Well, it’s here, with ballyhoo aplenty. The much-vaunted “behind the firewall product”.
Yippee, one might state. Others might be more ecstatic. Some, poor benighted souls, might even think it is for them (I did find it hilarious that one “SL businessman” expected the new “sim in a box” to cost around $100 USD, and was stunned at the $55,000 price tag!).
Make no mistake. This “solution” is not about, for, or really involving “business” as the majority of us in SL go about it. Nor is it really geared towards the education sector LL has (until recently) been treating as a possible bedfellow. No, make no mistake, the Behind-the-firewall “sim in a box” is aimed at one market and one market only: the big corporations.
You might say it is 2006-in-a-box. Remember back then, all the hype and trumpeting about SL being “the place” for business, with the like of NBC, Toyota, Nike, Coca-Cola and others flocking into SL….doing next to nothing and then stampeding out again six months later….
I really don’t know that this new product has a market or whether it has been built on wishes and daydreams. To read the hype, a lot of it has been specifically engineered in ways that suggest it goes far beyond the capabilities of the main grid. However, seeing is believing, and as I’ve not seen, I can say either way. Certainly, as a “next generation” communication tool, it’s going to have its work cut out to effectively and efficiently compete with the millions big corporations have invested in direct-to-the desktop communications and collaborative tool sets, the ability to host face-to-face meetings with the participants hundreds (or thousands) of miles apart (or separated be several floors in the same building) without the need to either ldeav their desks or poke around with some 3D “image” of themselves in a digital utopia…..
But…that isn’t my concern. so long as LL don’t hang all their hopes on this yet-to-be “solution” and as a result crash and burn should it crash and burn, I don’t really care if they hit the mark or shoot themselves in the foot.
What concerns me is what else they are doing alongside this announcement. Because frankly, this “sim in a box” now seems to be the thin end of the wedge (or chisel) that could fracture SL. Ciaran Laval, in his blog, cuts to the heart of the matter.
Several times I’ve fought shy of posting to the official forum “discussions” challenging Amanda Linden as to why LL simply can’t develop a “Corporate mini grid” to which, if they wish, those corporations employing the new “sim in a box” product can connect at some future date. It’s been obvious for some time that the tool on its own would be limited in scope in terms of a revenue stream and that – given the emphasis on collaboration – somewhere would be needed where corporations could meet, not only with each other but with LL’s vaunted “Gold Solutions Providers” and perhaps with potential customers; so why not simply section-off server capacity and build a grid specifically for that purpose?
Now we see the reality: LL don’t have to go that route, as they appear to have already earmarked the main grid for this purpose. Many suspected this when they thrust the “Adult Content Policy” on us. I and several others challenged LL on precisely this point, and were told we were wrong.
Well, seems we were wrong in a rightish sort of way.
What is really worrying though, as Ciaran makes clear, is that now the gloves are really coming off. LL is moving beyond inconveniencing its user base (vis-a-vis the OpenSpace sim fiasco, the Adult changes, etc.), and into open hostility we’re being told “our world” is now a “serius” place of work, that if we want to be taken seriously “in business” we must start wearing suits. The implications in Amanda Linden’s post on the sim in a box are clear: if things don’t match the corporate-friendly image LL require, then “improvements” will be made – so step aside!
In this respect, I actually disagree with Ciaran’s assessment. He refers to the move as a “stealth takeover”. Actually, I’d say that up until now it has been “stealthy”; but now it is blatant and in our faces. And the stink is even worse for that.
Of course there will be the inevitable cooing from LL about how their “core business” – you and I – still matter. And we will; so long as we stay in our nicely corralled environments, overseen by the Lindens themselves (Zindra) or by their new Land Baron friends, who will doubtless vigorously police their estates and “themed lands” in accordance with the meme that “residents should be seen (on a map) but not heard”.
I’d given go so far as to say that LL are actually looking to keep us around, albeit nicely constrained and within markets that the new “big boys” won’t want to touch. To name but two of the markets and the reasons I say this:
- Markets like land (corporations are going to be interested in running zillions of sims and renting out parcels, obviously) – but the big land barons are, and guess who are already being enticed with “beta programmes” by Jack Linden et al to buy more land, and to possibly take on management of “themed” Mainland.
- Markets like the Adult community. Sure, we might not be appealing to LL’s corporate image, but we’ve all now been brushed under the carpet, tucked away in private sims or on Zindra. And while we may be “unsavory” – the fact remains that the Adult community is one of the most creative in SL, and one where businesses can thrive with huge turnovers (and Stroker Serpentine isn’t alone in this). It has a lively, nay, bubbling community that cannot help make T Linden’s quarterly reports look good. Ergo, so long as we behave, we Adult Market users stay – which is likely the real meaning behind all the hollow assurances LL gave back in the Adult Change fiasco that they were not “changing” their attitude towards the Adult market.
And the reason both stay? Two words: fall back.
It’s insidious and it is nasty. LL are aware that they are taking a gamble. They are aware that if it succeeds, then they break their reliance on the “casual” or “home” user – those who have, as many keep saying, made SL the “success” it has been. They can finally move beyond the “narrow” opportunities we afford them and move into a bigger marketplace and Do Things, as I seem to remember Mitch Kapor demanding of the company back just before Mark Kingdon showed up.
But…they can’t just let us go. Oh no, not yet; because everything still might go, as my father was once fond of saying, tits-up. If that happens, LL will need a fall back position – you and me – in our nice, constrained environments in SL, still turning our hard-earned cash over to the Lindex mill in order to keep their coffers topped-up.
It’s a pessimistic view on things, I admit. And I hope to high heaven I’m wrong.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees things this way. It’s good to have company.
The question is, what is Amanda Linden’s hostility about, for you, and what forms will it take for all of us?
It’s not just about how work avatars dress; it’s about making a sanitized marketplace that is separate and decidedly not equal, that will be held up as the mecca for all content creators to aspire to. What will the rules of this new separate shopping district be?
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Prok!
First off, I’m hnoured you cast a peek in this direction.
I actually wonder if the hostility is not born out of a resentment of SL’s past history.
While it is fair to say that you and I disagree on certain things (I’m not precisely anti-open source, for example). However, we do agree on the subject of content theft and LL’s laissez faire attitude towards it.
In this regard, it seems to me that the hostility is born out of Amanda’s corporate-suited realisation that this historical laissez faire attitude has finally come back to bite LL – and specifically her (and Kindgon’s) corporate nirvana soundly in the rear end.
That is, because content theft is so rampant, and despite our own calls for something to be done about it – Amanda see _us_ as a part of the problem. content theft is “our fault” so to speak because a) we create so much; b) we “harbour” the content thieves in as much as they operate in the open community on the SL grid.
Thus, given the overall situation, it is easier (in her mind) to corrall and restrict us all in the hope that doing so contains the problem (or at least keeping it more out-of-sight when wining and dining her corporate friends on the “improved” grid) than trying to deal with the issue head-on and risking the ire/resistance of others within LL itself and openly factionalise the organisation.
It strikes me that the “Work Marketplace” also fits this ideal.
Again, why seek to eliminate content theft when you can ally all fears by setting-up a channel to market open to a select few dealing in only those items “useful” to the corporate community, and then fiercely gatekeep the channel?
This is why I really don’t think that the new channel is “the mecca for all content creators to aspire to”. The majority will be excluded simply on the basis of what they make. Joe Schmoe (or indeed Inara Schnoe) who makes nice houses and skyhouses isn’t going to cut the mustard. If corporate minds are going to want a shiny edifice in-world or on their squaky sim in a box, they’re going to want a Name behind it; someone with a Reputation and Qualifications. They are also not going to need comfy sofas, beds, lamps, cars, planes, boats, BDSM gear (well….maybe if some coroprate high kinks are to be believed….), and so on.
Thus, the channel will remain more of a funnel, bottlenecked at one end to prevent the “unsuitable” getting in while directing others to the status of favoured elite.
Assuming, of course that this wonderful behind-the-firewall commitment works out. Which is a big if (and opens a whole other can of worms if it doesn’t, which is where your question perhaps has more relevance).
This is again is why I believe that we’re the “tolerated evil” in Amanda’s eyes. SL would be a lot easier for her to “sell” were we not around; but without us, there wouldn’t be any SL, and for the foreseeable future we are needed in order to keep it viable. So there is an uneasy compromise for the present between the corporate push and the need to “coddle” to the rest of us.
And even the best of us sometimes have difficultly in hiding the degree of hostility we feel at having to so “compromise” ourselves.
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I did mean to reply to this post days ago. Yes you’re probably right, the stealth stage has gone, now it’s a full on assault. I see a lot of people right now complaining about an XstreetSL survey, but that’s really a small issue right now, this is the bigger threat to those of us who just have fun creating and want to sell a little, we’re clearly not welcome and I can only see this getting worse in the coming months.
“Business friendly mainland” that’s the enemy.
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