The spirit of 1776: Second Life's second revolution?
by Tateru Nino 
Oct 28th 2008 at 10:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Second Life users are already calling it Second Life's second revolution. Outside of Linden Lab's in-world Land Team offices, capacity crowds of users have been gathered through much of the day, though there's been nary a Linden Lab staffer in sight. People are cursing, newcomers are asking for protest signs, and there's angry chatter in over a dozen languages. There are a lot of Europeans here, which is not unexpected. They have to pay VAT on top of any additional costs.
There is talk about switching the signs and banners for flaming torches and pitchforks, because, if nothing else Second Life users find value in tradition. There are even discussions about picketing Linden Lab's Battery Street office in San Francisco.
All of this started yesterday at 6PM SLT (US Pacific time) when Jack Linden, head of Linden Lab's land team, announced a price-rise to void simulators (known to Linden Lab as Openspace sims). The reaction since then has been ... robust.
Void/Openspace simulators are low-capacity simulators that were once known as 'quad' simulators (because they ran four sims to the CPU rather than the usual one). Void simulators were used for coastlines, patches of ocean, rolling plains and other environments where there was a need for simulated space, but no need for construction.
Second Life pilots, sailors, sightseers and travellers used void simulators extensively. Bought in packs of four, they could add spacious regions for all these activities to private estates. That is, until March this year, when Linden Lab increased the capacity limits on those simulators, and changed the pricing model, allowing them to be purchased individually. People who valued space more than raw capacity snapped up the new offering, building out vast territories and themed communities.
If you've heard Mark Kingdon or John Zdanowski (Linden Lab's CEO and CFO respectively) talking at conferences and to the press about the boom in land area in Second Life lately, that seems to be a direct product of the Void/Openspace simulator market. The announced price-rise seems to shoot all of that PR in the foot.
Linden Lab has not apparently previously concerned itself much with changes that might cause users to sell their land or simulator space and abandon the platform. As they've said before, there is always a queue of people waiting to buy. What happens if that queue dries up, however?
The spirit of 1776
Since yesterday's announcement the Second Life blogosphere has lit up with angry posts, the titles of many of which we won't reproduce here due to crude language concerns. Many users are definitely angry.
Second Life users, and various Linden Lab staff are referring to this as 'a revolution', likening it to the original Second Life Tax Revolt in 2003, which was in a large part responsible for the formation of the modern Second Life economy as it stands today.
Between official and unoffical blog and forum responses, there have been several thousand negative reactions to the announced price rise so far. Operators of open-source Second Life alternative grids have enjoyed a surge of interest, and the open-source alternative 'opensim' (not to be confused with openspace/void simulators) has been getting more interest and more discussion among users than at any previous time.
On the Second Life public issue tracker, issue MISC-1776 is attracting comment-after-comment, and vote-after-vote protesting the price rises, at the rate of over a hundred an hour.
Rumors are already circulating that Linden Lab will capitulate rather than take a negative public relations hit over this issue, which is far from an unprecedented situation.
Linden Lab has yet to respond to any of the protests or protestors, and is not available to us for official comment.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rusty said on 11:19PM 10-28-2008
There are no winners or losers in Second Life.... Oh, there are losers.
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Reader said on 12:49AM 10-29-2008
Second Life must require a special type of MMO player...
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Sin Trenton said on 4:50AM 10-29-2008
Actually no, since it's not a computer game for a lot of people.
Though I'm quite sure there are computer game players in Second Life as well, though, since we have all kinds of people there.
Weiser_Cain said on 12:59AM 10-29-2008
I must admit I still don't get it, what has linden labs done thats so special no one's tried to make a free version?
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 2:09AM 10-29-2008
There ARE significant efforts out there to offer mostly compatible, but separate, grids based on similar reverse-engineered technology.
The main concerns with most people currently include the following:
1) sheer inertia: for all its flukes and inferiorities, Second Life provides one thing: connected communities and significant numbers of people in the world at virtually all times. There is an axiom that the power of a network is exponentially proportional to the connections and interactions that form within it. On that count SL can hold its own against some other Web 2.0 systems.
2) an actual microcurrency system. there are fractions of dollars that Paypal outright refuses to handle. L$ steps into the gap (rather awkwardly, but still usably) and allows people to charge for virtual goods and services. And the ability to charge fractions of a cent is not necessarily an impediment to creating an economy - money flows in SL are cited at about several hundred thousand US$ a day. Granted, part of that value stems from agreement by all quarters of SL that the L$ is a storage of value.
@Reader:
Second Life must require a special type of MMO player...
It does, in a sense. I had some months in EVE Online when I was more bloodthirsty and young, and I tend to find that when death is not an option and your mass driver is more a roleplay trinket than an actual instrument of force, but rather cordial (or otherwise) relations with others and the application of a flourishing intelligence, a different breed of people tends to spring out.
I would kinda finger out players of A Tale In The Desert as fitting this role more - there's no combat unless one wills it in Second Life, only crafting, conversation and politics.
There's also some booty shaking, but that's only if you actively go finding that sort of thing xD
Bob said on 6:28PM 10-29-2008
Second Life if free to all. If you would like to purchase land or L$, that's when you start to cough up USD.
Vivito Volare said on 5:07AM 10-29-2008
If Linden Labs truly cared about their customers or the quality of their product, they would not handle their public relations so poorly. Furthermore, they would fix a technical issues with technical tools, and not break trust with so much of their user base.
@Weiser_Cain, from how outraged many users are, I would assume a lot of money that would have been coming into SL will be diverted to development of any one of its seedling competitors.
For the sake of other Massively readers, to put it into broader MMO and PR terms, Linden Labs should be borrowing a page from Blizzard's Playbook. Instead, they seem to emulate Funcom, circa 2002.
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Bob said on 2:50PM 10-29-2008
FYI everyone... the company's name is "Linden Lab". Not "Linden Labs". If you're going to post, please get it right. Small things like this make your arguments less effective.
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Dedric Mauriac said on 8:30PM 10-29-2008
I would still like to see the full sim prices go back down to 195 per month. Lindens hiked the price up to 295 and never brought it down one bit after residents protested over it. Existing full sim prices were grandfathered to help with PR. However, they are not allowing any open void sims to be grandfathered with price today - i think that is perhaps the most shocking part about it.
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Eris said on 9:27AM 10-30-2008
So, today's official SL blog hints at possible compromise over the issue of OpenSpace price-hiking - as some predicted, LL's earlier announcement seemed more stratagem than statement.
I really think we have to stop explaining these incidents away as ineptitude and examine their underlying motives. They didn't issue the price-hike not knowing that people would be upset. We're being managed here, this is PR, clumsy or not...
My guess for the next big change they'll make : remove the requirement of a Premium account in order to own mainland? That will no doubt cause a bit of outcry too but makes more sense than cynical price-hikes. Maybe it'll be 'smuggled' thru as part of LL's impending "aw, thanks for criticising us, we're listening" PR-driven capitulation?
Cynical, me? :-)
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rightasrain said on 8:03AM 10-31-2008
@Eris--they look pretty dug-in now. Looks like Kingdon is playing his hand...let's see what he gonna leave the table with.
http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/linden-ceo-price-change-needed-optimal-second-life-experience
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rightasrain said on 7:56AM 11-04-2008
actually--I would go more with the Boston Tea Party which was a revolt out of frustration with tax increases without discussion/representation.
This was on December 16, 1773, from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party) --
"Many American colonists, particularly the wealthy smugglers, resented this favored treatment of a major company, which employed lobbyists and wielded great influence in Parliament. Protests resulted in both Philadelphia and New York, but it was those in Boston that made their mark in history."
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