on AOL and San Diego

I always wanted to be a musician! Rai on baby!
My star at AOL Pointe.

I actually thinks San Diego is a really great place. The weather is always nice, good food especially mexican. It never seems to rain down there so all the cars look new and shiney. Great place to buy a used car. They have all kinds of old muscle cars for sale. The coast is fantastic as well dotted with gleaming white sailboats flaunting multi-colored sails. Lots of big, beautiful homes, golf courses etc. All the local people seem healthy and relaxed--ok some of them are medicated but they still look good.

But why turn SL into San Diego?

Seems to me (and what do I really know, so take this as it is) that in the brave new virtual world people seek the sunny saftey of San Diego because they are disoriented or scared. The new AOL area is perhaps a recent example of a safe place to explore SL. It is a very nice build, but not more adventorous than an average seaside amusement park.

But I think it is a bad trade-off to recreate the happy, main street USA stuff in SL. Although famillar, it misses the point of what SL can be and that is/should be more challenging. Certainly the vampires I met at AOL Pointe seemed to be interesting than the bland offerings at the AOL amphitheatre.

I think also that the big Brands are having a hard time figuring out what to do in SL. The AOL brand is a bit lost even on the internet, so figuring out the right message in SL is pretty tough. How can a big corporate do much more than serve up San Diego without taking the kinds of risks that they just can't take? Unfortunately these corporates are the ones who have the budgets to pay the Sheep, MOUs, RRRs. Is it really that only the residents can take the chances and push the limits.


San Diego or TJ? Usually an easy choice!

Motorati tries to open stuff up a little. They have the blah blah Pontiac dealership, but also a little ghetto for a game to drive-over zombies. They are letting people get involved with some direction on the area and maybe that is because Pontiac is only a sponsor and not the owner. They can tap the creative energy, but not get all dirty. Still seems a little compromised.

Tijuana is still more fun that San Diego!

Infinity and Beyond

Interesting post and dialogue on SL scaling issues:

http://www.3pointd.com/20070217/linden-lab-approaches-a-crossroads/

I even tossed in a few points on this discussion.

I don't think it is all going to come to a smashing halt. However, it is getting increasing difficult to manage and run the overall grid. The larger issue for me still is how to get over 100,000 concurrent users. There is a trade-off between openness, user customization and performance that needs to be addressed and outlined to SL community. Seems to me only way to deal with this is to partition the grid. Some parts will be free and service more unstable and then others will be more stable, robust and more expensive.

It will be more complex to move between grids, but this is also interesting to create cross-platform avatars and objects. So if SL is too slow, go to Wii or somewhere else!

SL Demographic Data

Recent data from LL and comments from Reuters. More French men in SL! Ohlala!

Europe Takes Lead in SL Growth

Makes sense to see growth in areas with combo of broadband access, fast pcs and disposable income. Of course most of SL is in English with increasing french,german areas. Will be interesting to see when asian languages come on.

Good to also see growth in Men as this is probably a signal that SL is as interesting as the MMORGs on some level.

Toyota Scion SL version

 CNN piece on Toyota Scion in SL

Toyota is selling SL versions of Scion for $1 and targetting 4,500 sales per month. It is a pretty boxey little ride even in SL! Not anywhere near as sexy as the Dominus Shadow! Dispensed out of a sort of gum machine is most exciting thing about it! Main feature seems to be user customization by allowing users to change textures on car. Intersting to  note that even at $50k per year in revenue on virtual cars, Toyota isn't making money on this area. 
So must have cost them a lot more!

Also interesting is the Motorati area build by Millions of Us and sponsored by Pontiac. Simillar ideas about letting users pimp-out cars. They are also renting out parcels for other car makers as well as more general lifestyle builds including nightclubs and games -- Drift of Die is where you run over zombies in Hummers!

We Are Not Alone...

 
Sometimes the grid seems like a really empty space. All kinds of empty malls and disco lights without dancers, makes me feel like I stepped into the beginning of a horror film. Like I'm looking for Romero's zombies to pop up of some corner or like a post-nuclear attack film where all the people are just missing.  And then when you stumble across people they are all campers...and not really there anyway.

But these are early days in the Metaverse and we are the explorers as well as the settlers.  

Found some interesting stuff about the Metaverse...seems a lot of people are really thinking about where all this is headed:

http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/inputs.html

The other side is that the grid is also kinda peaceful without all the people. A quiet chance to look at some cool stuff and think about how creative people can be sometimes.

SL Land of the Undead

SL Land of the Undead
 

During the day here in London, SL sometimes seems like the land of the undead. The campers stand slumped often staring blankly at Camping boards or casino machines. I guess it is like watching tv but getting paid--although not a whole lot really 6 Lindens/hour?

I think problem here is that no one wants to be alone in SL. As Sims are often empty, the promise of being with other people is luring. But to find they are all zombies sponsored by the sim owner to trap more people to their empty area is irritating. 

SL Cars > The Shadow Knows

Almost everyone I asked said the best car in SL is the Dominus Shadow. So of course I bought one! It is a fine thing and good fun to slam around the sims (the way I drive). Why do you need to drive a car in SL is a whole other issue! But Need is so RL.

I had a look around SL for other cars and in general seems that the Shadow has set the level all other try to reach.

Key Features for SL Cars:

* Brand
Lot of makers like to rip-off the muscle cars, mustangs, vettes, dodges etc. Some older cars also around. Not sure why anyone would want a Toyota--but you can buy one.

* Looks
Cars bodies can be very reflective and also have great art on them. It is also more interesting to see the entire car including engine, undercarriage, dash.  Being able to easily configure colors, rims and convertible also key.  In general seems like a good challenge to keep the prim count down to less than 35 total.

* Driving
After all it is a car and you will want to take it out for a spin. However at 200 mph the sim does go by pretty quickly. Inevitable I seemed to be moving faster than SL was providing something to drive on. But doing doughnuts at highspeed around the middle of a busy sim is still ok! Cars should have some gears and related performance. The Shadow can drive up a vertical wall as well.  Main issue is in cross sims. Shadow has a special feature to facilitate this.

* Effects
What fun would it be to drive in SL and not leave a dusty wake behind your car! Also need some lights, exhaust flames and hover air cushion.

* Transformations
Car needs to be able to turn into a hover car easily. That seems to be enough really. But other types of vehicles seem to have more interest in turning amphibious or into planes etc.




* Other Features
Nice animations and ability to let passengers do stuff are big styling points.

The prices on cars seems to range from Linden 1000 all the way to 5000. It terms of feature set the Shadow at 2398 is solid value, but it's not a corvette! or a Toyota...

Where to drive such fine cars? Best place I found so far is Silver Motorsports. They have a track and drag strip as well as area to look at some of the cars. They just put up a website to keep score of races. But you can also drive anywhere in SL where you can find some room!

The Magic 100,000

 The growth in new Registrations is amazing.

Apparantely there was a piece on SL on CNN which inspired either first time or another time registrations. The concurrency rates however, in my anecdotal observations have not jumped so much yet. Seems like some recent grid flakiness has keep people off the grid over weekend.

So the scaling of SL issue is still big. But really aside from managing the Registration flow, which in general seems to lose about 85% of all people, the main event for 2007 seems to be when/if SL can hit 100,000 concurrent users.

My random analysis of 2007 based upon current headings and steam of 15% monthly growth rate in Registrations suggest that the magic 100,000 will hit in August/September time.  But will SL be able to get there? Or will it struggle at 50,000?

In general it seems like 2 things must happen 1) no more free accounts 2) segmentation of grid, ie 4 grids each at 25,000 should already work.  So if you jump between grid areas it would be a more involved teleporting somehow. You may have to pack a travel bag of your inventory!

I think paying a little more in general should provide better user experience for more interested people, but will that change the wierdness of it all too much!