Why SL cannot succeed - a personal opinion.

See the article referenced in post 3 of this thread. It isn't very long, but toward the end are some medium term forward-looking statements that seem pretty clear.

Phil Rosedale is not shy about his vision for 3D worlds going forward, so if you are really interested try googling around for podcasts or transcripts of interviews with him. His recent interview at the Davos Summit might be a good start; I think Eric Reuters covered it.

Re: grid interconnection -- Interconnection implies standards, and it is generally a mistake for one company to create a "standard" and expect others to follow ... even Microsoft has trouble pulling this off. The IETF, being a collaborative standards body, is much more successful. So, metaverse companies and their clients (such as IBM, Motorola, ...) are now creating a standards forum for 3D grid interworking. If that effort takes off, it's probably the venue LL will use to offer their proposals for interconnection.

(just read it)

WOW

Considering how *DUMB* some of the people I have met in Second Life who are thriving are, I cant fathom how much worse the countless thousands who couldn't get to that point are.

Unless I'm reading a different story, it quotes 2 residents, one says it's boring, the other says he's figured it out by himself and "the discovery is what it's all about". Seems to me the second resident quoted has summed it up very well, and I can't see anything sad in that.

The point is, out of two quotes, one couldn't figure it out and left. Yeah, hey I know it's only 2 quotes, but that's 50% loss right there. If one out of every two people give up, there's something seriously wrong with the entire "Welcome" model. The point is, FIX the welcome model.

I got more a feeling that neither comment thought SL was easy to use.

And the one outright quit because of it.

I don't think SL is all that hard to use - But I agree the welcome area tutorial is not very good.

Thanks for that, Nika. Most of the article is about adding to the current system, but the last part shows that LL really is aiming towards the future that I've been envisioning. It's reassuring.

I agree that there _are_ some big problems with the newbie experience. Back when they were still encouraging mentors to go to OI, there were newbies actually getting _trapped_ there because the OIGuide script couldn't recognise that they had completed one of the stations. The griefing issue is also a major one - the fact that OIs and HIs are restricted to newbies tends to provide some protection from griefing but also makes them a very lonely experience, and as soon as they reach a WA where they could meet people, they find themselves vulnerable.

I should add, however, that there is an awful lot of social confusion created about newbies. The problems tend to stem from the fact that a) SL is oversold (take the Wonderland TV show as an example), and b) there is a lot of pressure on newbie helpers not to tell newbies that something "can't be done", because for all the helper knows, the newbie will grow up to become the creative genius who works out how to do it. What this means is that newbies are coming in and asking how to become what they think (from the overselling) is a regular SL resident but is in reality the SL equivalent of Bill Gates. Since the helper can't say no, they have to say "get used to SL first and see if you can work your way up" - which is a perfectly fair and correct answer, but sounds to the newbie like deferring giving help. The newbie then starts exploring SL, and tends to follow the popular tracks, which results in them finding estates and shops and similar things owned by the top few "Bill Gates" characters, which reinforces the newbie's false belief that everyone on SL has one of these so they should have one too, and that scumbag of a helper refused to tell them how to get one.

Add to that the tendancy for newbies - like every other human being - to filter out statements that don't match their perceptions or desires (as with several newbies I've met, who complain that nobody will tell them how to get L$, when in fact they have been told about LindeX and camping several hundred times) and you can easily see that the claims of a "bad newbie experience" could in fact be proceeding from several hundred different causes.

(Oh, and by the way, a thought struck me on the "big five" issue after Brenda's comments about people with no imagination. In fact it seems that SL appeals to a rather odd medium band of imagination. People with too little imagination can't imagine themselves in a hot tub just because they see their avatar in one; and people with too much imagination don't need to see their avatar in one in order to imagine it. So saying that people who don't engage with SL content lack imagination isn't necessarily right, they might have much more imagination.)

Yes, but just because one does not *need* something, it does not follow that they don't want/use it. I live 2 miles from the grocery store. I *could* walk there and back in a not-unreasonable amount of time. However, I prefer to drive.

Also, while one may be creative enough to visualize a hot-tub interaction without SL, it does facilitate that interaction when involving other people at various levels of creativity.

Yes, but it does affect the amount of desire and committment that will be required. In your case, I expect it wouldn't take very much of a rise in gas prices before you decided to walk.

In Second Life, a cost for land *plus* monthly tier *plus* L$ for prefabs is a lot of money just for something that might help your imagination a bit.



I don't see that so much myself. If the other people are all prepared to imagine, you don't need the prims. If they aren't, the prims make no difference.

lol..good one...