as Gwyn and Maria) have noted, OpenSim is showing itself to be a serious metaverse platform:
Technical – HyperGrid, MegaRegions, choice of voice (Whisper, FreeSwitch), more flexibility, compatible with existing SL viewers, archiving of regions and inventories. Willingness to evolve past LSL. Region scripting as well.
Policy – widespread, dependent on Grid Operators, if you dont like it, run your own grid! Opensim grids win because none of them has to address the issue of trying to come up with policies that would satisfy everyone in a large walled garden. We can easily move between web sites with varying policies and narrow niches. The same thing will be true in the Metaverse.
Cost – a fraction of what LL charges – Is there a market for high end grids with hand holding support, as well as a slew of specialty bargain basement offerings? Yes!
Currency – yes! OMC and Cyber Coin Bank These work across grids. Maria writes in depth about this.
Scaling – with one fell swoop, HyperGrid does much to address the issue of scaling. How? If people can easily get from one grid to another, then there is little reason to try to shoehorn them all into one place. As we see with some web sites, there will be some huge grids, possibly with millions of users. But balanced with that, there will a large number of grids that address niche communities, with 10’s of thousands of users. If they choose to be isolated, they can turn off hypergrid access. Within 5 years, the combined scale of OpenSim based grids will dwarf the walled garden of SecondLife. It is like the old AOL service trying to compete with the entire web.
Third Party Viewer Community - Not only will the viewers based on 1.x and 2.x source streams become the preferred entrance to OpenSim based grids (easy grid management in them), there will be a movement towards more types of front ends. HTML5 is one possibility (resurrect AjaxLife?). Unity3D holds a lot of promise.
What Could LL Do To Stave Off The Inevitable?
At this point in time, the biggest technical innovation LL has on their agenda would be meshes.
On the development side, they would have to show that they are open to some emulation of the 1.x interface, in order to gain traction. They are competing for something valuable, developer attention, and are making a lot of wrong moves.
On the policy side, they need to show that they will provide adequate controls for display names, so that people can be proactive about protecting their identity.
On the support side, they would need to make a case as to why people should pay the same amount of tier, but accept a reduced level of service.
On the interopability side, LL finds itself in the position of being a large walled garden, a la the AOL service of the 90’s and 00’s. LL should ask itself it wants to follow the examples of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.
The Tipping Point
Having said all this, it is quite clear that the majority of Metaverse usage hours are still being spent in SecondLife. I dont see any single event from the sides of OpenSim, or SecondLife, that will radically tip the scales. I see something more organic going on: friends will drag friends to OpenSim grids. Any one of several LL policy decisions will be a straw that breaks a residents back. OpenSim will make some technical advance, etc. There will be as many reasons to switch as there are metaverse residents. The Tipping Point occurs when a sizeable number of people realize that their personal puzzle pieces have fallen into place for them to make the switch.
[1] I did write to Scott, wondering how long he has been in SL. No Reply.
