Reuters have published an interview with Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale from this weekend’s SLCC. Most of the interview is fairly predictable but it’s encouraging to see the acknowledgement of quality as the key driver into the future:
“We’re at a place where we’ve demonstrated that the virtual world can exist. Now we need to make it high quality so it does continuously support the activities and desires of the people who are using it. That’s what we’ve learned by listening for the last couple of quarters. We’ve got to increase the quality.”
Of course, I’d deluded myself that some mention may be made of further internationalisation of the servers but the only allusion to that came from Rosedale’s thoughts on open-sourcing:
“If you’re an entrepreneur, wanting to enter the virtual world and sell stuff to people, you’re going to want to find the largest possible audience. So you’ll be strongly drawn to set up your shop on the system with the largest number of people using it. There will be a tremendous desire by people to link those servers together and be on our network so they can have access to the largest base of people.”
Finally, on the legal issues around ageplay and gambling, he summarised Linden Lab’s intent to tie restrictions to avatars through verification of that avatar’s RL location. That seems the most sensible way of not forcing the whole grid into a universal lockdown in a range of sensitive areas.
If Linden Lab are planning some incredible revolutionary step in SL’s development, it’s certainly not apparent in Philip Rosedale’s thoughts. What would you have liked to have seen asked of him in the interview?
I think Philip’s missing the point. Linden Lab needs to hire someone who can write manuals and they badly need some expertise on interface design. All his answers are engineering answers, and they just don’t address problems with the user experience.
The way to measure lousy user experience is not the numbers who stay, but the numbers who sign up and never return after one or two sessions. Don’t get me wrong, I adore SL. I just hate the interface and I hate even more the lousy documentation available to new users. I’m sure Torley Linden is a really nice guy, and his videos are great to watch, but they’re not good instructional materials, and they cannot replace a couple of well-written how to pages.
Linden Lab also badly needs some professional advice on their legal proposals. Country-specific avatar rules are going to be a nightmare because criminal laws run by location, not the origin of the individual. In Gutnick’s case the High Court held that a defamation happens where the material is downloaded from the Internet, not where it is uploaded. It’s a civil case, but it’s hard to see why an Australian court would not reason by analogy that a crime occurs where the criminal matter is downloaded. Gutnick’s case has been either followed, or cited with approval, outside Australia, although it’s also been heavily criticised in the US.
Linden Lab could find themselves in significant difficulties if a court outside the US held the Gutnick principle sounds in criminal law and that downloading matter in that court’s jurisdiction is therefore criminal conduct. Applying different rules to avatars according to their citizenship does not solve the problem at all. Let’s say a citizen of Country X opens a child pornography shop in world. A criminal court in Country Y will not have the slightest interest in the nationality of the uploader, no matter what the laws of Country X may be. A criminal court is likely, in extreme cases, to find an offence and authorise extradition.
Gary McKinnon was extradited from Britain to the US for breaking US law, even though he was not a US citizen and his alleged criminal conduct happened entirely outside the US.
Philip’s a great engineer. That doesn’t make him a legal authority. Linden Lab need to broaden the places they’re looking for advice, both in world and outside. They also, just quietly, need a better feedback mechanism than Lindens wandering around in world.
I think Philip’s missing the point. Linden Lab needs to hire someone who can write manuals and they badly need some expertise on interface design. All his answers are engineering answers, and they just don’t address problems with the user experience.
The way to measure lousy user experience is not the numbers who stay, but the numbers who sign up and never return after one or two sessions. Don’t get me wrong, I adore SL. I just hate the interface and I hate even more the lousy documentation available to new users. I’m sure Torley Linden is a really nice guy, and his videos are great to watch, but they’re not good instructional materials, and they cannot replace a couple of well-written how to pages.
Linden Lab also badly needs some professional advice on their legal proposals. Country-specific avatar rules are going to be a nightmare because criminal laws run by location, not the origin of the individual. In Gutnick’s case the High Court held that a defamation happens where the material is downloaded from the Internet, not where it is uploaded. It’s a civil case, but it’s hard to see why an Australian court would not reason by analogy that a crime occurs where the criminal matter is downloaded. Gutnick’s case has been either followed, or cited with approval, outside Australia, although it’s also been heavily criticised in the US.
Linden Lab could find themselves in significant difficulties if a court outside the US held the Gutnick principle sounds in criminal law and that downloading matter in that court’s jurisdiction is therefore criminal conduct. Applying different rules to avatars according to their citizenship does not solve the problem at all. Let’s say a citizen of Country X opens a child pornography shop in world. A criminal court in Country Y will not have the slightest interest in the nationality of the uploader, no matter what the laws of Country X may be. A criminal court is likely, in extreme cases, to find an offence and authorise extradition.
Gary McKinnon was extradited from Britain to the US for breaking US law, even though he was not a US citizen and his alleged criminal conduct happened entirely outside the US.
Philip’s a great engineer. That doesn’t make him a legal authority. Linden Lab need to broaden the places they’re looking for advice, both in world and outside. They also, just quietly, need a better feedback mechanism than Lindens wandering around in world.