Second Life Hype vs. Anti-Hype 67
The new GigaGamez site, part of the OM network, has a look today at the hype fight over Second Life. It's the new darling of media companies, but is increasingly attracting negative feedback by people who know a thing or two about the industry. James Wagner Au tries to sort out who is saying what, and provide a little context for the discussion. From the article: "Can they really build a fully streamed world comprised of tens of thousands of servers? That's way above my paygrade, but I'll guess that task fits under the rubric of Fricking Hard. Can they fix a profoundly unfriendly user interface and thoroughly disorienting first hour user experience, which are aggressively, almost intentionally unwelcoming to the vast majority of interested users? Both shortcomings are at the heart of Second Life's poor retention rates, but neither have significantly changed in the three years since its commercial release. You have to wonder, whatever their stated intentions, if Linden's tech-centric corporate culture simply puts their improvement at a low priority."
Guess there's no Hype Fight... (Score:2, Funny)
(Watch, someone will tell me to RTA)
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It shows now (Score:1)
is there for a reason, folks!
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It seemed to be missing for a bit, but it's there now.
And it's one of the most awfully formatted (or, non-formatted) pages I've seen in a long time...
Entrance Restrictions (Score:3, Insightful)
External world communities are rampant with unspoken restrictions. Some call you a Greenhorn for five years after you move there.
Re:Entrance Restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
And the benefit is that you have a Massively Multiplayer Game that lacks the Massively Multiplayer part
I could be wrong, but from my understanding Second Life was a game that was largely based around user generated content; the game gets better as you attract more people to develop interesting content within your game. If you actively discourage people from playing a game like this you will probably scare away a lot of people who could bring a lot of value to it; consider that a lot of "artistic" people have a great deal of difficulty just "getting" a user interface that makes sense to technical people.
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Art museums, discussions, roleplaying, etc. all still happen, but they are, as a rule, harder to find.
Re:Entrance Restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't played SL much. Just a few days as a n00b. But from what I gather, building objects (the confusing part) is a technical AND artistic. Designing objects is one thing, but then you have to script them to make them do interesting things. Scripting is technical. There is really no way to get around that. One might liken it to designing a website with Javascript and server side scripting. Doing it well is not easy. And it isn't for everyone.
-matthew
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A benefit to you, perhaps, but a benefit to Linden Labs, who would like to make some $$$ off these people? A benefit to companies who might want to set up a "virtual presence" in Second Life somewhere? Maybe, but probably not.
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In this case, I think the problem is the interface is terrible and clearly designed by someone who doesn't 'get it' - personally I find it easier to create my own objects in OpenGL in my own code than using their interface to do the same thing, it really is that clunky. Even moving around is painful thanks to floaty controls and because t
Not flamebait (the software is sucky, sorry) (Score:2)
None of the 3D engines you talk about could handle the job. All of them precompute and cache things to speed up the display.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can easily have a sc
Yet more on SL... (Score:2)
Regarding "is as dynamic as it is in Second Life" it is of course worth me pointing out that most objects in SL you'd expect to be dynamic (cars, jet packs, robot suits, etc.) have little or no actual animation going on. If you are lucky you'll get some (annoying) scripted sound and a single short and simple animation (for example, a door might open and close on someone's house).
From
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Oh no! It's hard! I'm scared! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want this to sound like a blanket indictment, because some studios get this right, but a lot of the unreliability, and failure to execute on difficult tasks in the gaming industry is due to the moronic staffing decisions of many game development companies. I haven't played Second Life, so for all I know (and from the sounds of it) maybe they got it right. A fully streamed world comprised of thens of thousands of servers? Sounds like some work, but it sounds completely feasible. When you're only willing to hire people who want to work in games so badly that they're drooling all over themselves at the opportunity and thus are willing to work at well below industry average pay level, what do you think you are going to get?
There are people out there who have built massive clusters and have decades of experience solving these problems... But they usually don't work in games, because they can make five times as much in other industries. When a company comes along and runs a game studio like a real software company, people who are stuck in the more traditional 'you should thank your lucky stars you are working in games' mindset shouldn't be too surprised when that company actually succeeds at problems that were considered too hard in the past.
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I've made 3 attempts now over the years to get into it, and it just doesn't grab me at all. The UI doesn't lend itself to exploring fun things, it's more like "how the hell do I... Nope, that doesn't work."
The tutorial in Eve Online has been revamped 4 or 5 times now, and it is a great game for tthe new player now, despite the depth the game has. As of a couple of weeks ago, new players st
I tried second life (Score:4, Informative)
After playing WoW for a few months and seeing how fluid, beautiful and easy to use a virtual world can be, Second Life was a shocking kick in the nether regions. It reminded me of very early 3D games with no collision detection and collosal clipping issues.
Yes I know it's streamed and if that's the primary cause of it's issues then it shouldn't be.
Additionally, for my first hour I wandered around trying to find something to do but was profoundly ignored by my fellow "2nd lifers", presumably because I looked like a newb.
If the developers could at least sort out the shocking camera and other control issues I may consider retrying it. I spend about 10 minutes of my first hour working out how to unzoom the camera which was permanently stuck 50 yards behind my guy.
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Not to mention the furries, the sex clubs and the walking dildos. Or the assholes who setup content bombs that pop you.
Second Life is user created, but it has all the unattractive qualities
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No, seriously: walking in 2L is slow. Running is bizarre. WoW's way of handling this is so much better! Left-click: select. Right-click: use/sit/go there. Both-buttons: walk/run (it doesn't matter if you're in 1st or 3rd-person). Space: jump. Scroll button: camera distance (including entering and exiting 1st person mode). Mouse-movement: select direction (up, down, left, right) of movement/camera
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Alas, this clicking is not only idiotic, but also prone to error. If I don't click in the precise spot of my avatar that 2nd Life understands to mean the avatar as a whole, it'll think I'm clicking some piece of cloth or some appendage, with unpredictable results. I've l
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If fine control was necessary in SL, I'd agree with you, but it's just a glorified chat room. As long as you can get close enough to a chair to right-click and select Sit, does it really matter? That said, navigating with WASD and the mouse in the manner I've described is pretty much the same degree of control has you have in, say, World of Warcraft. It may not be up to FPS standards, but for pottering around it's plenty good enough.
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i've chatted with a few people, but mostly i wander around and don't make trouble - i find it somewhat hypnotic.
it is worth spending time to figure out . . .
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1. The User Interface: Yes, it's really as bad as you've heard. Here I am, an ex-IT, lifelong computer-using guy, and I couldn't figure out how to do squat.
Fix it, Linden.
2. The Graphics: The very best that 1999 has to offer.
Of course, this is probably due to number four below.
3. The "Content": User-created content? Intruiging. Pity it turns out to be mostly empty buildings, shops pushing expensive and difficult-to-use items (se
As a longtime user... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since it began it's always had a hard time keeping new users. I think the way it's setup (completely user-created content, so there's less of a "wow" factor to people who just want to consume) means that you either "get it" and stay there, or you don't and leave immediately. The 10% churn rate cited in the article soudns about right; I've introduced something like two dozen people to SL, only one (my gf) stayed on, and that's probably only because I'm such a big fan of it.
SL needs a more compelling new user experience (professionally done content, some sort of direction, quests, whatever) if they want to keep people there for more than five minutes. PRoblem is, no matter how much professional content you throw at the newbie, once the newbie experience is done, you're still thrown in the middle of the content quagmire of SL; cube houses, poorly textured sex clubs, and rigged casinos.
For someone who just wants to experience things, unless you're incredibly social, you won't last in SL. For the creative types there's more of a stick.
Generally speaking, though, if you have to ask "what's the point of this place", you dont' get it.
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Yeah... the thing is, further, that the folks who "get it" and make the content tend to not want to be bothered by real corporations coming in -- indeed, they become direct competition.
Li
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After all that time, you still have your eyesight?
I tried it for about an hour and I had a headache... and it nearly made my eyes bleed.
I have never, not since the very early days of 3d games, seen such poor graphics or poor performance.
Or is there some trick to getting decent quality out of it? If so, please tell because I'd gladly give secondlife a secondchance!
I mean, looking at the "screen shots" from secondlife that I see in magazines and on websites I wonder how on earth th
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This is because SL is created by amateur hobbyists, and WoW is produced by a 100+ member team of paid professionals.
It's like comparing the works of Da Vinci to your seven year old's crayon scribblings.
If you go to places where care, thought, and professionalism were done in SL, you can find graphics that can easily rival most MMORPGs on the market. Nakema, Millions of Us Island, Reuters Island, Numbakalla, etc. are all
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If its *capable* of decent graphics, why don't they make the start area -- everyones first impression of the game -- a showcase of what its capable of?
Given the poor performance of even that, very simple area, I dread to think what a high-end area would do to the game engine; it has a hard enough time rendering simple textures and simple models.
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The 3D performance of SL is largely due to the fact that it has user created content. This is not so much because users create lousy content, but rather due to the constant streaming you have to do. Second Life can't just cache everything forever. Objects in WoW won't change shape every few seconds, in Second Life they can and they need to be synchronized to all clients, so the servers will have to proce
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I guess that consistency really confuses people.
I tried it on a Mac G4 and on a high-end PC and the performance and appearance was *exactly* the same which was a little disconcerting for some reason.
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Are you sure they're not load-balancing behind the scenes?
Seems to me it would be trivial to balance based on the GUID of textures. E.g. every odd one from server 1, ever even one on server 2. Or any simplistic balancing method, for that matter.
My experience (Score:1)
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Please compile a list of any real life clubs you visit (if any) so that us fellow persons may avoid such eye bleeding activities you partake in.
I guess... (Score:2)
There.com (Score:1)
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Their main impetus to growth is the insistence of screening all custom content before approving it, and then taking a commission for each sale. It tends to limit growth as most people are interested in sex stuff (look at SL).
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I don't think I'll be going back to There in a hurry;
Performance of There wasn't as good as VLB. VLB has its freezes and lag and repeat animation sequences but in over a month I'd not seen anything as bad as I experienced in There in my first hour. Not even when VLB servers were being rebooted...
There is far more commercialised than VLB; I'd taken the compass and summoning for granted only to find that in There I had to pay for these... you onl
They get it wrong - as usual (Score:2)
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Of course, such draconian private contracts
I tried (Score:1)
I always thought the problem with second life... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I always thought the problem with second life.. (Score:2)
Wow, because I thought that the main 'magnet for every sick and twisted loser the trolls around on the Internet' was actually somethingawful.com, the site you link to. Hows that for ironic?
And yet another falls victim to stereotype (Score:2)