Users Creating Content Implies a Need for Power
Second Life is a unique virtual world environment because of the ease and possibility that the common user has to create his or her own objects and environment. For a platform like SL to focus on making this the primary goal leads to a fairly simple idea of features leading to creativity. The means to these features, and the protection of our our creative works resides from the same source - raw, unadulterated power!
Okay, so, minus the raw and unadulterated parts. (Who ever heard of "adulterated power" though, seriously?)
Government: Communication Outlet, But Not Effective at More
When someone hears the word "power", government is usually the first thing that person imagines. It's hardly the only thing, though, and in SL, it's far from being sufficient at achieving developer goals. There have been a multitude of attempts at governing bodies in SL, and each with a small range of success and creative ability generated.
Let's examine a few categories of approaches at government in SL.
Groups
Groups are the most basic form of government in SL, with simple voting and powers over land and objects given to officers. It allows the sharing of resources and control, and have been an ideal setup for small projects. They are generally only successful when a strong leadership is maintained, and clear roles defined. They are completely lack the features needed to be sufficient for complex forms of government, such as democracy.
Committees
On occasion, a few residents will get really infuriated with Linden Lab and form some Justice Democracy League entity. These groups gather to talk out issues, and wind up the loosest form of governance in SL, because they inevitably distrust government in SL - even though they are one form. They are ideal for discussing issues and sharing ideas. Since they lack organization, they are completely inadequate for getting anything done.
The trick of one of these groups is to get some power-users involved, and then the meetings serve as a venue to persuade the power-users to do the bidding of the group. Usually, power-users already realize that they have the power, so they are often not persuaded away from their original sentiments. Should like-minded power-users come together, they can coordinate their efforts, and that's about the best result a Committee-type group could hope to accomplish.
Governments, with a capital "G"
There are attempts at making governing bodies that span all of SL; folks have made stabs at creating legislative bodies, dispute resolving systems, and representative bodies. These all have failed and will continue to fail. The main problem is that the very nature of SL is that of doing what you want - and that would include not being involved with any government, or be subjected to their rules. The secondary problem is that we're talking a worldwide community, and there's simply too many opposing viewpoints and agendas to reconcile.
In Summary ...
So, in conclusion for governments, I don't foresee any sort of governing body really empower residents of SL, and such I see little creative value in pursuing them other than from a simple communications channel. I don't want to understate the effectiveness of this, though; spreading the word about issues and getting people to voice their opinion to LL is a very power thing.
Residents Banding Together to Ensure Legal Protection
One of the quickest ways to lose creative ability is because of angry people with lawyers. SL is still flying under the radar, but lawsuits like Marvel's attack on City of Heroes makes gives me pause to wonder when SL will be in some corporate crosshair. Issues such as copyright, trademark, user-disputes, even large scale griefing could become nightmares for using both on the giving and receiving end of lawsuits.
If the idea of SL is to enable individuals to create, explore, interact, and generally merely exist in SL without being hassled, what's the biggest hassle out there? How about being tied in court for years on an issue?
Richard Bartle, MUD co-inventor, brought up the issue of developers banding together recently in Terra Nova. It got me thinking again, that a big way for SL developers to secure power would be to protect ourselves from the constant threat of creative disenfranchisement.
Does the average SL user have the ability to fight off a big corporation? No.
Does the average SL user have the ability to stop copyright violation in sl? Yes, through LL's intervention, but this is an unscalable solution.
Does the average SL user have the ability to collect money for damages done in a copyright theft of their product, or griefing interference of their business? Absolutely not.
Rewind to: State of Play III, "Law In Virtual Worlds" panel. You can check out the video here. At the end, you can watch me stand up and ask the panel if they could envision some way to provide scalable, affordable legal representation to the average SL user. I got shrugs and "that's tough" consolidations.
I believe there's a mentality out there, even in fellow residents, that only big game companies should be allowed to make money. Maybe that's why the overwhelming majority of news articles on SL focus on "Wow, OMGzors! Some individual is making money!" It's such a big deal to people that individual developers can turn a profit, because the game industry has become such a Hollywood-like industry.
If anything acts as a barrier between entrepreneurs and success, it's doubt in one's own ability. Many people think "Oh, I can't compete" and give up. When the mentality is that independent content creators really shouldn't / can't make money, it just acts as a repressing agent.
We have to change this mentality that only big game companies are allowed to make money. It's holding us back, both directly, in the financial sense, and on a larger scale, when we talk about the power we could wield with the wallet.
Money is Power, Too
Perhaps everyone's favorite form of power is the almighty (Linden) dollar. When LL thinks about changes to their platform, naturally they need to think about how it will affect their paying residents - their investors. It doesn't take long to figure out that LL listens to someone like Anshe Chung because she is the equivalent of a major investor in the SL world. Having holdings, and making money makes you a business partner with LL, whether you realize it or not.
The second aspect to making money in SL is that by running an established business, you stand out as a person worth consulting. Anyone who can make a living in SL is clearly determined, talented, and self-motivated, with a great deal of belief in self. Since LL is pioneering SL, they are making things up as they go along. In the same sense, so is the successful business owner in SL. I get a strong sense that LL looks at these people as a model of what things are possible in SL.
Last weekend I wound up at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival. I wound up sharing a cab with Pathfinder, Ryan, and Eric Linden on our trip from the Museum of the Moving Image to our dinner locale (Big Nick's, in Manhattan). A major topic brought up was whether Linden Lab could ever sponsor start-up businesses in Second Life. It came up that LL had dabbled in the idea of how to do this.
Perhaps it's time we stand together and ask that they dabble a bit harder. :)
Raising Questions
Rather than a formal conclusion, I'll pose some questions that I hope you can consider and respond here or elsewhere.
- How can independent developers form an organization to offer legal services to members at affordable costs?
- How should indie developers band together to create a union or association for communication, training, and negotiation purposes? (Or is IGDA sufficient?)
- How can we, as developers, set our goals to bring in more spending into SL? (More spending = more of us that can make a living off of SL.)
- What objectives and features of SL are truly critical to our success, as indie developers?
- How can we better empower not only ourselves, but casual players to back our goals?
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2 comments:
Hmm, some thoughts on your article, Hiro...
1) You seem to list three types of "government" and invariably conclude that none are workable, so, what naturally follows is that no form of government is viable. Well, actually, Second Life has two types of successful "government forms", and a third one that might be successful. One of it is the "benevolent dictatorship" form, where one individual (or a tiny group with strong leaders) successfully invests in planned communites, sets the rules, builds the community, keeps the peace, and charges for it. People like Anshe or Prokofy are long-term "one-person governments" that have been around for quite a long while and deal successfully with the issues you describe. They are not really "governments" in the usual sense, but rather "corporations" who will do everything to please their customers, the tenants.
The other type are things like Neualtenburg — slow, bureaucratic, and not always democratic, but where there are no "clear leaders", just a group of self-governed residents, trusting the local government to do what is needed to "keep the peace", moderate disputes, and so on, and fully knowing that each and every citizen may very well be the next member in government. Neualtenburg has successfully used that model for 15 months or so and is still growing — slowly, but growing.
What the next step will be is "federation". Not a "world government" — we have too many anarchists for that — but planned communities, either "corporate" or "democratic", making alliances among themselves. Imagine that a griefer is banned from Ansheland; Anshe has an agreement with, say, Prokofy and Neualtenburg, and every one banned on her land would be banned from their land as well. While at this very moment this sounds utopic — just because all these projects are made of people, and people have their own views, ideas and personal motivations — in the long run, I think that this is what will slowly happen: planned communities banding together against the anarchy. What you neglected to understand is that the "pressure groups" that emerge right now are just disgruntled people that wish to emit their opinions and, in a sense, make others adopt their opinions because they "feel" they're right and the rest is wrong. Sometimes you can gather quite large groups that way; more often than not, people understand about the "real intentions" behind that, and the group disbands.
On the other hand, planning communities joining forces is natural. They have a common interest: making their residents/tenants/citizens happy. If they can agree on a common ground, they will do so. Imagine a Better Business Bureau, not run by the common consumers or the talented artists, but by the big mall owners. This "Chamber of Commerce" will want to protect their interests — they will ban people from malls if these people are just griefing, because the shop owners will demand so. It makes only sense that the mall owners "cartelize" together and define a common ground, a "community standard" for shop owners. This "community standard" may very well be at odds to what the common consumer or artist would like to have.
You may have noticed that all planned communities wish to have a distinctive look, an aesthetically pleasing view, and will fight hard for that to happen — even if they are at odds at each other. It's not uncommon to see Cory Edo or Barnesworth Anubis doing buildings for "competing" planned communities. It's only natural that this happens — all planned communities wish order and good-looking buildings, because that's what is demanded by their residents. They compete to give their customers the best, simply because if they don't do that, their customers will flee and go elsewhere to live. So it's natural that there are (as yet unwritten) rules for urban planning on all planned communities, like having zoned regions, limits on height of buildings, on active scripts, and so on.
There is no need for a "committee" to decide all this. The planned communities are more than enough to deal with that.
As SL grows, and the anarchy in the mainland remains, the number of planned communities will also grow. Unlike the anarchists, the planned communities have the intention of getting things organised. Right now, they view each other as business competitors, and it's not unusual for them to fight each other aggressively. However, they also recognize that the other planned communities have exactly the same interests and expectations: if they don't care about their customers, those will go away, and you'll lose money. It's just a question of time to have all planned communities fighting the Common Enemy: anarchism in the mainland.
At the end of the day, SL will be split in two halves — the ones that will abide to order and peace, and the ones that won't. The cool thing is that you have the option of choosing where to live. The two cannot co-exist side-by-side, but they can co-exist inside the same virtual world. There is no need for an overall "world government"; a federation will emerge naturally from the landscape. Give it two or three more years and you'll see :)
Notice that the power is currently on the land owners, not on content creators. That's only natural — it's historical :)
2) I'm not sure if I understood your point about legal protection. If you, as an anonymous user, create a Web site with amazing content, and some Big Corp simply steals your idea and starts selling the very same service under their brand name, what can you do? Not much, right? Competing with Big Corps is exactly the same, in the Web or using Second Life.
3) I also didn't understand the bit about "We have to change this mentality that only big game companies are allowed to make money." Which game companies? And are you talking about L$ or US$? If my group converted all the money they make for using SL as a platform into L$, I'd probably make as much as, say, Chip Midnight. Some people like Satchmo Prototype, who probably is not even mentioned on any "list", makes enough money from services provided using SL, that is able to afford running a three-person company that concentrates on doing projects using Second Life. So the issue here is a bit complex, we're crossing the SL/RL barrier too easily, and the issues get a bit blurred.
4) Your last item seems targeted to developers that see "SL as a Game Developing Platform". It looks like you definitely should join the IGDA and register your work with them. It's a far better option than to create a new association just for a handful of people in SL — perhaps you should form a local chapter of the IGDA inside SL. That would be an excellent idea, and very well worth the effort. I see few articles related to Second Life at the IGDA web site — perhaps this would be the right opportunity to explore a formal relationship with them? I'm all in favour of such an idea, and I think that Linden Lab, as usual, would very likely sponsor a meeting with them, or even become a partner (or have someone volunteer time) of IGDA.
5) One question you asked was: "How can we, as developers, set our goals to bring in more spending into SL?" Do you mean external funding or boosting the internal economy? External funding is, at this stage, much easier — there are literally a few thousand residents actively pursuing their RL jobs using SL as a platform. As an example, take a look at the Scandinavians in SL — almost all are in SL because they got an art fund to explore artistic creativity inside SL. That is, of course, not the only area that gets external funding — so many US universities, colleges, and technical schools are already using SL, as well as health care institutes all over the world, that there definitely is critical mass for external funding.
Boosting the internal economy is another, different question. From what I can gather from the statistics, the average user spends almost the same thing every week. By bringing in more people, content producers will be able to sell more. That is the current trend: as SL grows its user base, its economy grows, prices stay about the same, inflation is controlled — but the average user is not spending more. There are just many more users. Now, this starts to appeal to semi-professional graphics artists, used to design clothes and items for other platforms/applications (like the Renderosity or DAZ communities) and that are looking at SL as an emergent market beyond Web-based sales of 3D virtual content. So, as SL grows, more content producers will be attracted to it, just because SL has more potential consumers than other communities. This is very definitely the case in the end of 2005; it will become more and more important as we reach the million-user-base, since Linden Lab is so keen on protecting copyrights and encouraging creative artists to produce content and sell it without restrictions. Again, the "amount spent per capita" is more likely going to stay the same; it's just the total amount of L$ in circulation that will rise.
1) Your dichotomy theory about the grid splitting between cartels and anarchy is interesting, but I believe developments in metadata and searching will help evolve a natural, flexible order. Also as people host their own servers, they will expect much more control over land, so I think you're going to find a host of new options coming down the road that will help limit griefing and make your land, grid or private island, more customizable.
2) I suppose, to a degree, you're correct.
3) I'm talking US$. Your examples are exceptions to the rule. Game development industry is like Hollywood - hard to break into, extremely fast paced and competitive. Suddenly you have people learning photoshop and building things in Second Life? It's not recognised by mainstream - and despite Tringo, I will stand by this until we see game companies recruiting from SL.
4) I recently joined. My schedule is freeing up, so I'm hoping to attend a meeting soon.
5) External funding, yes. How do we make people and companies spend more money in SL?
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