4 ms·

The tech has been copied and improved on multiple times. But it's the community what makes it interesting.

Animats 3y ago
Yes. That the society works, and has worked for two decades, is fascinating. A few things help with stability. There's a fully open source clone, Open Simulator, and sizable grids which use it. The number of users is not huge, but it's large enough to offer an alternative. This keeps Linden Lab management from getting too uppity. Landowners have considerable power over what people can do on their land, but no power outside it. This distributes authority. It removes the need for the armies of minimum-wage goons armed with ban hammers that Facebook and Roblox employ. Second Life has a "governance" department. It's tiny and rarely seen. Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. The annoyance radius of a jerk is about 100 meters, in a world the size of Los Angeles. Somewhere in Second Life, a few people are probably being jerks right now. They're mostly being ignored and will probably give up. There's no way to spam to the whole world. Nor is there any way to advertise to the whole world. This kind of stability is rare online.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Yes, I think the grid model and charging for land was a very good choice for SL in hindsight. Charging for virtual land sounds stupid to a lot of people, but the tradeoff is that everyone has neighbors. As you do something on your chunk of land random passers by see stuff happening, you start talking to nearby people, and a community forms. Over time it makes for organic development. High Fidelity and the like are much trickier socially -- you're always either on your own turf with barely anybody choosing to visit your place specifically out of a big list, or on somebody else's domain. Visiting places can feel less like wandering around and more like randomly teleporting into somebody's house. One thing High Fidelity seemed to be considering is domain nesting -- something like you go into a building and the inside is another server. This might be a good enough hybrid of both models. You can't have an infinite mainland, but you can have hub worlds of sorts. It could be interesting to try.

Yes. That the society works, and has worked for two decades, is fascinating. A few things help with stability. There's a fully open source clone, Open Simulator, and sizable grids which use it. The number of users is not huge, but it's large enough to offer an alternative. This keeps Linden Lab management from getting too uppity. Landowners have considerable power over what people can do on their land, but no power outside it. This distributes authority. It removes the need for the armies of minimum-wage goons armed with ban hammers that Facebook and Roblox employ. Second Life has a "governance" department. It's tiny and rarely seen. Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. The annoyance radius of a jerk is about 100 meters, in a world the size of Los Angeles. Somewhere in Second Life, a few people are probably being jerks right now. They're mostly being ignored and will probably give up. There's no way to spam to the whole world. Nor is there any way to advertise to the whole world. This kind of stability is rare online.

dale_glass 3y ago
Yes, I think the grid model and charging for land was a very good choice for SL in hindsight. Charging for virtual land sounds stupid to a lot of people, but the tradeoff is that everyone has neighbors. As you do something on your chunk of land random passers by see stuff happening, you start talking to nearby people, and a community forms. Over time it makes for organic development. High Fidelity and the like are much trickier socially -- you're always either on your own turf with barely anybody choosing to visit your place specifically out of a big list, or on somebody else's domain. Visiting places can feel less like wandering around and more like randomly teleporting into somebody's house. One thing High Fidelity seemed to be considering is domain nesting -- something like you go into a building and the inside is another server. This might be a good enough hybrid of both models. You can't have an infinite mainland, but you can have hub worlds of sorts. It could be interesting to try.