50% discount for Educational and Nonprofit Institutions IS BACK

Linden Lab has made a very important step today, they undid one of their biggest mistakes of the last years.

Educational and Nonprofit Institutions used to get private regions with a 50% discount but this was cancelled in 2010, a very bad decision.
It caused many of SL’s educational sims to pack up their bags and leave.
Making an educational sim profitable is very difficult, I should know as I run The 1920s Berlin Project.
And of course it is important that these institutions get some help.
Cutting their discount did a lot of damage to the relationship between SL and many educational institutions and I fear that many won’t return, even now the discount is back.

Regardless of its steep learning curve and all its issues, SL remains the best tool for virtual online education and it is good that LL now wants these people to come back.

LL is showing that they ARE willing to lose some revenue, give discounts, lower tier, lets hope that they will now start thinking about doing the same to regions in general.
Not give everyone a discount, but create different kinds of tier, as I wrote about here in this blog.

Educational sims are important to SL, they show the outside world that this virtual world is not just about shopping and hanky panky.

When the Oculus Rift comes to SL, using it for educational will become even more interesting.
Imagine a history class in school where all the students put on their Rift and explore a Roman city… or 1920s Berlin!

I am not sure if the educational sims will come back, they may have found other places they can use for their projects or have just given up on virtual education for now.
But SL is (still) one of a kind and the alternatives that are out there just don’t cut it.
So who knows.

Either way, it is a step in the right direction even though it undoes a step that never should have made in the first place.

You can find the official announcement here;
Updated Pricing for Educational and Nonprofit Institutions

Rod Humble talks to Gamasutra about Desura

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"rod humble", interview

One of the big games websites Gamasutra interviewed Rod Humble about Linden Lab buying Desura, some sort of digital distribution website.

And this time the website used a SL picture that is only 3 years old… I think that especially when Rod Humble does an interview, LL should flood those people with some up to date screenshots they could use.
“Hey, you want to interview me, sure, but please use up to date pictures when talking about SL, like these….”

I’ll admit that I am not that interested in this story (yet) but I do know that this is very big news and probably a good move.
Well done Linden Lab.
But, more interesting to me, Rod also mentioned Second Life.

Linden’s flagship Second Life, which despite years of getting slagged off in the press is still chugging along with 400,000 new registrations a month and a 20 percent retention rate. Not bad at all for a free title.

Now, this of course is old news, but it is nice that this website feels that perhaps the media treatment of SL the last couple of years has been a bit unfair.

The reason we don’t retain [more] people is, very simply, if they don’t find something that fits with their vision, they’re gone,” says Humble. “[For years] there was a belief that it would be big companies coming in and setting up shops, and in fact what happened was this user-generated economy of millions of people coming in and making small things. That’s a pattern that you’ve seen throughout many industries, the games business being one of them.

Rod Humble shows that he has pinpointed the reason why new people don’t stay in SL; they don’t find what they are looking for.
I also think this is one of the major problems SL has, new users need to be at least helped finding a sim they will enjoy and like, a theme they find interesting.
Once that happens, the rest will follow and they will want to figure out how it all works and accept the steep learning curve.

In facilitating that, Linden has rolled out (and continues to roll out) some pretty significant overhauls to Second Life, including to the servers. “As I’m sure you’ve heard from a lot of MMO developers, the one thing you never want to do is go in and try to refactor the server code. It’s just a nightmare. Well, we did that,” Humble chuckles anxiously. “We thought it was going to take us a year and it took us 18 months… [But] I think a lot of people will be seeing performance improvements now.”

I find this interesting as well, they planned such a massive overhaul that they assumed it would take them 1.5 years, that is impressive.
And yes, I’ve experienced some improvements already but am still waiting for the server side texture thingy to come to 1920s Berlin.
Either way, in my experience SL has changed a lot for the better in the last year.

The journalist writes;

Propping up the company’s mainstay is of chief import, obviously, and certainly a developer couldn’t be blamed for sticking to just that. The fact that Linden is instead capitalizing on Second Life‘s cashflow to expand into what could turn it into a solid rival for Valve’s Steam service is unique, risky, and potentially something to watch out for.

That is a good way of putting it, personally though I am not very interested in the LL cashflow but I guess that eventually, what is good for LL is good for SL.
I just hope that if it all goes wrong, SL does not suffer.

“We’re always on the look-out for key partners to further our strategy,” Humble says candidly. “We’re a very profitable company, we’re cash-rich, and if we can find potential partners, we will. That said, the strategy going forward is quite clear: to take all of our creative platforms, make them more and more open, and hopefully allow people to share and, if they want, sell their creations.”

Good, keep reminding the press how well LL is doing, that should keep them interested or make them interested again, after all, 10 years of pretty much running just one game and still making enough money to put bread on the table is a good story.

Rod Humble playing with the Oculus Rift

A few minutes ago Rod Humble (CEO of Linden Lab) posted this picture of himself trying the Oculus Rift in Second Life.

Notice the message on the board behind Rod… ‘Supa Sekret Acquisition here’… with an arrow and aw, what a coincidence, Rod is blocking the details!

Evil! 🙂

It is great to see Linden Lab taking the Rift so serious and work on it seems to be coming along!

Such exciting times, I can’t wait to try the Rift myself in 1920s Berlin!

Oculus Rift in Second Life goes public late summer!

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"rod humble", "second life", oculus rift

In a very interesting interview with www.allthingsd.com Rod Humble talks about the Oculus Rift.

He says amongst other things;

I’m traditionally very skeptical of peripherals or hardware, but we’re integrating Oculus Rift support, which turned out to be really cool. Surprisingly cool.

It is great to hear that Rod is very excited about the Oculus, because I am too and I truly believe that it will not only change gaming and interaction with computers for ever and for more people then just gamers, I also think it can be a ‘game changer’ for Second Life.

We already know Linden Lab has the Oculus Rift up and running and is working on its usability, thanks to the interview with Draxtor Despres a few weeks ago.

But that Rod himself is also keeping an eye on it and doing some of the ‘testing’, is fun to read, he says;

I’ve ridden on a train within Second Life with the Oculus Rift on, and it’s very cool.

But most interesting is what he says on how far Linden Lab is with working on it;

We have it up and running, and right now we’re working on usability. You need to integrate it with the Rift so you can look around and touch things. I think it’s late summer when it’ll be public.

The official commercial Oculus Rift model is not out yet of course, so only people with a developer’s kit will be able to use it but nevertheless it is very exciting that, if all goes well, people will probably be able to start using their Rifts in Second Life within a few months!

There are a few more interesting things Rod says in this interview;

It’s coming in and out. When I arrived (in 2010, coming from EA), I thought it would be a core group. But well over half of our user base has been here 18 months or less, with about 400,000 new registrations a month. With the world I’m used to, video and computer games, usually you get a core and it’s the new users who stop coming. And we’ve maintained this incredibly healthy user acquisition. It may be that we don’t have a large competitor that’s well funded. If you want a user-made virtual world, we’re kind of it.

He also mentions one of SL’s biggest problems, the fact that so few people stick around, this is something I will write about (again) in my next blog.

It’s usually about 20 percent are going to be around a month afterward. That’s a massive drop-off, but it’s still not too bad compared to other services.

You can read the full interview by clicking here.

Only negative thing I can say about this interview is that once more… they used a picture from 2007!
I wrote about that typical problem we have with the media in a blog you can read about by clicking here.
That is sloppy journalism (let’s use google images to find a copyright free picture of Second Life and use the first one we find) and I think Linden Lab should make sure that every time they get a request for an interview or some background info, that the journalists use the pictures Linden Lab provides.
One of the things people complain about is the level of graphics in Second Life, by showing them six year old screenshots, it will be hard to convince people things look a lot better these days…

Oh, one final thing, Rod needs a haircut.
But I say that about all men 😉

Update that viewer!

Linden Lab just announced that it really is time to update those viewers.

Early next week they are rolling out ‘Project Shining‘ (All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…).

I quote

“the single largest capital investment in new server hardware upgrades in the history of the company. This new hardware will give residents better performance and more reliability.”

Sounds good ey?

Project Sunshine stands up a Texture Compositing server that is separate from the Sims servers. When a Viewer needs to render an Avatar, it sends a message to the Sim, which in turn sends a message to the Texture Compositing Server. The Texture Server then performs the texture compositing and sends the results back to the Viewer.

In short; Second Life will become better.

Unless… you keep using that old viewer!

Then SL will become a LOT worse.

So time to get with the times daddy-o!

Kickstarter cancelled for Surreal Project

You may have heard of Surre.al, it’s kickstarter got a bit of attention lately but it seems to have died before it even got started.

I quote from the kickstarter page;

Guys — an important update:

Given that we didn’t get the early traction so critical to Kickstarter projects, we are canceling the project and retooling it and perhaps coming back to Kickstarter at a later point.

As we’ve said in the project description, Surre.al is a dream job for us, so we are fully committed to it, and do expect to launch by the end of 2013 — please keep an eye on us in the news.  

As you know, this will automatically make sure that your pledges are not charged — thank you SO MUCH for all of your support.

Most interesting to me was that in many ways this virtual ‘world’ would become very similar to Second Life but somehow nobody seemed to notice that.

Lets get back to the beginning.

The idea was to build this massive virtual world all around this huge cruise ship.

People would create avatars, rent a cabin at the ship and the ship would sail the virtual seas, giving people the chance  to travel to strange and unusual islands.

To anyone who knows ‘Second Life’ and who realises this huge virtual world is still around and pretty active, this sounds like a bad idea.
It is just like Second Life…. except with less options, less freedom and as it seems, no way for its users to be truly creative.
In a way it was just a 3d world where you could chat, do the virtual hanky panky (yes they mentioned that in the kickstarter and no it didn’t give it the bad PR it gave SL), and now and then play a game.

Surre.al did offer some very interesting bits that Second Life could/should also employ, it offered its users full Oculus Rift support (something SL is working on) and it would be useable on lots of portable devices.
Personally I don’t care for portable technology, I don’t even have a mobile phone, but I know that most people today do.
At this moment in time, to me being mobile, seems to suggest that the graphics will not be of an extremely high level.
That is the reason why most computer games are not (yet) available on your Ipad.
Either way, this is what Surre.al was promising, not something they already had ready.

From their Kickstarter page I quote;

“I am excited about Surreal. This is exactly how I envision virtual reality.”

Jan Goetgeluk, CEO Virtuix, maker of Omni

Has mr Goetgeluk not tried Second Life?
Or can he imagine nothing more then people stuck on a ship as virtual reality?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of sticking people on a virtual cruise ship, might be fun for a few days, maybe even weeks.
And it is a nice idea to let people then get off at islands that they like.
Maybe a good idea to start Second Life that way, let new avatars experience Virtual Reality from the safety of a ship before getting off and trying some actual sims.

I like normal boring avatars that look like people do in RL, but as far as I can see, the cruise ship experience does not offer that much freedom when it comes to changing your avatar.
I didn’t see any old people or children, no furries, animals, dragons, etc.
So again, an experience with less freedom then Second Life.

Most importantly, there was no building.
I love building, it is perhaps the biggest reason I am using Second Life.
I would have gotten bored of Surre.al within days, if not hours and would probably not be interested in 90% of all the worlds they would create for us users to explore for a bit before coming back to the ship.

As I said, I like cruise ships, I want to build one in Second Life one day, but not a boring modern one where people run about in their bathing suits by day and dance in the disco by night.
No, I’d build The S.S. Normandie, a proper Ocean Liner!
I can’t imagine myself on a modern cruise ship in RL, let alone a virtual world.

But it is interesting that this project has failed to gather enough funding and enthusiasm.

The kickstarter started on June 25th and was cancelled half an hour ago.
They were looking for $100,000 in funding and managed to get only $6,802.

Why is this even interesting?
Because it got any funding at all and generally some positive feedback and interest from the tech community.
And it shows that now the Oculus Rift is about to start the Virtual Reality Rennaisance, new  ideas for virtual worlds are popping up.
People are getting excited and motivated about its possibilities… but may have forgotten some of it could already be achieved trough Second Life, even though SL will of course need an update and keep up with the technology.

Let me for instance also mention this doomed indiegogo;
‘World of diving‘.

Yes, learn to dive with the Oculus Rift… great idea, but that too is already possible in Second Life and once SL gets the Rift to work properly, many of these ideas for games will simply be bypassed.

And looking at the funding this game is getting, either people are realising this or it is just too early to invest in such projects.

Personally I think it is a combination of both.

I do believe the Virtual Reality renaissance is coming but with only devkits available at the moment, it has not started yet.
When the first commercial VR headsets come out, things will start to go faster and faster.
Everyone who has tried the Rift (myself included) knows how big it can become.

If Second Life plays its cards right, it will be right there, ready and waiting, offering that cruise ship experience, that virtual diving and so, so much more.