Thursday, August 19, 2010

The Real Gift of Linden Lab's New Development Approach for Second Life

I take back all I've said about the reasons I love the idea of Agile Development for Second Life. Not because I don't believe that an open and iterative approach is the best way to deliver great software. But because there is another benefit that so far outweighs the others I've mentioned that it is like comparing the light of the sun to the twinkling of distant stars.

Okay, I hear you, "Enough teasing Botgirl! What the hell is this alleged gift about which you have been unsuccessfully trying to wax poetic?" Ready? Here you go. The precious treasure is:

A Perpetual Drama Machine.

That's right. There is nothing that the Second Life Community loves more than drama. Emotional speculation about the possible consequences of Linden Lab machination is right up there with shopping, dancing and SLex as the most popular virtual pastime. And by opening up their virtual kimono and accelerating releases, Linden Lab has allowed us all to have a never-ending supply of drama-fodder that we can play with across the worlds in blogs, social network posts and raging transplatform flame wars. Each iteration, we we can exhaustively examine every emerging feature and find the hidden seeds of paranoid- or bliss-inducing soma, reading the shifting backlog tea leaves to play digital Nostradamus.

Of course, the Second Life community that will benefit the most from this priceless gem is the blogging community. So thank you, Philip from the bottom of my raving pundit heart.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mortgages don't pay themselves, after all. Nice to see the Lab giving something back to the community. :)

Moggs Oceanlane said...

Mwhahahaha.

Lalo Telling said...

As the Cowardly Lion said: "Ain't it the truth!"

Anonymous said...

But only the one team (snowstorm) is doing it right. The search and commerce teams won't share what they are doing. Too bad. There would be much good and much drama there. (then there are the rest of the teams we don't know what their names are or what exactly it is they do)

sororNishi said...

Yummmm....gossip...

Chestnut Rau said...

LL is doing it for the lulz.