I am now a City Developer and actualy having fun adapting to the new tools. So far, customer service, business development assistence and community support have been no less than excellent.

We may wait until the platform has fully developed, but as you said, this will give the competition a free kick. Whenever you enter into the beta, as a beta tester or as a developer, just realize what a beta means…

Yes, there may be glitches and bugs – however limited – , you may not be 100% satisfied with the features and plenty of stuff is up for further development, but coming in there with your “SL button switched on” is a big mistake. See the positive side: In this period of beta testing, our opinions and input really counts. This is the time to have influence on the further development of an extremely promising and advanced platform.

As a teaser for (SL) business owners I might just add: “Look at the difference in size between a SL Sim and a BM City… Beyond comparison I’d say.

For the tools: I am used to work in Poser and DAZ and was quite happy to do so and pretty advanced in it. Compatibility with Collada/BM has proven to be very limited in these tools, so I have to consider switching to DS Max or Maya. Why are we mostly scared of change? Because it drags us out of our comfort zone!
Why is it good to come out of your comfort zone? Because it keeps you sharp and prevents you from falling asleep! There, another way to always be a step ahead of the competition.

Thanks for this great article and hope to catch you inworld soon!

Actually I’ve stated many times that the skills learnt in creating content for BM are cross platform and useful beyond virtual worlds. I’m speaking specifically about the geometry and not the texturing et al which is a factor common to all modelling and is mostly an external process even in SL.

As for an evolving environment, every platform is but we’re dealing with here and now not what will happen in 3years. SL has some fundamental problems that they will need to overcome whilst still keeping their client-base happy. There will likely be a lot of pain involved for both LL and their residents.

Not by half. Being able to draw upon existing content from a range of applications increases the potential content available. Existing modellers -of which there are millions across multiple industries – aren’t required to recreate their content from scratch like they are in SL.

Someone learning from scratch can start modelling decent content using Sketchup in under an hour. BM provides for a range of development levels and standard industry-utilised applications not just a single in-house system that is kludged together.

Clearly my article is aimed squarely at the SL business owner. Being in business requires you to keep a constant eye on the horizon. If SL suddenly closes, gets bought out or has a mass exodus then livelihoods are at risk. Business owners need to have fallback options if everything goes pearshaped.

In addition to this, your comment that “BM will ultimately be able to draw on a wealth of content, possibly more than Second Life currently does” is grossly exagerated. The entry level for BM is very high and with a steep learning curve. That will largely reduce the number of developers being able to produce content for BM. The great advantage of SL is that it gives everyone the opportunity to build in a relatively simple way. You don’t need to sign up as a developer or learn new, complex tools. If you have the inclination, all it takes is a mouse and some time to play with prims. The result is terabytes and terabytes of produced content, a huge variety. Frankly, I don’t see BM ever pass SL content based on the current premises. True, lots of the content produced in SL may be on an amateurial level but that doesn’t seem to stop people appreciating what they do. And the quality level of content produced in SL is increasing by the day. Compare that to a virtual world like BM where content will likely be produced only by a few elected ones, those with the skills and time to produce content which, I read, will also have to pass the screening of BM management. With the rest of the people being just passive consumers. BM may be very slick but me thinks a virtual world is not only made of eye candy.

Take me as an example of an average SL user. I guess I could be considered a SL content producer on a very small scale and at an amateurial level, eager to learn new skills and tools as opportunities will arise. I have over 2 years worth of work made in SL, all my friends are there, my social relations are there. It would take *VERY* serious reasons for me to decide to move to a different environment and start from scratch. Expanding to BM? Heck, SL keeps busy enough that I lose my sleep! Sure, I could take that expansion to BM into consideration if I had a profitable business and I built 3D content for a living, but I don’t.

SL is *home*! Virtual worlds are not just business, they are mostly social environments and it will be very difficult for BM to eradicate SL’s pattern of social relations, creativity and opportunities available to everyone. As much as SL residents love to gripe and damn the Linden, they are also a very passionate bunch of people who for the most part want SL to succeed.

You may want to read Gwyneth Llewellyn’s take on BM, if you haven’t already: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2009/09/14/evaluating-blue-mars-%E2%80%94-an-open-letter-to-avatar-realitys-representative/?dsq=16552634#comment-16552634 . Most interestingly, she seems to disagree on the low cost to start business in BM. Have a look at it, it’s interesting reading from the perspective of a VW enterpreneur.

It’s not just an attitude that LL likes to foster. I’ve encountered it many times before in a range of places. The film industry is full of it and so were the MU* worlds when I was involved with them. It would be easy to label it as arrogance but I think it’s more likely a self-defence mechanism. It’s not easy to face up to the knowledge that someone might be able to do the same job as you.

I think the unwillingness to adopt new tools by existing SL builders is not so much the change, but that they figure why learn a new set of tools that are only applicable to BM, and aren’t aware that models made in those tools are applicable to any 3D/VR environment. They have the “walled garden” attitude that LL likes to foster…
.-= teddlesruss´s last blog ..Just Caught Up =-.