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Update 4/30/10: Blame it on a data-center in Arizona. Must be them immigrants!

Second Life Economics: Real Improvments?

Location: Hunting down old Econ textbook

Linden Lab ran some impressive-looking figures on their blog recently, claiming a best-ever quarterly performance in their virtual economy.

I'll take a few moments to reflect, amid the biggest downtime in SL I can recall in the last year, at time of writing 6+ hours. It's affecting the the Land Store, the LindeX money exchange, and the XstreetSL shopping portal.

Downtime like this hurts the Lab's bottom line, but what do their broader economic claims mean? Rather than cynically assuming that the Lindens are polishing the railing on a slowly sinking ship, I'll play along and, from my educator's point of view, respond.

Tateru Nino may have summed it up best, and far better than an armchair economist like me ever could:

Coupled with the reduction in Supply Linden sales, the overall picture is that the Second Life economy experienced no statistically significant growth during Q1 2010, insofar as an increase in the overall value of available goods and services are concerned. At least, none that can be determined from the published information.

In a global economy that is struggling back to its feet, running in place may not be such bad news for Linden Lab.

In a more encouraging sign for the Lab I'm curious about the increase in repeat logins by new users and what Tateru calls "median concurrency." Those numbers, as Tateru points out, mean more than the peak number Linden Lab often hauls out.

Most of these increases may be attributed to James Cameron's film and SL's heavy use of the word "avatar" in its advertisements. These were good tie-ins for the Lindens to exploit. Whether the "dream home" slant of current ads will help those new blue-skinned noobs stay remains to be seen. SL is not Pandora, even if some themed sims try--in SL's laggy way--to reproduce some of the film's magic.

Will the boomlet in SL, if that is what it is, last? Here are some figures I'd like to see:

• quarter-to-quarter percentages for land ownership, including the % of total land abandoned by residents
• average prices of land for sale on the Mainland continents, on Zindra, and for private islands
• number of institutions of higher education owning land
• median concurrency by academic users.

The numbers may be out there...I'd love to see them.

Right now concurrency is taking a huge, if short-lived hit, and the grid is still down. Could this be a hacker attack? If so, it's an immature yet powerful response to Linden Lab's third-party viewer policy, to go into effect tomorrow, and the taking down of Woodbury University.

Even if it's a cascading failure of some sort, somehow affecting very different resources presumably stored on very different hardware, it's an ominous sign of instability in the virtual world. I hope it's a one-off event.

Heritage Key: What the Educators Learned

Location: Ancient Britain & Egypt

Around 30 folks showed up for the meeting last Friday, and this tested the ability of Heritage Key's system to hold up under a lot of pressure. Crashes were indeed fewer, even as we all moved around more than we did last year.

In this post, I'll share my impressions of what we saw, what changed since the last visit, and what Rezzable's Team will need to consider.

Special thanks to Pavig for going above and beyond to serve as docent for one group, when another docent failed to show up. Viv and I led the other two groups.

Navigation: The Travel Center / Hub is a brilliant idea, because it's the intuitive point of departure for the past. The time-travel metaphor works better, however, than overheated teleporters. Too many educators crowded in at once. Only one of my three visitors survived the trip without crashing. The other two, who had friended me, did not relog.

Those who left for Egypt seemed to have fared better. We all gathered for some group photos at the end, near the Life on the Nile exhibits.

I am not technical enough to tell my friends at Rezzable how to fix this. But a new metaphor for travel would be counter productive... so a large-group teleport strategy, perhaps one that allows a leader to teleport a group of people at once, or a HKurl system, or a wearable customized tour HUD, or all of the above.

Rezzable's folks are clever, and I'm sure they could build something as cool as Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel!



Right now, I'd recommend two changes. First, that Rezzable remove the "Solstice" teleporter for modern-day Stonehenge and put those bound for Salisbury Plain through the one marked "Portal" so they will then choose their era. Traveling companion Hobbs joined me in making the mistake to go to modern-day Stonehenge. It was lovely but not as interactive as the ancient site. We also had a heck of a hard time getting back as there was no return teleporter we could find.

Second, Rezzable will also want to be sure that teleporters back to the Travel Center are readily available at every destination. This would avoid how Hobbs and I became stuck in the time machine, rather like Allen's hapless scientists.

Interactivity: This will be needed in all areas. I'll confine my remarks to Stonehenge, though I'm keen on seeing what my Rezzable colleagues have been doing in Amarna.

Visually, the modern circle of stones was absolutely stunning and the evocation of a Summer Solstice dawn perfect. I've spent a good amount of time in stone circles in the UK where one gets a view of the horizon. I was unnerved by how the HK build moved me, emotionally.

To keep student interest, some sort of quest / game might enhance the modern site as it has done (find that log!) in the Neolithic areas. For example, I showed Hobbs the Welsh Bluestones, the Avebury Sarsens, and the famous Heelstone just relaying on personal knowledge. A quest to find them with a prize would spur visitors to learn the geography of the site.


Education & Games: There's an element of both paideia and ludus in the HK sites. The former idea, of playfulness that may not result in a goal or outcome, encourages the explorer just to look about the site. The second, with rules and outcomes, works well for educators (the Valley of the Kings segment is particularly strong here).

I hope to see more materials, however, for educators rather than for a broader class of visitor. I've suggested to Rezzable that a teacher's kiosk with possible assignments in range of disciplines could help, perhaps with links to parts of the Heritage Key Web site. Right now, it's hard to see how a teacher could structure an assignment beyond "explore all this and write about it." Since many teachers will be new to any virtual world, I'd recommend that Rezzable challenge us with an assignment competition, with small prizes going to a dozen winners.

Their projects could then become the nucleus for the Teacher's Kiosk at the Travel Center.

Meanwhile, I'll be looking forward eagerly to future visits the other parts of Heritage Key. I don't have nearly enough time to explore it in depth, even this summer, but I'll keep readers posted as I continue my explorations.

Final note: I love my Neolithic log...the crazy "help the builder move the Sarsen" is perhaps my favorite bit at Stonehenge.

Kunstlerism of the Week: Banks & Us

Personally, I believe that the damage was mostly done during the tenure of poor dim George W. Bush, and his predecessor Bill Clinton. I suspect that Mr. Obama learned at the height of 2008 election campaign -- during those days of the Lehman collapse and the TARP -- just how completely the government -- and the people of the USA -- were in fact hostage to the banking system, and that it has been his unfortunate role to pretend that there is some other fate to bargain for besides this sucker going down. It is probably why he continues to smoke so much. He must be lighting one Marlboro off the tip of another, one after another, in whatever inner sanctum he repairs to when the midnight chimes toll around the White House. It's sad to think of this graceful, still rather young man going down in history as the chump-of-the-century, a reincarnation of Herbert Hoover on steroids, with sugar on top.

Read the rest of "A Still Moment" at Kunstler's blog