lbsa71.net Just another WordPress weblog

In Light of Recent Events

Diva just blogged about the Linden Labs layoffs, and what the recent change of course for Second Life could mean to the Open Simulator project.

Funnily, I had just decided to blog along the same lines.

For some time, I have coined what's happening with general-purpose virtual spaces "consolidation by biting dust".

To me, the picture is quite clear. The general-purpose 3D worlds domain has not provided compelling enough content and services to reach the critical threshold needed for the technology to reach and secure mainstream adoption. For this hype cycle, that is; there will be a next one. But for this time, it's toast. And no quick-fix facebook integration or web embedding will change that.

Now it's about digging in and waiting for the next wave of technology convergence.

Allow me to elaborate: Technologies come and go, wax and wane. All technologies develop in 'clusters' together with other technologies - and more often than not, the maturity of these supporting technologies are more or less out of synch.

One example: internet (as in ARPANET) has been around since forever. Hypermedia too. The first version of html and the http protocol was defined in 1990.

But what else would be needed? An communications protocol stack simple enough to implement that the network hardware was affordable for consumers. Cheap enough bandwith to enough companies and households. Enough potential viewers (PC's) installed to motivate spending efforts on creating content and integrating services to the media. Enough flatbed scanners around to facilitate transfer of legacy 2D content and production of new digital content using old analogue sources. A dominating Operating System paradigm that provided a 2D GUI, and affordable (free) text and graphics manipulation programs available.

And of course, the promise to do away with costly and time-consuming transportation of tons and tons of paper with ink on it.

I would argue that the timing for the web was right - the supporting technology cluster was there - and the technology rode the hype cycle and by the end there was compelling content and services. Had any number of the supporting technologies been in a lesser state of maturity, we would probably not have seen the web as it is today - but my point is: eventually, it would have been inevitable.

Enter Second Life. General-purpose 3D. Again. Now with a social media flavour. User Generated Content. Hell, it was the Matrix, or Neal Stephensons Metaverse. Second Life was supposed to be the torch bearer in this brave new world - attracting lots of bright people with lots of good ideas.

The genius central idea of Second Life, the thing that would make it thrive, is also the thing that will lead to its commercial downfall: there is no plot.

If you were there when the web started, you heard the same question over and over "but what's the POINT?" - and the answer always was "that's the brilliant thing about it, it can be anything to anyone."

The problem is, you can't run a company around that. At least not with mainstream customers. A company will always want to force the customers in one direction or the other, to make them make each others pay more. Stifle innovation, if innovation would lead the customer astray.

Case in point - fast forward to 2006 when I joined Second Life; was enamoured, created interactive 3D content for the first time, because it was SO EASY, like coding html in notepad and get stuff to <blink>. I was awesome.

But after doing my first big Second Life project for my then employer - a big web community site that wanted to mash their web content with this new and exciting media - I come to realize that Second Life would never cut it. There was just too few integration points. The experience was not brandable. We were in a co-opetition deadlock with SL, its API and its TOS. We had user integrity and security issues. We were supposed to ship our customers off to Second Life and loose precious screen time. It was a no-win situation.

It was at this time, when my then employer was starting to pull out of Second Life that I met Darren in #libsl, him saying "I have this rough proof of concept for a Second Life server made in C#"

This was the answer to the problems I saw with SL, why SL would never be anything but an AOL in a world that was ready for the web.

But it was more than that. We quickly realized that what we would have to do, was not to build an SL clone, but rather, wait for the compelling content and services that promised to come, and let those dictate the protocols and implementations that would be needed. Or put it in another way; we all saw that Second Life would fail to deliver the 3D web - but we had no clear idea of what the 3D web would actually look like, or why anybody would want to use it, so we set out to build a framework for those who might come up with the right ideas so that they could proof of concept and implement their services with less effort.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. I can't say that this approach has paid off. Most efforts has been around cloning Second Life, the content and services that one could find there, but within own organizational boundaries. Which is okay, since that was one of my original pains with Second Life.

But; here's the kicker: it will come. The 3D web will come. Bandwith will rise, there is a number of technologies emerging that will simplify and lower cost for layman 3D media production and there will be services that leverage the richer environment that is 3D to the point where we think, again, "how is it possible that we ever used to enjoy this thing not in 3D?"

And at that point, there will be a need for a configurable and robust platform to deliver rich, shared and highly dynamic 3D scenes in an optimized and user-friendly manner. Probably more like an embedded interactive continuous video stream than like an embedded casual flash game.

That platform will not be Second Life. But it might be Open Simulator. This depends on where the OpenSim community decide to take the platform. It also depends on the service developers, the innovators that has left Second Life, or are currently pulling their hairs over how the platform is step by step bereaving them of the degrees of freedom that is necessary for their success.

Will we meet on the other side of the next wave?

/Stefan

Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Open Simulator. I also had a company trying to capitalize on Second Life/OpenSim that went belly up. Thus, I'm equipped with kick-ass 20-20 hindsight.

Update: Diva did an excellent follow-up blog that's a must-read.

Update: Rob Knop wrote a great blog that fills in a bit more on why the LL change of direction is a change of direction away from the 3D web.