Why SL cannot succeed - a personal opinion.

I'd say welcome to SL, Vikki, but it looks like you weren't made to feel very welcome and you're on your way out. This is the sort of experience that ticks me off about SL. Being a new resident is really hard and it can be a completely unwelcoming place. The interface is difficult to get used to and worse, it's unstable, so half the time when stuff doesn't work it's not even your fault. The places they dump you as a newb...shudder...Ahern. You're lucky if you get past that, then there's no real guide for how to start out. Vikki jumped right in and started laying out cash when she didn't need to and as a result, ended up missing the social aspect she might have enjoyed because she was stuck in a skybox fending off griefers.

I don't know what the solution is, and I know a lot of people in here work hard to try to help new people, but geez. Why does ANYONE stick around. I'm glad I did now, but those first few weeks sucked! I got lucky that I found the forums here and made a few friends, then got settled down enough to figure out what I wanted to get out of SL. What about the poor new folks who just pop into some crap infohub mobbed with idiots and then get sexually accosted, orbited or laughed at. Ridiculous.

No doubt about it, Sl needs a "Second Life for Dummies." I wonder if - and when - it will become economically feasible to publish one.

Har, there is already one published.........check it out on Amazon!

Vikki, I'm sorry SL didn't work for you and I hate to see you go, but this is a case where I can't fault SL. I think it just wasn't your thing.

You say your not much of a chat fan. Well, that's most of what SL is. Why do I have a nice house with a beach? So I have a place to hang out and chat with friends. It's more visually appealing than an old fashioned chat room. The same thing is true with dancing at clubs. Most of us would tire quickly of watching our avs move and shake on the dance floor if we weren't chatting at the same time.

Four weeks of building and your bored? Well, I'd have to say then that it wasn't your thing either and that's ok. It just wasn't for you.

You didn't mention role play at all so I can only presume that is something that doesn't interest you either.

Without any of those, I can't see that there would be much of anything in SL that would be of interest to you. It's great that you gave it a try. I hope you found the experience interesting if nothing else and I hope you find something you enjoy more.

EDIT: I also must add that it's only been a month. There's no reason to spend any more money. Come to the Forum Cartel Hangout and get to know some folks who can teach you a little more about SL. Maybe there is something that will strike a nerve with you. What have you got to lose?

i'm sorry to read vikki's post also.

my main went thru that very difficult sl "learning" a couple months before i was rezzed. poor guy.

i am so very very thankful that i am an alt. it was a breeze for me.

Im knee deep for a year now.... Its my full time job I love to log on every day : )

Some days are bad, some days are good.....
such is life.
Because its virtual i think people try to control it more, i dont think thats what the lindens intended.
Before SL sometimes i would awake and have to scrape ice of my windshield before my drive to work in traffic ( RL LAG ).

Met some wonderful people from all around the world : )
Love racing my planes
Love creating
Love the challeges... good or bad
The balance of adding things like windlight while trying to make the grid stable is perfect.
I see more and more wonderus things when i have time to explore.
Love trying to figure what my next move will be.

Thank you so much LL, Second life is a success!!

Niki Wilder

What Vikki described is extremely accurate and is a very real problem with SL.

It's not as simple as "people didn't make her welcome" - it's that, as Bradley said, the main functions of SL so far are chat, building, and role-play. The problem is that both chat and role-play have become centralised. There isn't that much point having a house or having your own castle anymore, because all the chatters and role-players will be at the big club or the full roleplay sim.

Believe it or not this is a problem that the web, as a whole, is facing as well. I have heard (through a friend of a friend) that the World Wide Web Consortium is concerned about sites such as flickr, myspace, youtube, etc because the original design of the web was supposed to be that everyone would host their own content in their own location and those would be linked together - not that there would be mega-sites with all of each given type of content, each with a single central authority controlling all of it. But the problem is, the economics of hosting, the distribution of work (better one site with 100 hours of work put into it, than 100 sites with 1 hour of work each) and the "network effect" (the more people use a site the more useful it is), work against it overpoweringly well. So Second Life may well be becoming the Web 2.0.. and facing exactly the same problem.

Not with the 25 group limit it won't and that is something that could very well bite this product in the ass a lot harder than people think.

Heh! After reading Vikki's post I'm reminded how lucky I am that I came to SL & thought "WOW! This is SO damn easy!!"

Ok, years of gaming & a degree in this stuff helps too.

As someone who is not interested in Building, scripting or business running in the least, I get where Vikki is coming from. In world I am not very sociable, I tend to do things by myself, with the exception of RP. I enjoy the flying and skydiving, I'll hop in my speedbaot sometimes, or just explore by myself. When I go into a club, I pretty much keep to myself and listen to the music and chat sparingly. Even at the Hangout, I raely stay that long unless it's an event. My first month I was logged in at an astonishingly high rate of time, every day, for most of my free time. Previously, I never spent more than an hour or two online, and sometimes wouldn't be on for days at a time at home.

That first month was the Gee Whiz period, I couldn't get enough of the place, and once I committed real money and could shop I was on a mission. . As that wore off, I acquired all I needed, I explored some of the other aspects of the game, some I am still enjoying, and some aren't for me. But my time in world has fallen off considerably, and I onsciously limit the time I do spend on line. I generally stay on for no more than an hour at a time, unless there is a specific reason, an event or RP that will occupy me longer. Some days I log in, check messages, if any and log off shortly thereafter.

SL can grab you and pull you in easily. Sometimes you have to kick your way out for a time. I'd recommend Vikki step away for a day or two, a week maybe. Then maybe log on for an hour and see what happens. I don't know where her interests lie, maybe a group or two will help there. Or she can give me a call and I'll give her a helicopter ride.

You got that right...the day SL FINALLY leaves "Beta", I'll probably lose my mind in shock, and jump off a cliff, never to be heard from again.

The web wasn't invented in the way that you seem to think, Yumi, and W3C aren't what you probably think either.

The internet existed, and people could access documents from computers around the world, but getting a document required that the remote computer's internet address, and the path on to the document was known and used. Then a guy, who was working at Cerne, came up with the idea that words in documents could be clicked and the remote document was retrieved by the 'system' behind it. That was it. That was the web being invented.

W3C is merely a group of people who make recommendations about HTML, CSS, and such, so that, if they are used, there is compatibility between web browsers. They don't control anything, and their recommendations needn't be used. In fact, no web browser uses them all, and some use their own ideas instead of some of theirs.

The web evolves, and websites, such as those that you mentioned, aren't a problem for the web at all. It's just the evolution of the web system.

Vicki's experience is very understandable, and probably very common. Pretty skies wouldn't have changed it, and neither would stability, although a lack of stability is likely to bring about the departure of people like Vicki more quickly.

When I fist came into SL, I was in awe of the system iteself. I could walk around in a 3-D world - wow! I had been used to scrolling text MUDs in the past, so a 3-D graphic world - wow!!! I had the advantage of being introduced to the place by someone who showed me round, and explained things to me. Not everyone has such an advantage.

The first thing I wanted to know was where the center is where the people are. I'm very happy chatting, but where are the people? Where's the town center? I learned that it's not like that, and I soon got into a business. If I hadn't got into that, or into something else that interested me, I would have disappeared a long time ago. Even now, when doing one type of thing gets a bit boring, I sit back in-world and think, "what'll I do now?" And there's nothing. Most of the things that appeal to different people have never appealed to me. Even the appeal of sex faded away a long time ago, although that's gradually returning

So the high turnover of people doesn't surprise me at all. I don't know what the dropout figures are, but I noticed a long time ago that I didn't often see anyone who was 'born' before me, and I'd only been in a few months when I first noticed it. I wouldn't put the turnover down to a lack of stability or pretty skies. To my way of thinking, it's normal for a place like SL, where, if you yourself don't find things to interest you, there's nothing here to occupy you. There is no game to be played, for instance. It just a place to 'be'.

But if true this is really a very deep concern about SL. We all know that LL claim that SL is a platform, rather than a game. But if it is truly a free platform, then why has nobody yet managed to build anything that avoids this problem? That's important because without it, SL isn't really a platform at all.

I'm going to make a "true confession" here.. one of my own reservations about learning or trying to build has always been, that I would feel deeply cynical making objects that would just leave people in this same position. I'm not trying to attack any other content creators there, that's just my personal feeling and it might be wrong or irrational. I have always wanted to make a "magic wand" (more like Luc's than Starax's) though but have never done so, partly because I'm not sure I'd be able to do the artistic side well, but also partly because I'd feel silly making it and then thinking, well, what am I actually going to _do_ with it? I could sell it, but that would just be making money from other people who would then find themselves in the same boat, which (to me) feels unfair and wrong. It's why most of the gadgets I sell are self-contained and don't require participation from others to have their full value.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in our ongoing list of “reasons the retention rate is so low” is that a lot of people just don’t “get” Second Life. With no levels or script to follow, it really is up to the user to create their own SL experience. Anyone who has been a Mentor for any length of time knows that the most frequently asked question from new residents is “what do I do here?” It takes someone who is creative and can actually think outside the game mentality to grasp “whatever you want” as a concept and run with it. Without structure, goals, clearly defined levels and a script to follow, a lot of people are lost and that is just a fact of human nature. Not everyone has that ability to go off script, think for themselves – to follow the beat of their own drummer. Most people are sheep, they want to be told what to do, which level to go to next, they want to follow where ever “everyone else” is going.

It is equally true that those who joined with a guide to show them around and teach them tend to stay more than those who just wandered in without anyone. This was the motive behind the Greeter Program, a failed enterprise from lack of leadership and management, but a good idea nonetheless.

I think Isablan has a good point here. People want what they've come to expect from their other online experiences. If you come from a FPS background, you're used to running on rails. Your go where the game developers want you to go and kill stuff. There really isn't any exploration, and the script is pre-defined. If you are used to an MMORPG, you are used to defined quests. Go to X, kill the Y and retrieve Z. It really does take someone who can get outside that box to really "get" SL.

I think people would get it better, though, if there was more guidance from the start. I clearly remember my first couple days. Help Island and OI were worthless. The interface didn't make any sense. I didn't have any idea what the expectations of the community were. The concept of people owning stuff made no sense to me (why can't I just jump in this car and drive around?) It was just confusing, weird, incomprehensible and to top it off, I kept crashing. How can anyone figure out how SL works socially when they can't figure out how it works technically.

Unfortunately, I don't see an answer. A welcoming committee is a great idea, but without LL support and some changes to the way residents are brought in-world, I don't see any real progress being made.

You're quite right that many people ask "what do I do here", but I think that suggesting that the reason they ask that, is because they can't think for themselves, is very unfair.

It's not that they can't think for themselves, it's that they want to follow an activity that has social support because - well, because without social support, you are basking in your pool on your own, turning the jets on and off to watch the pretty particles, and wondering why you bothered. And "social support" doesn't just mean "other people showing up" - with just that, you are basking in your pool with your friends, talking in exactly the same way you would have done in a random box club, and wondering what you got for your tier money. It's about getting a form of social support that integrates with, and affirms, your activity.

That's the point. Those newbies aren't asking for single "things to do today", they're asking for an ongoing experience, something that will be the reason to log into SL every day. And sadly, the answer to that certainly _isn't_ "whatever you like" - at the moment, it seems the only options are "business", "chat", "combat" or "sex", since these are the only fully socially supported activities.

I'd agree with that too. That, and so many come here just looking to make money (the boat has sailed), sex (the boat has sailed, largely) and frankly yanno ... it always was a bit of an elitist concept.

The place needs to stop EXPANDING without having people around. It's a wasteland - people are not sociable any more like they were a couple of years ago. I used to meet people wandering but I rarely talk to people now as they just walk away (maybe because they don't speak English well) but also cos the social edge has been largely erododed. Not to mention ennui when you have been here and while and think about all the good things which no longer exist.

Still, it is what you make of it.

Actually this is typical of short term use - but actually Vikki this is the point when you need to go out and meet some people (see point above). It's lonely on your own.

It isn't so much that there aren't people around. It's that SL has had to eschew the kind of social manipulation that MMORPGs engage in in order to ensure activities are socially supported. If you are a healer on WoW you can heal people, and other people need that, so they'll approach you for heeling, and then you can "feel like" you "really are" a healer because you can actually heal people by clicking a button, doing that makes a real difference and other people will value you for it.

SL doesn't do that and a lot of people are grateful for it - amongst other things grinding is one of the forms of manipulation involved in this - but the problem is that it means that SL has left open one of the big problems of online social entertainment which is that everything has to be socially consensual (because a simulated world depends on suspension of disbelief; a truly virtual world would not, but SL is not truly virtual), and there is little motivation for anyone else to suspend their disbelief for you.

I find it odd that you say



Because that implies that you can somehow make other people support you, which certainly isn't true.

My initial reaction to some of the comments here was "If you aren't the type of person who likes to go out and interact with others, then what are you doing in SL? That's what it's here for."

But I realised that this is probably a bit narrow-minded. There are people who just like to build, and some of them like the idea of selling what they build. You don't need to be a social butterfly in order to do that.

I had one friend who is a real geeky type, who heard about virtual 3D worlds and thought it would be geek heaven - he was disappointed, because it wasn't geeky enough for him. In a lot of ways building in SL is more like being an artist than a programmer, although from what I have seen there are some programmer aspects to it.

But I guess I question what people's expectations of SL are - it can't be all things to all people. Maybe we should just understand what SL can and can't offer people, so that they can come in-world with their eyes open, and maybe decide that it's not for them BEFORE they invest time and money into it.

Umm.

Well to address the last point - that's not what I meant at all. The corny answer here would be "Your World, Your Imagination".

I really think we've talking about completely different things here Yumi cos all of your posts after quoting me are completely leftfield of what I was trying to say!

***edits and rereads***

Nope. I stand by what I say. There's simply not many people in the average sim, IMO. I'm not decrying what you say, which is very valid, but is not what I was talking about.

Personally I love that this place is what I want from it. I'd find an MMORPG terribly confining, personally.

I agree completely, the reason I came here was because it appered to be a "game" where I would be able to do whatever I wanted. And to a large extent it is exactly that. What I want from SL has changed, to begin with my main interest was just in wandering around seeing what was here, what people had imagined in their world, now I'm more interested in building the things I imagine, but if it hadn't been for the possibility of seeing a world made out of people's imaginations I would never have tried it.

I think the main reason for the low retention rate is that most people don't want what SL offers - Vikki is a classic example, she basically ends up saying "what is there to do here if you don't like what's here?" Killing orcs doesn't interest me, so I've never even tried WOW (I know there's more to WOW than that), and if I did try it, I'd get bored quickly and leave.

And to be honest I've never got the "steep learning curve" thing. I've never played any other online game/world (except for a brief visit to Active Worlds), never used chatrooms or instant messaging, and had no idea what I was doing when I came in. But I found the basics of the UI very easy to pick up or work out, and I "got" what SL was about almost immediately. Maybe because I saw the "your world, your imagination" and was expecting an imagined world, not a game, which is exactly what I got.

I think that SL is more likely to appeal to those who "got" Chat rooms.

As opposed to those who disliked chat rooms and preferred online games.

Well I think we need to sort this out because I think there could be something interesting here

Vikki's post I think, was very much about the _problem_ with the pure "your world, your imagination" model. She could buy or construct a house that matched her imagination, but (quote) "... now what. Am I supposed to sit and float in my pool or something?"

And if meeting up with other people is the answer to your "now what" - then suddenly it's not "your imagination" anymore, because although you can build your imagination, others can stay away if they don't like it, and you wanted to meet up with them, remember? So instead, like all societies, it becomes a consensus thing. Unfortunately, on Second Life at the moment the consensus is that most avatars are hanging out at clubs and if you don't want to do that, well, they're OK without you, but you're not OK without them, so you're th one who has to change.. by tp'ing to that club.