On Tuesday, November 10th, the Lab announced the forthcoming launch of Lab Chat, “an opportunity for you to ask Lindens your questions during a live taping that will be recorded and archived for everyone to view.”
The new show has been in planning ever since SL12B and the successful Meet the Linden chat sessions hosted by Prim Perfect and which featured opportunities to meet Linden Lab staff such as Pete Linden (Peter Gray), the Lab’s Director of Global Communications; Xiola Linden from the Community Team; Patch and Keira Linden; Product Manager Troy Linden and Senior Director of Product, Virtual Worlds, Danger Linden (Don Laabs), and which featured a Q&A session with CEO Ebbe Linden (Ebbe Altberg).
Draxtor Despres, Danger Linden, Troy Linden and Saffia Widdershin at the Meet the Lindens at SL12B, the series which acted as a precursor to Lab Chat
The blog post announcing the new series, reads in part:
The first Lab Chat will be Thursday, November 19th, at 10:30am SLT at the Linden Endowment for the Arts Theatre – with guest Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab.
Residents from the Lab Chat production team – Draxtor Despres, Gentle Heron, Elrik Merlin, Petlove Petshop, Inara Pey, Aisling Sinclair, Devin Vaughan, Saffia Widdershins, and Jo Yardley – will pick questions to ask Ebbe from this forum thread – so be sure to get your questions into the thread no later than Friday November 13th, 2015. Authors of selected questions will be invited to ask their question live at the in-world show. Time permitting – additional questions from the audience will be answered.
If you are unable to attend the live show, a recording will be available shortly after the first Lab Chat wraps, so no one will miss out!
We’ll see you on November 19th at 10:30am SLT. Don’t forget to add your questions to the forum thread and mark your calendars to join us!
My own role in this series is relatively minor – I’ll be producing transcripts of each Lab Chat session, which will be available, possibly with audio extracts, on these pages most likely on a forthcoming Lab Chat website.
If all goes well, it is hoped that Lab Chat will go on to become a monthly series. So if you do have questions you’d like the opportunity to perhaps ask your questions directly to Ebbe Altberg, hop over to the forum thread and leave them there, as noted in the Lab’s announcement.
Second Life: “almost as diverse as the physical world we live in” – Ebbe Altberg
Martin Bryant, Editor-at-Large at The Next Web caught up with Linden Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, in Dublin at the start of November, where they had both been attending the 2015 Web summit conference.
During a 10-minute audio interview, Mr. Bryant offers a series of questions which, while they may not reveal anything new to those engaged in Second Life or following the unfolding news about “Project Sansar”, nevertheless cover interesting ground and offer food for thought on a number of fronts.
The recording is prefaced with a series of useful bullet points under the title Think Second Life died? It has a higher GDP than some countries, itself is an eye-catching title, which help put some perspective on just what Second Life has actually managed to achieve over 12 years, and sets the stage for the broader discussion.
The interview starts from the position that the media have tended to get Second Life wrong, noting that far from having failed or gone away, it is still operating, still engaged some 900,000 active users every month, just 200,000 a month down from when it hit a peak of around 1.1 million 7+ years ago. Not only do these figures tend to highlight Second Life’s (albeit very niche) ability to attract and hold an audience, they also put oft-repeated claims that people are somehow leaving Second Life en masse into perspective. The outward trickle of active users is there, but it’s hardly a the deluge all too often portrayed. And those who remain are still capable of powering an economy with a GDP of some US $500 million.
From here, the conversations travels by way of the kind of virtual goods on offer inside Second Life to arrive at a question about the “typical” Second Life user, which generates a well-rounded reply.
Well, it’s a huge variety … there’s no typical about it. It’s like asking, “what’s a typical person from Ireland?” There are educators, there are students, there are health professionals, there are patients, there are fashion fashionistas, there’s partiers, gamers, role-players. People just socialise around pretty much anything you can think of. It’s almost as diverse as the physical world we live in.
Further into the conversation, there is a re-emphasis that even with “Project Sansar” coming along, there are no plans on the part of the Lab to discontinue Second Life, with Ebbe again demonstrating a pragmatic view on the amount of investment users of Second Life have made in the platform.
Second Life will continue. We have no plans to shut down Second life or forcibly migrate users from one to the other. So users can ultimate choose where they want to spend their time. And there are probably so users that have spent so much time creating incredible communities around all kinds of interesting subject matter that might just fine it too much effort to do it all over again on a new platform. so they can stay in Second Life, that’s fine.
Obviously, if the vast majority of users in Second Life opt to make a full transition to “Project Sansar”, then it will call into question how long SL can remain a commercially viable platform – but is this likely to happen overnight? Probably not (which is not to say it won’t, at some point happen) over time). The transition is liable to be gradual, simply because it is going to take “Project Sansar” to grow to a level of sophistication offered by SL: as the Lab has made clear throughout 2015, everything isn’t simply going to be in place when the open alpha commences in early 2016 – that’s why they’re calling it an “alpha”.
An image from the Project Sansar: looking to the future of VR
The more detailed discussion of “Project Sansar” starts with a reiteration that it is being specifically – but not exclusively – developed to operate with coming plethora of VR HMDs and other devices, and that it will be “consumable” (i.e. accessed via) computers (initially PCs) and mobile devices. It is here that mention is made of something that may have been missed in broader discussions about the new platform: there will be no “one-size-fits all” client / viewer.
Instead, client functionality will be determined by client device capability. If you’re on a PC platform, you’ll have access to the full range of capabilities to both “consume” (that is, access, use and participate in) “Project Sansar” experiences and you’ll have access to the tools to enable the creation of those experiences. If you’re using a mobile device, you’ll be able to “consume” experiences, but not the tools to build them. Which makes sense.
Ebbe Altberg: offering a good perspective on LL, SL and “Project Sansar” for TNW readers / listeners
In discussing the likely impact of VR, Ebbe takes the pragmatic view that things aren’t going to happen overnight, just because the first generation of high-end headsets are going to appear in a few months; it’s going to take time for the market to grow, and there is still much more to be sorted out.
This is a view I hold myself, so no argument from me. However, where I do perhaps hold a differing view on things is to just how important avatar based virtual experiences are actually going to be outside of some very niche environments.
Even if VR isn’t overhauled by AR in terms of practical ease-of-use, widespread practical applications, convenience, and appeal, I also cannot help but feel consumer-focused VR might offer such incredible opportunities for immersion, entertainment, training, etc., that it will see the use of avatar focused virtual environments remain somewhat marginalised in terms of acceptance with the greater VR community, just as Second Life has been marginalised with the greater on-line social community.
Reader Besedka gave me a poke about the Lab releasing a new set of Classic avatars for Second Life on Friday, November 6th.
The release, which came with a blog post from the Lab, see the avatars which use the default avatar mesh and system layer clothing completely overhauled and replaced with a new set of very modern looking avatars (in terms of their dress and style).
In all there are 16 revamped avatars, which sees the set make use of fitted mesh items and presents them with looks many might find not only an improvement on the older “Classic” avatar looks, but also on the mesh versions launched in May 2014. That said, having tried several, I do feel some are perhaps oddly proportioned; “Shawna” in particular came over as a tad elongated when I tried her.
The new “Classic” avatars, featuring mesh attachments, are available to new users signing-up for Second Life …
The avatars are available to those signing-up to Second Life on the avatar picker when setting-up their accounts, and from the Choose and Avatar option of the Me / Avatar menu option in v3 viewers. Once you’ve obtained one of them, it will appear in your Inventory under the Clothing folder and identified by the name assigned to the look.
Avatar Complexity reveals the avatars to be reasonably lightweight
A further update with these avatars is they dispense with the infamous duck walk, replacing it with something that works reasonably well, together with a series of male or female AO poses which appear to be “built-in rather than reliant upon a HUD. They work reasonably well, although I found the female one a little jerky in the transitions between some poses. They also avoid the hiccup made when launching the fully mesh avatars: these new avatars are properly modifiable.
The Lab’s blog post refers to these avatars are being “more performant”. Checking some of them out against the Quick Graphics RC viewer’s Avatar Complexity capability revealed that have reasonably low ratings, so they shouldn’t offer any major hindrance to those viewing them on lower specification systems.
The demographic represented by the new set remains fairly typical – they all appear to be relatively youthful, perhaps no older than their mid-30s. However, given the general age range of new users signing-up to Second Life, which the Lab has in the past stated has moved more towards the 20-somethings in recent years, this isn’t that surprising. And while it may sound ageist, It also means the avatars have a level of attractiveness around them which is perhaps more enticing to people signing-up to SL that offering a much broader range of ages.
My “Crash Test Alt” finally gets a fresh look (left) – the “Shawna” avatar, with my skin and shape. Now actually looks more like my twin 🙂
All told, it’s good to see the “Classic” range of avatars updated in this way. The looks are fresh and clean, and – dare I say it – streets ahead of the mesh avatars in overall appearance, none of which I found particularly appealing in either looks or apparel.
These new avatars however, look pretty sharp (speaking as someone yet to swap to mesh bodies, etc). So much so, they they’ve finally encouraged me to give my Crash Test Alt a change of clothing after seven years! She’s now using the “Shawna” outfit and hair (but with her own shape and skin), and looks pretty good.
“Project Sansar” has been getting noticed again. In Dublin, at the 2015 Web Summit, Ebbe Altberg, the Lab’s CEO gave a presentation about the new platform, the end of which included short video of the platform, which was captured by attendee Janne Juntunen. Following this, at least a couple of articles have appeared in on-line media outlets, with my colleague Ben Lang offering a brief write-up in Road to VR, while Fortune On-line, to which I was directed by Ciaran Laval, also carried a piece.
The Fortune article offers an enticing headline, How ‘Second Life’ Developer Hopes To Deliver The ‘YouTube For VR’, drawing on the Lab’s YouTube / WordPress analogy they’ve used in talking to the media over the last few months, but neither – beyond offering an image captured from “Project Sansar” and which can be seen on the Lab’s redesigned corporate website, has much that is new to those of us following “project Sansar” as closely we can.
An image from the Lab’s redesigned corporate website showing the Golden Gate Bridge model from “Project Sansar”, complete with flying vehicles moving around it – a moving versions of which was show at the Dublin Web Summit 2015
The YouTube / WordPress analogy is fitting, given that “Project Sansar” is designed to be pretty much a white label environment where clients and customers can come into the platform, develop their virtual spaces and then market them to their users under a brand of their own choosing, complete with dedicated access from the web.
Given most of the statements made in both articles will be familiar to those following Sansar, I was drawn to one statement in particular made by Ebbe Altberg:
We want to make it less expensive and less difficult for creators to get started with Project Sansar, while at the same time enabling them to create higher quality, larger, and more immersive experiences, reach larger audiences,and create much larger business opportunities—whether selling virtual items or monetizing entire experiences. In addition to supporting our community of creators we’ll give them tools to create and support their own communities and serve their customers and audiences. [Emphasis mine.]
The first part of this comment again doesn’t really reveal anything new; however, I’ve highlighted the last past of it because it presents another opportunity for some speculation.
A further image from the Lindenlab.com home page showing a scene which formed a part of the Lab’s Dublin Web Summit video
Yesterday, and thanks to a huge amount of legwork by Vick Forcella, I wrote about the Lab’s subsidiary Tilia Inc, and the filing of a trademark for Tilia, a payment processing system. Seeing Altberg’s comments about providing “project Sansar” customers / clients tools to … serve their customer and audiences”, I find myself wondering if “Tilia” might be intended to provide “Project Sansar” customers with a further white label environment in which they can build and brand their own marketplace presence and control the goods and services presented to their customers.
Thus, rather than sending their users to a generic “Project Sansar” marketplace where they might be confronted with a plethora of goods, including those from competitors or which might otherwise be unsuitable to their target audience, customers using Sansar could present their users with exactly the virtual good they wish them to see and use, a level of control which could be extremely attractive to the core vertical markets towards which “Project Sansar” seems to be being steered (e.g. education, training, simulation, architecture and business).
Ebbe Altberg presents a short video featuring footage shot from inside “Project Sansar” at the Dublin Web Summit 2015 (image via Janne Juntunen on Twitter)
In his Road to VR piece, Ben Lang focuses more on the technical aspects of the new platform, pointing-out that style and looks can be an integral part of a game or platform’s longevity, and that in his estimation of these initial screen shots, “Project Sansar” is hitting the nail pretty much on the head.
It is in the Road to VR piece that we do get an interesting insight. It has been previously indicated that “Project Sansar” will offer ways and means to optimise content to improve performance, rather than just shoving everything down the pipe and little the viewer try to handle it all. In discussing things with Ben Lang, Ebbe Altberg gives some indicators as to how this will be achieved.
We’ll do a lot of things to help users understand how to create performant content. There’s a lot of work yet to do, but we have plans for things like automatic optimization of content, polygon reduction of content that preserves quality at the same time, including showing users that create content some sort of visual indication of how performant their content is going to be across various platforms [i.e. clients].
Both articles offer good light reading on “Project Sansar”, even if they don’t offer anything especially new, with the Fortune articles also underlining a few facts, good and bad, about Second Life.
I remain intrigued by the direction the Lab is taking with their new platform. While it is early days, and given the fact I still tend to feel “Project Sansar” will end up niche product – albeit it a much larger niche than filled by the likes of Second Life and OpenSim today – I also tend to think that the Lab is far more one the right track in their thinking than those behind some of the other platforms currently in development out there.
Friend and fellow blogger, Vick Forcella contacted me at the end of October concerning some interesting items related to Linden Lab he’d uncovered in digging around a few places.
The first comes in the form of documents relating to a relatively new Linden Lab subsidiary company, and the second in a partially filed trademark.
The subsidiary company is called Tilia Inc., and at first glance it seems to be completely unrelated to the Lab, being referred to as being involved with ” Packaging Machinery”. However, an examination of the company’s papers will reveal it is registered at 945 Battery Street – the Lab’s headquarters, as a check on Buzzfile confirmed to me.
Tilia Inc appears to be a defunct corporate entity, first registered in 2002, which has been acquired by the Lab. This, and the further registrations of the name across several US states as a “foreign” entity (meaning the filing is by an existing corporate entity registered in another US state), tended to suggest the Lab might be using the company to leverage certain tax advantages – a common practice among corporations around the world. Further support for this appeared to come from the names of the directors: the Lab’s CFO, Malcolm Dunne, their Legal Counsel, Kelly Conway and, from outside of the Lab, Benjamin Duranske, founder of PayCom Consulting, and LeAnne Hoang, the Lab’s former Chief Compliance and AML Officer.
Companies registered at 945 Battery Street, the Lab’s HQ, via Buzzfile. Note Philip Rosedale’s “Coffee and Power” sitting in the middle – and its associated industry description!
Obviously one way to get more of a clue was to ask the Lab directly. So I did.
Tilia is a subsidiary of Linden Lab, focused on payments and the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies, and it will provide services for both Second Life and Project Sansar.
Peter Gray, Director of Global Communications, Linden Lab
Following my initial enquiry (which is not to say it is related to it), the list of senior personal at Tilia Inc., dramatically increased. The additional appointees comprise: Bjorn Laurin (Bjorn Linden), Vice President of Product (Blocksworld, Second Life and Sansar), Landon McDowell (Brandon Linden), Vice President of Operations and Platform Engineering, Jeff Peterson (Bagman Linden), Vice President of Engineering, Pam Beyazit, Senior Director of HR, and Peter Gray.
Tilia Inc is said by the Lab to be focused on the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies, and will provide services to “Project Sansar” and Second Life
The trademark, USTPO document 86374264, originally filed on August 22nd 2014, relates to the name of “Tilia”, which is described as, “Computer software, namely, electronic financial platform that accommodates multiple types of payment and debit transactions and the transfer of funds to and from others, in an integrated mobile phone, PDA, and web-based environment.” A further document located by Vick pertaining to the trademark application reveals even more information, and makes for interesting reading on its own.
What this all adds up to is still hard to determine. “Tilia” and Tilia Inc., might be totally coincidental; as such what follows might be pure unfounded speculation; then again, a lot of it also seems to hang together.
As indicated in June 2015 by Ebbe Altberg, the Lab has been focused on four areas of activity, one of which has been that of compliance (see the quote on the right).
This work appears to have been overseen by LeAnne Hoang, prior to her departure from the Lab in July 2015. More recently, the Lab has also transitioned to a new payment processor for credit and debit card payments, which may be related to this work.
Again the two – the compliance work and the new payment processor – could be entirely unrelated. However, given that “Project Sansar” and SL will both operate virtual economies possibly based on the same virtual currency, it would make sense for the Lab to develop a central transaction and payment system capable of supporting both. Doing so could reduce the complexities of managing two payment / transaction systems (or any least manage any exchange mechanisms between two separate currencies) and in managing updates to match evolving compliance and anti-fraud regulations and requirements. If so, could “Tilia” be the proposed name for this new service? But why run it under a separate entity? Why not simply run it under the “Linden Lab” umbrella? Is it a matter of compliance, as stated be Peter Gray in his response to my initial questions? Perhaps so.
Another option might be that the Lab be considering making the Linden Dollar and all its attendant services a pre-packaged solution / service they can offer to other companies wishing to operate a virtual currency, with Tilia Inc., as the nominal operating company for that service. After all, they have made much of their leadership in matters of virtual economies and compliance, so spinning it out and offering it to others might be a means of generating additional revenue, although admittedly, given the complexities potentially involved, this might be seen as a bit of a stretch.
As a believer in Occam’s Razor, and moving away from idle speculation, I can’t entirely let go of the idea that Tilia Inc., might be wrapped in matters of compliance and potentially a means of leveraging tax advantages.
After all, The Lab have made it clear that “Project Sansar” in particular will rely on generating the majority of its revenue through the sales of virtual goods and services. So, spinning out the systems and services that make this possible into a subsidiary registered in states with advantageous tax regulations might be a way for the Lab to reduce its tax exposure on those revenues.
Following Peter Gray’s reply to my original enquiry of a week ago, I have placed follow-up questions with the Lab, but have yet to receive a response. Updates will be forthcoming if a reply is received or should the Lab reveal more themselves.
And why “Tilia”? I would guess it’s to do with the fact that tilia is genus of trees also referred to as linden trees.
My thanks to Vick Forcella for doing much of the digging into Tilia Inc and “Tilia”, for passing the information to me, trusting me to blog about it, and for his patience as I chased down various information myself, sought answers to questions. Thanks also to Johannes1997 Resident for his input on US corporate tax activities.
On Wednesday, November 4th, Linden Lab launched a new look to its corporate website.
The new design has much in common with other tech-related (and some purely blog) sites, offers a fresh, clean and scrollable home page which introduces the company’s products: Project Sansar (at the rate that name is being used and gaining familiarity, it’s liable to become the de facto name for the new platform!), Second Life and Blockworld, each with buttons specific to them – the Second Life section, for example will launch secondlife.com. At the bottom of the page is a link to the Lab’s careers page.
An image from the top of the redesigned Linden Lab corporate home page possibly showing a scene from “Project Sansar”
The home page offers one of two different images at any given time (you might be able to swap between them by clicking). One of these appears to be taken from within “Project Sansar”, showing as it does a model of the Golden Gate Bridge, which the Lab has indicated to be one of the major initial scenes built within that platform.
The main pages for the site include a simple, clean menu at the top right, and all have had a similar facelift to the home page, and some nice refinements. The About page, for example, has a much more refined approach to presenting the management team which helps keep the page clean and tidy, although the fact that the images are clickable isn’t entirely clear when hovering the mouse over them.
The corporate home page introduction to Second Life includes a button to take interested parties directly to secondlife.com, while the Blocksworld intro has a link to the Apple Apps store, both offering a no-nonsense link to the products
All told, a simple, clean and fast redesign of the website which, to me at least, is a lot more contemporary than previous looks, and which somewhat matches the approach taken with the Second Life landing pages.
On Tuesday, November 10th, the Lab announced the forthcoming launch of Lab Chat, “an opportunity for you to ask Lindens your questions during a live taping that will be recorded and archived for everyone to view.”
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 