The future(?) of Avination

I read the latest Hypergrid Business report on OpenSim grid development this morning ( http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/07/opensim-grids-break-records-for-regions-users/ ). While OpenSim grids in general are booming, Avination keeps decaying. So, where did it go wrong?

I think there are two basic flaws in the management of Avination, causing a multitude of symptoms. The first one is not realizing that favoritism tends to run off those you don't favour, and the second is not realizing that your intentions don't matter, it's how the results of them are perceived that matters.

Avination set out to be a haven to creators and merchants, to the degree that it became downright consumer hostile. If you basically tell your visitors to start paying right away or take a hike, the vaste majority will pick the second option, unless you have something unique people really want or need. Avination doesn't have that. It has no edge in neither technology nor content.

Voice, physics and a decent monetary system obviously aren't important enough to most visitors to justify the "pay or get lost" attitude. There are no top notch designers in Avination, just some who are big enough in Second Life to afford Avination as a side kick, and some who are decent or even good, but not competitive enough in Second Life to make it big there. However, more than a few of those coming to Avination seem to believe they can make a buck there by selling Second Life freebie quality goods at stupendous prices.

I guess it needs no explanation what happens with a "merchants' paradise" without any customers to pay for the goodies, or a "creators' paradise" without anyone being around to enjoy the creations.

Avination management seems to believe that offering the bleeding edge of OpenSim development equals offering top notch technology. The thought may be beautiful, but the truth is that if you again and again throw in poorly tested upgrades, that wreck the grid for a couple of weeks every second month, few people will see that as an improvement. Those who aren't run off by the consumer hostility will probably instead be run off by the grid constantly failing, making creation and maintenance of facilities hopeless.

There are also many minor exponents of the failure to realize intentions are nothing and perception is everything, such as offering services competing with those of paying customers, making management less available to customers to let it work more efficiently, not bothering customers with details about how Avination is managed, and a few more.

So, how to turn the ship around then? Well, with the present management looking at their beautiful map and coming to the conclusion that reality is at fault for not coinciding with that map, you can't. Even if management would realize they need to change their ways, they still have to fight with the very poor reputation they already built concerning policies and technical performance. Competing with some established and many up and coming grids without that reputation, I'm afraid that's a lost battle already. My personal estimate is that Avination will survive for at most another year, but by the time it disappears, no more than a few hardcore fans will be around to miss it.