Second Life cuts 1/3rd of Staff

[Numtini]

Hardly a surprise. They've been getting rid of gambling on underage furry snuff sex for the last couple of years in favor of happy corporate friendly entertainment that nobody was interested in.

But yesterday they reportedly canned a third of the staff in order to start a new emphasis on a browser based client. I can't imagine that could be the existing SL which is just far too sophisticated.

[UnSub]

Saw this too.

The hype has deflated and people / companies have worked out paying to create your own content for a very niche audience is a curiosity at best.

[tazelbain]

So you in favor of abusing underage polygons?

[Numtini]

So you in favor of abusing underage polygons?

No, but it's apparently more lucrative than chasing corporate money.

[Mrbloodworth]

With everything being open source, whats left for them to do but collect transaction fees?

[LK]

It wasn't exactly 1/3. It was 30%. I'm no expert on layoff laws but apparently 33% is a magic number according to one of their former employees.

[HaemishM]

The corporate world gave up on Second Life 10 minutes after their CEO's tried to do anything in the game and realized that while powerful, the interface was written for the 30 closeted geniuses with Asperger's Syndrome who were thrilled to create gigantic phallic chicken feet costumes. When even someone as knowledgeable about interfaces and video games and me turns the game off because he can't figure out how to do dick, you have a losing project. Those CEO's didn't stick around long enough to be bombarded by a flying army of penises (penii?) led by Nazi McScrotieBalls the 3rd and his army of Furry Degenerate Infant Rape Victims.

[Furiously]

3-D chess is cool in Star Trek. Not so cool in RL.

SL is about experiences. There really isn't a good way to monetarize that unless you are Disney.

(That being said, I've made several hundred dollars selling my animations there.)

[Fabricated]

I wanna know how breathless articles about how SL was the future of everything online were written.

Bonus points if there's a Newsweek or Time cover with the CEO looking smug next to a title like, "HOW SECOND LIFE IS GOING TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET."

[Furiously]

They would usually talk about virtual meetings and how it didn't matter where you were in the world. Suddenly you could look professional in SL.

(Neglecting to mention that there is a 45 user limit per "zone/island".)

[Malakili]

On the plus side, going to virtual red square did help me learn russian for a while.  In fact my college russian teacher gave us the assignment to go there, which got me on to it in the first place.

[UnSub]

"HOW SECOND LIFE IS GOING TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET."

Facebook still has a chance, but my money is on Twitter. 

[Samprimary]

Second life: the paradigm paradigm platitude revolutionary game-changing buzzword buzzword: will it game-changingly buzzword platitude the revolutionary paradigm?

[Furiously]

Live music shows, RPing, and virtual sexxoring (safe bondage / exploring furry sex/ whatever turns you on) is where it really excels. (not that I am into any of that).

Well I do like the live music shows.

[Falconeer]

Bonus points if there's a Newsweek or Time cover with the CEO looking smug next to a title like, "HOW SECOND LIFE IS GOING TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET."

Best I could find.

[TripleDES]

I wouldn't wonder if she cashed out long time ago. Doesn't she have her grubby hands in Entropia Online meanwhile?

[Furiously]

I think she moved to IMVU. I understand that was a goldmine when it started.

[TripleDES]

Anyway, SL failed hard due to their shitty graphics engine, physics and scripting system.

First of all, the graphics. Not enough primitives and morphs on them. Sculpted objects came too late. Texture mapping fucking sucked. Lack of different types of texture layers. No control over shaders (if there ever were any). Anything a normal game needs to hide godfuckingugly low poly content. There's no mesh imports either, or UV mapping of any sort.

Physics were completely retarded because server framerates were bogged down due to complete script overload. Everything was glitchy and rubberbanding. I think the netcode wasn't exactly stellar either.

Scripting was retarded, too. Event based programming and state machine that dealt with 128bit keys to address objects and brain damaging APIs and language features. JIT, i.e. Mono, came way too late, too. I think it's still not possible to write externally in any .NET/Mono language and import the MSIL/CIL. Also, not offloading scripting onto users in the zone was a big mistake (any other FPS doesn't seem to have much issues coordinating and syncing object manipulation across different clients, safe for physics accuracy). An object oriented programming model would have worked wonders.

As far as zoning and the world goes. I think it would have fared better with an quasi infinite boundless procedurally generated moddable world (kinda like Spore, but infinite terrain), where people could allocate arbitrary sized zones while still giving the impression of everything being connected. Rigid sized zones made some things unpractical, since scripts would go batshit when crossing zones, e.g. a large race track.

Given all of the above, people could create impressive stuff. In principle full-blown games inside the game.

The early Blue Mars promo shit on Youtube gave the slight impression of cornering most of the complaints I have here, including decent looking graphics and near infinite terrain. I was hoping for someone to finally create a cool virtual world. Turns out, it's just a fucking lobby that makes you download and use CryEngine maps with ugly avatars. And absolutely squat to do, literally. And buggy to boot.

Well, that was pretty incoherent...

[Numtini]

I wouldn't wonder if she cashed out long time ago. Doesn't she have her grubby hands in Entropia Online meanwhile?

She started cashing out a couple of years ago as the concurrent users started dropping after the hyper period.

Effectively she has a perfect model. She bought whole sims from Linden and was almost instantly paid back by "selling" it in small parcels to her renters. When the game started contracting, people weren't able to "sell" the land, so rather than keep paying their monthly fees to her, they just defaulted and gave it back to her. Once a "sim" stopped being profitable, she moved everyone left on it to another sim and sold it. Since she had already had it fully paid for, there was really no loss to her. She could undercut linden's prices or even just give up sims.

On why Second Life failed, it's hard to really say. They were growing very consistently despite the issues with the game engine until they started cracking down on vice. I honestly think the real reason is the killer app for virtual worlds is the sleaze.

[Mrbloodworth]

Truth be told, there is no polysoup geometry in SL (other than avatars), its all procedural stuff, and its all streamed on demand.

[TripleDES]

The terrain is a simple heightmap.

[Raph]

TripleDES, I actually (still!) think that the emphasis on graphics is misplaced. That's what one of the biggest obstacles to adoption is. Asking for tougher content creation isn't a recipe for success.

[TripleDES]

In an improved SL, as imagined in my mind, the editors could handle as they are, just offer more options. For instance in regards to textures, instead of just offering the ability to set a diffuse map, the improved version would additionally allow for specular, reflection, bump, transparency maps. The ability to mess around with shaders probably just involve a large selection of predefined ones (no custom writing). You can implement these things without making the existing editor UI harder to use. Mesh imports would be a compromise to prevent server breakage from overly complex objects (i.e. huge prim clusters trying to match a complex shape, SL hated those in the past). Any UV mapping would continue by offering the standard planar and cylindrical options, as well as specific UV maps matching the primitives (just as there are for avatars and their clothes).

I don't think that'd make things harder. Unless you're saying that you want to cap the graphical capabilities to limit the potential quality rift between content from beginners and "professional creators", to prevent discouragement in former group?

[Furiously]

In an improved SL, as imagined in my mind, the editors could handle as they are, just offer more options. For instance in regards to textures, instead of just offering the ability to set a diffuse map, the improved version would additionally allow for specular, reflection, bump, transparency maps. The ability to mess around with shaders probably just involve a large selection of predefined ones (no custom writing). You can implement these things without making the existing editor UI harder to use. Mesh imports would be a compromise to prevent server breakage from overly complex objects (i.e. huge prim clusters trying to match a complex shape, SL hated those in the past). Any UV mapping would continue by offering the standard planar and cylindrical options, as well as specific UV maps matching the primitives (just as there are for avatars and their clothes).

I don't think that'd make things harder. Unless you're saying that you want to cap the graphical capabilities to limit the potential quality rift between content from beginners and "professional creators", to prevent discouragement in former group?

You might want to take a look at the materials project Qarl Linden is working on. It's going to be there....someday.

[TripleDES]

Probably related to the graphics engine update that's being promised since years and won't deliver.

[Numtini]

I don't think that'd make things harder. Unless you're saying that you want to cap the graphical capabilities to limit the potential quality rift between content from beginners and "professional creators", to prevent discouragement in former group?

I think that's pretty much what is going on with SL. I think they underestimated the number of people interested in monkeying around with (stolen) professional tools and overestimated the number of people who wanted to monkey with simple primitives rather than just buy shit.

[Morat20]

On why Second Life failed, it's hard to really say. They were growing very consistently despite the issues with the game engine until they started cracking down on vice. I honestly think the real reason is the killer app for virtual worlds is the sleaze.

Porn drives everything. If your business model can, in any way, involve porn, sex, hookups, dating, or sleaze -- either you include it, or you suffer much slower growth (or early death) by keeping it out.

Porn drove VHS, drove DVDs, drove the internet.....

Which is why I think Steve Jobs is a fucking moron from banning porn from his walled garden. I know he's all 'family friendly' but he'd get twice the money if he had an 18+ section. I suspect dating Apps will squeze by, though -- even if they're really hookup apps.

[Mrbloodworth]

In an improved SL, as imagined in my mind, the editors could handle as they are, just offer more options. For instance in regards to textures, instead of just offering the ability to set a diffuse map, the improved version would additionally allow for specular, reflection, bump, transparency maps.

Um, with all the procedural stuff going on, you are trying to increase the overhead by a factor of 100, on an engine that on its best day (because of the streaming, procedural geometry and what not) has issues already.

[Furiously]

Starting Wednesday they are going to be allowing you to upload Collada format mesh files. They will also be riggable. 

[Minvaren]

There was a Slashdot article a week ago on the rumor that Microsoft was eyeing SL.  Best theory was for the IP and patents, but otherwise...  why...?

I checked it out at release - bought a hoverboard with all of my cash, it never showed up, I never logged back in.

[tmp]

Starting Wednesday they are going to be allowing you to upload Collada format mesh files. They will also be riggable. 

Wonder what gets uploaded faster, a furry AV or a penis.

... then again, that's probably not "or".

[Furiously]

I think you will see a lot more miranda's during the testing. (from mass effect 2)

[Sir T]

I think you will see a lot more miranda's during the testing. (from mass effect 2)

The one that looked like a concentration camp survivor with beachballs on her chest?

Oh right.

[tmp]

Think she was acknowledged more for the other end



didn't know there's mesh in common format out there, interesting.

[Furiously]