Direction, percieved unfairness, and the mainstream

Err.. Yumi..

I've heard a lot of things about SL, but never that it was a Dickensian hell of apathy and callousness. What do you expect from your Second Life?

_Yes_ - and also the rule that groups are never expired, because it means that people searching for an interest groups are often offered a large number of different groups, most of which are dead.



That's true, but the other side of the problem is that if you meet people somewhere, you probably won't be able to just get them to move somewhere else.

Emphatically, YES, for a great many people. If eventually they show their stuff it is much later or by accident. There are many people in SL who find it hard to connect with others.

The answer is that it cannot be - you really ought to know this with the criteria you have been throwing around.
The roleplaying games within SL are the closest you could come to that and they are worlds away from being fair and level for all that you seek.
There is no game or system possible which includes other people that can be fair and level for all, whether those people are in the game with you at the same time or playing the game at a different time.

Yumi, it's really not hard to meet people on sl.....even if you are as shy as I am, but to retain those relations there is a bit of give and take. You have to be willing to give of yourself and take a risk even if you get hurt. There will be massive fails, but the successes will always outweigh those. When I first got to sl I did feel alone, and I was alone for a while until I jumped in and risked looking like a moron. I pretty much am myself on sl; I don't play like some who love to be anonymous behind the avi. It's easier to be me. So, because of that, it's kind of like rl. You gamble. You go places. You talk and mingle or just listen to others. There is no reason to feel alone on sl unless you want to be alone.

So you can't engage in role play that involves making people go somewhere else? That trick doesn't work? TRY SOMETHING ELSE.

I was given a magical thing when I started in SL that gave me a big advantage over the average newbie - a landmark to the NCI, and a schedule of their classes. I think I went to all of them except the scripting ones. That played a huge part in why I'm still here, and didn't just quit after 3 months like I did in 2006.

Sometimes all it takes is a little effort.

You can't wait forever for someone to help you out of the river. You learn to swim, and build up your muscles, then you can get out by yourself.

On the other hand, SL isn't for everybody. Some people just will never get it, will never be able to find their place in it, because there is no place for them there. That's why there are 70,000 people logging in to SL every night, and 12 million logging in to WoW. SL itself is a niche that caters to a limited set of people, and if you're not the right sort of person to start with, I don't think you'll ever be happy in SL.

/me is pressing the Agree button right now

*grin* This forum REALLY needs those buttons.

1 user said Thanks.

... and the ability to move to the USA. Unfortunately, the majority of NCI classes start between midnight and 5am UK time. I actually run an event at NCI, specifically to make it available for UK and European people.



That's a common belief, I know. But I believe there's another theory that people don't consider: that the SL experience is inherently self-limiting. In other words, the issue isn't that people don't like "the SL experience", the issue is that only a certain proportion of the SL population can have it, because it requires the rest to be their audience. Many of those who leave might have enjoyed it if the experience scaled better.



And now consider the consequences of that: there is no point trying to create a role-play build (nobody will visit, since that would involve them moving away from the places they are already at), and all future role-play on SL will be constrained by the themes of the builds that already exist.



Sure, I've met some great friends on SL, and I'm grateful for them. But that sort of misses the point that the whole "virtual world" engagement is missing. In most places I've been, it doesn't matter what AV I wear, because the location defines everyone's behaviour. Occasionally there is the option of wearing an AV that blatantly doesn't fit and being rejected, but there doesn't seem to be any option with a _positive_ effect. And in most of those places, it's only people talking about RL, howling, camping, or having sex. When I run SL, I can hear my computer's fans speed up about twofold, so I'm very conscious of the fact that if I'm just chatting in a way that could be done in pure text, all that wear and tear is going to waste.

I said MAKING PEOPLE GO SOMEPLACE ELSE. If people don't want to go someplace else, then you can't make them. Your someplace else isn't compelling enough. So maybe

(1) Your niche isn't making compelling builds, find another niche, or
(2) You're trying to attract the wrong kind of people, try another build, or
(3) You're trying to attract the wrong kind of people, try another group, or
(4) There's something wrong with the way you're presenting it, try a different approach.

It sounded like you went out, built something, went over to a bunch of people who were happy doing their thing somewhere else, and tried to talk them into playing in your game instead. Why would they want to do that? What did you do to make that an attractive proposition? Did you consider their loyalties to the people who were already spending time and money on their existing build? What if they were already playing in your build and I came along and tried to talk them into playing in Coonspiracy Central instead. How would you react? Have you looked at what you did and thought about what you could have done differently?

You've never explained any of what you did in enough detail for anyone to understand what happened and what went wrong. There's no magic recipe for success we can give you, otherwise everyone would be using it and you'd be back where you are now except on a higher level. All we can do is suggest, broadly (because we're operating in the dark) what you might do, or what yo might be doing wrong. And then you turn around and say we refused to help... we haven't refused to help, we've been UNABLE to help because we're in the position of a doctor whose patient just calls up and says "I feel funny, can you prescribe me something for it" but never comes in for an exam.

No, I didn't do that, because I thought it through in the same way you described and know that it wouldn't work and would make me look like an ass. But if I rule out that option, there seems to be no option but just to not make anything at all, since everyone is happy where they are.



But that creates the problem that, if I can't make a build, I also can't play what I wanted because I'll have to go to someone else's build that will put a different spin on it. Now, I don't mind adapting in that way if it's unpopular because other people don't like it, but having to adapt because I don't have a skill that's only necessary because SL artificially adds it is a flaw to me.

There's the option of seeing if you can get good enough to make a compelling build. There's the option of playing in someone else's build and work with them to make it more compelling and more like what you want. There's the option of waiting until they decide to change their game. There's the option of starting a new community around people who haven't yet joined the existing builds.

So maybe you won't be able to play exactly what you wanted. Look, SL doesn't even have the technical capability to let me play the character I want, so I do something else. I have over 300 unique avatars of at least 60 or 70 species, so I have many many options. That's the flexibility of a ferret, not the rigidity of, I don't know, something that's very rigid.
Um, what? What do you mean by "SL artificially adds it"? What skill has SL "artificially added" that you wouldn't need in RL? Do you mean if you wanted to create a role-play environment in RL you wouldn't need the ability to create a compelling environment in whatever media you chose?

Which is a huge risk, because it may turn out not to be compelling just because of what it is.



In other words, barging in where someone else has done the work and trying to change it? That doesn't seem very polite!



I've tried that before (although without a build myself) and simply put, it can't get started because the "new" community is so small that 90% of people go to one of the existing places with a large community, even if they want it less.



For artificial reasons to do with SL's build system and timing, and also experiences it gave me. Thus, a world flaw.



No, but LL chooses all of what that ability is, and is culpable for those choices. They could have made building easier, they could have decoupled builds and communities, they could have provided offline building so you don't have to pay tier to maintain a flop, they could have done numerous things that would make it more possible for people myself included.

Learning anything new is always a risk. But everyone does it, and everyone who made the builds you're concerned about competing with have taken that risk.

No, joining a community and becoming part of it and actively contributing to it and seeing if your ideas are compelling to the community.

I've tried it with a build. It didn't work. I didn't come to the forums and complain. I did something else.

'Doctor, I feel funny, can you prescribe something'? Details, Yumi, or no prescription.

I don't even know what some of that MEANS.

Building in SL is pretty damn easy. You can build without paying tier in a sandbox, or by working with people who have spare land. You can build in the Beta grid. You can now run a sandbox using OpenSim. People have put up with bigger problems than those.

There's no non-human skeletons in SL. There's definitely no way to build a credible and practical Tine avatar: a Tine is a pack intelligence, each animal looking like a cross between an otter and a rat. I don't rail on the forums how horrible Linden Labs is for not letting me play a pack avatar. I do something else. You can too.

Except less risk - not just because they didn't have to compete with themselves, but also because often they were more involved in the communities at the time.



None have ever been very interested, and "actively contributing" tends to become a power grab.



Right, but that them doesn't explain why it didn't work for me but did for others; nor does it tell me WHAT "something else" I ought to do.



Any competitor that's arised since 2005 is partly SL's fault since if it had pushed me harder to build I would have.



Building isn't easy if you want to build well. You can't buid a venue in a sandbox, or the Beta grid, and people with spare land generally want you to be a good builder first. You still have to pay tier to wait to see if it's popular or not. Ths would feel a lot better if LL hadn't banned gambling..

People still come in and create new communities around themselves, so that's not it.
If actively contributing was a power grab, then there would be no such thing as Linux, MySQL, Squid, etcetera... SL is built on Open Source and Open SOurce is built on active contributions from hundreds or thousands of people.
I don't mean "I tried a different approach to the same goals", I mean "I change my goals".

And the risk for each becomes greater and greater. The numbers doing so drop over time.

See, this is exactly the thing I was talking about.. people "build communities around themselves". By definition not everyone can do that, because there have to be some people who are just 'in' the communities. Which means that if it's key to the attraction of SL it's going to run into a major scaling problem.



And there are often complaints about power grabs in open source projects.



But then I have to ask why someone else can achieve the same goals by a different approach. Bear in mind, I have not actually tried any of these approaches yet, just been told several times on every one that it won't work.

Luckily, it's not the key attraction of SL.

Almost always only when there's actual power grabs. If being a significant contributor was even a significant amount of time "seen as a power grab" these projects would all be dead in the water from the drama before they got off the ground, because they DEPEND ON continual significant contributions.

Um, because they have different skills and talents?

100% of the shots you don't take don't go in.

It seems to be necessary for many of them.



OSS contributions can't usually redirect the whole project!



No, because most of the objections transcend skill or talent. If it's a bad move to go where people are happily enjoying themselves and tell them to go elsewhere, then it's a bad move - no skill or talent can change that, surely. If people will retreat from a new small community because it is new and small, no skill nor talent can change that either.



Right, but if the design of SL is meant to be that I spend weeks or months learning to build something only to have a 90%+ chance of it all being a waste of time then I consider that a pretty basic design flaw.

Also, the fact people do shoot down ideas suggests that they are not keen on them, so in truth these threads are me "taking shots".

100% of the shots you don't take, won't go in the basket.

These posts are shots.

It would be foolish to spend months practicing basketball if the captain just doesn't like me.

Yumi

Have you tried searching for groups interested in the same stuff and joined them and looked at what builds are popular?

These posts are standing in the stands yelling "I coulda been a contender".

Unless you're on the court, the ball is in your hand, and you're risking the game, it ain't a shot. It's heckling.