i read about Help People Island closing its sim on Daniel Voyager’s blog and must say it saddens me
those efforts are precisely the ones that should be able to somehow have some Linden Lab support. i don’t know how you would adminster that sort of thing (maybe like the old ed discounts) but certainly sims like Help People Island were beneficial to LL. from my understanding, the Ivory Tower of Prims went under years ago but LL left it up and running. maybe it has more to do with obvious big traffic draws but surely LL could foster activities that help n00bs (but LL also closed the Mentor Group a few years ago of which i proudly was one – how screwy is that to shut it down? here i was paying LL big $$$ for my sims PLUS donating a few hours a month to n00bs)
well, if the good people at Help People Island still have a desire to help people new to virtual worlds, maybe we’ll see them with an OpenSim grid. the same wonderful thnigs that can be done in Second Life can be done with OpenSim. in fact, more of those good things can be done since it can cost a whole lot less and give a lot more freedom
Second Life grew explosively in 2005, ’06, and ’07 due to massive media frenzy and a lot of good endeavors came from it (like Help People Island)
now OpenSim grows slowly and steadily and sees some great endeavors being pursued =)
A shame when welcome areas are so vital for new people to get acquainted with VW’s. LL made a big fuss about overhauling their welcome areas for noobs, and again it always comes across as just words rather than actions…which is a disappointing. It’s great to read than opensim is developing more and more thanks to non interference from some, but hard work from people like Justin CC, and bloggers like yourself who continually promote the excitement of the platform and are a centrepoint for so many people who follow your interesting postings.
Kaase Kingfisher
18 Sep 11 at 3:55 pm
Warren Haskin, the man behind Help People Island, has been helpful with advice for my company in the past, and he’s done a fantastic job helping people in Second Life. I routinely recommend his island as a starting point for people I know who are new to virtual worlds.
He didn’t tell me why he was closing down the island — just that it was a board decision.
My guess would be that, at the end of the day, it cost money to do it. Not just for the land, but also for staff salaries to manage the whole thing.
In effect, his company was donating money to another for-profit organization.
It is easy to make a case for a corporate donation to a non-profit — you get the tax-write-off, the PR good will, the employee morale boost, etc… It’s hard to make a case for donating for another for-profit company.
And Help People Island isn’t alone. There are a lot of organizations and individuals offering services, products and renting land in Second Life at a loss. I’d guess that the majority of creators making goods for sale in Second Life aren’t getting much more than minimum wage for their time — if even that. But they help make Second Life a place with a large variety of content. Creators who produce amazing 3D works of art, machinima, or themed destinations. Organizations who hold classes. Clubs and other venues. Each one that isn’t making real income from their efforts, are, in effect, helping subsidize Second Life’s operations.
Linden Lab should be bending over backwards to make them happy. Each time a popular destination closes, I hope that Linden Lab sees it as wake-up call.
I don’t know if OpenSim has grown enough to survive on its own yet. Second Life provides a mass of users who already know the interface. It has a mountain of useful content — training videos, wikis, script libraries, free building classes, and much more — all of easily translatable to OpenSim. Second Life is currently the best starting point there is from which to explore the metaverse, garden walls and all. If it disappears, I don’t know if OpenSim will survive, and we might have to wait another five or ten years for a new virtual platform to come along. And, for those of us who believe in the vision of a 3D immersive metaverse, that would be a crying shame.
Maria Korolov
18 Sep 11 at 4:09 pm
Sad story, Help Island was a place with a unique good natured spirit…
DD Ra
18 Sep 11 at 5:15 pm
Internet Addiction
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/Psychol/Addict/
Eurominuteman
18 Sep 11 at 7:00 pm
Industry F A C T S about Real McCoy Gamers
http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp
Virtual Worlds needs to get on this bandwagon, and not lean on the fruitless virtual world business model P R O M I S E S of groupthinkers and illusionists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
Eurominuteman
18 Sep 11 at 7:16 pm
Is it any wonder that Linden Labs keeps very few of the 10,000 signups they claim to get every day when you read how poorly they treat those who have supported them for so long?
I guess crocodiles don’t think of the sustainability of their food supply!
Gaga
18 Sep 11 at 9:22 pm
Remedy Immersive World Newbie Help Desk
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=135151653044
Kitely Opensim
http://www.kitely.com/virtualworld/James-OReilly/Immersive-World-Newbie-Help-Desk
Eurominuteman
19 Sep 11 at 1:28 am
it has been difficult to make vworlds work. i have been looking at vworld for over 20 years, and only two have survived — everquest and WoW. none of the social vworld survived except second life and online sim.
i was the last one in 2007 to get to second life and i said “wow”. but then sl went sour. but opensim was the hope. unfortunately, it is becoming fragment with all the independent companies. even for clients, the sl model is the sole surviver except for realXend. there is no opensim client yet or better a framework that you can have addons.
second life is on the way out. and except for opensim, there is no one that can make vworlds work and certainly not open source.
something has to change. why can facebook have 500 million users and vworld have about 0? because in vworlds you have to do something.
bristle
19 Sep 11 at 12:24 pm
thanks Kaase for the nice words and very true about LL spending time redoing Orientation Island and Help Islands (i thought the old Orientation Islands were better than the latest ones)
good analysis Maria and a point that bristle brings to mind – will OpenSim eventually be mainly used as a media tool like Photoshop, Blender, and Flash? a tool to make virtual worlds for specific but niche purposes? like educational use
nice crocodile analogy Gaga!
Ener Hax
19 Sep 11 at 12:32 pm
An ounce of MEANS is not equal to an ounce of ENDS. It’s fruitless to avoid looking at how this equation unfolds.
So focus on Return-on-Investment ROI is needed.
Inputting 1 dollar and outputting 10 dollars is a message that attracts the mass market.
Eurominuteman
19 Sep 11 at 9:42 pm
Facebook and Twitter had an identifying role in the democratic Arab revolution this Spring. How much did 3D virtual worlds tangibly role itself and contribute to this change?
If so, no one talked about it… Ford I used to say, if you want to sell a dollar for 50 cents, you need to tell someone about it.
Eurominuteman
19 Sep 11 at 10:03 pm
Why do you see a “Recommend” button from Facebook and Twitter everywhere now, and none from 3D virtual worlds?
Ener has a battery choice of such buttons here :-)
Eurominuteman
19 Sep 11 at 10:09 pm
What alternate solution can Kitely provide if a Second Life region is shut down?
http://getsatisfaction.com/kitely/topics/what_alternate_solution_can_kitely_provide_if_a_second_life_region_is_shut_down
Eurominuteman
20 Sep 11 at 2:13 am
Case Study 2:
Cypris Chat Break-Even Analysis for #SL vrs #Kitely vrs #Gaming
http://ow.ly/6ziY5
Eurominuteman
21 Sep 11 at 2:37 am