sororNishi: 2012

Sunday, 4 November 2012

soror Nishi | .is powered by a volcano

The continued slow exodus from SL was a topic of conversation on Twitter last week with Ener Hax posting a commentary on her blog… projecting a reduction to 10,000 sims.

Wizard Gynoid was at one point accused of schadenfreude [enjoyment of someone else misfortune], by another Tweep, an ex-Linden [maybe indoctrinated into the idea that all SL users are losers]. Obviously this person has missed the point entirely. We have all, longterm users of SL, predicted the effect of the dismal customer service meted out by LL and tried, in a small way, to draw attention to the foreseen consequences of such behaviour.

“I told you so” is not schadenfreude. For all of us it is still a source of sadness mixed with exasperation that this steady decline continues unabated.

A few days ago Wizzy pointed to this post on Wikipedia about Technical Debt … see below to save you following the link … asking the rhetorical question “is this what’s wrong at Linden Lab..”

Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is a neologistic metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development within a codebase. The debt can be thought of as work that needs to be done before a particular job can be considered complete. As a change is started on a codebase, there is often the need to make other coordinated changes at the same time in other parts of the codebase or documentation. The other required, but uncompleted changes, are considered debt that must be paid at some point in the future.“

Now, this has long been the common view, summed up by Miso Susanowa’s sharp quote “you lag, you lose”…. and guarding against technical debt has been why the code wranglers at Inworldz, Jim and Tranq have moved so slowly and carefully in bringing new changes to their grid.

Like the tortoise and the hare fable, Linden Lab has now 4 new games coming to market .. … while InWorldz has been honing mesh and PhysX upgrades.

There is, however, a world of difference between SL and these new games … not in that they are different products, but how those products stand in relation to the competition. Whereas SL was years ahead of it’s rivals when it started, these new games are just more of the same…. i.e. another 4 games in a fairly full market.

Watching a leading internet-based company lose it’s position as leader through bad management, infighting and chasing the rainbow’s end is not a situation that gives any of us a feeling of satisfaction.

Schadenfreude … no way.

:))