I’m just offering my own suggestions of how I think it could have a broader appeal.

>1) Completely re-engineer the scenegraph to catch up with the immersion and realism of modern gaming platforms

There’s a limit to how much an interactive, user-generated world could sustain that sort of stress, especially one with this many diverse purposes, only some of which are about immersion, and only a tiny fraction of which are about actual games. There are plenty of immersive modern games with better graphics. Go and play them. Leave this one alone. The moves the Lindens have made to trying to make this again “more like modern games”, such as Windlight, only crack and break it in ways that are harder and harder to fix.

>2) Hire content developers whose sole task is to create a rich, detailed and compelling world.

Did you not understand that this is a user-generated world? That means yes, there is amateur content, and yes, people do their own thing, as they wish, on their land. It’s like real life in that way. It is rich, detailed and compelling already, with a huge variety of amateur as well as professional. I think this very concept is elusive for you, as you want to dumb it all down again and make it like the latest MMORPG. No one will be doing that. We’re past that now.

>3) Rewrite the entire UI, highlighting basic navigation, rich user profiles, and social affordances

Oh, I dunno. Sure. Yeah. The Lindens have yet another version of doing that. I don’t think they are probably capable of doing that, but since the browser is open-sourced, eventually, better ones will emerge. There are already two non-Linden ones that many people like better that have things easier and more clear to see.

I think there’s a basic premise here: the UI can’t fix a more complex world to become less complex.

>4) Focus on user affordances. An avatar should essentially be a living MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn object.

Ugh. Says who? If I want to go on Facebook, I go there. Perhaps the SL avatar might be linked to FB at some point — there is one guy’s API widget thing that does it, but who cares? I mean, there’s so much of all this stuff around now, that nobody feels the absolute exigencies that you feel, as apparently some would-be API and widget maker, to open up SL and make it “yours” instead of “ours,” as in “our world, our imagination” for anyone who joins it.

6) Break the walls of the Second Life by wiring it up to the First. Avatars should be able to easily send and respond to sms and email. If I buy a new jacket at G-Star, I should also get a virtual copy for my avatar. Cross-channel communication and cross-promotional opportunities.

I now see more what this open-source extremism within SL is about — it’s about taking the revolutionary product that is SL, and dumbing it back down to becoming a game like any other game.

Do all MMORPGs everywhere already have an existing interoperability? I don’t think so. Have they, in their many years and zillions of iterations of existences, even developed a common lexicon? I don’t think so. So…what my take-home here is that there is a war on SL to make it go back to being a game against, by gamer geeks.

I can already send an IM to email or visa versa, there is just a check-off box for that on my user preferences and always has been in SL.

There are also several third-applications to do that with mobile phones, but meh, who wants to risk their security/password with that? See, you and your knocking down the walls stuff, what you are really up to is taking IP and money lol.

>7) Scale down the virtual economy. The WoW economy is an emergent property of life in the Warcraft world. It should be the same for SL, not the primary business model.

Hahahah ok, now I get it. You really DO want to take my money! And roll up the entire economy too! Well $1.5 million US dollars in trading a day must make gold-farmers jealous, I guess.

The economy is a desirable and deliberate feature of SL, but I guess you must feel it threatens you in some way. I’m glad we’ve had this little talk.