Second Life View and Reviewed

I have a mix of items about Linden Lab’s virtual world, Second Life, for today’s post. First let me emphasize how much I enjoy Second Life. Time in Second Life for me is excitement and delight, interacting with people from around the globe, the opportunity to practice my foreign language skills, learn about other cultures and beliefs, history and couture, computing and technology, human nature and music. I have a wonderful there.

Reorganization

In early June, Linden Research reduced head count by 30%, and shuttered its business-targeted (enterprise) program.  Shortly after, then-CEO Mark Kingdon announced his departure from Linden Lab. Phillip Rosedale, the original creative force of Second Life, returned as the interim CEO. The story was covered by The Wall Street Journal, “Digits” blog. I was dismayed by the abrupt corporate reorganization. Sustained existence on “the bleeding edge” is not appealing to me. I wrote this as a comment on Another surprise at Second Life – Founder is CEO Again (WSJ Digits, 24 June 2010):

Voice of the User

In the past 24 hours, two well-established third-party viewers (TPVs) left Linden Lab’s virtual world of Second Life, and made the move into open-source territory as of 29 March 2010. N3X15’s Lua-coded Luna Viewer transitioned to a more accessible team coding repository at Github, and will only run in OpenSim worlds, e.g. OS Grid.  Imprudence viewer will no longer run in LL’s Agni, the Second Life production environment. Instead, I think it will be supported in Reaction Grid and Third Rock.  Reaction Grid focuses on the growing educational applications of virtual worlds.

Voice of the User: I’m Confused!

Privately-held Linden Lab is merely one option for the social gaming and commerce metaverse, albeit the largest in terms of active user numbers and growth, name recognition, and expertise with systems infrastructure and development.

How important ARE viewers?

Alternative viewer development benefits users in the same way that competitive markets tend to benefit customers. A pipeline of innovative and user-requested capabilities is just one example.

The number of viewers available or in development may seem excessive; however, the metaverse concept is considered to have great promise, extending far beyond combat, RPG (role-playing games), and social interaction.

Corporate and government organizations grasp the potential and join educational institutions in actively contributing to development of virtual worlds.  Despite the nascent technology, they want to show a presence now, not later. Yet none has taken a visibly active role in sponsoring viewer development… Why not?

Well, the residents of Second Life are testing its functional and ethical  boundaries. Second Life has experienced content theft, griefing, and recently confronted the social issues of gambling, child avatars and adult subject matter ratings.  A large part of content theft is accomplished with copybot viewers.  The growing content theft issues, further enabled by rogue TPVs such as Emerald Life and Shooped Life, may be a more formidable obstacle to broader adoption than the Patriotic Negras griefing the Second Life political campaign headquarters for John Edwards.

The above is an example of griefing.