Corporate Misdirection Plagues Linden Lab

It seems to me now how unfortunate those words are. For so long, Linden Lab, the company that brought forth the cultural phenom known as Second Life, was on the frontlines of technological innovation, literally impacting how we use 3D immersive spaces. I thought of Linden Lab was destined to go down in history as the birthplace of mainstream virtual integration in everyday living. Some will recall, it wasn’t that awfully long ago, let me remind you, that computers were thought of as a lavish, specialized toy that no one would ever really grasp. Those who started on Commodores know what I mean. They were ugly, chunky at best and largely expensive despite being a coders dreambox. As the computer evolved to embrace more applications and other developers began creating progressive technologies with those tools, it literally marked the dawn of the technological era. Of course today, they’re teaching practical computer usage to first graders, and they are staple in the homes of any traditional family and almost every workplace imaginable. The computer is now a fundamental life tool.

What brought it this far were those beloved geeks who sat for hours on end in front of their bulky screen writing code for programming. It was the people that shaped the direction, that determined how we might use it, how we could use it- from editing programs, to photography manipulation software, the origins of technology can be traced back to the inspiring people who simply gave it purpose – and then a million purposes.

I once believed that in ten years we would look at Linden lab in the same way we look back on the early technologies of our time- as a company that pioneered a new way we interact and conduct our daily affairs; be it business, education, content creation or development, the makings were all there.

How could it change so dramatically, so fast?

With the debacle that was the introduction of their Viewer 2.0, which was literally dwarfed by the shadow of much more intuitive and convenient viewers already developed by the users of Second Life itself, they seemed set on a path to take the world from the customers and redefine it entirely. To me, I find that an enormous affront to the hundreds of thousand of users of the service upon whose backs the world was built to begin with.

But now, the decision has been passed down from CEO Mark Kingdon, who took over for Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale just a couple of years ago, to make Second Life more like “The Web.” Viewer 2.0 was a huge clue, given it possessed an intrusive search bar in the same way a browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer does, and also boasted other eerily similar traits like a favorites tab and much loathed drop-down menus that appear on edited objects.

Second Life is not the web. It cannot be the web. While it had the potential to change how we use the web and integrate that into our tools in Second Life, it should never attempt to be the web.

Why do I make such a statement?

The web is, quite obviously, a 2D environment. It is ripe with text and blinking ads. It is a place to streamline information to a casual browser – keyword here being “Browser.” It’s basically a much more exaggerated version of facebook. Millions of people putting out into the metaverse millions of things like pictures, music, random thoughts. It’s people searching for information, playing flash game applications during their idle time. The web is an extremely nice companion to Second Life. How many of you have your twitter open simultaneously while in-world? But Linden lab should not remove their user from the process of determining direction by forcing a new experience through a browser window. We’ve had that already, it was called AOL. Since 1983.

Second Life is a richly layered interactive world. Not a series of static web pages and hotlinks. Second Life is visual, everything we see has been created by the residents, and we can see it being created in real time, growing infinitely by the day. Second Life is a stimulus. People rarely log into SL to read web pages, or shop for razors on Amazon. They come in to listen to the performers, to attend a classes, to socialize with friends, to create something from the recess of their imagination and to share it with everyone else. Second life is far more than the content on it’s base terrain because if not for the people who have put it there, it would cease to exist.

While the web itself is undeniably ripe with societies on various forums and social networks, the spontaneity of experience is lacking. Those forums and social networks were created for a purpose, and the users fulfilled that. Second Life begins with users intending to create it’s purpose each day, and often that purpose is ephemeral. They can come back to the same place an hour later and do something completely different. For a world that was founded on 3D technology and visual stimuli, it seems disheartening to have it reduced to something whereupon we navigate it through a poorly designed, visually intrusive browser just because Linden Lab heads now want it to be the web. They apparently want us to interact with it as we do the web.

I don’t want to use Second Life in the same way I use the internet. They are two entirely different beasts. Second Life fulfills primarily an entirely unique purpose for me, and so does the web. At times those purposes may be complimentary, but to try to merge them would be nothing more than ignorant and the results would be unkind.

I love how in this interview (link) with Mark Kingdon, it openly declares he “believes that Second Life has continued to thrive because it nailed a particular kind of customer: the creative class.” My mouth drooped a little because I know that our creatives have taken the worst hits Linden Lab has had to throw. They’ve had their content stolen, lost sims do to an increase in prices, and are largely ignored by the company that has gone on to catering to corporates and “Gold Members.” However, let it be said this time more plainly if I may. The creative are the ones paying their bills.

But the creators were not considered when introducing Viewer 2.0 or the attempt to manipulate the entire way we interact with the world- new users were. That sentence made me flinch. While new users are critical to any growing company, it’s the ones who are there, the very ones that Kingdon openly admits  that Second Life “…has become a full-time job for some people,” that are shaping the world and creating the content and applications that enrich everyone’s experience.

They changed the viewer to make new users more “comfortable,” while many who relied heavily on the flexibility and function to make their living found it unfriendly and often incoherent. Unfortunately, regardless of the public backlash regarding Viewer 2, Linden Lab is still pressing on with making Second Life more of a web application than a virtual world. Is Second Life something you do passively? Not many- most are busy from the moment they log in until they shut down.

Kingdon claims they hope to make Second Life more conducive to our social networks; That being facebook, twitter, ect. And I wondered why given that Second Life was already positioned as the definitive social network. Sure we can toss out random thoughts in 150 characters or less on twitter and play our passive applications on facebook, but how do those experiences, even for a moment, parallel that deeply interactive ones we have while in Second Life? None are as immersive. We have brief interludes with social networking sites and web pages; But, we engage with Second Life. We use it in a million different ways without leaving our seat.

Why deign to become web-like when the tools you have at your disposal in your own box are far superior. It’s a step backward in innovation and progress. Let the web be the web, let Second Life residents determine how to integrate it into their own experience, just give them the tools.

It frustrates me because, with this newly determined direction, they behave as if the users of Second Life are unreliable. Has it not been users that built a world on your bald terrain? Was it not users that developed the economy with content they created and sold? Was it not users who recognized potential in any number of industries and harnessed it, be it the land industry (Anshe Chung) the Sex industry (Stroker Serpentine) the virtual design industry (Scope Cleaver) the art industry (AM Radio) The media industry (Treet TV.) and countless others? Was it not users who developed amazing new programs in Second Life over the last couple of years ago that further engaged the users and heavily contributed to this “Market Boom” – People like Sion Zaius who developed artificially intelligent pets that populated to grid to some 160,000? Or those that followed who are encouraging people to buy and sell in large sums? It is your creators lining your pockets. It is your creators that seeded the world. Those who come after will contribute, but why change the experience explicitly for their “Comfort?” Did you forget it was the real world educators who sought to use SL as a new device in their classrooms. It was the singers who saw opportunities to perform to welcoming audiences. It was the filmmakers who saw a world worthy of filming. The artists who discovered a new canvas. Linden Lab did not have to define their purpose, they gave it their own. Linden Lab did not have to define their direction, ther forged their own path.

But somehow all that’s forgotten. They need to give us an impeding viewer and put out feelers for “New Users,” going to the extremes of changing the interface entirely to mimic a web browser – which only says to me that some higher-up in the company found it too hard to use. For some reason, the do not seem to trust the users anymore, despite having been carried this far by their respective achievements. It’s sadly unsurprising given that the community has been set on the backburner for some time now, with only an occasional stand-in to  incorporate something on their behalf- and even then it’s the volunteers who do the legwork.

Second Life suffers from severe corporate midirection, and it’s because they have diminished most of their relationship with their own community. They don’t know who you are. They hired a conversation manager you never hear from, and the person filling the role of a “Community Director” has never done anything notable in-world that I’ve witnessed- in fact she appears to be a ghost figure. It’s obvious there’s nothing about community in her role despite the title. And the developers behind Second Life’s new viewer 2.0 could not have had any type of relationship of necessity with the world, or they wouldn’t have dreamed up such a tremendously unintuitive viewer. Do they think that will help these “New Users” learn to build as their builders do? Will it ease the learning curve? No. It makes nothing easier. In fact, it’s altogether more complicated. If it looks like a browser it should behave like one, yes? But Second Life is not a flat world pocked with clipart and text. There are no web pages to be seen. From my perspective, it will only skew the experience for everyone.

I’d feel the same way if my coffee maker suddenly started churning out milk. The mechanics of the machine are so dissimilar. But that doesn’t mean i don’t like milk in my coffee.

I’ve been a Second Life evangelist for many years now. I first set foot in this environment when I was fresh out of college at 24 years old. Granted, it was a different world then than it is today. No one back then expected it to become the mammoth it is today, but the process of getting there was exciting. Good things came at each new turn. New tools, new implementations, new people, new ideas manifesting all the time and put into action. As little as two years ago they had employees on the ground incorporating community initiative to further enrich their Second Lives. Suddenly, Linden Lab has detached entirely, those once exciting directions and that anticipation I remember having regarding the future (Lights! Flexy Prims! Sculpties!) has given way to my disappointment or complete indifference. I could have filled a thousand blogs with all my praises for Second Life and Linden lab 3 years ago.

That said, like so many others, I too am no longer going to write about Linden Lab, or share my perspectives on their decisions and directions via this blog. Second Life is a tool, not altogether unlike Final  Draft on which I write my screenplays, Sony Vegas on which I edit my silly cartoons, or this ottoman on which I prop my feet. It has been proven, uniformly, that they have no interest in listening to their users, as exemplified in their recent official poll which asked “Do you like Viewer 2.0″ and 83% of respondents said “No.” They may as well have been talking to a wall.

I certainly don’t feel entitled, as though I should have any effect whatsoever on Linden lab or their internal choices, but I’d be lying to you, dear readers, if I said I didn’t suffer from an intense passion for it’s success. I have a nostalgic relationship with that world, and it has provided me countless opportunities that, without Second Life, I would certainly never have had. It was a wonderful companion to me in those dark times in real Life we all have when just finding our bearings during that adult-life-real-obligation transition after we complete our education. It inspired me often, and so did the people, they still do. But now it’s time for me to detach and just roll with the punches as they come like the vast majority of users do. It’s time to check myself and gauge what really matters here; What they do with the world? Or what I do as a response. I have no control over what they do and don’t expect to, but I can rationalize it as business and just move forward. It’s not appropriate anymore for me to use this blog to write about a company I’ve grown disenchanted with, or a platform I’ve come to use as a mere tool like any other. So this is decidedly my last Linden Lab related post. Most of my readers possess no awareness of the company and no interest in it’s evolution. And I like it like that.

For those of you who are interested in my work or public engagements, I’ll see you here again soon for more on my upcoming film!