I’m going to talk about expectation management and Second Life, so it is only fitting that I first talk about Star Wars, in 1977.
That Star Wars film (Episode IV, the first one made) was the most spoilerific effort that I have ever seen. For months before the premiere of the film the media was saturated with character-bios, plot summaries, clips of the film, and making-of featurettes.
Every major newspaper in the country ran plot summaries, or synopses, or serialisations. One ran a two-page spread in small type, covering the last 15 minutes of the movie in detail, with pictures.
Science Fiction and Fantasy films had always been a bit mysterious, full of the unexpected. Star Wars was not. You had to hang out under a rock not to know every twist and turn of the plot a month before it first appeared in the cinemas. You could even pick up much of the merchandise in advance, though it was not available in the truly vast quantities that would appear later.
Your expectations were completely managed. You knew everything there was to know about the film (except how it finally looked on the big screen – a bit washed-out and grainy, to tell the truth) before you saw it… and it delivered. It met your expectations exactly, with no surprises.
Well, with two surprises…. the hordes of people who turned up to see a Science Fiction/Fantasy film who would never have done so otherwise, and the amount of merchandise sold.
About a year later, the film Battlestar Galactica hit the cinemas, and I went to see the opening, and sat in an almost deserted cinema – there were perhaps no more than 20 people. It was pretty much SF/F fans only. Few people (even fans) expected decent plots, acting, characters and emotional involvement in an SF/F film, so people who liked that sort of thing didn’t usually turn up to them. Once again: Expectations.
Now, have I suggested that Linden Lab should undersell Second Life? No. I believe it should change strategies and manage expectations better.
Why? Because according to the best information I’ve been able to get (which is extremely scanty) only one in every one hundred new Second Life users stays on beyond their first day or two.
Most of you have seen the comments of various people who have tried Second Life and bailed out. “It’s clunky,” they say. “As a game it is very boring,” or “It’s really awkward to use.”
These people are expecting a far different experience to the sort of thing that Second Life delivers. For them, Second Life isn’t cool, because it isn’t the slick, smooth game-like experience that they are expecting. Second Life is a very cool experience to me, and quite probably to you, if you’re reading this – but it isn’t the experience that they’re expecting, and thus they do not ‘buy in’. There’s no sale of the experience of Second Life, because the experience of Second Life isn’t what they were expecting to ‘buy’.
Linden Lab sells Second Life as cool, but I think it is selling entirely the wrong kind of cool.
Second Life – as a ‘sale’ – is a progressive proposition because it is a service, not a basic product. You’re not just selling the idea once, you’re selling it long-term – because a user who signs up and doesn’t continue to use Second Life is a waste. Doubly a waste, in fact, since they may not return, even if the service subsequently were to suddenly start handing out buckets of cash and sackfuls of chocolate lesbians.
To obtain a new Second Life user, the user has to be aware of benefits. A user has to first be able to justify creating an account, installing the software and trying it out at all, and that’s where expectations come in. If the users expectations are grossly mismatched at this point, why would they continue? If they’ve been sold on the idea of one thing and presented with another, they’re going to feel misled – or ignorant. These are feelings you don’t want to generate in potential customers who you want to continue to stick with you on an ongoing basis.
It’s okay (from a business perspective, at least) to oversell one-off products – it’s done all the time – but this demonstrably doesn’t work well with ongoing services (or at least not without lock-in contracts). To sell services, you need to manage expectations. Second Life does poorly in this, and pretty much always has, selling expectations that are not met on arrival.
Even once you’ve passed that barrier, because some people do come into Second Life with quite realistic expectations (despite everything they may have heard or read about it), Second Life is poor at communicating benefits.
Each one of us committed users know that Second Life is cool, and that it has benefits that are meaningful to us. We’re already sold, though. A new user, however, may not initially perceive the benefits that are actually available to them as a Second Life user (heck, there’s all of us, if nothing else), and if they cannot justify the usage to themselves, they just stop.
New Second Life users are important. The total pool of active Second Life users is, quite frankly, too small to be self-sustaining indefinitely. Exactly where the line is that we need to cross to get into that comfort-zone is uncertain, but we’re very unlikely to be very close to it.
The Second Life experience is being sold the way it always has been, and this strategy is long past the point where we can confidently say that it simply does not work, but it is the only basic strategy that the Lab ever really uses for selling Second Life. It’s time for a change. Time and past time.
Nailed this one.
Each management shift I kept expecting this to change, meaning that the product does actually meet the expectations.
Case in point, Linden Realms. Not only does it not work properly for roughly half the people that posted in a thread about it on the SL forums, and on their blog post, they advertised it out there as free play through Google. Plastered it on their front page, login screen, destinations, blog post, etc.
The end result is that employees, using their own product, couldn’t manage to build a fully working mini-game on their own platform and had their own internal mis-expectations that this was good enough to present to the public.
The people that had no problems were fine with it, as were those that came in with low expectations.
I don’t know of a another virtual world/game company this size that put something out with that level of quality and call it good enough to promote.
I keep trying to attribute the bulk of it to mis-management and not keeping employees out of business and product decisions in favor of people that are real product managers in order to move toward that level of polish you’d expect in product.
Everything is piece-meal, when it needs to be a single coherent product offering, in order to achieve that pro level of quality and polish.
Afraid that if they don’t get that, they won’t get over the hump. There are plenty more users that fit the bill for SL, but that same demographic has higher expectations, as they should already know by their existing users.
There are a lot of new residents sticking around. And it is better they avoid the jaded aspberger antisocial disorder affected oldbies crowd that bitches about anything LL does.
End of story.
Sorry if reality bites but there it is.
Exactly what I and many others have been trying to say for a long time. Thanks for putting it so clearly.
What’s the remedy though? It seems hopelessly out of control. Your last thread touched on the more prominent marketing stuff, but smaller oversights of expectation management hurt a lot too.
For example, the last time I brought a friend into Second Life, the very first ‘bug’ he spent 10 frustrating minutes trying to fix was his avatar not animating the same way it did on the new registration page. Those were 10 minutes that may have never been an issue if the new registration page didn’t lie about how an avatar would animate without an AO.
Those small expectations turned disappointments matter. Its better if the expectations weren’t planted that way.
Rod spoke at SLCC about the 16,000+ sign ups a day and not completely understanding why. I think this post details exactly why, the too high expectations, and consequent disappointment which explains why 99% don’t stick around. You have to wonder how long Linden Lab can squander first impressions before those numbers aren’t that big anymore.
I know they can’t exactly pull the ‘Join’ button to guard first impressions though, but they can market Second Life in a way that issues the challenge of joining an incomplete, rough from edge to edge virtual world or not. If those sign-ups shrunk to 1,000 consequently without the vampires, effortless shopping and high-fiving hover segway rides, that’d be fine so long as that 1,000 a day consciously decided they were up for the challenge Second Life actually is. It might actually grow more that way.
@Ann Sounds like the people you describe would be keeping themselves away from new users anyway.
For me, Pookymedia has been making some great videos that explain Second Life.
Pooky’s Year in the Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GgNcTxgCMLQ) is great for showing the evolution of a Second Life experience … each shot has a wealth of detail about how you can explore, shop, build, play games and socialise – there’s a nice touch that the couple’s early friend who shows them how to shop is joining them to play games at the end. There’s a undercore of romance, but it’s not over the top.
And it also makes it clear that you start off as a newb and that this is an experience that grows.
heh, i keep telling my ‘real world’ friends that when i think SL is ready for them i will invite them to join. Well i still haven’t invited them yet, although i’ve started to say things like ‘it’s almost ready’ like its been in an 8 year Beta stage.
I worked in Marketing a few years, and I’ve thought about how i would market SL, and i find it hard since SL seems to change so much.
[...] ”Dwell on it” skriver Tateru Nino ett inlägg om hur Linden Lab saluför sitt Second Life och varför så många [...]
Great post. Second Life is too big for its own good when it comes to selling the benefits, by this I mean it’s such a broad canvas that it’s hard to sell the benefits.
Ideally the experiences should be being sold by content creators and sim owners and the creation aspect sold by Linden Lab. There should be less talk of Second Life from casual users and more talk of the experiences within, we’re still a long way from that.
It’s always the same with the marketing professionals. They try to sell something that they don´t use and understand. And that is the case for most products. So it is good to have Rodvik, somebody who is not a marketing person like Mark Kingdon. He focuses more on games, which I think for a long time already, should play a much bigger role in SL. Many newbies expect SL to be a game, so they should at least find some games to play. But what I am missing completly in the advertising is the creative part. Building, Scripting, Creating, Making Money, that is the foundation of Second Life and very interesting for many people, while the marketing focuses just on the consumer side.
But that is not the main problem of SL. Even if the expectations of the people are not matched, many more should find it interesting and spend more than one day inworld. The main problem is lag. Nothing really is working. The Lab keeps introducing one new feature after the other, while the basics do not work. For example, I have a very fast computer (3.2 GHz Quad Core, 4GB RAM, ATI 6850). I get 2 FPS with the default graphics settings. After hours of research I turned VBO in the hardware settings off and managed to increase that to 10 FPS. I got 60 FPS when I bought the graphics card half a year ago. Reason: a bad implementation of OpenGL, probably in the new ATI drivers. Newbies would of course not be so patient, they just leave. It is still almost impossible to drive a SL car across 2 sims without crashing or it is impossible moving at all once there are more than 20 people on a sim. Lag prevents us builders from building better experiences, not lack of functions. Wouldn´t it be possible to assign power from unused sims to heavyly used sims? How about virtual cloud sims? Also the costs are a huge problem. Last time I looked Linden Realms run on about 15 estates. That is 180 sims. Including VAT, I would pay for those about 65.000 USD per month, 360 USD per sim. How could a resident builder ever create a game like that and make money with it? But it is even more basic stuff that is not working. For example it is customary now to send notecards for offline communication because offline IMs are capped. Lately even those did fail for many people. I got 12 e-mail notifications, but none when I logged in. A Linden recommended in the Jira to block a random object. For some reason that would lead to the missing IMs being delivered. It worked. 27 IMs appeared immediatly. What an advanced piece of technology after more than 10 years of building it.
i agree, Second Life had an energetic vibe in 2006 and it felt like Philip was a daily part of that and it also truly felt like anything was possible. i think the lack of a specific direction helped make it seem that anything was possible
that feeling left for me in 2009 because of more constrictive policies such as the new adult rating, more restrictive TOS changes, and the clear departure of Philip
SL can never recapture that media frenzy that occurred in ’06 and ’07 but perhaps it can rekindle some of that “anything’s possible” vibe
i’d like to see SL stay relevant and not lose millions of user hours – even though i never see myself returning to it, i owe my VW roots to it. however, the cynic in me thinks it will continue to slide slowly down – many “good for SL” people have left and found better options – i count myself as one of those because apart from having 19 sims, i blogged positively about SL for two years, posted 9,000 SL pics, and was as evangelical as one could be for SL (plus i had been a mentor too!)
i used to be a huge SL cheerleader and a big customer – the “used to be” is the key part and many others like me are gone . . .
I was hanging out with friends at NCI Kuula when a newb appeared–you could tell, he was the vampire with the striped shirt–and made an indecent proposal.
I don’t think it was aimed at me specifically. I hope it wasn’t.
Since I was, at the time, in the guise of an anthropomorphic feline female jedi, I told him that I wasn’t the pussy he was looking for, and muted him.
It’s not every newb who acts as a sex-starved Vampire, but it happens often enough to make me wonder just what the Lindens are trying to sell.
@Wolf
When a new user immediately propositions me, my method for dealing with them is to turn them down, maybe with a joke, and then engage them in conversation. “You getting around okay? Finding what you need?” They either run for the hills at this point, or they actually start talking like a human being. And just in case they still harbor any hope for a quickie, it’s pretty easy to say, “Hey, I notice your freenis/bondage cuffs/random attachment is crooked/too big/too small. I can talk you through adjusting that properly, if you like.” If they’re gonna walk around like that, they might as well do it right, hey? When they realize that you really, honestly intend to do nothing more than give a lesson on basic building tool use, they once again either run away, or forget about sex for a while and maybe even make a friend.
I don’t consider this approach wasted on the ones who run away. Sooner or later they’ll get bored wandering around meat markets. They’ll either give up, or maybe they’ll remember that there are more substantial experiences around and go looking for them.
I would love to see LL follow through with “Your World. Your Imagination” in one branch of their advertising. It is relatively easy to make your avatar look like you want it to. You really can learn to do basic building after a few hours spent at the Ivory Tower of Primatives. You can socialize “face to face”, and yes, sometimes that involves sex, but a lot of the time it is dancing and conversation. These were the things that kept me in SL for the first year or so while I worked out what I wanted to do with MY newfound world.
Marcus, NCI Kuula is one of the PG areas that really new newbs arrive at, it’s not somewhere you should expect any of the sex stuff, newbs or not.
Wolf, while I was pretty specifically addressing new users looking for sex, the little effort expended is worthwhile in pretty much any situation, in my opinion. A flippant, non-informative response followed by immediate muting isn’t going to do nearly as much as, say, actually telling them where they are, why they’ve done something inappropriate, and then maybe even inviting them to drop the sex (or whatever other annoying thing they’ve done) and hang out. If they’re actually a complete troll, well then, yeah, at this point mute the heck out of them. But treating them as a troll straight away helps no one.
Wolf indicated that they were immediately propositioned – that’s enough to mute someone, imo
that’s pretty poor manners to blurt out wanting sex to a stranger (this would happen to me on Orientation Island as a Mentor and some where so blatant as to ask for real pics! all within 30 seconds!)
oops, drat . . . and as far as being concerned about what is most effective to do with a n00b? LL spoke loudly a few years back when they abandoned the Mentor program, if LL does not care about helping n00bs, well . . . my two cents
(subscribing to the comments)
I totally agree with Tateru. And yes, “Your World. Your Imagination” is the key line. This message was what made Second Life so different from all the boring, pre-fabricated game environments. And highly attractive for the curious, the non-gamer crowd, the talented, creative and playful, who prefer constructing and visualising and sharing their ideas for killing aliens in a flashing superduper perfect game. Create your own world, your own universe from your own imagination and share it – and share the world and imagination of others. SL was exactly like this and boomed while it was like this. The remains of it still can be seen in-world, on mainland, where some results of a tremendous amount of creativity and crazyness survived the boring years of decline.
A “World” is not perfect and it must not be perfect, it has bright and dark sides, pretty and ugly sides. Imagination is not “clean”, it includes all kinds of ideas and conceptions, elitist ideas as well as flat stupid ideas and totally crazy ideas. And it is not necessarily commercial.
Back in the boomtimes all avatars were created equal, for example they did not need a 3D application for creating fuzzy looking pixels for selling them on a fuzzy looking “marketplace” or “investments” into motion capturing equipment or whatever. If something was made and sold or shared , *everybody” could have made this something in-world without much knowledge besides the SL tools. This encouraged legions of users to try their creativity by following the example.
All this and more created and more an athmosphere of “Yes, we are one” and the feeling of a real “world”. It was definately NOT the urge for technical perfection or superb visual detail which attracted people to Second Life, and this never was promised. “Your World, Your Imagination” was the perfect slogan characterising what was really going on in SL. And – as a side effect – it allowed Linden Lab to be exaxtly as “not perfect” as their customers and users were “not perfect”.
Unfortunately, this idea got lost. Lindens came up with “new” marketing ideas, like crosstalking to RL on “social network” level, sponsoring elitist offline content creation instead of improving the community tools and overall usability, adding features which not only were not demanded but never worked as intended (like media on a prim) and so on. The crowning climax was the realease of “Viewer 2″, which can be seen as the final blueprint for a company losing touch with it´s own product and it´s actual as well as potential users.
As a result SL lost a lot of users while not attracting enough new ones to fill the gap.
The return of “Your World – Your Imagination” and Rod´s latest activities and published opinions – which i strongly support – might be a turning point, but i think it is will be very difficult to regain what we lost.
They most definitely have to address the performance and stability issues. With all the new features that have been added, performance is worse than five years ago and most of the “help needed” posts in the SL Answers forum are of the “I can’t log on” or “I crash all the time” variety.
One of the major reasons stated for developing Viewer 2 was to “start with a complete, fresh, bottoms-up code base” instead of endlessly patching up the ramshackle Viewer 1 code.
This didn’t exactly work out as LL told us it would, did it?
As for the “expectations”, I agree. Second Life is not a game, and it shouldn’t be sold as one.
@Ann Otoole InSL, +100 you tell them gurl!
“The Second Life experience is being sold the way it always has been…”
Yes, as if it was subject to Moore’s law rather than Murphy’s
Yep have to echo a little of Anne Otoole Sl there – lots of complaints of “LL never listens to us” and there are times when I throw my paws up and give up listening to “us” – and I is “us”. (Excuse the grammar).
And expectations – I suppose I must have had some to be drawn in to try logging on the first time but something must have stuck.
But ok how about ‘Hey your attention didn’t wander before the end of this sentence, you didn’t burst into tears when your plastic toy said hey ‘math is hard’ because you didn’t need that affirmation, you get the idea that just because you managed on the third attempt to navigate the Add button so you have a billion friends (loosely put) its not actually real, you quite like the idea of having the chance to explore almost limitlessly without instant gratification but with a sense of quiet achievement and your idea of fun isn’t slaughtering pixel piglets – well we might just have the place for you…’ Not exactly snappy is it?
As for being propositioned…I sort of miss it =^^=
I agree with Tateru on this article, however the outcome should be better defined in the case of Linden Lab.
What it boils down to, and usually is the case, is that the people running Linden Lab aren’t entirely aware of what it is that their product represents. This representation ideal seems to be as fluid as water and changes on the whim of whomever happens to be in charge at the moment.
Whether we’re talking about Mark Kingdon and the focus on Enterprise Servers, or Rodvik Humble with his focus on making Second Life more like a game. In either case, what we see is the CEO attempting to conform the virtual world to their own idea of what it should be, and quite honestly failing when they do.
As nebulous as Philip Rosedale was concerning the position and direction of Linden Lab/Second Life, he still understood this virtual world better than any of his successors. It’s not that Philip didn’t have a vision, it’s that his idea of that vision was in a language that seems to have been entirely alien in nature to a board of directors, subsequent marketing, and CEOs ongoing.
I commend Rodvik for coming from the prestige of EA and gaming, just as I hold high esteem for Will Wright for his contributions to the gaming industry. I hold the same esteem for Mark Kingdon because of his business expertise, and I commend Kim Salzer for attempting to market and control a unified message in Linden Lab and Second Life.
They all deserve their kudos and all came from high pedigrees in the business world. However, that being said, they all are standing examples of what happens when you attempt to address a virtual world like Second Life as if it were something entirely different.
That’s the real lesson, in that Second Life is not a game. There is a major difference between a dynamic virtual environment and a video game – more so than I have time to actually explain in detail here.
However, first and foremost, it means that there is no central goal. There are no stories except those you make in-world. There are no experiences or locations that were (or should) be made by a multi-million dollar design team in-house. Second Life is not a AAA title, and cannot be treated like it is.
Yes, I do know the lingo a bit for the actual gaming industry (as well as methodologies of those executives). It’s amazing what sitting around a bunch of Atari execs and disgruntled employees will teach you when you’re trying to divert their own disaster. So you could say that I actually do know the expected actions and mentality of Rodvik Humble, even before *he* may acknowledge them or notice them.
For that, it’s a sociology issue. People are creatures of habit, and his habit was learned as a VP at EA. There should never have been a surprise that he would attempt to treat Second Life as a game (applying methodologies he’s used to, and surrounding himself with people from that familiar industry). It wasn’t a surprise that Mark Kingdon focused on Enterprise servers, either.
In either case, it’s equivalent to being a tourist in a foreign country for a few months and suddenly believing you are fit to rule that country. That’s what Second Life is… a digital country. It has its own culture, it’s own currency, its own mentality.
In the end, Philip Rosedale still had the closest understanding of this fantastic environment when he said – I’m not building a game, I’m building a country.
Once Rodvik actually understands these lessons, he’ll do just fine and so will Second Life. Until then, I expect more of the same blind fumbling in the dark from Linden Lab.
I have always really respected your opinion, but on this issue I just have to disagree. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be about managing expectations, but meeting expectations. The focus should be on improving Second Life to meet expectations, not producing low quality advertisements that just further stigmatize SL and feed into lingering stereotypes in hopes that new users won’t expect much.
@Gianna
I actually agree partially with you and also partially with Tateru. It is about managing expectations, and it is very much about meeting expectations. However, the underlying issue is neither of those, but instead actually understanding Second Life first.
After all, you cannot make adequate plans or expectations, nor can you manage expectations if you’re basing them on a product that is nothing like the one you are actually working with. In this case, I’d have to say that both you and Tateru may not be entirely correct, but have at least pointed out the symptoms of the root.
And for that, I thank both of you. Without at least looking at those symptoms, we would not have a basis to get to that root issue.
For the record, I’m categorically opposed to low-quality advertisements, Gianna. Also, meeting expectations goes hand-in-hand with managing them, in my opinion. The thing should do what it says on the tin.
I think it would make the point clearer if you said it in the other direction as well, even if on the surface it looks like you are just saying the same thing twice with different words.
Somthing like: “The thing should do what is says on the tin. And the tin should never lie about what the thing does.”
Even though the total end result is the same as if you only focused on modifying the thing to match the tin (or vice-versa), saying it like this emphasizes that the issue should be approached from both ends; not only you need to change the thing to meet the promises you make about it, but you must also make sure the promises you make respect reality.
I’ve been struggling with this problem lately of why we use SL. I mean, I use it because I like talking with my friends and I like making stuff, but most people don’t care much for my friends and most people aren’t inspired enough by the platform to care about making stuff, so that’s no marketing pitch.
I think there has been a sharp spike in self loathing among SL users in the past year or so. Hamlet says we fear change, Pixeleen says we’re little Hitlers, Rosedale himself says we’re all sad lonely people in rural areas with no friends in the real world (I can’t imagine a bleaker vision from the CEO of LL). Tateru seems to be the least negative, but even she posted that some SLers are messing up the new user experience. Are we all really just a bunch of change fearing cyber bully pervert shut-ins? Is there nothing noble about what we’re doing?
Back in 2007 we could argue that we were creating a new kind of internet. Now that argument is very difficult to make, especially since LL became openly hostile to the academics. OpenSim might be making a new kind of internet, but they are doing it very slowly.
I guess my question is a bit existential. Why am I here and why are all of these other people here? I guess if I look at what most SLers actually do I have to admit that we’re here to perv and greif at each other.
I just wish I had an answer that wasn’t so depressing.
“some SLers are messing up the new user experience.” – Well, that’s *always* been true. Perhaps not from day one, but probably by day one hundred. I wrote about it originally back in 2006, I think.
As for your question… whatever its faults, Second Life is (to me) the most powerful, versatile, and important step in this generation of the overall development and evolution of virtual environments (now in its 36th year). I have friends and family in SL. I have business interests in SL. I meet new people in SL, whom I would never otherwise have the opportunity to. I can create in it, although the ability for SL to realise that creativity feels rather limiting, but nevertheless I still do it.
What other reasons would I need to justify it to myself?
I actually agree with you on the new user experience. I wish it wasn’t true, though.
I’m not really asking you to justify yourself, I’m just wondering what a realistic expectation in SL would look like when morale is in the toilet. My morale is in the toilet, at least, and I get the feeling I’m not alone in this.
If LL can’t really point to you to create realistic expectations, Tateru. Your success isn’t what the average SLer can expect to find their first day, or even at all. My experience certainly isn’t something a noob could aspire to. Not because I’m awesome, but you know, the two biggest things I’ve done are expose copybot and anger half the grid with my poor understanding of privacy (I’ve learned from my mistakes, though). That’s not a normal user experience. The only realistic expectation to give new users seems to be, “come let people insult you and/or try to pixel hump you in a buggy, laggy high concept videogame that isn’t a videogame!”
This isn’t an online activity I can really share with my RL friends. When I tell friends in RL about SL they just assume I’m big into cyber sex (contrary to Phil’s ideas, I do have meatspace friends). I can’t point them to an article about SL that isn’t about LL’s mismanagement or users greifing at each other or LL simply lying about how awesome their latest failure is.
If LL could come up with a good marketing scheme I’ll know it because it will give me some hope again. When that happens people will be more willing to share SL with their friends and that will have a multiplying effect. I doubt LL can do it, but if they did I would really appreciate it.
Well, I’m still feeling positive and optimistic, if that helps any.
Ciaran@ “Ideally the experiences should be being sold by content creators and sim owners and the creation aspect sold by Linden Lab. There should be less talk of Second Life from casual users and more talk of the experiences within, we’re still a long way from that.”
I could not agree more with Ciaran. LL should let creative residents do what they are good at since, after all, they pay LL for the privilege to run business’ on the Second Life platform. LL seems to usurp and mess up the basic market from emptying the in-world stores and malls in favor of their web-based market place too crippling the smaller landlords in favor of land barons and Linden homes. Linden Realms is just another example of LL meddling in product rather than platform function and stability which they singularly fail at. No doubt LL is aiming at the handheld market and really could not care less about the traditional business. Certainly, Phillip Rosendale harbors nothing but contempt for those long term residents that have invested thousands of dollars and hours of work to make Second Life into what it is today. Linden Labs are just doing a great job in wrecking. They did NOT build Second Life!
Maybe LL should listen to what seasoned residents tell about what kept them inside after subscribing, and distill a strategy from it to keep more newcomers in. Maybe they already did that and that resulted in this whole vampire campaign thing, so I just may be wrong. Nevertheless, allow me to bore you with my early days.
First of all, I had no expectations of SL whatsoever since I had no gaming experiences prior to me entering it, other than some flight sims and Myst/Riven. I’m a great Myst fan and likely, the parallels with SL had a large impact. What can we learn here? Have an easily accessible portfolio, on a FAST website; Nice screenshots (ok, and videos) of interesting places, from eerie, magical to mundane and crowded.
Second, orientation island sent me to Calleta, the Hobo Railroad Infohub—home of Arcadia Asylum and like-minded. They were creative and for them SL wasn’t about L$. The first thing n00bs ask: “How do I make money?” was totally irrelevant here. The hobos were there to hunt and spread fun and free tidbits. Home made stuff. Interest people in creating things. Maybe people would be more interested in SL if the focus was more on creativity rather than financial gain.
Third, quite possibly, 5 years ago people in SL were nicer to newbies than now. Whenever I arrive at an infohub now, it’s being dominated by cynicism, sarcasm and downright hatred; four people arguing loudly in Voice, intimidating the shy people. I experienced four English-speaking people take on a Tunesian fellow. It was an ugly thing. In general, infohubs now seem the stage for a clash of the egos. Resident seem to drive away newbies, rather than welcome them. What if all infohubs would disable Voice? More people would have a chance to speak out.
Fourth, my default avatar looked pretty crappy. When I got tossed into SL, I saw fancy avatars all around me. For me, objective #1 was to turn myself into something as nice-looking. Work on my identity. It was a fun thing to do and for me it was like being allowed to play with Barbies and Kens without getting strange looks from people. Maybe more people would stay in SL if their default avatars looked really crappy to stimulate them to do something about it.
Fifth, in the Hobo infohub, rez was enabled. People could show each other stuff. Script were fully enabled too. Newcomers could instantly see how cool things were in SL. Now, scripts are disabled and noone can rez things, to keep a few griefers out. I’d rather have a few griefers around once in a while than to have the place sterile.
Bubblesort wrote, “Back in 2007 we could argue that we were creating a new kind of internet. Now that argument is very difficult to make, especially since LL became openly hostile to the academics.”
That’s pretty much been my experience since I rezzed nearly 5 years ago. I’d not be back in-world now save for a uni that is staying around and gave me a parcel for a build. It’s sad to see good academic builds leave the grid slowly, but they didn’t pay LL’s bills. If the RPers find another sandbox world, they’ll be gone and with it, SL.
Has LL forgotten that rich UGC is what makes their experience unique? And what good my favorite part of the UGC–cool custom cars–if I cannot even cross a sim border? For all its talk, LL’s “world” simply refuses to act like one, and it calls into question the very idea of a “mainland.”