There has been a bit of community response to Kotaku’s coverage of the Worlds in Motion interview with me. I felt like clarifying my stance on platform-centric development, and the relationship between third party and platform developers.
…and this be it:
I appreciate the commentary, I’m always happy to see active engagement and discussion about the metaverse as a landscape that is only partially composed of SL.
One of the fallacies of harkening back to the early days of the web, however, is that this simply isn’t the early days of the web. Virtual worlds are a similarly developing medium, yes, but one major difference is that the web was a completely unprecedented communicative and informational medium. Users were suddenly developers by the very fact of their participation and contribution.
But the diffusion or confusion between developer and user isn’t anything new anymore. Certainly we’re approaching a revolution of the person-as-author, but it’s essentially a rapidly advancing but already existing framework.
Developing for 3D virtual worlds is not web development. There is a significant component of game development in these spaces as well.
This is one major difference between the development of the web and currently developing virtual worlds. There now exists a tempered and a demonstrably efficient system of 3rd party game development. Had there been a system like this during the initial development of the web, then yes, there would’ve been an expectation for platform developer support. SL & There are not Navigator & IE. They’re two programs that, although aiming at similar ends, differ in great ways, both technically and in regards to the social makeup of these spaces.
In the framework for 3rd party development for proprietary hardware/software, a development house has some level of direct support, collaboration, dialog etc. with the architects of the platform. As a developer for vw platforms, I feel that we could benefit from a closer relationship to the Lindens.
The point of the comment was that, in this traditional vein of 3rd party development, a platform where dialog between developer and architect is nil is as far from the norm as it can be.
It enhances fluidity, flexibility, and real agency on the part of any organization or person who has a direct line to the ‘gods’ of the space.
Case in point: early activism against taxation and other elements of SL’s dynamics that residents thought to be deleterious and counterproductive. The Lindens will be the only ones to effect real policy change, and in the same way are the ones I most want to talk to when conceptualizing a brand new app in SL, for instance.
Anyway, in our experience, SL has demonstrated its ability to be just as strong a platform to develop on as any other. But there are benefits and detriments to any specific platform choice. The freedom and flexibility that we enjoy with SL can be beneficial for some purposes, while alternately a project may be more benefited by the very serial control and close dialogical relationship with Makena, the developers of There.
Alright, that was a bit long, but I feel that it’s easy to misconstrue my comments in this interview as favoritism toward one platform or the other. The truth is that, as a user and part of a very passionate dev team, I want to see these emerging metaverse nodes develop to their utmost potential. I think that it’s essential to draw out inefficacies or inefficiencies in order to improve anything.
But, of course, it’s not up to any one of us. The virtual world is a space that I feel should be ideally shaped as an amalgam of interest and vision. And I think it’s wonderfully reflective upon all of this to see that a conversation can develop in this format beyond the story, as part of the story.
Good things.
Cheers
