What happens after Lift Off? How about stage separation? That's a good metaphor. After a slow start, followed by a rapid climb, Linden Lab has done what, in the business world, should be considered unthinkable. It has alienated a majority of its users, causing a vast separation between its remaining supporters and a growing army of detractors. The only reason this isn't a surefire formula for suicide is that Second Life is currently the only player in the lineup of virtual worlds that is even close to being able to offer what it does. Linden Lab has a captive audience, for now, and it knows this.
There are still the Clueless Ones ... people with rose-colored glasses and blinders and brown noses who can't see the truth of the situation. "Age verification? Bring it on! We need to get the kids off the main Grid." That's their current rally cry. Their appalling ignorance would be almost funny, except that it gives Linden Lab hope for the future -- a future which will likely find the Grid as devoid of life as a moonscape. People are abandoning ship right and left as they perceive, rightly it would seem, that Linden Lab has abandoned its original vision -- a vision based upon the Second Life motto, which I regard as a broken Promise ... "Your World, Your Imagination". And the most astonishing thing about this is that Linden Lab seems to be either oblivious to this, or doesn't care. Neither bodes well for the future that many of us were expecting even only a year ago.
So much has happened since I joined Second Life back in the Good Old Days ... November 14, 2006, in fact. Back then the Promise was in full force. Lag was minimal. The morality nazis had yet to establish themselves as a force in Second Life, or even within the ranks of Linden Lab, itself. Things worked better back then. And we didn't have arbitrary policies regarding what we could and could not do crammed down our throats. Even as a global community we didn't have the specter of the globalization of our in-world "laws" being held at our neck, ready to slice our jugular veins and let the life-blood of Second Life spill out over the barren landscape that our world is becoming.
The simple, and very sad, fact is that the New SL World Order, as being orchestrated by people who have no idea of the damage they're doing, is a Bad business model. They think they can placate the foreign governments that want to impose their own restrictions on behavior and content in Second Life, and attract big business to a Disneyesque shell of what Second Life was, and still survive. The writing is already on the wall -- in big, bold letters. They are gutting second life, but they can't, or won't, take notice of what the users are telling them. Businesses are closing down. Land is going up for sale, or simply being abandoned. Premium users are downgrading their accounts. Other users who were going to upgrade have decided not to do so. People who used to be relatively happy with their Second Life experience are leaving ... in droves ... and they won't be back. And still, Linden Lab refuses to open its collective eyes and see the damage it is doing.
They have money right now. They don't need our monthly dues. They think the supply of concierge users (those paying $125 or more in monthly fees for land) won't dry up. Well, when they have all the IBMs and all the Dells, and all the other big businesses interested in setting up housekeeping in Second Life, where will they be? I already know concierge users who have sold off their land and either downgraded their accounts to "free" or even left Second Life, and there will be more. These are individual users -- not huge companies. And these users are the backbone of the economy which must, once the investors have poured enough money into Linden Lab to be asking for a return, supply that return. We won't be there, then, because Linden Lab is not here for us, now. The investors will pull up anchor and set sail for a better climate, and where will that leave Linden Lab? It doesn't take an economist to figure out the answer to that question.
Right now, Linden Lab has few real friends on the Grid. We no longer agree with their vision, whatever monstrosity it has mutated into. We no longer trust their ability to make decisions that affect all of us, because decision after decision has proven to be additional nails in our own coffins. We see a post in the Official Linden Blog introducing yet another policy change. Residents bomb it. One user after another presents arguments as to why that policy is a Bad Thing. Then there's a flurry of posts, that appear to be an attempt to bury the unpopular post so that casual users can't easily find it, and a few days or weeks later there's another post that's clearly an attempt at damage control, re-explaining the policy and attempting to defend it. This is met with an additional barrage from angry users who aren't fooled by sugar coatings. And so it goes on ... and on ... and on. And this is why users are convinced that Linden Lab cares nothing about our opinions, our desires, our needs, Our Imagination ... Our World.
This is my ball, and I don't have to share it with any other kids. OK?
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