Feted Inner Child

August 4th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

“A comic aside – I will do a makeover for my avatar. I am not a good advertisement for content creators of skins and clothing. This is my alter ego. I am careful about changes.” – Philip Linden

The above was said at Philip Linden’s July 30th inworld meeting. It was what it says it is, an aside. If anything, it was an off the cuff witticism, based on those who’ve told him to update his look over the years. The “meat” of the discussion was elsewhere, embedded within the mantra of “fast, easy, and fun,” or in countless other items he chose to discuss. Many others have written about these far more important issues.

Still, this caught my ear, and has been rolling around with me for a couple days now.

Philip Rosedale is a fairly nice looking man. Blonde hair and blue eyed, with a charming smile. He’s not a whole lot like the long-faced, spiky haired, biker dude he appears as in Second Life.

In another recent speech, Philip told a somewhere-beyond-capacity crowd at SL7B where his avatar came from. It was the product of a “build off” between him and several other Lindens in 2002, all out to make their “coolest” avatars. Philip did not win with his quickly assembled look, nor did he think he would.

Yet eight years later, Philip Linden still carries that same look from way back when. It’s iconic at this point. The spiky hair, the lips shirt, the muttonchops, and of course the sparkly codpiece.

Now he’s talking about updating his look, but he seems somewhat reluctant, couching it by saying that he is “careful about changes.” He admits, you see, that Philip Linden in all his codpiece and system hair glory is his alter ego.

His successor and now predecessor, M Linden, was no such thing. Mark Kingdon’s avatar was a near pitch perfect recreation of himself. It has his boyish smile, his taste in clothing, and was likely about as close as you get to him being himself in Second Life. It was exactly what Mitch Kapor was touting two years ago, shortly after M became CEO. “A much more realistic looking avatar and particularly for business meetings and meetings between people who know each other, the ability to look more like yourself when you want to, would be a positively good thing.”

And this is the difference between Philip and M, and may point to what may well have gone wrong for Second Life in the last two years.

For M, he was himself exploring this strange new world of Second Life. His Flickr photo stream was an exploration of this. Pictures of his avatar standing about in strange vistas like the perpetual sightseer. Many of them, too,focused on the meetings and the back-rooms of LindenWorld, rather than the Second Life the majority of Residents see. This was how he approached the world. His avatar was simply him, interacting with the strange world of Second Life.

But Philip is a different animal. His avatar — as archaic as it is in comparison to M’s top-of-the-line virtual self — is nevertheless his alter ego. While M remained a Sam Lowry or Walter Mitty and explored the world as an outsider looking in, Philip Linden took the next step, and created a virtual self that is a part of the world, that has the ability to not just interact within the space, but is a part of the space.

That alone makes me feel a bit more conformable with one over the other. I too am an alter ego of the person who sits behind my keyboard. Many if not most of my friends are as well. Indeed, I suspect that most of the “Pioneers” — those who Mr. Kapor declared their era over back in 2008 — would be much the same. We’re not just our first life selves, but an alter ego, an avatar that enhances the first life person behind it, and allows them to interact in the Second Life world in ways separate from the limitations and drawbacks of their first life selves.

Both M and Phil’s way of approaching this world hold merit, and both come with their own drawbacks, but I think Philip’s alter ego has more of an ability to directly reach out to those of us here now, compared to the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of “settlers” out there, dying to just be their real-world selves on the Grid.

Indeed, I think this is where the idea of SL as a social medial product, let alone an adjunct of Facebook, fails. it’s what went wrong with a lot of the real-world companies who sought to market to all the people in Second Life back in 2007. The market is markedly different when you are trying to appeal to a real person versus one’s alter ego. I’m not in Second Life to do my First Life tasks, but to explore my own fantasies, my imagination, and just what my alter ego can do in a world of boundless possibility.

Finally, my own aside: Philip, should this cross your eyes, I think it’s fine if you update your avatar — but consider the obvious route. Be your tough-looking biker guy, in a tough-looking biker skin, with some tough-looking, spiky modern hair. Have someone do your tough guy muttonchops on a good Viewer 2 tattoo layer. Maybe one of the better SL designers can make a nice, sparkly sculpted prim codpiece to go with a well designed lips shirt and worn jeans ensemble. Be Philip Linden, unapologetically.

July 29th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

So in an article by Wagner James Au, known as Hamlet Au in-world, or to oldbies, the former Hamlet Linden, he offers seven “easy steps” for saving second life. the piece caused quite a bit of reaction on Twitter, mostly because Second Life happened to be down at the time it hit the wire. No better way to get attention from SLers!

For fun, I decided to take a look at these suggestions, and offer a few more thoughts.

First off, “Save Second Life?” I think that’s a bit of a reach, title-wise. Is Second Life in need of “saving,” and do Hamlet’s suggestions do the job? I don’t think either is quite right. If anything, most of his suggestions — some of this he’s advocated for months — would only build on the established platform without fixing some key issues that rate quite a bit higher than “point and click movement” or “prepaid cards.”

Most controversial of his suggestions, and one he’s wanted for a long time, is an achievement or leveling system in SL. First off, we’ve had that. It did not work well. The leader boards were horribly gamed, then dramatically altered before finally dying off. The most recent failed attempt at anything remotely resembling such a thing — the Resident Choice Award — proved to be a rather embarrassing failure.

It’s not that the idea doesn’t have some merit. There have been many Resident attempts to implement their own systems, which indicates an interest. One could even call “Bloodlines” an achievement system, or perhaps Ozimal bunnies, Sion chickns, etc.

For that matter, the Orientation experience before the current one — the one where you had to dance the hula, drive the car, etc — was its own closed achievement system, “requiring” you to finish all the steps before entering the world at large. Perhaps as a result, I doubt you’ll find many who look back on that Orientation Island with much love.

Indeed, I think that the achievement/leveling idea isn’t necessarily the best fit in Second Life. Will I be be to earn the “Prim Rezzing Badge” or some of categories like those humorously suggested by Kanomi Blake? To what end? How does this improve my Second Life experience?

All that said, some of Hamlet’s suggestions do hold water, even if some don’t quite cover the whole story. Consider his suggestion for improving text chat. For some time, I’ve felt that Linden Lab was — deliberately or otherwise — making it harder to text chat. The biggest example is the size of the text entry field in Viewer 2, which is little larger than a search field.

Yet for years now we’ve known the group and friends system was painfully unscalable. Group chat is always unreliable, and lacks a lot of features that would bring it up to speed. In my opinion, improving and modernizing this system is about the most important thing Linden Lab can do to improve Second Life. Groups could use a lot more useful features, and we need a higher group limit.

Heck, give me a higher group limit as a premium feature. You can get the Linden Home, thanks.

Hamlet also asks for an “In World Now” display. This reminds me of the old Second Life webpage when I started, where you could see the map and places of note marked on it. I like this idea by and large.

One of the biggest issues, perception-wise, has been that Second Life is empty. Once you get past the welcome areas (an issue all their own), you are pretty much on your own to find others. So yes, tell me where others are. More than this, tell me where others with a like mind are. Much like the marketplace wanting to tell me where the vampires and goths are (I can dream for a kid category, no?), tell me where they are inworld. Help new furs find the Luskwood, or help direct the steampunks towards New Babbage. The destination guide doesn’t seem to be doing it, you know?

But more than this, bring more of this INTO the world. Give me information there. Not just the mission critical stuff like I suggested on the JIRA, but devise a way to tell me (without me having to search) about events inworld. Allow me to metafilter this to items just for my community or interest. Stop sending me out to the website, Avatars United, or even Facebook to get information I should be getting without leaving Second Life. Ultimately, you want to keep my eyes inworld.

By the way, this is the big folly with XStreet/Second Life Marketplace. IMO, the Marketplace competes directly with Linden Lab’s biggest market: the buying and selling of virtual land. If the marketplace is wildly popular, we can all close down our stores and by 16m parcels to store our magic boxes. Then all those servers will be sitting out there burning power and dollars (US$, not L$) with no one using them. This doesn’t pay the lab’s bills. We’ll be the prettiest avatars that no longer exist.

Now here’s a couple things I think Second Life could use that were not on Hamlet’s list:

Recognition
When I had my First Life birthday the other day, I got several automated notices wishing me the best. Likewise, on systems like Plurk, it announced to my friends that it was my special day. But when one has a birthday or rezday in Second Life, there is nothing.

It would seem trivial to set up a system that automatically sends a “thanks for being with us this year” message on a person’s rez day. It might even be possible to have an automated system that offers a person some tchotchke come rez day, or even adds a specific rezday “character” to their name tag.

Or — and now I get frightfully close to that achievement system I panned — you could apply similar things to an avatars 100th, 500th, 1000th, etc day inworld.

This should be easy to do even simple, and I think would actually have a positive effect. Which leads to…

Communication
This has always been an Achilles’ heel of Linden Lab. They do listen, but it doesn’t tend to go far. They communicate by talking at us, then don’t seem to understand why people get upset.

As I said in another recent post, the Residents are the best possible evangelists. We can also be the company’s worst nightmare. the key here is involving us.

Communicate openly. Talk with us, and assume that some of us might have ideas to share. @workinginworld on Twitter is, IMO, one of the stellar examples of a Linden Lab employee doing communication right. Rather than just mindlessly Re-tweeting Hamlet’s post, she turned it into a conversation. She read the replies. she responded to them, even hinted at places where Linden Lab was considering courses of action. This is how you do it.

Don’t go dark when we need information — we may assume that no news really is no news and find other places to play. Some of the biggest stumbles have been when people perceive a core shift at the lab that may have been in the pipeline for some time — but confidential. It leaves them blindsided and non-trusting. This is bad.

To borrow a somewhat smarmy statement: help us help you.

Eat your own dog food
Use your product. Every time Jack Linden has to fly into SF, you are not using your product. Every time a contest is run through Facebook, you are not using your product. This is simple stuff: lead by example.

Enhance the product
A no brainer. I touched on it with the improvements to chat , etc.

While doing that, give me a better inventory system. Make so I can see my full inventory every time I log in, rather than once in a blue moon. Let me make custom groups of items that can have their own tab, or even be top level folders.

Unlike most, I like Viewer 2, but I know it could be made that much better. For one, let me tear off profiles, group panes, the destination guide, and other windows as easily as I can only a new inventory window.

And let’s look at land, shall we. Let’s improve the beauty of it all. Find some way to enhance those old Linden Trees and plants, rather than continually depreciating them. Allow me to “paint” my ground textures on a private estate, and give me more control over same.

Likewise, allow me better access tools for my parcels, including the ability to make an access list of individuals who can res or run scripts beyond just a group role. You don’t even need to lower the price on tier, but make it more of a “value” to your users.

Bring back the fun
Do what you can to enhance the overall fun of Second Life. The LDPW did a great job of enhancing what is here, and providing good, fun, entertaining places for users.

but we’ve lost much of the community team that worked on special events, as well as helping to promote Resident events. You have scores of people griefing infohubs and crying about how bored they are. Give them something to do or, barring that, send them to Residents who will give them a fun time.

Anyway, I went long yet again, and I’m sure others have plenty more to add to this, so I’ll stop here. Food for thought, I hope!

July 26th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

(Sorry, it’s tl;dr! next one will be shorter and less serious – honest!)

It’s June 9th, and I’m working on my build for SL7B, the annual celebration of Second Life’s birthday. It’s an event where we celebrate making it another year, and look to the horizon. While I put the finishing touches on the oversized toys that made up the Unexpected Childhood build, a friend tells me that things are “not happy” at Linden Lab that day. Pressed, she could offer no additional information — but I soon did not need any. I begin to hear about various Linden Lab staffers who’ve been given their walking papers. I start IMing and e-mailing those Lindens I know, asking them if they’re okay.

Lists of names begin to circulate, and I too start doing searches on those I know, seeing if their accounts are still showing up. Many of them did not. I stop by Mia Linden’s office, which appears largely intact. Then I notice that many of her prized “Resident Bears” are gone. It has the feeling of someone who made a hasty retreat, or who did not get the chance to finish collecting her possessions. Blue Linden’s chair has a simple sign of thanks.

I know that my experience is not the same of most Residents. Living in the SF Bay Area, there are people I’ve known before they had the last name of “Linden.” There are many who work for the lab who I know outside of Second Life, who I have a friendship beyond the confines of the virtual world. find myself sorry to see them gone from Second Life, but more concerned with the real-world people beyond their pixelated selves. I find myself growing sick with anxiety, finding that some of my closer friends at the Lab have now joined the ranks of the unemployed.

I think of friends lost:

Mia Linden, who I first knew under her Resident avatar. Someone who would spend crazy long hours putting together hundreds of special events armed only with an XStreet account and an inventory that makes mine look miniscule. She encouraged my own desire to volunteer my time and talent within Second Life.

Blue, the big ol’ dragon-ish monster who helped develop Bay City. Someone who I could take a problem to and — when he could — he’d kick it upstream. I look fondly on his old office hours, and seeing his passion for the world and its Residents. I was glad to sneak him into the background of one of my Bay City shots, a monster in fedora and pipe.

Teagan, who was in a chibi kid avatar the first time I met her, floating over one of the stages at SL5B. She made her way over to Kids5B a bit later, showing herself as a voice of compassion in a time when the future of child avatars seemed very dim. She was someone who I felt I could come to if I needed a Terms of Service issue discussed — and even if the answer wasn’t the one I might have wanted, I’d still feel like she was being fair.

There were others I knew who lost their jobs that day, and many more who had been phased out in the months leading up to June 2010. One thing I would say about most of them is that they did use this world we share. They “ate the dog food,” shopping and socializing alongside the rest of us. They grumbled about the same troubles we did, and dealt with all we dealt with. Yes, some of them still do, and are not gone from our world simply because they no longer have “Linden” at the end of their username.

But I think we’ve all lost something. While they’ll go onto other jobs, I’m sure, our world has long some people who did genuinely care for this place — and did what they could to make it a bit brighter. That’s our loss.

It’s June 22nd, and I’m at SL7B. Philip Linden did a nice, inspirational speech about the future of Second Life. It was far better than the SL5B calls for the “Pioneers” to step aside for the “Settlers,” or SL6Bs nostalgic — but largely unsubstantial – speeches. It was someone who both acknowledged the missteps of Linden Lab while laying the groundwork for making things better. That same night he was out roaming the SL7B lands, asking people one on one what they did not like in Viewer 2, and what features in Emerald LL really should look at incorporating.

The next day, M Linden was scheduled to speak, but ducked out due to an emergency. Philip spoke again, giving a very similar speech to what he did before. Only to be expected, I suppose. M’s emergency, though, fueled the rumor mill — and the rumors became reality soon after, with M joining the roster of lost Lindens, and Philip taking the “interim CEO” role.

I felt the confidence I’d lost on June 9th coming back to me — with Philip sailing the ship, maybe we’d have somewhere to go.

It’s July 26th. What now?

Philip has not said a whole lot since those speeches. A bit on the blog about his return, as well as a call for an inworld meeting this month and a notice about the Burning Life event. To be honest, given the depth of the layoffs, I have to assume that not everything is happen at Battery Street, and I’m sure they’re doing all they can to streamline efforts and remain profitable.

But I hope one more thing is going on, and maybe I’d too hopeful. I hope that Linden Lab will not continue down the “Residents versus Settlers” construct from SL5B . During the M years there was a long focus on people who were *not* in Second Life. A continent’s worth of people was moved to make way for these imaginary people, and additional lands opened up to give those people a place to set up a home. A viewer was created in order to bring those people in — but they’ve not materialized.

They may be out there, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like a very important part of the equation was missing. While the focus was put on people “out there,” a lot of those already in Second Life grew disenchanted with the world. Long time residents grew frustrated with any number of issues. Search got worse. the “mono bug” continued to confound. “Copybotting” and other IP infringements became epidemic. Proposed plans to up the charges on XStreet and elsewhere caused people to simply shutter their stores. More and more was put in the way of the users of the world, all the while that Linden Lab was courting those “settlers.”

The Residents who are here are Second Life’s best evangelists. They know that if Second Life is successful, we all benefit. They found something to love in this world, and enjoy their time here. But all of the above has hurt their enjoyment. Many long time names have scaled back or left altogether. Many who might have once been the first to tell their friends to come to Second Life might now pause.

By no means are witnessing the death of Second Life — but at this point, the interim CEO needs to tread cautiously. If the goals are only to build on what works *in spite* of existing users, then we’re in trouble. But if — as Philip has promised — the goal is for all of us, Resident and Linden, to work together to build this world, then there is hope left.

Philip, if you are out there, please have a listen. Your sibling Residents want to be heard. Please help make a company that will listen to its Residents, who will talk with us, not at us, and who are worth Linden Lab’s time. Please consider the losses of June 9th — as necessary as they may have been to keep the company afloat — and know that OnTyne support can never fill the gap of real, honest-to-goodness community managers. Develop a true social media strategy that involves more than simply a one way street, and bring tools inworld that help to energize your established and new Residents.

Like many others, your return has come with a lot of good will. On June 9th, I know I was considering what I would do in a post-Second Life world — and on June 23rd, I began to feel like there was still life to be had. Please, together, let’s keep that going and make things better.

May 17th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

I want to take a moment to talk to those who are kids in Second Life, as well as those who take on the role of parent, caregiver, teacher, principal, scout leader, camp counselor, and whatever else I may have missed from the list.

Our community is a great one, filled with special, wonderful people.

Us kids have opened up a part of ourselves rarely seen, sometimes shy, sometimes capricious, always childlike part of out psyche — and through this, have unleashed some awesome parts of ourselves onto the Second Life Grid.

Those who serve as adults, too, are very special. These people nurture our inner kids, providing incredible places and wonderful experiences, while giving a great amount of their time creating amazing shared experiences for us all.

Yet, I also know that our community is a fragile one. Over time, I have seen wounds open up between people, virtual kids and parents set against each other, adults against adults, kids against kids. Entire subcultures have begun to spring up in response, and these may well end up hurting us all.

Perhaps there were slights, perhaps great wrongs. I know that there are people amongst out community who hurt every day over things that may have happened here. In a world where we are here for fun and joy, we need to look hard at this.

Each of us is a special being, and capable of great things. We may have a hard time believing it, but I’ve seen this little group of ours grow from a handful of people dispersed over the grid like so much thistle down, to a large but disparate community.

We don’t have to agree with each other every day, and I know that there are kids and adults out there who I don’t always agree with. I’m no saint neither.

Yet I ask each of you this: if you feel you were wronged once, try to forgive. Seek out those who you were hurt by, and talk to them. Don’t accuse, but seek to mend. Likewise, if someone does seek you out, or if you feel you may have hurt someone, seek them out too, and tell them your sorry for any thing you might have done to hurt them.

We are a big, wonderful bunch — but we’re even better as a team. Imagine what our world could be if all the schools worked as a district, if our regions worked to the benefit of all, if we could truly be one community?

Let’s make this happen, and strengthen our ties to each other: we’ll all stand to benefit.

April 6th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

Lately, I admit, I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts. There is so much change going on, much of which I actually think is good, and some that I’m not too sure about. Also, a majority of my close SL friends have moved on, or are not around as much any more for a variety of reasons. More than this, I tend to pick up a lot on the moods of others around me: there has just been so much negativity and unfocused anger lately — and that does get to me, even when it shouldn’t.

Because of this, I’ve felt the need to visit a few of the places i call sacred: the places I go to capture that sometimes elusive “spark” that made SL what it is for me. It’s also a look back into an Second Life that is largely gone now – the Second Life that caught my fancy.

I started on Orientation Island, like so many others. This temple at the end of Orientation Island is a spot I never quite attained in my original orientation — I got frustrated somewhere around the beachball, and lag walked into one too many rivers ’til a friend rescued me. Still sometimes I do come back here, just to remember my roots.

Montara Bridge was an early place I stopped at in my SL journey. It struck me with its simple beauty. I still think it’s a pretty place, even after all these years. I suspect it has a lot to do with my love of the highways, byways, and “public works” of this world. The places that we, as Second Life Residents, all get to share.

I’m not sure how I found Boardman initially, but I was struck by its suburban nature. It was like walking into a town, albeit a very idealized one. I was also struck by the promise of a community, a neighborhood. The corner park, and its Gazebo, was one of my earliest “stomping grounds.”

On my first visit to the lost forest of Kahruvel, I was still very new, and had no idea what the place was, or even if I was allowed to be there. Since then, I have found it to be a wonderfull place, full of old lore and mystery, yet also perfect for quiet contemplation. A recent gridquake seems to have damaged it severely, but I hope it will be returned to glory soon.

The Zen Gardens was an early find. I came across it accidently, going to another of my old faves, the long-gone DharmaEcho Garden. I watched here, as a total noob, a Resident like me first rezzing prims and setting up this space. I was entranced with the possibilities from that moment on.

The Sami Infohub is long gone, a vacant plot of Linden Land where once an infoub stood. I placed out a hub, though, if only for the time I was there. In my earliest days, it was home, a place I could log into away from the maddening throng that was the Ahern Welcome Area (my initial home location). I still come back here, on my Rez Day, and remember.

Livingtree, event hough it dates back to 2007, is about the “youngest” of these places I’ll talk about in this post. Still, it’s the first place I really got to really explore my ability to build and decorate, and still means a great deal to me. While i do spend countless hours in its workshops, the duck pond remains a place a relax and recoup.

Many other places I considered sacred and special are no more. DharmaEcho Garden, the daycare in Falcaria and Pathfinder’s place in Ambleside, for example. Others have changed dramatically over time, and are not really what they once were to me: the standing stones in Serenite being a big example of that. It’s Second Life, and things change.

Home is one of the biggies for me. It was an important part of my old SL life, back in Hundertwasser – then it became a sad place for me. Now I’ve a new home, and while it may never be the same as what the old Islandia home was to me, it’s still an important space.

In First Life, we’re a product of our biology, our families and the company we keep, and the places we’ve grown up and inhabited. I contend that the same is true in our second lives. These are the places that helped shape me, early on, and made me the avatar I am.

March 22nd, 2010 by Marianne McCann

Okay, this one is gonna be long. Settle in, grab something t’drink, an alla that.

Not long into my Second Life, and shortly after I grew down, I ended up in a family. I did not go through any of the early adoption agencies (this was before MAW, etc.), but a RL friend of mine was part of this family, and I happened upon her aunty while exploring her treehouse. Later that day, her Aunty and Uncle, Sazzy Rosebud and DJMike Glitterbuck, asked to adopt me. I agreed about a week later.

DJMike did not hang around long, and for the first few months of my SL kidhood, I was an only child to my single mommy. in the course of a year or so, this changed, with the addition of my brother, Pygar Bu, my sister Robin Howe, and a new, improved daddy, Laurynce Book.

Being in a family for an SL type kid can be the bestest. That’s why – if you look at the profile of SL kids – you’ll usually see “I have the best parents in the world” in there somewhere. It can truly complete the character, and create a next-to-perfect RP environment for one to just be a kid.

It means having someone there when you are at graduation at HardKnock Elementary, or when you get promoted at Kid Scouts. It means having people to write home to from camp, or attend parent and family events with. It means someone who gets that dreaded letter home from school, or who is there when your avatar gets a boo boo on the playground. It can also mean having someone there when you are facing hard RL times, and each of us in our family went through a few of those.

In my SL family, one regular occurrence – nightly or near nightly for the course of about two years – our little avatars would be gently tucked into bed my our parents. So no matter what, we still had that ‘family bond,” that little bit of time that would be ours as a unit. Sometimes it was a tender moment, sometimes it was silly, but it was nearly always good. It is one of a great many things I miss from then.

I miss my mommy’s sense of humor, and I miss my daddy’s quiet wisdom. I miss hanging out (literally) at the family tree behind our old house. I miss getting care packages and letters from home while at Camp HardKnock. I miss that whole thing.

So you may ask yourself this: what happened?

The trouble with SL families as a whole is that they rely on all parties to keep them going. Each person brings something to the table, and plays a part on it all. When things are good, they’re good — but when things turn sour, it’s not so much.

I’m not going to get into details or air any dirty laundry here. Suffice it to say that the relationship between mommy and daddy turned sour, and fell apart. call it unreconcilable differences. Both considered dropping their SL personas, and both have all but retreated from the Grid. I might see mommy online once a month, maybe — and to her credit, her First Life has seemed to be too busy to really allow her the time she once had in her Second. Daddy is on rarer, largely over on a fresher account and making a new Second Life for himself.

What of us kids?

Well, no one ever truly told us “this is over.” For the longest time we remained with the family house out in Hundertwasser, but found it to have lost it’s spark. It was just us there, in a far too big home. A christmas tree and unopened presents beckoned from the large family room for a year, remnants of a Christmas day that never quite happened. My brother took to spending his days in his workshop rather than coming home, and my sister tended to just stick to the bedroom — and not go downstairs at all. Me, I eventually found some land elsewhere on the grid, and tried to make a house that we could get away from all the old ghosts. Never mind that I could not afford to keep the tier going on the land we once had.

My folks remain listed in my profile, albeit only on one panel in my picks. I think my siblings did much the same. The old home is now go, for nearly a year now, and the three of us share a much more modest place in Shermerville. There is no parents’ room there, though much of the house outside our rooms is decorated more to the tastes of an adult.

We delved into other things to take up our time. I became much more involved in exploring, and made my way into Bay City and its goings on. My brother focuses on his building work. My sis is simply not on as much as she used to be.

Why not get new parents?

It’s a good question, and there’s a lot of answers.

First off, like I said above, no one ever said it was over. For all intents and purposes it is (and it certainly could not be what it once was), but it remains an open, unfinished chapter. We remain the “Flying Rosebuds,” an affectionate term coined by my daddy that plays off my mommy’s last name.

We are a trio. We’re like a civil war chess set from the Franklin Mint, and you simply can’t break us up. You can’t take one, you take three.

Each of us are not the usual. We’re all pretty knowledgeable about SL an how it works. Each is a pretty good content creator and usually knows what is going on in SL on a gridwide basis at any given time. Any of us could be called away to do projects here and there. We’re all storeowners. And while we can indeed fit into our role-play selves just fine, there are going to be times where we simply will have to be somewhat out-of-character.

We’d also be pretty particular about parents, in part due to the issues of our old family, and in part due to things that we know would make us a better fit. We don’t need folks who will be there 24/7, but we do need folks who are going to be here. We’d need distinct family times, and would prefer to at least have some “at home role play times” (tuck-ins, family dinners, etc.) as well as things like attending talent shows or parent-teacher conferences. We’d need stable people in stable relationships who aren’t going to abandon us, and we’d need people who could embrace our quirks.

In short, I don’t see it happening. Not easily. I’m certainly not going to put all this in a panel at an adoption agency.

March 8th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

The more I use Second Life’s Viewer 2 beta, the less I seem to like it. More so, I find myself less interested in being within Second Life at all, and a lot of that relates to my experience with Viewer 2. I feel as if there are some core issues that may need revisiting.

I don’t want to come across as yet another person jumpin’ on the anti-V2 bandwagon, nor do I have a track record of responding angrily to every little thing Linden Lab does. I want to like Viewer 2, and there is a lot I do enjoy about it. I personally feel that while Linden Lab has not batted 1000, it has had a fair share of hits (Windlight, Linden Homes, and arguably Havok 4 and the acquisition of Avatars United) to go along with its misses (Homesteads, SL Answers, the Blogorum, Homesteads – and yes I did say that twice).

I actually had the good fortune to get a slightly earlier look at it than most, and have taken to using it as my main SL viewer. My reasoning on this is simple: this is the viewer will will likely get, in spite of whatever flaws it might have, and we’d best get used to it. It’s a cynical view, perhaps, but I really don’t expect I’ll see much change in it from the initial beta to the release product. Please, Linden Lab: prove me wrong.

Like I said, I *want* to like Viewer 2. I really do — but so often the bad outweighs the good.

I love having the top bar, for one. The browser-like interface is great! Having favorites up there is even better. This has been a boon to my own travels. But here’s the bad: need to get to, say, North Channel 112, 128, 506? That’s going to be a bit more work. If you have a SLURL or a LM, you’re golden, sure. but you cannot enter coordinates on the map, which is especially frustrating with Z coordinates. You also don’t see coordinates in the top bar anymore automatically (you need to enable this with a right click in the top bar), making it harder to know exactly where you are at any given time.

Unlike many others, I like the sidebar — but again, there’s trouble here. Nothing tears off or undocks, nor can you switch it to dock on the left. Opening up multiple profile windows is impossible, and attaching anything to a group notice (or even seeing how many items you have in inventory) requires opening a secondary inventory window.

This brings up one of my major issues with Viewer 2.0. The stated goal is to make the user interface easier for new members to grasp, presumably easing use and, therefore, retention. Yet that does not seem to be what has happened. While some things are arguably easier (You can, for example, go back to your last location much easier than in Version 1.x), many things are harder, require more steps, of have become less intuitive.

A caveat: I’m not referring to the fumbling around one typically has to do when exposed to a new interface for the first time. New and old get the opportunity to fumble around with our well-worn ruts erased in Viewer 2. I’m talking about trying to teach people to turn off their music by hitting a “play” button, helping people find shared media hidden on the texture panel, or being able to only right click and build n ground versus on top of prims.

My second big issue with Viewer 2 is that the UI gets in the way of the world. I half-joked early in the private beta that Viewer 2 was great – but they should really get rid of that 3D virtual world that was getting in the way of my chat and IMs. Windows no longer go semi-transparent when not in the forefront, notices and IMs steal focus, and some windows can even be overlaid over the bottom bar.

As a test, go to a busy location. Let’s day the Ahern Welcome Area, though a popular club or large event works just as well. Open up your sidebar — maybe you are checking out someone’s profile, or changing outfits, or something. Field some IMs in the midst of it all. Now, now much of the event you are at can you see? Any of it? You have a screen full of black bars of text obscuring the world much like the redaction of a formerly top secret government document.

The #1 thing that separates Second Life from being just another chat room or instant messaging program is the 3D virtual world. This is what we’re showing on the front page of secondlife.com (assuming we’re not logged in) and the login screen of the viewer. It is why we have a snapshot buttons – particularly a snapshot to postcard. It’s kinda the whole point. Yet it becomes quickly overpowered by the 2.0 UI.

Ironically, the third big issue I see is the continued push for voice use. I am not anti-voice chat. While I do not often opt to use it, i’ve long had it enabled, and have seen a great many events enhanced by its inclusion. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that Viewer 2 is trying to do some not-altogether-sly attempts to push text chat out of the way of voice. You can tell this the first time you enter the world and see the size of that box for text chat. You’ll see it when you try to type your chat into the “nearby chat” window. You’ll even see it the first time you hit the “speak” button and discover that its not the old “say” button it once was.

So I’ve kvetched enough. How about some solutions. First thing, look at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_2_Tweaks – here, many Second Life users have left to the challenge of making Viewer 2 much more useful, making windows semi transparent, extending the chat bar, and much more. Much of this really should — and could — be part of Viewer 2.

Speaking of shoulds and coulds, the JIRA is full of them. Here’s a few good ones:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17130 “Build” missing from contexural menu when clicking prims.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17010 The viewer 2.0 chat bar needs to fill ALL unused space in the bottom bar
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-16978 ‘Inspect’ is missing from Viewer 2.0
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-16964 PLEASE allow adjustable transparency of “Nearby Chat” window, Chat History and Chat “Toasts” in Viewer 2.0!
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17314 Glow on Screenshots, and Hirez Screenshots broken.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17202 High-Rez Snapshots to Disk produce regular rez snapshot surrounded by black to bring the final photo to high rez
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17094 Advanced > UI > Use Default System Color Picker missing in Viewer 2.0
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17022 Clicking on the current time in the Viewer should bring up events happening right now.

But beyond JIRAs and XML tweaks, we need a sense that any of this is fixable. Like I said at the beginning, the feeling is that this is the viewer we’re going to get, like it or lump it. Word is that this thing is hoped to be the main viewer next month and, well, I think thats woefully optimistic. There’s a great many things that could be addressed, but first someone needs to be hearing these needs and acting on them. I fear that timelines, business decisions, and all sorts of things may well lead to a less-than-finished product — one that does not serve its goal of bringing in new users and further alienates the existing user base.

Again, please prove me wrong. I’m beggin’ ya.

January 25th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

(Somewhat inspired by my last post and some discussion that came after it)

For as long as I’ve known of Second Life, there’s been some confusion as to just what it is. This war of words has been going since the first shots were fired in Jessie and continue today in debates over “augmentation and immersion,” or fears of the “Facebooking” of our world.

What I think lies at the heart of this debate is one simple matter: Second Life is a noun, and — as those of us in my generation learned from Saturday Morning cartoons — a noun is a person, place, or thing.

Now I’m going to discount Second Life as a person. There are a great many people there, but it is nigh impossible to call Second Life a single person. It is not Philip Linden, nor is it M Linden. It is not Ansche Chung, or Aimee Weber, or Desmond Shang. It is also not that n00b who is wandering around right now in Waterhead, trying to figure out what this world is about while being harassed by the regulars. Second Life’s people are its “killer app,” IMO — but again, no one person or even group of people is Second Life.

What we’re left with is “place” or “thing” — and this is where it gets tricky. There’s very much two sides at play here.

To many, Second Life is an “application” or a ”game.” It is a place they go and play in, or its something they pop into for meetings, 3D prototyping, business, classes, or yes, even hooking up on Zindra. It is a thing that one uses to achieve a goal, a tool in their computing arsenal.

Content creators come in every day and spend their hours tweaking prims and uploading sculpt maps. They might be knee deep in scripts or textures, hardly aware of the virtual world beyond the confines of their workspace. In the end, they’ll have created the most wonderful things to sell or use in other ways within Second Life. They will also have somewhat sated their own creative impulses, at least for the moment.

They might be here to work, spending much of their SL times in meetings or (where I often end up) in IMs. They might be handling builds for big schools or institutions, or even simply taking courses with some of the same-said locales. This is not just a plaything for errant hobbyists, but a tool full of serious potential for business and education.

To others, Second Life is a hangout. It’s where they go to see live music, chill with friends, maybe even have their virtual family. It’s a tangible world where they might (if they’re brave enough with region crossings) sail a boat on the Blake Sea, or drive down the highways. It is a place they do to akin to visiting a nearby theme park, campus, or large shopping center.

I think I can say with some sense of sureness that those of us who play kids most often view the world as a place, and feel that kinship to our homes and family. I think it comes with our territory.

Right now, Linden Lab “Moles” — paid Resident content creators — are putting in a “reserve infohub” in Murray. A handful of residents who frequent the area are up in arms about their place being changed. To the west of there, in Bay City – Docklands, a small group of Residents has claimed a street corner, and dug in their heels when a self-appointed police force moved into the area to somehow assume control of the area. Two groups right now are vying for their views on the Second Life Railroad’s right of way. You see stories like this all over, as people lay claim to their home soil.

Heck, I know that n about a month, when I hit my 4th rez day, I will be stopping by the place where the Sami Infohub once was, just to visit the place that a very new Marianne McCann first called home.

That’s what it is to call it a place

These are not mutually exclusive. I know that much of my own experience falls under “place,” and I know this surprises no one who has ever read this blog. But I too have used Second Life as a thing. I build for my store and for other companies. I use it as a communication medium for meetings and gatherings in the same way I might have used AIM or Skype. It’s an application that runs in a window on my Macintosh, often sharing space with a browser window giving me the latest from Twitter or Plurk, or running YouTube videos to entertain me while I fling primitives.

Nevertheless, it is the disconnect between these two things that seems to lead to the biggest troubles. Residents who view Second Life as “their turf” see the possible influx of “outsiders” from mainstream sites like Facebook with the same sort of disdain often afforded to real-world “immigrants.”

To many outside the world, the idea of place is lost entirely. This is a world that comes out of passive entertainment, who enjoy a good movie or TV show, At best, their “virtual world experience” might have come from collecting their share of mystery prizes from friends in Farmville via Facebook. There is no “world” within their computer to explore, just games, applications, and programs that entertain and inform.

Some who are here for the “game” might find themselves bored and disaffected, finding it hard to see beyond the confines of an infohub into the broader world beyond. They want “quests” and the like, and just don’t want a place to “chill with friends.” By the same token, they may also turn to griefing, making their own quest life out of mario cubes and the like, getting their lulz off those who see SL as a place to visit, not a game.

Second life is a noun. It is both “place” and “thing,” and attempts to serve both audiences. It seems clear to me that Linden Lab would like to increase its stake in the “social networking” crowd, and knows that this may alienate, even anger, those for whom this is a place. It’s what I said of Murray or Docklands ramped up several notches.

The thing is, Second life is big. Tens of thousands of Regions, enough that many decry how “empty” the world feels. They have a point. Given that, there really should be enough room for all viewpoints — and if there is not (and there is a market for it), Linden Lab will add more simulators, and the world will get that much larger. There is no scarcity of land and resources like First Life, and nearly anything can be bought or made without need to find much in the way of raw materials. There is room for Second Life to be “place” and “thing,” like some virtual Schrödinger’s cat.

There’s space for us all within the noun that is Second Life.

January 23rd, 2010 by Marianne McCann

Nearly two years ago, Second Life announced a new area. A bit of a throwback to the days of Nova Albion, this would be a city area composed of several regions, planned to be in an “American urban experience” theme, focusing on Art Deco stylings and a “Chicago in 1950″ feel. I immediately wanted a part of this place. Since then, I have remained a part of the area, helping in some small way to keep the area growing as best as I can with the members of the Bay City Alliance.

To be honest, I’ve put in a lot of time in Bay City. It’s not like I haven’t stepped back a time or two for various reasons, and re-accessed why I’m there — but in the end, I always come back to it. So… why?

First off, I have to look at the three things that appealed to me in the first place:

1. I’m a sucker for mid century design, especially Deco and Streamline. This could mean being a part of a virtual recreation of these times and their structures, much as Caledon is a “steampunk” version of Victorian England.

2. I run a toy store that has a higher than average focus on older “retro” toys that would appeal to those reliving a childhood that happened in the same — or similar — times as my own.

3. I envied the sense of community that existed in Nova Albion, and hoped to see a similar, vibrant community that I could be a part of.

Note on that last one: I did not feel I could be a part of the Nova Albion community given the high cost of land there. Little did I know how much Bay City would be!

These reasons are still a part of it, but it’s more complex now than it was then.

For one, I’ve become involved in the mainland as a whole, looking at some of the “historical” parts of the grid, helping to see them preserved (when they can be) or modernized, and feeling a kinship to the grid.

My avatar may have grown up on the other side of the Sansaran continent, but I first rezzed into the world in Ahern. Nowadays, my home location is in Shermerville, north of Nova Albion, and a six or so region trip from my Bay City store. I feel a odd sort of “kinship” to this chunk of virtual land. It is “home.” Bay City is, as some might put it, my “stomping grounds.”

The city has not been without its challenges, but it does have its Art Deco flair. It may well be the most consistent, on theme part of the mainland, which is in many ways a miracle. It’s far from being a mid-century modern paradise, but compared to a lot of the mainland, you’ll find a consistency beyond the rest of the grid.

And then there is the community. In Bay City – Imaginario — the region I own land within — I know all my neighbors. We chat when we’re in the region together, and I often find myself in IMs with others from the city. We all meet regularly to discuss “city business” with ourselves and with Blondin Linden. We all — particularly lately — do a good job of acting as a group, and coming up with plans that will benefit us all. I think that too is a bit of a rarity.

It’s not a perfect place. Land is still frightfully expensive (tip: always ask a seller and try to bargain if you can). May parcels sit vacant as a result. Not every parcel is going to be a showpiece, either.

That said, it has a charm and “specialness” not found all that often. It’s worth taking another look at i you haven’t for a while.

January 7th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

While at Michael Linden’s office hour this week, I got what was for me some exciting news: the Wild West Town in Oak Grove would finally be seeing some love.

In the dim and distant past, the Oak Grove sim was the home of wild West Town, a resident build project from 2003, once housed in the Zoe sim. Then things changed. The Native American village was replaced with the Oak Grove Education Stage, and the entrance to Wild West Town was nearly buried as land was raised for Busy Ben’s Vehicle Lot. The Oak Grove telehub went away, and Wild West Town slowly began to fall apart. Two structures are all but gone, leaving just a jumble of prims.

It was Oak Grove, the damage to same, and the lack of upkeep to the area that led me to file a JIRA and a support ticket back in Spring of 2008. It also led me to seek out other locations that were in need of retails, such as Yamato Town, Mount G’Al, the Moth Lamps in Iris, and the “Games” Pavilion in Ahern. Some of these have been fixed, some remain in need.

Seeking out those locations led to something else, too: it helped opened up this world to me. It made me think of it as something more than a collection of parcels to be teleported to. I had already been reaching that with my experiences in Bay City, but once I began to see that beyond Bay City was Nova Albion, and the Suburbs, then Yamato, Nexus Prime, Ahern, and Oak Grove, then Lusk, the vehicle sims, and the Lost Forest of Kahruvel — well, you get the idea. I begun to see all these as somehow connected.

Then I looked at the SL Roads, waterways, and rails, further connecting places. I rode the train from Tuliptree to Bhaga, and when it came time to move from South Islandia to Shermerville, me, my siblings, and an aunty or two took a drive ‘cross the whole of the Sansara continent, passing Resident and Linden locations I’d previously only visited via teleports.

So often, we hear people talk about how little there is to do in SL. Reporters will write silly articles, bloggers toss their snark, and everyone sharpens their knives on Second Life. Plenty of Residents, often huddled in the crowd at an infohub, will also tell you about how bored they are in their Second Life experience.

Yet there is always something out there to see. For me, there is quite literally more than I could ever hope to soak in. I’ve travelled every road and rail line (including the unbuilt right of ways), and sailed between continents and across the Blake Sea. I know the Mainland better than most, no question, and can rattle off long discussions about what is — and was — in a lot of these many regions.

Yet in knowing and doing all this, I can only tell you that there is a lot more out there I don’t know and have not seen. There will always be places to see, things to do, and new experiences to have. There are nine continents, three major cities, and then thousands of privately held island estates to boot. On top of this, things change with a regularity quite unlike the real world. There is simply no way to keep up on it all.

And this is good.

As I write this, I’m boarding the new Blake Sea ferry in Barbarossa, while a B-17 and an F-16 fly overhead. How wonderous a world is this? There are a bit over 40,000 people inworld, each doing their own part to make this world unique and special.

Before you started reading this blog entry, you may never have heard of Wild West Town of some of these other locations. Maybe you are now intrigued enough to do some exploring on your own. Please do. In fact, if you are interested, come by my store in Bay City – Imaginario and click the billboard above the parking lot, or come to Miramare Place and click the Exploration wall. You’ll get a stack of Landmarks to some of these places, ripe for exploration. Go, have fun, and learn how vast this word of ours really is.