Cory Linden leaving: could this result in a viable rival to Second Life?

With official confirmation that the Chief Technical Officer of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka (a.k.a. Cory Linden, the Spaghetti Monster) is leaving the company at the end of the year, this has the potential to have serious repercussions to Second Life.

I can't help but wonder if Cory and Phillip have had a falling out over Age Verification. There have got to be some Lindens who think that going against the wishes of the majority of Residents is a seriously bad idea, and when Cory joined the fledgling team (he was the fourth ever employee to join Linden Labs) back in 2000, the emphasis was on a company that interacted with its userbase, something that has lessened increasingly in the past year, first of all with Lindens being able to make their online status hidden, then with contact directly with Lindens being removed via the live help vanishing, and now with them being unwilling to listen to their userbase over age verification.

Which begs the question, since Cory did a LOT of the coding for SL (he also wrote the LSL) - what will he do now, and is it likely he will join a company, or even found one himself, that produces a rival to Second Life? Certainly he's got the technical know how to do that, and maybe even develop something better starting again from scratch, because part of the reason he coined the term Spaghetti Monster was that the coding for SL was becoming so twisted and difficult to follow that a bug wasn't easy to find and eliminate purely because the code of the monster was no longer simple and neat.

I've said all along that in my opinion, Age Verification when it's made mandatory could conceivably destroy Second Life. Cory, who has always been an advocate of the Open Sourcing of Second Life, may already be planning to make his own version of it, and if he does AND leaves out Age Verification... well, a few years down the road it might be HIM that's the CEO of the successful company, him doing the hiring and firing while the memory of Linden Labs is consigned to computing history and an article on Wikipedia.

Watch out for Cory Ondrejka. He might be leaving Linden Labs, but I really doubt very strongly that this is the last Second Life residents will here of him.

GOOD LUCK WITH THE FUTURE, CORY!

Welcome Area Thoughts

There are two main questions that I get asked when I'm standing in the welcome area and have my "I help people - let me know if I can help" tag on. The first of which is "Where can I go to grief?" (although it's never quite put that way - it's always termed 'shoot people/throw bombs/kill people/fight') and the second of which, from those on free accounts, is "How can I get money?"

With regards to the first question, I generally refuse to offer any suggestions. I tell them that Second Life isn't about killing people and blowing things up. Normally they either become abusive (and get reported for it) or just ignore me.

With regards to the second question, I tell people about camping. Camping, for those new to second life, involves going to an area where the owner has set up special scripted chairs. These are normally casinos or clubs. For sitting in the camping chairs you can get paid an average of 3 lindens per 10 minutes. Yes, it's not much - but what do you expect for nothing? If you're on a paid (or 'premium' account) you get pocket money every week; several hundred Lindens - but if you choose a free account, and don't put any "real money in" then you don't get simply given any free in-game currency. You have to earn it or be given it by other residents, or buy it yourself (free accounts can still buy Linden Dollars using a number of different methods, credit or debit cards or even paypal.

The internet is a fascinating place. I think people get to used to having something for nothing, particularly those who've grown up used to being able to download music and films for free. I'm not in favour of banning free accounts in Second Life, but it is important that those who use them recognise they don't have an automatic entitlement to either the free account or to be given in-game currency. It's particularly upsetting to either see people begging in the welcome area, or to get a mouthful of abuse because you won't give people lots of game currency.

Heh... just wanted to kick this blog off gently. Next tuesday I'm in the Metaverse Messenger newspaper having a rant about Support, of which I'll say more in a future post. In the meantime, welcome to my ramblings.