Note: Updated Sunday 15th August, after re-watching the recorded video stream without rl interruptions!
Philip Rosedale has just given a presentation at SLCC, and its is causing a very mixed reaction. The following represents snippets – I missed portions of the stream due to RL issues, and will potentially expand once the whole thing is reposted somewhere for more relaxed viewing.
Highlights of the take were:
- Script limits are still very much on the books, along with other methods of helping improve the overall in-world experience for users
- General latency issues (failures in group chat; rough region crossings, teleport latency, etc.), are going to be improved substantially be the year-end
- The start-up process (Viewer loading, downloading information from the servers, etc.) is going to be improved (speeded up) possibly by a factor of 2
- The new user experience is going to be radically overhauled (as outlined in his meeting with BK)
- General tasks are going to be made a lot easier – such as simply walking / sitting or even opening a box and wearing / using the content
- Looking towards “standardising” the Viewer code base and also towards shorter, more iterative release cycles & automatic updates for the Viewer
- A confirmation that Mesh *is* going to ship, although the process of introduction will be slowed down – which potentially a public beta by year-end
- The ability for users to pick their first name and their last name and the ability to edit the display name (e.g. rather than using a group title)
- The closure / merging of the teen grid with the Main grid.
These are all valid points, and addressing many of them will clearly be welcome to the vast majority of SL users. However, there are a couple there do require a closer examination.
The first of these is the commentary on the Teen grid. This has already caused considerable feedback on the official forum and elsewhere, and many have expressed surprise at the move. Why this should be, I’m not sure; Philip has made no secret of his desire to have the Teen and Main grids “merged” – even going so far as to state in a Metanomics broadcast back in January 2009 that he could see it happening “down the road”. Back then, he said:
“Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that’s the direction that we’re taking in our planning and our work. I think that the educational opportunities for Second Life are so great for all ages that we need to make it as available as we possibly can to people….But, if you look at the problems with having a teenage area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.”
Furthermore, the changes are pretty much in keeping with the idea of “bringing down the walls” of Second Life, if not exactly in the manner Philip initially indicated when introducing the concept.
What will happen here is that ten grid will effectively close for anyone under 16, while 16 and 17 year-olds will be “moved” to the Main grid.
Philip hints at the reasons for doing this are educational and economic – both increasing the user-base and providing a means for younger users to enjoy the full capabilities of Second Life, while offering improved educational capabilities in line with removing the “isolation” elements. While these are not views necessarily shared by educators at present – as indicated by comments made during the Q&A session – Philip’s sincerity on the matter seems genuine; even if – and I have to be brutally honest – it carried the traditional Linden Lab edge of, “We hear you, but we’re doing it anyway, our way.”
On a personal level, I have mixed feelings about this; despite the more noble aim of Philip’s statements around this move, it is not without risk.
Leaving aside the entire shift in legal onus and potential repercussions of an adult actually being unwittingly caught in flagrante delicto with a minor, there are a number of other concerns that spring to mind.
Firstly, and despite his assertions that minors can be safely ring-fenced within Second Life through mechanisms such as Age Verification, the matter becomes one of perception more than fact. There are more than enough people outside of SL who are ever-eager to throw sticks, stones and whatever else they can find at SL / LL (step forward, Mark Kirk, salacious tabloid hacks, et al). Perceptions go a long way in the media. So even if the above-mentioned scenario never comes to pass, and no matter how robust age verification and ring fencing may appear to be (and are the verification systems LL employ really that robust?) – there is a strong risk here that innuendo, suspicion, inaccurate tales of under-age sex and other salacious reporting could do both LL and SL a lot of harm as things get mixed.
A second area of concern with the “move” of 16 and 17 year-olds into the main grid is what happens to the content they hold in their inventory. As Teen Grid users such as Ishy Wingtips have posted about in the forums, the Teen Grid, due to the lack of full-scale commerce, is rife with ripped content – including content from the Main grid. Is this content also to be transferred? Will filters be applied? In fairness, Philip does comment indirectly on this point and indicates it needs addressing – but the concern remains, particularly given LL’s track record of addressing “issues” in the past.
While not wishing to portray all young people as content rippers, there is a further concern here: ripping, as Ishy and others have indicated, appears to not only be endemic in the Teen Grid, but pretty much a modus operandi for many; it’s an accepted norm. Obviously, this is in part due to the “lack” of specific content on the Teen Grid. But, given it is something of an accepted norm, there is a risk that the arrival of younger players into the Main grid might lead to a renewed round of content ripping; that those entering the Main grid (assuming they are not already doing so “illegally”) will be the proverbial kids in a candy store.
Equally worrying, even if the above doesn’t happen, is the perception among content creators that it is – leading to another rise in the paranoia that surrounds the issue of content ripping which in turn leads to a rise in the use of the more edge-case “anti content theft” tools within Second Life. The net result being the Grid becomes somewhat more unpleasant for people of all ages as suspicion becomes the norm and people find themselves getting kicked from stores, etc., simply because their avatar looks like a teen.
In fairness, this latter point goes beyond content creators: while teen player will allegedly be ring-fenced to PG / G sims, one can still, sadly, still picture those *resembling* teens (i.e. with “below the SL average” height) being subjected to suspicion and questioning in clubs and elsewhere.
The other point of Philip’s presentation especially worthy of comment (given I skipped it following his in-world Roadshow last month) is the idea of making SL more fun by having new users being able to sign-up and effectively teleport directly to the things they want to experience. In this case he highlighted someone with an interest in live music being able to sign-up, click and link and go to a music venue.
Again, this is both a laudable aim and a potential minefield – as Philip acknowledged. It is also not something that is precisely new – Mark Kingdon alluded to the same idea back in 2009; the major difference being, he seemed to hint that the process would be far more siloed in effect than Philip is proposing.
The worry is of course, the process by which destinations / venues are selected for inclusion in this process; if it is not handled very carefully and with a lot of forethought, it could be seen as damaging to smaller venues / destinations / businesses if the larger (/louder) players are seen to be benefiting unilaterally as a result. Certainly, it runs the risk of further FICs forming / benefiting (or being perceived to have formed / benefited).
It was very good to hear Philip’s commentary on Mesh; with all that is going on around Second life in terms of emerging “competition” and rich, deep content, Mesh is something that SL will need if it is to maintain its position. But in that, it is pretty much a double-edged sword in terms of its impact – it can simultaneously make Second Life a richer environment, have a beneficial impact on elements such as lag and latency, etc., and Philip points out – but it also runs the risk of revolutionising the content creation process so much that many creators find themselves pushed to one side or out of business. Thus, to hear that the impact of Mesh is being considered carefully, and that the rush to introduce it has been somewhat slowed (public beta now slated for “around” year-end), is very welcome.
The comments around shorter, more iterative release cycles for both Viewer and server code were interesting. I’m not a technologist, but it has always seemed to me that making smaller, more contained changes to something like the server code, then building progressively on such changes is more logical than developing a release for a specific purpose – and then throwing as much as possible into it as well. Certainly, to my own way of thinking, the recent spate of server releases that have rolled out and back more frequently than Brighton sees a changing tide tends to support this.
It is going to be around the Viewer that there could well be further howling down the road. Philip raises a very valid point: one of the issues we all face in SL is that there are several flavours of Viewer out there, all handling things differently, and all operating from different code bases. If the Second Life experience is to be one that people can readily identify with one to another, there is a case to suggest things need to be unified in some way so that Viewers grow from a single code base.
The issues here are going to be precisely *what* constitutes this code base and how controls are going to be applied to it to ensure it remains manageable, controlled and verified as being “right” for the Grid; how Linden Lab continues to engage with TPV developers; and how much freedom they will have in terms of developing their own Viewers. Could this actually mean the end of all support for 1.23.5, internal and TPV? Again, while the sentiments appear logical, the potential for upset appears vast.
During the Q&A Prokofy Neva raised the issue of Search – something that is the cause of much angst within Second Life and which was absent from the presentation. Philip was quick to point out the reason for the latter is that he is still trying himself to understand all of the issues, before admitting that the matter is complicated – especially given various factors such as LL currently using two search tools, issues around establishing reliable measures that will help them more properly manipulate things like relevance in a search for the benefit of all. This again caused a mixed reaction on a personal level.
On the one hand, Philip’s openness and honesty was good to hear – the frank admission that there isn’t an answer to all the issues at present. While his comments around the number of people working on search compared to “six months or a year ago” were a tad disingenuous – while there were issues with search 6-12 months ago, they are nothing like the chaos people are experiencing now, so this measure of headcount isn’t entirely relevant in that respect – it was nevertheless good to hear that LL appreciate this is a major issue for residents and businesses alike and are trying to get things under control.
Overall, there was much that appears good in Philip’s presentation, and it is good to hear him couch matters in terms of issues that do massively hit people rather than in matters that could be said to be somewhat more “trivial”. The assurances given around certain activities – providing they are followed-through – are equally good to hear. As to the more controversial elements, such as the teen issue, there are concerns that, on paper, make this appear to be potentially a “bad” move and may need to some ugliness. But that said, as we’ve seen time and time again, Second Life users and both resilient and adaptive – frequently in spite of LL’s efforts / activities.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 