Issue Rehash: Second Life MUST be an enjoyable place for the Average Person

Since the last thread has disintegrated into banter on technicalities, let's try this again, from the top, while the iron is still hot.


Adding to this, I feel that the potential of the "average person" to contribute to the world is very high - but that the barriers to entry are still too high for some.

What, if anything, should we be doing to enhance the average user experience beyond what it is already? Consumerism certainly drives Second Life already, but is it a place where the community's efforts and content can sustain it beyond simple appearances?

Discuss.

Philip's desire to see SL hit a million users aside... why does SL have to be all things to all people?

That's a simple question to answer. The level of empowerment we should be shooting for is what the Internet is able to do already, or if you'd like - we want to create a metaverse.

The Internet is in many ways all things to all people because it caters to niches - those who wish for a closed society of users - and to broader appeals equally. It is literally what Second Life is attempting to do on a shared-reality basis - a concept that clashes a bit with itself.

It's also all things to all users because of the people involved. It's a self-feeding system. Users create stuff for other users, who create other stuff (or income) for other users, and the cycle repeats. While we're in the blanket consumerism stage of that, as a culture, the bottom line is we all feed into the system and reap the rewards in one way or another.

I feel that makes it better for all of us - simply because it increases the scope of what we all are capable of tenfold.

I really can't fathom the attitude that somehow the act of creating content for SL can hold it back. What is there to do in SL but create content or use content? There's chat, I suppose, and that's great. But in order to grow, we need content. In order to improve content, we need people to experiment and learn more about what's possible and what's not. To get ideas.

Expanding what's possible in SL does nothing but *grow* the world.

Brilliantly boiled down.

Now THIS is the question that we should be answering. "WHAT SHOULD BE DONE." Not "whose fault is it" or "what were the motivations of the people".

1. SIMPLIFY. Give newbies and non-tekkies a way to turn off complexity.

2. Expand welcome area activities. Include live classes in simple things, like how to drive a vehicle, and how to take clothing out of a box. (PAY instructors if you have to). (Pending, of course, making those things intuitive so that such a classroom would not be necessary.)

3. Expand the event calendar. Encourage LOTS of events, and provide filtering so that you can find things in categories.

4. Improve the "Find". Its spammed with nonsense. How about having amazon-style "people who attended event x also enjoyed event y", or "people who liked place A also liked place B".

THose are some of mine, for starters.

This is a very fair assessment, Cubey. I think you're reading too much into my argument as coming off blaze's, however.

The point is both acts are of equal importance. However, Second Life is in many ways viewed, justifiably, as a shallow experience for more discerning consumers. This is because the caliber of our content, as a whole, is not yet "up there" with other ventures - like those put together by more focused game development houses.

The argument, then, is that we should strive to improve our content to the fullest, for the benefit of everyone else and ourselves.

Such is the nature of a self-sustaining social structure. And, damned if I can say that five times fast.

I don't think anybody in their right minds thinks SL should have to be all things to all people. Try to please everybody, end up pleasing noone.

But SL does need to appeal to a braod constituency in order to grow enough to justify its existence. There isn't enough money in it at its current size to run a business like Linden Labs for very long. It must grow in order to survive. In order to grow, it must appeal to a large audience.

It doesn't have to appeal to everybody, just to enough different midsets. Lets just say that for each mindset in the target group of mindsets, it must be appealing to that mindset.

Buster

Except for boycotts. Those make baby Jesus cry.

~Ulrika~

THe one suggestion Blaze did bother to make was close - the thing that's always going to drive this sort of thing is micr-community building. Groups of people with common interests are the most successful at attracting others, simple.

Now, attaching it to sims doesn't strike me as worth the effort... I think that suggestion was made because the group tools suck so terrbily bad. Those need to be expanded in scope and the UI cerfully designed so that Joe Average doesn't need to think in tech mode to use it. I think if SL has a weakness, the group tools are it.

Everything else is up to the residents of SL to figure. Along those lines, it would be nice to have an in-world tool of some sort - a content suggestion box. Things Joe Average wants to see in the world, but isn't something the Lindens would provide. The games, the social centers, the mucis, meeting places, group types...

And as the obvious compliment, an in-world directory, by categories.

*shrug*

What would you have those contributions be?

Socialize.

Okay, this is going to maybe not be a very popular opnion... I think the idea of SL as a replacement or alternative for the internet is just plain silly. I remember back in the early 90's when VRML was supposed to revolutionize things like internet shopping... and what it did instead was make it slow, unwieldy, inneficient, and largely annoying. Don't get me wrong. VRML was cool. But the idea that if what I wanted to do was buy something from an online store that I'd be okay with it taking ten times as long because navigating a 3d environment somehow made the experience "better" was always laughable to me. If I want to accomplish a task on the intenet like buy a CD or find a piece of information I want the most stripped down, fast, and efficient interface for that I can get. My favorite feature of flash is the "skip intro" button. I love SL for what it is, because of what it is, without trying to pretend it's a replacement for things it's not actually suited for.

I agree, so long as we avoid The Evil That Is Streamlining. Basically, so long as we don't cut off useful features when we need them.


I have nothing to add to these. I support them all.

Heck no! I see it as the next step... something we can enter when we please that's a step above the present internet. Second Life posits itself as a shared user reality, and that's essentially what it is - a very pretty presentation and ethic to what is hard to express in a largely text-and-URL media.

There ain't nothing that'll replace the internet now. Well... besides mass extinction or hivemind machines, which would just be jacking the internet into a lobe of the brain anyway.

I agree, NOT "streamlining". Instead, provide "simple mode" for certain things. For example, provide "move things around" tools for people who are merely using things and not making them. In RL, I don't use a carpenter's square, sextent, yardstick and laser level to point my chair at my computer. Why make me do it in SL?

I think another simplifying method is the "wizard". I absolutely *HATE* it when some nanny-soft makes me go through a tard-wizard to do something. But I'm a savvy tekkie (or at least I like to think so). There should be more wizard-like hand-holding for newbies and non-tekkies, providing you can turn it off when you know your way around. For example, when installing SL, walk users through choosing their settings for things like cache size and distance. Give them a wizard that they can go back and run again later to re-tune after they know their way around.

I agree with Buster's ideas, however I'd like to add one which is that LL should provide a mechanism to create incentive for us to bring people in the world to socialize.

Right now, I have lots of ideas on how I could bring in lots of people and create an environment that they'd enjoy.

Unfortunately, there is very little financial incentive for me to do so. And it doesn't have to be a lot of up front money, it could also be a way to profit from a long term relationship.

I also agree that I was stressing a bit too much the negative effect that the techi wiki culture was having on SL, but not as much you might think. I've participated in quite a few MUSHes in my time, and they have all suffered from the same thing. If you don't create content you're considered an outsider.

This actually is the FIRST thing to do in Second Life

You dont need a massively multiplayer virtual world if you arent looking to socialize


If it werent for socializing ..
Lindin labs could have sold Second Life on Cd's and no internet connection required.

This content is to give the social people stuff to do .. often together. And if the content is good enough they will pay for it. Becuase its fun.

So the bottom line is ..this discussion is backwards .. its not trying to find new un tech savy people stuff to do .. its finding incentive for the tech savy to keep creating stuff witha "WOW" added to it.

The non-tech savy will be here to socialize ... and after yakking all night with my girlfriends that what i have to say =)

Yes, but we have to move beyond the IRC version of socializing, otherwise what is the value proposition of SecondLife to the non techi wiki?

Whoops. The thread actually shot off and I didn't notice.

As mentioned, those contributions are largely social, political, and with consumerism - fiscal. They can also be minor modifications. The average person is not very technically-inclined. They might like to, for sake of example, swing an existing skirt in a different direction on their avatar so it looks nice for an important "date" or party visit.

How would you do that? Well, for the tech savvy, pop open the GIMP... grab the texture... flip it around... whatever. What about the person that just wants it done?

This is where the slack can, should be, and is picked up by other users. Users that can and do write tools to do that sort of thing so someone can. It's funny, but in many ways "the small things" like that matter to a heck of a lot of people.

Anyway, that's the thesis - working with "we can" instead of "you must know this first." We should work to catter to the skill levels of the average individual, as well as the degrees above and below that, simply because it benefits us (monetarily, socially...) as it does the rest of us.

That's an excellent point. I think one of the most fundamental and imprtant things that needs to be taken care of is the entitlement mentaility that so many people come in to SL with... an expectation that it's a game that's going to provide some artificial skinner box mechanisms for them to earn cheese dollars. I'm not sure if this is because SL is somewhat ahead of its time and people see a 3d rendered environment and automatically expect it to be that kind of thing, or if the way SL is marketed directly contributes to people having those expectations.

Well. I'm glad somebody is airing a concern I've been trying to air all this time and has, so far (the night is still young), not undergone the bashing I have for daring to suggest ways in which the game might appeal to a larger audience. And it is nice to see that we have a new thread carrying on with exactly what Blaze was trying to get at anyway.

I really do feel that in all probability, the Lindens would like this game to attract more people, radical and hideous as that idea has apparently been to many.

I would add to your list:

A WAY TO MAKE MONEY.

I would also take this opportunity to ask a question: Why, why, why, does the notion of players being able to make money in some other way besides creating content cause such a commotion? What the heck is so awful about having a productive way for the less technically-inclined to enjoy their game time, and make a few Lindens in the process? In order to buy and enjoy your products, or to buy land?

Give me one good reason why that would be so terrible.

coco

" For example, when installing SL, walk users through choosing their settings for things like cache size and distance."

The most basic, absolutely A-1 priority for what they should do. I know people who quit because they couldn't get their settings right, and I was almost one of them.

coco

Coco, the reason is because LL aren't the people to look to for that... the whole idea behind SL is that it's an entirely user created world. Those ways to make money need to be provided by other users. It's a development platform, not a game, and currently it's not economically viable for content developers to provide ways for other people to make money... yet. Hopefully we'll get to a point where the economy is large enough and the toolset robust enough that we can start to provide that kind of opportunity for people who don't want to create content, but in the meantime people need to get used to the idea of paying for things, not being provided artificial mechanisms to earn them.

I agree. While it can be used for capitalist ventures, and arguably should, people definitely shouldn't feel that they are simply entitled to a free lunch without contributing in some way.

I think this mindset is bred in two separate thinktanks that cross over often:

1) The classical MMORPG, which is stylized around a system of performing menial tasks for a (relatively) swift reward.
2) Modern capitalistic thinking - that sensation of "get rich quick" that blinds all too many

The irony is Second Life is in many ways seeing a "gold rush" of capital investment by residents. This is good for getting people to stream into the world, but it falls way too short on addressing residents once they get here.

So, yes. The fact that "it's not just the money" should be better addressed for the long term.

At any rate, I hate to make-it-and-run, but I have to catch up on a little work for once. Have fun storming the castle!

What is beyond the IRC version of socializing that does not involve SOMEONE creating compelling content, be it clothes to wear while socializing, dances to do, sex animations to do, whatever to do. It is all part of one ecosystem.