Really

In Clive Jackson’s white paper on The Metaverse 2.0 he mentions cites “no barriers to entry” as the first criterion for successful adoption of the metaverse. We saw an example of this principle when Linden Lab remove the credit card requirement for creating new Second Life accounts, paving the way for the exponential growth in registrations.

Another way that Second Life lowers the barrier is the ease of content creation. The in-world tools for building and scripting brought 3D modeling and animation within reach for many people, who no longer needed to buy and learn potentially complex applications like Maya. The success of Second Life must be at least partially attributed to the fact that large numbers of people, many of who might never have thought of themselves as modelers or programmers, were able to have great ideas, and then implement them. Because everybody is using the same tools, applications are differentiated mostly by their creator’s imagination, rather than proficiency in some tool or programming language. There are exceptions, of course: texture and animation creation is more difficult than regular building, and is thus more costly (and, perhaps, we see less innovation in those areas?).

Several recent developments seem to be moving us towards raising the barriers for creating. There’s the proposed certification system for builders and scripters, the push towards mono for scripting (ultimately allowing the use of programming languages like C# instead of LSL), and most recently, the introduction of sculpted prims. All of these initiatives are intended to enable richer, better, and more quality content. Since there’s no plans to remove the current building tools and features, it may not prevent people from creating content, but it may lead to a split in the creator community. Those who bother to go through the certification, know how to program in C#, and are able to use 3D modeling packages to create sculpted prims, will be more sought after, and will be able to create much better applications than those developers only using LSL and standard prims (whether the certification program will actually have any effect, remains to be seen, but the intent is to differentiate between professionals and hobbyists).

That better applications can be built is good of course. However, if the consequence is a decrease in the number of people who try to develop their own ideas, because ultimately they won’t be able to compete, might that not lead to less innovation? Gwyneth Llewelyn covers the sculpted prim aspect of this discussion, but I think it’s worth seeing that as just one piece of what she terms the growing rift between the “talented amateur” and the professional artists, and perhaps another slight dent in the ideal expressed by “Your world, your imagination” .