The reality however, for SL, it seems, is that it still needs to remain a viable business, which increasingly means strategizing its position in a marketplace in which there are increasing opportunities of interest to the creative class, looking for partnerships, and of course making sure that operations, marketing and community relations are well managed.

Hopefully Phillip’s vision isn’t leaving just because he’s moving to a different office, and that this year Burning Life is a success rather than a chaotic community relations nightmare plagued by lag and griefers….which is my vision of how a poor transition could end up.

How nice if someone who knows nothing about other 3D programs makes “educated” guesses ….

http://brownblog.info/

However, I have a slight suspicion that a lot of people give up not because they don’t have the patience to ascend the learning curve – it is surely hardly more difficult than any gaming environment – but because a lot of things are broken when they do.

There is certainly a resident perception in some quarters that LL is more interested in adding new features (presumably to attract additional visitors) than making existing broken ones work, and overall reliability is not as good as it should be.

While I have no doubt that front-end improvements leading to a levelling of the learning curve might well attract more visitors (however we existing residents might regard that), to keep them, things need to work when they get there. And work reliably.

On balance, those of us who are active residents stay in-world because SL is far and away the best metaverse out there, despite its faults. That doesn’t mean to say that taking out the faults would not be worthwhile.