“So far, we’ve built awareness. Seven years ago we weren’t a very well known brand. Now we are, and now we have to build preference and emotional attachment.” ~ David Steel

A couple days ago I watched the Second Life brand die a particularly ugly death. One I’m not sure they can revive from and one I’m not sure they deserve to be revived from.

The assassin was a young geek with comedic timing coupled with an appearance and shtick based on Nicholas Brendon circa 1998. Chris Pirillo has some deserved geek cred and comes up with watch-able YouTube stuffage. He’s somewhat knowledgeable and entertaining and I imagine he gets the positive and negative attention that comes with that combination in this forward-frenzy age of all things viral.

And every so often, like all of us, he takes the easy route when asked a legitimate question:

Chris Pirillo on “Whatever happened to Second Life” Take One:

This is what Second Life’s brand has become to the current generation of fine young geekibals.

In all fairness to Chris, there was a time when Second Life, socially, was healthy and happy with little more than porn and gambling. And I don’t mean the elite class of Second Life — I mean the casual user. The “addicted” part is a might unfair. Games of luck have existed at least as long as history has been worth recording, and so have depictions of sexuality. Most people have a guilty pleasure be it gambling, porn, techno-gadget lust, virtual paper dolls, good sippin’ whiskey, or bad 80’s music. But our peccadilloes are not what define us and they shouldn’t be the details that define our societies.

We spend a lot of time declaring “RL” and “SL” in our speech — and I appreciate the movement to stop that practice, even if I don’t abide by it. Because SL is, in many ways RL. It’s sort of like the Dagobah Dark Side Cave:
“What’s in there?”
“Only what you take with you.”

Put another way: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” is ever true in both virtual and real worlds (Oscar knew everything but a good lawyer).

But, let’s look at it from Pirillo’s point of view. There are a lot of people in Second Life doing wondrous things, but they aren’t the average user and those wondrous things aren’t necessarily what will woo a mainstream audience into the format (or even what will woo the current generation of geek). So if you just have a specific elite class working to impress that same elite class and a bunch of other people running around trying to indulge their peccadilloes — what is someone like Chris supposed to come away with?

What Chris got right was his very valid opinion — that Second Life is a crummy product that has failed to capture the imagination of someone like himself. What he got wrong was why — mostly because he simply took the easy out. (Also, he was uninformed about our gambling having been taken away from us — more’s the pity).

To his credit, however, the kid is a trooper and he didn’t just continue to mock and roll his eyes. When attacked by the community in ways I can’t even begin to imagine and don’t want to read, he engaged a few calm voices and re-evaluated his point of view:

The ungodly second take:

This is what Second Life’s brand is, even for those fine young geekibals willing to take a second chance.

I also tried to listen to the Phaylen Fairchild interview, but I couldn’t get beyond the introduction. If you can and must, the link is here.

I can’t fathom what the poor kid could possibly have to say beyond this point, but the thing that’s clear to me is that he’s done his due diligence. He’s done better by SL than SL has done by him. And that is a harsh, cold reality if you’re trying to evaluate the outreach SL has made toward inviting new users to the table — or even in trying to lure indifferent users back.

Second Life and Linden Lab have murdered a brand that had every chance to be the top of its game for a very long time. It happened through incompetence. It happened through indifference. It happened through arrogance. But, the more I reflect on it, I really think it largely happened because Linden Lab did the same thing Chris did in his initial video — they scorned their user base instead of evaluating the product honestly. For me, this started when they took the coward’s way out instead of defending their user base against the shock-and-awe wave of news stories that revealed *gasp* people were doing naughty things on teh interwebs.

There is a lot of hostility that wafts from Linden Lab toward its users — that sense of eye-rolling that we are all crazy cat ladies and griefer vandals (when we’re not busy being porn addicts that have to be led by the wrist between “Adult” and “Non-Adult” and “Whatever Mature Means” sections of a needlessly over-segregated grid). For the last several years the old Microsoft mantra of “you’ll get what we give you” has been their MO (hint to LL: even Microsoft had to dial that back to keep up, guys). And when pushed up against silly reporting they didn’t take the high road and say “if our users want adult experiences in our platform, that’s their option and we defend their privacy. Second Life is no different from the real world in that adults will spend their time pursuing different social options — be it a night at the opera or a stripper jumping out of a make-believe cake. Now, if I could draw your attention to the money our community has raised for cancer research and the work some of our users are doing to help handicapped individuals explore mobility options…”

Boo-yeah. Dismissed. Moving on.

Instead we got the Robin “deer in headlights” moment which has come to define the “not ready for prime time” reality of the Linden Lab program. LL doesn’t appear to have moved beyond that point. It’s as though they dismissed their user base for embarrassing them instead of bridging the gaps that led them to realize they were out of touch with what was happening on the grid.

Ivory towers kill brands.

What people fail to realize about Facebook games and Twitter social networking is the simplest aspect. Sure, there’s ease of use and the accessibility on the deck, but underneath there is the sense that those tools and entertainments are living languages. Second Life is becoming the Latin of virtual worlds. Sure, you have to study it, but no one really *uses* it anymore except those freaks up in their elite clubhouses.

Can we turn it around? As a user base that has been dismissed from the table? I don’t see how. Not until Linden Lab invites us back. The more frightening question — does Linden Lab want to turn it around? Or is this now the final product that will be stripped down into chatroom / facebook friendliness with point-and-click virtual shopping options to turn profits and no longer push the boundaries of “whatif?”

I’m waiting, hopefully, to see that is not the case. The firing of Qarl and Philip’s inability to talk straight about real goals, however, leave me edgy and disheartened. And yet, still here, unwilling to let go of the possibilities of “whatif.”

To steal an abbreviated moment from James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter:
Eleanor of Aquitaine: “How, from where we started, did we ever reach this…?”
Henry II: “Step by step.”

“There is a powerful tension in our relationship to technology. We are excited by egalitarianism and anonymity, but we constantly fight for our identity.” ~ David Owens

This is a rambling train-of-thought post. Proofreading it was a nightmare; I can’t imagine why you’d want to read it, but if you do, know that persons attempting to find a plot within it will be shot.

It’s strange to me that the Blizzard / Battle.net controversy only hit stride yesterday. I got my first “Real ID” email on the 13th of last month and knew there was darkness on the horizon. True, it didn’t contain the official forums tidbit, and was worded in such a way to highlight how everything is (at this point) optional. So maybe that explains why the enormity of the consequences didn’t set in until now. Or maybe privacy is already so on the ropes that it takes a fortnight for people to connect dots these days.

From a purely cynical point of view, it’s brilliantly timed. Those users who might be pissed and cancel in protest are likely to be lured back soon after by Cataclysm (…or StarCraft, or Diablo III…).

The official line and a lot of the conversation seems to believe the Battle.net requirement is merely a smirking corporate tactic they’re hoping will silence a lot of negativity on the public forums (which, in theory, will reduce the energy that is expended on moderation). Blizzard’s own babble backs this.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

Most of these assumptions are demonstrably untrue, and ignore the troubling implications.

* Forum administrators will be vulnerable and serve at a disadvantage while their real-life information becomes fodder all over the internet.
* Vile people will be just as vile under their own names as they will under a handle. Talk shows, Reality TV and Girls Gone Wild videos are the majority rule and those people don’t wear Guy Fawkes masks to act like morons or say disgusting things. Social and criminal deterrents only work when there are consequences that deter people from their own natures.
* It’s easier to impose stricter rules and employ technology solutions than it is to police a user base. Trying to impose a false sense of positive by bulling away negative criticism is ultimately self-defeating.
* Devaluing your own forums and driving people to third party formats in search of free speech makes you a second-class delivery system in your own market. When people stop visiting the official forums, Blizzard will have to work harder to monitor third-party forum sites to find out what their customers are saying/thinking and will have to spend more on promotion efforts to get their messages out. This is bad juju.
* Blizzard actively recruits and markets to children; the first time a kid’s real name gets used for something sinister, it’s crying moms and abused children vs. Big Bad Blizzard’s greedy corporate policy. Throw in an ambitious lawyer and you’ll end up with a class-action lawsuit just for putting kids at risk.
* God help them if they try and make this retroactive, or there’s a tech glitch and information from past posts are revealed without user consent.

Blizzard is usually nothing if not self-serving and hyper-protective of their legal liabilities. So why the dumb move? What’s the advantage? Do they think being able to provide users with the ability to network inside their own system is more important than focusing on gameplay/immersion, developing the relationships between users and their avatars, or updating content faster? It looks like it. They’re misreading their role as that of a communication provider, instead of being an entertainment provider with outlets to communication-based venues.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment — one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID — including these forum changes — have been made with this goal in mind.

You can almost see some out of touch suit sitting around spouting things like “we gotta be more like that Facebooky stuff — why aren’t we doing Facebook things? Farmville is killing us!” while his R&D department head tries not to commit seppuku in the middle of the boardroom.

It looks like they’re trying for the Disney World model, where once you show up, you never have to leave for anything. Except that sort of thing only works at Disney World because WDW provides for every guest need. Food, clothing, transportation, emergency services, entertainment, etc, are all catered to. It’s stupid to attempt this sort of this thing when you only offer one product (entertainment/activity) and that product is, let’s face it, waning. Improving the flow of communication between users and their social networking is certainly crucial. Trying to establish themselves as a closed-circuit hub (and doing so while imposing constraints) is unfathomably dumb.

I could support (and would defend) Battle.net trying to hook up their users with outside social networking as a means to keep people inside the format, and requiring authentication for such. That’s basic, but it doesn’t require the public brandishing of user information. If I’m Jane Smith on Facebook and Jane Strangelove on Twitter and KillzYouHard on WOW, my voluntary desire to link those accounts doesn’t require my IDs being splashed all over the forums just because I hate the fact that Blizzard techs can’t ever meet their announced deadlines, or because my fishing hat lure doesn’t work after the latest patch.

Being able to monitor and interact with my social networking should be a positive thing, not a sacrificial endeavor. Blizzard could easily allow authentication and interaction without stomping all over user privacy. So why don’t they value user privacy, or believe that users value it enough to make it worth the trouble?

Well, that’s a longer post and requires a bit of personal disclosure to understand where my beliefs on the subject come from. I’ll bump it behind a jump so you can leave it here if you’d like. (more…)

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” ~ Gloria Steinem

This will be a long one with a side order of history lesson and a smattering of lecture. Feel free to salt to taste.

A long time ago, when WOW was limited to 60 levels and maxed out characters took long tours of duty in the same boring garb, I was hanging out with my regular org pvp group (all guys and me) and happened to casually remark in vent about how much I hated my Lieutenant Commander’s PVP set. One of my friends asked what I didn’t like about it and I said it wasn’t the individual boosts or the spell bonuses, it was just plain ugly. What followed was a predictable hour of ribbing about silly girls in gaming. It was all in good fun, and I tend to give as good as I get in those situations, so I can’t say I felt harassed or belittled in any significant way. I’m not that type. You have to wake up pretty early on the asshole side of the bed to offend me, otherwise I’ll just volley back.

The next day, however, I got to thinking about how it didn’t occur to any of those same guys that the incidental misogyny of WOW character generation and costuming was aimed at making everything boy-friendly for them. From the Masters of the Universe homage that is Undercity to the action-figure builds of every character to the fact that that in the majority of the lore the leaders and heroes are all male — WOW, like most gaming environments, is Guyville. Naturally, most men would have no issues with the aesthetics or characters — it’s tailored to their likes and dislikes.

My level 60 priest PVP gear was cyan and gold. Cyan and gold, I kid you not. Color blind nanny goats would be able to tell you how tacky it was. Don’t believe me? Feast your eyes on this fresh hell:

Lieutenant Commander's WOW Priest PVP Gear

More Lieutenant Commander's WOW Priest PVP Gear

Yet More Lieutenant Commander's WOW Priest PVP Gear

SPIKES, ffs. On. A. PRIEST. In cyan and gold. It’s like they were trying to piss me off.

I’ve been a gamer since my ‘rents bought me my first Telstar Alpha Pong machine for my fifth birthday (note: the box for that old relic MATCHES the Lieutenant Commander PVP set… oh, the humanity!) so I am accustomed to games being aimed at boys. In the early days, I rarely got to play a character of my own sex. Generally, women in video games were only there to be rescued by the important characters like Link and Mario. Princesses Zelda and Toadstool/Peach were pink-clad halfwits ever-abducted by two-dimensional villains. Plumbers had to save them.

In early text-based games like Tai-Pan and King’s Quest, and the Fool’s Errand, you were still a guy (or following the guy story), and addressed like one. Females were thin on the ground. Even Carmen Sandiego was just an elusive mystery you chased and you hardly ever got to arrest the bitch.

The first female character I remember being able to “drive” was Ms. Pac-Man. She was designated female by a tarty red bow, a beauty mark, and lipstick. If those clues failed to make an impact on you, there was the pin-up visual guide adorning the arcade cabinet looking like a yellow M&M crossed with Bettie Boop. Of course, since she was female, the game designers introduced the romance intermission scenes featuring Pac-wedding and Pac-baby. Even at ten, I wanted to Pac-gag. It was the first glimpse of how far off the mark game designers can swing when they descend to address something female, and the first taste of what I’d be putting up with as a girl gamer.

Five years later came Samus Aran, but she was a cyborg and you didn’t know she was a girl until the end, so I maintain she doesn’t count. The fact that it was such a shock for that to be a “reveal” testifies to the rarity of meaningful female protagonists in gaming at that time. In the early 90’s the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter/Tekken craze introduced some female player characters, but they were mostly mindless sexpot kick and punch drones (I’m sorry, Sonya, my darling, but you know it’s true), although in all fairness, their male counterparts weren’t exactly deep thinkers. The Final Fantasy series started to let us at least pick female characters for our teams, and we got us some good evil facetime in characters like SHODAN.

In 1996 (after twenty years of gaming) I got Lara Croft. So what if she looked like she just got ejected from a trailer park bar’s wet t-shirt contest, she was a street-smart bad ass with a chic accent and automatic weapons. I will always adore the wench. Around that same time we also got Jill Valentine, but I wasn’t really into the Resident Evil thing. Still, Jill should get props, even if they did make her trade in her STARS uniform for a corset and miniskirt (nothing says “let’s kill zombies” like trampy, knock-off clubrat attire). At least the ladies had the right foot gear. Inappropriate outfits aside, the designers didn’t make us run through caves and dystopias in clear heels. We gave thanks for boots. Sometimes, they were even cute boots.

In the late 90’s / early 2000’s, the gates opened up and female game characters got a lot more high profile; we even got to drive on a regular basis. Sure, most the visuals were still sexpot on a stick (*cough* BloodRayne *cough*) but the characters were also complicated, story-driven, and smart. Games like American McGee’s Alice, Drakan, Longest Journey, No One Lives Forever, Return to Mysterious Island and Syberia set the bar higher. I even got to play my girlhood-beloved Nancy Drew, and Nancy wasn’t dressed like a whore. These days, you can’t make a game without including deep female characters in the mix, whether they’re protagonists, side-kicks or deliciously evil antagonists. They are still likely to be of the sexpot variety (…paging Ada Wong…), but I’m not sure if that doesn’t cater, at least in part, to female vanity as much as male vanity at this point. These days, the lines are blurrier. Part of female vanity involves wanting to maintain sex appeal, no different from male vanity (we’re just better at it and tend to be more subtle with it). But, the choice should be equal and the details employed in development matter as much as the mindset we bring to the table when evaluating those choices.

Even with the evolution of gaming into MMOs like NWN, EverQuest, WOW, and Aion, and console games where we actually got some control over our avatar generation, the gaming environment continued to focus on male vanity. Despite the growing presence of female gamers, the market still targets males, and male-targeted marketing is all about “feel good.” Commercials for beer and shaving equipment are testosterone-fests of male bonding and “damn I’m awesome” moments.

I’m a gamer by choice and I’m used to the body humor jokes and the “Dude, no way,” vernacular that dominates most gaming communications. I’ve won my own battles, defied the stereotypical misconceptions of “all women are girlfriend-gamers who need handicaps and can’t play their class.” I’ve put more than one wanna-be Napoleon in his place for trying to get all Lord-and-Master on me. And I’ve done it on the format’s terms, not by pinning my ovaries on my chest and bullying guys into submission. To be honest, I probably swear more than any average guy when I’m gaming. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what the fun vulgarities are for — when you miss.

I don’t expect a bunch of pizza-fueled college boys to want to sit in vent and talk about WOW fashion or the last Sex and the City installment. I don’t get up in some guy’s grill when he’s bitching about his wife nagging him during a raid. I’m not a man-hater and I don’t think you win points for the sisterhood by crying about being the only apple on the orange tree and then demanding everyone change to your variety of fruity goodness.

What does annoy me, however, is the double-standard that exists between those who talk about female-dominated sim-formats like Second Life and hardcore gaming platforms or technology subcultures where boys still remain cocks of the walks.

Example. Over the weekend, Grace re-tweeted a comment by one Raymond Pirouz which read:

The sad truth is that Linden Lab is a wanna-be virtual monarch w/currency exchange power disguised as a Barbie Play House. Sad truth.

Now, Mr Pirouz is correct about a few things. Linden Lab has fumbled a very nice pioneering lead all over the field. The company embraces an annoying propensity to remain entrenched in a class system that impacts both its users and employees. They’re on the verge of pricing themselves out of reasonable realms. Their marketing hypocritically promotes sim-living domesticity and avatar vanity out of one corner of their mouths, while projecting shame of the same demographic over everything else they do. These are legitimate complaints about Linden Lab and I echo them.

But Linden Lab is not playing “Barbie Play House.” They’re not even helping their residents play it. If they were, they’d be better off and a lot of residents and content creators would be happier. They’d also be closer to their own goals.

If they’d focused on getting Barbie Play House right, they’d have built a foundation that would have helped them build toward other targets. But they’re still playing boy ball, and they don’t want their product to be branded as Girlville. So, instead of helping residents optimize their virtual living experiences and developing the marketplace that exists, Linden Lab has been trying desperately to supplant their users. They’re too ashamed to engage and develop Barbie Play House because that’s what those yucky girls like. So they chase educators and businesses and any other demographic that they can like some desperate Super Grover trying to teach kids the difference between near and far.

They do this because people like Mr. Pirouz assign girl vanity as bad and scoff at it, branding it as a low-priority focus while claiming that anything which develops around such a market is doomed to an ultimate demise. I’m sure he’s a swell guy with a lot of know-how in other formats, but on this, he’s just plain off his nut.

Unlike most virtual platforms, Second Life is overwhelmingly female. For better or worse, the grid is estrogen-drenched. Despite this reality — despite the fact that women drive the SL economy — Linden Lab and those who talk about SL seem ashamed or bemused to address it. The video game industry has been built around the male ego and hand-fed male vanity. Women finally have a foothold in a platform, and it seems like no one knows how to manage it, promote it, interpret it, or embrace it.

But, why is that? I mean, in the real world, women drive powerful markets. Not just the obvious vanity markets like fashion or cosmetics, or the domestic markets like household goods and groceries, but the art markets as well. You know all those screaming teenagers who chased rabidly after the Beatles and filled the stadium seats? They weren’t all (or even, mostly) boys. Over the last several decades, females have comprised at least 50% of music sales in most genres, and much higher percentages in key genres. Barry Manilow’s career is my sex’s fault and I have to live with that, but we also had just as much, if not more, influence on the British Invasion and nearly every music revolution that’s happened since. As far as movies go, women spend equally, and women are more likely to spend on books. However, authors and screenwriters know that a woman will see a movie/read a book that appeals to men while the reverse is less likely, so markets skew male and a male-focused product is believed to do better than a female-focused one because of this crossover discrepancy between the sexes.

Female gaming is on the rise, we buy our fair share of techo-toys, and cyberspace is becoming more and more our equal territory. Sure, we still have to navigate guy-infested waters when we want to blow stuff up, but our native habitats are Sim-based; we’re good at them and we spend on them. And it doesn’t matter how much you roll your eyes, we’re going to buy cute virtual dresses and decorate cute virtual homes and that’s going to account for a hell of a lot more of the SL economy than anything else for a while yet. So you can keep rolling those eyes and missing the forest for the trees, or you can confront why that notion seems silly to you while you tweet about techo-gadgets and video games in much less derogatory language.

Toward the end of the tweeted back and forth, the bloke tossed over some vague, “oh gee sorry if I offended” which I’m sure he felt was lip service owed to some hypersensitive female. Very few people who deal in virtual world circles and speak about technology recognize when they disparage female-focused products and endeavors, and when it’s pointed out to them, or when they’re made to defend their positions without the scoffing, they commonly like to fall back on “those sensitive females” tropes. Like a uterus negates logic and spell power bonuses.

Mr. Pirouz will never know what it’s like to be the only woman in a vent channel during a 25-man raid listening to all the male geeks brag about their earliest masturbatory experiences starring Jessica Rabbit. He’ll never know what it’s like to have some yokel from Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky call you “honey” while he talks down to you about how to play a class he’s never rolled. So, I’m sure to him, my calling him on the cheap shot legitimately felt like a silly overreaction and that’s why his arguements were all over the map (first assuming I had a personal stake in Linden Lab before resorting to the “sensitivity issue” cop-out). Because the idea that a woman might be making a valid point about double standards on virtual vanity simply doesn’t compute.

For the record, the tweets will reveal that I didn’t mock him too much for trying to use jargon in place of logic when he invoked Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs irrelevantly; I didn’t even gloat when he misused his own red herring (stating that luxury items were *low* on the hierarchy when they’re actually at the top). I didn’t roll my eyes when he threw out “sensitivity” and “if I offended anyone in Barbie land.” I gotz me a sense of humor, I kin dance 2 eet.

I don’t want to be the feminist brat poster child. I mean, I will if there’s a check attached to it, but that’s not what I’m after here.

I just want people who claim to be engaged about Second Life to think before they talk down about how frivolous female-centered virtual activities are and how invalid they are as market-focus products. Yes, Second Life is capable of so much more than make-believe dresses and houses, and yes, that should be discussed and shouldn’t be forgotten.

But, Apple is more than Macs, and they don’t ignore or discontinue their personal computer products. Disney is more than cartoons, but they still cultivate them, and promote them properly. Just because you have potential to do more, doesn’t mean you diss your bread and butter. You don’t ignore the demographics you have and the market share that works to chase something that isn’t yours yet.

Being a business professional means identifying your profit margin, developing it into a stable base, and branching out in small, careful steps to diversify your product. Linden Lab needs to worry less about geek street cred and go hard after what it’s good at. Before it can do that, it has to seal up its existing demographic and stop chasing the one it wishes it had. Part of that is embracing the fact that it is a virtual play-land that skews female; the rest of it is not freaking out about the false belief that embracing the female vanity market means that’s all they’re doomed to be.

So if you’re one of those people writing about virtual worlds and Second Life with any regularity, get off Barbie’s plastic ass, already. Most of you Master Chief wannabes would shell out plenty to get an interface that let you have carnal knowledge of Cortana. You’d package it with a free sample of ExtenZe while Jimmy Johnson and Kevin Conway plugged it during every Adult Swim commercial break, and you wouldn’t even blush. You’d tweet high-fives back and forth until you lost circulation.

Most of business and marketing is about catering to human vanity. It’s about making people want, or making them believe they need. It’s true for luxury; it’s true for art; it’s going to be true for everything virtual that is to come. If your language, your methods, or your own mindset leads you to believe that female vanity is somehow more shameful, or less valid than the in-your-face male vanity that predominates most technology and gaming environments, change the way you think because in this brave new world you’re the relic.

The clubhouse has been invaded. Get used to us. We crit all over Azeroth and eat murlocks for lunch right next to you. We’ve put in our time with your pin-up arcade decor and it’s time you accepted that we might be changing the drapes. It’s our turn to step into avatars and environments that appeal to us, instead of having to choose between stripper-stacked whores or humpbacked old crones. Hey, cheer up, a percentage of us will still pick centerfold avatars, we just want the options to add glasses and cute skirts in colors other than cyan and gold.

And I leave you with this warning:

I swear to god, if my next tier set has clear heels, I’m going to bitch-slap Arthas, hijack Frostmourne, take Northrend hostage and make every game developer live in Stranglethorn Vale until they’re all crying like little girls from getting chain-sapped outside the Gurubashi Arena by teenaged 4chan rogues with nothing better to do with their time.

Do not test me on this. I have portals; I know things.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” ~ Ayn Rand

Recently, a friend sent me this little gem:

It reminded me of the “Fair Game” machinma that uses WOW to explain fair trade:

Together, the set form an interesting lesson that combines both world and personal finance. And they say games can’t teach you anything useful ;-P

“Ahem.. excuse me! Can I have the attention of the class for one second?” ~ Eminem

Grace has volleyed up some interesting questions that I’ve been personally wrestling with since the dawn of Salome. Well, before, actually, but never quite as intimately as with Salome.

In the world of new media, where reincarnation, re-branding, and re-invention are sometimes just a few clicks away, what is the value of a virtual identity? The more I examine this issue and read the input of others, the more I can’t help wondering if it’s the right conversation to be having at this point about where we are as Second Life citizens. Are we allowing ourselves to be pushed to a level of theoretical discussion that just breezes over the issue of who is demanding our identity and what rights they have to assign value to us or anything else in the dysfunctional playground where nothing seems ready for the big show? Are we being co-opted by our own intellectualism, milked for a sense of outrage to distract us from asking the simplest questions about who the people are behind the curtains and what are they doing about the existing problems before creating new ones and what rights do they have to our information?

Background: Grace’s post branches organically from the tree of Wallace Linden’s somewhat clumsy post addressing the management of virtual identity. Shock and awe, a week to the day of Wallace’s “things that make you go hmmm” style post, Linden Lab announced their acquisition of Avatars United. An acquisition that Grace points out comes with its own share of clumsiness.

It’s getting to the point where sighing and highlighting Linden Labs failure is feeling a bit like picking on the slow kid at recess. But, ironically, many of us seem to be in this abusive relationship with the slow kid. He kicks the ball over by us, we take it back to him all big smiles and friendliness and he knocks us down for our trouble. It’s all Lucy and Charlie Brown practicing place kicks. “What? You trusted us? AGAIN? You really are a blockhead.” Good grief.

So it really doesn’t shock me, nor do I think it shocks anyone, that Linden Labs fumbles their user base again. I keep thinking of the World of Warcraft episode of South Park where the Blizzard executives are trying to hand off an in-world item to a player only to discover none of them actually have accounts or play the game. “I don’t have a World of Warcraft character! I have a life!” More and more, this feels like how Linden Labs also views its users. They are making SL, but they’re not of SL. Virtual identities are just their business tools — their DBAs — their stage names. I don’t know that any of them tie themselves into a virtual identity the way many of us do. They certainly do not seem plugged into the issues that matter to their users. To some extent, of course, there is always a betrayal of the first generation of early adapters. The shucking off takes place when most start-ups edge into the mainstream. In theory, this happens to homogenize things for a bigger audience. The one SL keeps chasing and never quite catching.

But it’s a disservice to dwell just on the usual SL fail side of this particular issue, because the concept of value based on a virtual identity is, actually something even virtual lifers disagree on. I touched on this in a previous post where I addressed an ex-acquaintance calling me untrustworthy because I do not publicly attach my RL identity to Salome.

My own feelings on the issue are a bit schizophrenic.

On one hand, I get exhausted by the endless stream of lackluster twattle that tries to pass itself off as professional grade in SL. The reality is that the majority of SL businesses, media, artists, etc. are all just hobbyists playing at being qualified for the tasks they take on. Much of it is self-absorbed and self-promoting on a level that is just shy of repulsive and it’s as vulgar in these ways as it is unexamined and unchallenged. When you cast too bright a light in most corners, the paint is peeling, or is simply a primer base that never got its final coat.

But for 95% of SL, that’s okay. It doesn’t matter if the talk show host is a self-centered nit who doesn’t research their guests or have so much as a basic grasp of new media issues. It doesn’t matter if the musician’s manager is just a “look at me” credit hog who does nothing beyond a little digital paperwork. It doesn’t matter if the news is brought to you by sensationalistic creeps or shills that regurgitate the shiny happy corporatespeak.

It doesn’t matter because no one is asking you to take them at more than their presented worth. No one is forcing you to watch or read or use their services. So their credentials are based on a brand in a virtual world. And their brand is what you get to take or leave. There’s nothing wrong with that.

To that end, the services most people are seeking in SL aren’t that major. Just like most services in RL aren’t all that major. Amid getting all riled up about identity, ask yourself, what have you ever engaged in in SL where a RL name, resume, etc. would matter? Then ask yourself how much does it even matter in RL?

We all like to think that we do full research on anyone and everyone we hire or do business with, but in reality, most people in RL don’t jump through huge hoops for the great majority of our daily transactions. It’s all first impression and luck. You pick a name out of a phone book (okay, Google search these days, but you get my point), you call, if the person talks a good game, you let them fix your sink. You get the number of a teenager from a friend and let her babysit your kids. Maybe you run a Google for the important stuff. But you hand over your credit card every day to god knows who behind the counter of Store X and Restaurant Y. The vast majority of service agreements and exchanges in RL boil down to the word of a friend, a good phone impression, the tidiness of a uniform, the brand name of a franchise. Even in some of the “important” institutions and practices of RL, this is the case. Most people get away with overpumped resumes because employers don’t bother to check all references. The package, the brand, the haircut, the suit, the ease of conversation — in most cases these will take the place of established credibility. Anyone who plays office politics will tell you it’s not usually the work horse that gets the rewards, it’s the person who sells themselves to the right people in the right way.

Few people in SL will render services that require access to your credit card, your home, or your real identity. So why this push for unnecessary transparency? Why are we so uncomfortable taking people at avatar value? Is it to do with the trust we have in others, or the trust we have in ourselves to do our due diligence when the time comes?

Unlike most people, I have no issue taking someone at what they present to me. I have every right to ask, research, and examine every relationship (personal or professional) to the limits of good taste. That is my responsibility. If a person has kept themselves private, then I will temper my interaction with them accordingly. If I want to get to know the person, I will. If I feel I need more information before engaging in any sort of business project with them, I’ll tell them. How they respond will dictate how things progress.

A great deal of Second Life residents and businesses are fringe or unpolished. But there are also actual professionals that work and play within the format. Generally they’re not loud, showboating posers. They’re too busy doing stuff to care about make-believe celebrity or fisking a handful of L$ out of consumers that are too lazy to become educated consumers. It’s a frontier society, so you have the shadows and the light.

But RL names and identities aren’t going to add anything to that pool that isn’t already there. That’s not how society works with new media. Not in SL. Not anywhere. A guy named Justin on twitter posts things his 70-something Dad supposedly says. It’s entertaining, so no one cares who Justin really is other than a few media types looking for a human interest story. But Justin’s brand reaches over a million people every time he tweets, not counting what goes viral when those people forward to others. Most of those million probably couldn’t even tell you that Justin was the guy’s name without checking first. They don’t care what his last name is — he entertains them. They don’t hand over anything to him he doesn’t earn with the name “Justin.”

There are a handful of cases where RL identities matter and they all have one thing in common: the point where something virtual finds its way into someone’s meat space life. At that point its the responsibility of the parties involved to engage in proper disclosure, or, if legal procedures are involved, for everyone to cooperate in good faith to resolve issues. Beyond that point, debates about credibility and the value of identity feel like distractions. Important theoretical avenues to pause and consider while we wander down Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, but not the crux of the matter.

The fundamental issue for me is the fact that most of Second Life is not ready for prime time because the format and company brand are not on par with what professionals demand of anything they invest their valuable time into. Before Linden Labs can seriously begin to float concepts into its user base on issues like identity and professional integrity, they need to get their own house in order, present themselves with credibility and professionalism, and show that they can offer a product that invites real professionals to the table. Until then, the theoretical discussions are that of a lot of small time vaudevillians dreaming of becoming Ziegfeld headliners. They’re distracted from the quality of their own offerings because the dreams of the big time shine too bright in their eyes.

I know a few people like Grace in-world who have the teeth and RL background — they can lay down resumes that would make your head spin. The vast majority of these people aren’t about putting their ego and their credentials on their forehead and making you call them Doctor. They don’t chase approval or applause. They certainly have little interest in the celebrity of a make-believe world. They want to explore, create, connect, develop on their own terms. And none of that requires their credit cards, their corporate resumes, or their driver’s licenses.

Their world. Their imagination. Their brand. Their value.

What do I think? I think virtual identity value is an important issue and it merits exploring, but I don’t want to stop holding Linden Labs’ heels to the fire and giving them a pass just because they’re trying to wedge us into the right corner.

Making us register identities, demanding our transparency, these issues aren’t about credibility. These are things that make us sexy to the business world on a consumer level. They want our information, our demographics, our names and our spending habits. And they’re right to want those things. They’re a business, they need collateral assets — and our consumer information is a big part of that.

But once we give it up, that’s the show. Our bargaining chips are gone. It’s all iPad downhill from then on. They give, we consume, and those are the options. There is a small window here for us to be smart consumers and leverage our value by protecting our identities and making them improve their products before locking us into billing cycles.

That’s the value this conversation isn’t addressing. Maybe I’m too cynical, but the more I see where the theoretical conversations take us, the less strength I see us consolidating as a community to demand a better product. That troubles me more than what the RL identity of the avatar next to me is, or what the credentials of the avatar that textured my shoes happen to be.

Have the distractions of intellectualism, drama, and indifference rendered the educated consumer a thing of the past? As such, is our only real value left that of how much we consume, how fast and how quietly we do so?