Rosedale: You can't do it

by Tateru Nino on Jun 24th 2008 1:00AM

Podcasts, Video, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Linden Lab Chairman, Philip Rosedale and freshly-minted CEO Mark Kingdon gave an introductory speech at 10AM Pacific time to open Second Life's fifth anniversary for 23 June, 2008. While some have considered the speech to be somewhat bland and uninspired/uninspiring, it was pretty much what you'd expect, and you can still smell Rosedale's passion through his anecdotes.

Interestingly, Rosedale referred (with characteristic Linden Lab not-actually-mentioning-it-directly obliqueness) to the troubles that arose from Linden Lab's takeover of the anniverary event from resident-organizers.

'Even to attempt to make a kind of cultural... or any kind of a celebration that makes a presentation of what Second Life is kind of bound to not work in some sense -- because what we're doing here together is outside the bounds of possibility,' said Rosedale.

'When you try to paint a picture of it in one time and one place, you fail,' he added, referring to the vast depth and breadth of diversity and creativity in the virtual world, 'You can't do it, and I just think that's ... I don't know ... moving.'

Obviously, Rosedale doesn't get around and about in Second Life quite as much as he perhaps should, because users have certainly demonstrated that it can be done, or at least done better. It's pure PR gold, though, stepping neatly around Linden Lab's previous statements of legal fears, and the circumstances that seemed to convert the community event to a corporate showcase.

We'll let that pass, but the strongest impression we came away with from the opening ceremony was that the event was more about Linden Lab and what they have accomplished and rather less about Second Life, or its users.

That's just our opinion, though, and you should form one of your own. The audio is available here, and the video is embedded below.

Got a different opinion? Let us know what and why!

Tags: linden-lab, m-linden, mark-kingdon, philip-linden, philip-rosedale, second-life, sl5a, video, virtual-worlds

Reader Comments (3)

I agree... that clever comment is PR gold, the old "we tried, but this event is bigger than all of us" chestnut ... but I wonder which users you think have done it better? I've not seen any event that represents all of SL ... then again, I don't get out much either ;)

Honestly - Big P admits they might have made a bit of a mistake and gets hammered for it. We all know it was badly done but it still happened. Lets call a truce here people and see you at SL10B. And M Linden (tm probably) seems more and more human, for a CEO :)

Tateru, I understand that you find the thought of a "corporate showcase" evil, and anaethema to all creatures creative and sensitive and true, but...isn't massively.com a corporation? Isn't it a corporate showcase, too? Aren't *you* part of a corporate showcase? Or does it somehow sanitize the "corporate" part of the showcase if games are the thing shown, and not, oh, social groups or educational groups or businesses?

If Linden Lab were to go on indulging their beta-test love-feast partners of yore, how fast or how much do you think SL would grow? Do you think it could endlessly collect fringe groups from around the world and "rule"? And still pay the bills?

If LL changes to becoming more corporate-conscious to have corporations buy their islands and eventually, move to a business model where they will hook up those with the capacity to run their own servers at an enterprise or business level, and not just an individual consumer level, why would you object? That's what IT companies have to do. They don't generally remain scrappy little start-ups, they are bought by bigger entities. They can't run on VC funds forever.

Why is it that those who push SL to a mainstream, starting with LL itself, overcoming its Burning Man days, are considered the "conservatives," but those clinging to its wacky beta past are considered "progressives"?

I think there is still plenty of room for anybody to express any kind of culture they wish in SL, there's 20,000 plus sims, lots of new ones for sale cheap, and you don't have to look at the other people you don't like and their cultures you find unacceptable if business -- or for that matter furry or Gorean -- isn't your thing.

I know you find it compelling to conceive of a world run by leftists and counter-culturalists and geeks, but I think even when Obama is elected in the U.S., you will see this doesn't work out as planned , there are always compromises that must be made to have a diverse and inclusive world -- and that doesn't mean allowing the public commons to be hijacked by special interests like Goreans and child avatars.

I'm supportive of what Philip said, and I don't think it was meant as some kind of squirrely evasion of the problems around the birthday -- he acknowledged there was protest and angst, and what more can he say about it? They don't chose to be whipsawed by special interests even though they can appreciate diversity.