Update, February 19th, 2014: dio was discontinued by Linden Lab on February 19th, 2014. Links to the dio website, etc, have therefore been removed from this article.
dio, Linden Lab’s browser-based “social experience” reaches two months of age this week. Whether this will be accompanied by any updates remains to be seen. So far, there appears to have been only one significant update to the application, which appeared at the end of February, a month after the original launch. As I’ve not really commented on dio for a while, I thought I’d take time out and have a poke at some of the updated features.
The Updates
“Live Chat” / Comments
When browsing dio Places, perhaps the most obvious update is that Comments have now been expanded to include Places as well a rooms. I’ve previously been critical of the idea that dio presents “persistent live chat” when in fact the “chat” element is more of a basic message board service, limited by the fact it only applies to rooms – so any conversations which might occur in real-time can ge abruptly interrupted as one person shifts to another room without warning.
The dio product team have addressed this by adding a new tab to the Comments panel. Entitled “Place”, it does exactly what it says on the label – allows comments to be made about a Place, rather than a room, and to be accessible from any room visited within the Place.
New Editing Buttons
The updates also bring a set of new on-screen editing buttons what are immediately available at the top of a page on creating a room. These provide easy insertion / creation of:
- Photos
- Videos
- Inventory objects
- Exits to other rooms
All of these work on the same principles as the initial release of dio, although the editing screens for the options have been revised somewhat (see below).
Additionally, a new option is provided – that of Text, which opens a simple text editor which can be used to generate simple blog-style entries for a room. Currently, there is no means of formatting text, so how useful this option might be remains to be seen. Once created, text objects appear in the In This Room panel along with all other types of object. Text objects can also been assigned Actions as well, which offers interesting options with their use; for example, in an adventure game Place, a text object could be set as a map with both explanatory text (or perhaps a riddle as to what it means), which can be taken by others. They then have the choice of both looking at the map and reading the associated explanation / riddle.
Room and Object Editor
The room and object editing windows have also been somewhat cleaned-up and now appear as pop-up windows. I personally find the new layout cleaner and tidier than earlier versions, although this is purely subjective. It’s still a one-stop-fit-all approach, but apparently more modal-style windows are on the way with a future update.
However, there are annoyances here. For one thing, the default text accompanying things like entering a room (e.g. <Player> enters <room>) has been turned on by default. This means that if you’ve previously gone through your Place and removed such text as you’ve not wanted it displayed – well, you’re going to have to go back a re-edit every room exit option and delete the text once more…
Some other basic updates are still missing with the editors – some options are still only “Add” or “Delete” and lack a “Modify” option – such as with Trigger actions. So if you make a mistake assigning a Trigger, you’ve still no choice by to delete it and start over. the image upload / selection panel is still minimal and would benefit from a slightly large pop-up windows which incorporates some search capability. Most of all, perhaps, is that page loading still seems a little rough-and-ready; I’d personally prefer to see the main display for a room scroll back to the top on returning to the room, rather than land me half-way down the display based on where the scroll bar was last positioned.
What Else?
- There is now a “heart” Like button on both the profile page for a Place and wat the top of the Place display – this allows people to “like” Places, which both adds them to their “Personal Favourites” list on the dio home page, and also moves it up the list of Most Popular places, also on the dio home page
- The Unlock option now allows up to three items to be associated with it – this allows greater interactive elements to be built-up; if you’re creating an adventure game, for example, you can assign a door up to three keys which must be found in order to open it, or a potion up to three ingredients in order for it to be mixed.
How is dio Fairing?
That’s actually an interesting question. As with all of the new products launched so far by the Lab, there is actually little evidence to show that dio is being actively promoted by the company. Following the initial press coverage of the release, there has been little further visible activity. Even the recent updates came about without any real fanfare – just a video quietly slipped into the Community pages and a quick Tweet.
In terms of the Community pages, dio has attracted some 66 posts from users, the most recent of which is a less-than-encouraging “How do I terminate my account” question… On Twitter, dio has gathered over 4,000 users which isn’t that bad for a couple of months, but hardly viral. However, neither of these measures are especially indicative of anything. People can use the site without participating in the Community pages (like me) – and people can follow dio on Twitter without ever creating a website account.
Trying to gauge dio in terms of the number of places being created is also less-than-easy. On the one hand, there are places being created almost daily; on their other it seems as if few ever get beyond a room or two and some random objects / images. However, whether this is because people are failing to engage with dio, or are simply waiting to see how it progresses through the “beta” phase, is again hard to judge – although if I’m honest, I tend to sway more towards the former than the latter.
For my part, I’ve not progressed projects in dio much beyond what I had a month ago. I’m a little narked at having to go back through my Virtual Fallingwater Place in order to remove unwanted prompts as a result of the February update, but beyond that I’ve not progressed either any reworking of my other public Place or my private “work-in-progress” Place.
I do still feel there is a lot of potential to be had with something like dio; sadly, I’m also increasingly of the opinion that the Lab who have done far better to wait until the product was somewhat more “feature complete” prior to opening it as a “beta” – or preferably ran a more extensive “closed beta” (assuming such was run) prior to opening the doors. Obviously, when it does come to declaring something reasonably “feature complete” can be pretty much a case of pushing a stick into the ground and hoping – but if the perception that dio is struggling to gain an active audience is correct, then I’m tempted to say it’s likely due to it being pushed out into the world a tad too early.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 