Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Brian, are you making money at SL?  Or is all of your commerce just for 
the fun of it?  (I love the shop!!)
  

    
All of this is fascinating.  I barely have time in my life to keep up
with the WeLL.  How much of a time suck is SL?  I mean, I guess if I
were pulling in $5K a month, time wouldn't matter, but it seems like a
very few people in SL  actually do that.  
  

    
Cool recounting, (bwsmith)!

Far as time suck, it really varies with what you want to put into and
get out of it; I know folks who go in-world for a few hours a week to
catch a live concert, play some games, whatever, while others are in
there 20-40 hours a week or more.

"Does Second Life have to contend with griefers? Did the tech
developers of this world try to find ways to build it so that this kind
of game-playing was hard to pull off? Is it possible to develop an
online world where griefers can't engage in disruptive activities?"

Yes, yes (not always successfully), and yes.  One interesting
phenomenon is that many of the more talented griefers end up realizing
they can be fairly weird and anarchic without actually violating any
rules, and evolve into relatively accepted members of the community.
  

    
Linda, its certainly not showing a profit... Actually if you are
paying for maintenance on residential land, there is a monthly charge
for the server if you "own" land, and there is weekly rental for
commercial space, its seems to me that it is probably quite difficult
to break even, much less make money. So, for me it has to be the
entertainment value.  For the houses I've built, I like being able to
go by someplace and say, "I built that."  For the things in the shop,
I've probably given away more as gifts than I've sold. Oriental rugs
are not one of the "gotta have" items in SL. 

I suppose that there is a strategy for maximizing return...  Only
invest in land that you use for commerce, or as a land baron own to
resell or rent at a profit. Have a diversified product line of things
that are easily sold and popular.  Most of those are probably personal
items like jewelry, clothes, shoes, hair, skins, etc.

So, if one really wants to concentrate on the business aspect of the
game, there is probably a way to maximize your "winnings."  But really,
then it would just seem like another job. 

It's kind of my reaction to a comment by Richard Bartle (one of the
original creator of MUD and another author concerned with "Designing
Virtual Worlds") that he couldn't enjoy SL (or any other VW for that
matter) because every time he went into one he wasn't there to enjoy
himself. It was all work and research for his book. He was there to get
the facts, see how much lag there was, and how horrible the interface
is...  He doesn't have the time of inclination to just look around and
see what the experience is.

Personally, I like being able to waste a few hours in the evening
looking for an event to attend, randomly teleporting to locations that
sound interesting to see what other folks are doing... (Found a set of
sims last night that are owned operated, and populated by Brazilians.
All I can say is, wow. Skins, cloths and accessories and building are
all completely different to what I have seen on the "US" and European
sims.)

So, its a "costly" game, but to me a game that is indicative of what
the Internet will evolve into over time. For my "day job" I work with
people all around the country and for the last two years have been
using tools like GoToMeeting to collaborate on work. I can visit and
work with folks in California, Tennessee, Florida, and New York with
out having to leave my office. What I see in SL is the beginning of an
environment that could make that sort of interaction ubiquitous.  If
everyone you work with is online and everyone has IM and their space to
meet, interaction with the folks you work with who aren't in the same
office building could becomes as natural as if they were. SL may crash
and burn (as did Prodigy before everyone had a www. in front of their
name) but something like it or better than it will survive and I'm
trying to learning as much as I can as I wait for something like it to
be the mainstream.

(Just realized that I get too wordy and off-topic...  sorry.)
  

    
Not too wordy at all!  And very informative.
  

    
James, where do you see SL headed? Are there coming changes in tech that are
going to make a difference, hwo big an issue is scaling, might some new
competition knock it out of the box?

Tell the future for us, man.
  

    
Totally on topic, (bwsmith), thanks for riffing.  I sometimes wonder
how much of SL's flavor I've missed by never running my own in-world
business/estate, and getting it from others second hand.
  

    
"Tell the future..."

To me, it's a lot more murky in the very near future, than the
mid-to-long term future.  As others have noticed, LL founder and CEO
Philip Rosedale just announced they're actively searching for his
replacement, while he becomes a more visionary, Chairman of the Board
type figure.  CTO Cory Ondrejka left/was pushed a few months before
that.  The company's ramping up to scale the world and truly take it
mainstream, is my read on all this corporate tumult; quite possibly an
IPO in the next year.  Assuming this works, then a lot of my
predictions from the book happen sooner rather than later: worlds like
SL become the Web's next generation, human knowledge and imagination is
Wikipedia-fied in 3D, the metaverse becomes a fully operational
platform that subsumes all the other tools that have come before, so
that real artifacts can be made with 3D printers.  Etc, etc.
  

    
I'm sorry I've been out of the conversation for a while. I was busy
this weekend so I'm just catching up. I wanted to also add some thanks
to <bwsmith> for the fine description of his own Second Life
experience. Didn't seem to wordy to me.

James, I wonder if you could talk about about the raising and
re-raising of Nexus Prime, and the role of that place in the SL
universe. When I read your descriptions of the very fluid life of the
place, it's almost like tripping or being a little insane. The Be-bop
Reality you talk about isn't entirely comfortable to me, but it clearly
allowed for vast creativity to arise in people who can tolerate it.
Nexus Prime seems like a perfect example of that, with all its promise
and difficulty.
  

    
Nexus Prime is an evolving "city of the future" project that's existed
since SL's Beta period in 2003-- "evolving" because it keeps changing
according to the whims and general plans of Tyrell Group, the
individuals who created it (and continue to do so.)  I chose that as a
leading example of Bebop Reality-- which is how I describe the fluid,
freeform, jazz-in-3D nature of Second Life creativity-- because it's
existed for so long, and also because the Tyrell members have been in
SL longest.  Most of them have gone on to work for Linden Lab or a
third party metaverse developer, so Nexus is also microcosm of SL's
general history.  As you say, there's also a lot of difficulty in
making it happen, because it's dozens of people (most of whom have
never met) working on the same project, a lot from totally different
backgrounds (a female pornographer, a military police officer, a young
woman squatting in an abandoned apartment, etc. etc.) so there's bound
to be ego clashes.
  

    
Given those clashes, it's not surprising that these groups will often
form around a central personality - some strong creative person who can
help hold the group together, and maybe mediate some of the fights.

I was interested, though, that you state that this central figure is
often a woman. Why do you think that is?
  

    
Because women tend to be the central figures in Second Life.  The most
active users in terms of hours per week in-world are women in their
40s. Projects like Nexus Prime require so much communication and
empathy (lots of personal strife, etc), and I think it's fair to say
women are generally better at that than men.  A lot of the best content
creators are young guys, and there's often a besmitten quality, dudes
trying to impress the Queen Bee with their talent.  So many of the
leading women have a motherly/crone kind of quality.  A glamorous woman
in her 30s/40s who lives on a boat in real life once told me the teen
denizens of her vampire community even called her Mom.
  

    
I love that. And you talk also about how people can use their Second
Life experience to re-design their first lives as well, that they can
mirror their in-world successes back to reality. Can you tell us an
story or two of that happening?
  

    

That's a fascinating concept!

I just want to comment about the Tyrell Group.  Tyrell, as in the Tyrell 
Corporation from Bladerunner, the company that creates replicants?
  

    
Yes, it's a nod to Blade Runner.  Lot of Dick fans in SL. :)

"And you talk also about how people can use their Second Life
experience to re-design their first lives as well, that they can mirror
their in-world successes back to reality."

I call it Mirrored Flourishing, which is the Second Life expectation
(bolstered by numerous anecdotes) that productive activity in SL should
benefit a person's first life.  I mentioned the Tyrell member who was
temporarily homeless, when she was helping build Nexus Prime--
impressed by Catherine Omega's SL programming skills, people started
paying her to work in Second Life, and she began making a real living
that way.  A broader example would be people with Asperger's Syndrome,
who are very frequent in Second Life, and tend to be very popular and
social in SL.  They get a chance to show off their geek skills that
usually put people off in the real world, and the avatar-based
interaction seems to give them a layer of protection to reach out to
others in ways they wouldn't in the real world.
  

    
"Lot of Dick fans in SL"

That made me splutter coffeee on my keyboard, James! :)
  

    
Lots of fans of both Dick and dick, of course.  Like I mention, the
Lindens half-seriously considered licensing "Detachable Penis" for a
Second Life commericial.
  

    
And we can take that nice segue into the topic of sex in Second Life,
which you discuss in your book, James. I know that around the 'net
generally, among people who haven't spent much or any time in SL
themselves, there's a tendency to dismiss SL as a haven for furries and
pedophiles, as ultimately about kinky sex and nothing more. I think we
know that isn't correct, and yet sex is certainly a large part of the
SL experience. What's the best way to understand how sex fits into the
Second Life experience?
  

    
The best way to understand the *perception* of Second Life being all
about kinky sex is the Rimm Report, which WELL veterans will remember
quite well: that was an undergraduate's bogus report in the mid-90s
claiming that 30% of pictures on the Internet (which was just starting
to go mainstream) were pornographic.  Despite the patently dubious
claim, Time Magazine made it the anchor for an alarmist cover story. 
(Which WELL folk like Donna Hoffman and Mike Godwin duly shredded.)  A
similar alarmism is happening with sex and Second Life, especially as
it starts getting described as a forerunner to the Net's next
generation.  

No one knows exactly how much cybersex happens in SL, but Linden
reports that just 18% of the total landmass is designated as having
"Mature" rated content, and an academic survey reports just 14% of SL
users have virtual sex on a regular basis.  So rounding down (after
all, even if you're an active sex freak, you're probably doing a lot of
other stuff too), I think it's safe to say sexual activity is
considerably less than those numbers.  Interestingly, non-sexual
*romantic* activity is probably about as popular, if not more so among
the active community-- many PG-rated gardens and other date-friendly
locations are very popular, as are several jazz nightclubs for fancy
dress dancing.  There's an SL truism that if you want to meet an actual
woman in Second Life, go to a ballroom; if you want to have sex with
other guys cross-dressing as dominatrixes and porn stars and whatever,
go to a sex club. 

According to a top furry leader (!), the active community is about 6%
of the total.
  

    

Sex!  On the Internet!  <throwing up hands in mock horror>

The way things are laid out in imvu, you have to pay extra to go into the
more "adult" places.  Is that true in SL?

And unless you have that Access Pass, there are places you can't go and 
things you can't buy.
  

    
Sex too? Amazing.
  

    
"The way things are laid out in imvu, you have to pay extra to go into
the more 'adult' places.  Is that true in SL?"

Not generally, no, but that's up to the individual landowner.  Many of
the most popular sex clubs have free L$ giveaways to attract new
users, leading me to think the bulk of sexual activity happens among
newbies, and much less so with the established community.  I mean, who
ever heard of an orgy where the hosts actually pay people to visit?
  

    
I think a lot of people would be surprised that the number you quoted
were so small, given how wild SL's reputation is in general. People
really misunderstand the place.

I was really amused by your description of some of the sexual
mechanics in Second Life. Maybe you could explain why the sex beds all
have little softballs on them, and how that works (or doesn't, as the
case may be). I liked that the whole thing was apparently so often
light-hearted.
  

    
"why the sex beds all have little softballs"

They're called "poseballs" in SL, and they're embedded with animations
which automatically trigger your avatar, when you sit on them.  So sex
beds (or for that matter any object, a tub, a car, up against the
mini-bar) are strewn with pairs of poseballs, generally pink and blue
for Him and Her. So you and your partner have to sit on the correct
pair at exactly the right time to get a convincing sex scene going--
otherwise, one or the other is bound to be humping away at thin air. 
That largely contributes to the level of light-hearted wackiness that
seems to be a big part of the experience, more like Barbie and Ken play
doctor than some kind of intense, super-immersive sex fantasy.  Of
course, when all the animations fit together just right, it can be
intensely sexy for the participants. 
  

    

oh my... This really sounds like a remarkable environment!

It's hard to believe that two weeks have already gone by. this has been a
fascinating conversation and I'm so glad you've joined us, James and
Jennifer.

Though we've now launched an interview with a new guest, this doesn't mean
yours must stop. This topic will remain open indefinitely for further posts,
so if you're able to stick around, we'd love to have you continue. If 
you have to get going, thanks so much for being here, and good luck!