Let's DO realize - everyone - that the beauty of SL is that it is a platform that makes it possible to do *different things* and that there's nothing at all wrong with the idea of having areas that work somewhat differently, even to the extent of specialized clients to truly play the game that exists there. So long as observers and spectators don't need to do that, all is good.
I think the idea of a game sim being developed and then "locked down" for pre-caching is excellent. It won't work well for a sim that is in constant steady flux, but consider this; if a sim could be developed on the beta grid, say, at a much LOWER cost to the developers, and then introduced on the main grid with a simple import, well, that would be an excellent way to make SL a true gaming platform... as well as everything else it is.
...please note the importance of this. the importance of an immersive gaming environment, with the potential for specialized clients, possibly even specialized server-side mechanics, but with the advantage of using your own account and inventory.
When I think of all my SL friends who wander off for days at a time to grind their other accounts, I can't even begin to imagine all the piles of shiny money that this change could represent.
And it's not even a bad thing for other game designers. Think of SL as being the shared environment in which you could walk from WOW to COS, stopping here and there to shop and hang out with friends. This improvisational, non-scripted sort of interaction is where the streaming reality truly shines. But why must we have one OR the other?
NOW let us imagine a "tiered" client which would intelligently load and manage plugin-overlays. A very simple, light, fast-loading client that will suffice for most things, with the ability to load special tool-kits; gaming, building, flight, driving, combat, etc. Something that can load and unload plugins and manage memory without pestering the user.
We do most of that now with horrible kludges built with LSL, but the kludges illustrate nicely what could be done with something better than cardboard and packing tape.
Meanwhile, I'd be utterly stunned if there were not other gaming companies quietly using SL or a private closed opensim server to prototype game environments, check sightlines and everything else that is easy to do in SL and harder to do in any sort of collaborative way on other design platforms.
I think much dissent in these matters has to do with various sorts of residents objecting to other sorts trying to tell them what SL is "supposed to be."
But really, it's "supposed" to be like the 2D web... as many tools as possible. Any particular page or sim is "supposed" to be *interesting* and *useful* to the people who refer to it. And the fact that I am interested in particular sorts of games should not force me to be NOT interested in sitting in my skybox and watching a live stream of an SL talk-show.