Bad Press

We've all seen the bad press that Second Life has been getting lately:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/10/03/barry-diller-needs-a-second-life.aspx

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/10/study_second_li.html

http://www.games-digest.com/2007/10/send-life-not-a.html

It turns out that folks log on for 12 minutes a month, on average. The press suggests that the problem might be too many technical problems, or that
people can't visit second life on mobile phones.

There have always been technical problems, and I can't imagine that anyone would want to visit Second Life on a mobile phone.

But the real problem is that there is just nothing new and exciting in Second Life anymore. People use it for a fancy Internet radio. It is not even a good chat room, because it is hard to find an actual group of people who are chatting.

So, Linden Labs, the question is this: Where are those developer incentives that you all
were hinting at last year? What kind of motiviation are you providing for folks to make
this a fun place?

Barbarra B.

At LL something shouldn't be considered complete until you actually see it in operation. They have a lot of pipe dreams, but lack ummm, what you might call initiative. Too bad a firm can't live on pipe dreams.

I think the current developer incentive is to make the game more costly to about half of their players without any increase in revenue. That tends to foster production (and yeah, I know LL didn't invent VAT, 'tis a sarcasm folks)

ANCIENT HISTORY: Linden Lab killed the Developer Incentive program instead of trying to fix it. This was around April 2006 when they were trying to monetize themselves after they took that money from the investors (8 million).

Education was gutted also but at least they get a break in tier if they apply as a educational area. To pay $300 USD plus staffing fees a month to entertain the masses is not as appealing to people as LL thought it would be.

OK, one thing I would like to know is how they are compiling their figures. 12 minutes a month? Do you know ANYONE that spends such little time on SL? Are they basing htose figures on those people who may sign up for SL, have a look around and vanish, forever leaving their footprint in the servers, with their avvies languishing in the database forever? Or the alts, created purely for griefing or other dodgy purposes? Quoted from the article in the Games Digest "In my own personal experience, I can’t honestly say that I know of a heavy user of Second Life." . What sort of personal experience is that? Am I abnormal in spending over 4 hours, quite often much more, daily in SL? Where in gods name are they getting these figures? Of course Seond Life is seen in a dismal light if you take these reports at face value, but I have to ask if the research team is on crack, and pulling figures out of their asses. Would someone please enlighten me?

well since everything that i have owned or presently live on (lind wise) is unusably slow , piss poor client choices and just the sheer fact of boredom i spent less than that in SL last month, maby a grand total of 10 min ... then the sim crashed and i couldnt get back in

so as the tech issues keep piling up and (to me) seems like constantly SOMETHING wrong, that totally zaps any form of entertainment i spend less and less time

infact i havent even logged in this month... why so i can wait 7 min for a cube to rez, or maby fight that "cannot upload texure" error for an hour

i really enjoyed SL, but its just too much of a headache for me, piss on it

You can SL's stats here for August. http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pxbDc4B2FH96QnlAI9boFUw

These come right from Linden Lab.

This is the main problem I think. SL has become more of a pain in the ass then real life. Who wants to spend time and money making their life more of a mess. lol

Personally I just pop in and pop out. I might spend and hour a week anymore.

Laughable and totally fake. What i don`t understand about this stats is why are the playing with some countries numeric values? And accountant would laugh if they saw how they played with the number to equal their sum(s). As I said in the Blog there is noway in **** that i going to believe how makes us believe in Said popualtion by contires/ avie used. SL is a VR with VR stats.......... VR VR Numbers. Thats how we should read those stats.


Usagi

What is the biggest crime here, is those that come into SL and expect the spoon feeding of other platforms from anything remotely like SL.

IF you have a vision, much like RL, and you want to make a difference, then SL is THE only place to be for the foreseeable future. The sign over the door says 'YOUR WORLD, YOUR IMAGINATION', clearly something they left on the door mat.

You want to be creative, expressive, educate, become your own boss.... well the sign says it all, all you need is the bit about IMAGINATION.

I pay no heed to anyone who is a 'sampler' then leave with a huge judgement/opinion based on that meer snippet. The only good thing is... that they left.

Mobile phone junkies perhaps complained because they couldn't upload their Froggie ringtones, or 'movies' of some old lady being mugged, to 'share' with us all.

I can't afford my imagination anymore. That is the bottom line. I have to break even, or I have to leave.

... and omits "our dreadfully buggy game severs and clients that we don't even know will run on your machine, and if not why not".

I grow weary of the elitist fanboi "if you aren't smart enough for SL, you don't belong here". This is partly why EMACS will never be the mainstream editor/shell. Given that SL is shooting for the "3d-web" appelation, that "you're not smart enough" crap won't work; anyway, it's just code for "we are not skilled enough in our craft to make this intuitive for the majority of potential players".

"YOUR WORLD, YOUR IMAGINATION" ............Should be Your CreditCard, Your Vat, Your Nightmare

Me 2

More stats, interesting or not. Google trends.
Second Life V Entropia Universe V World of Warcraft

http://www.google.com/trends?q=second+life%2C+entropia+universe%2C+world+of+warcraft&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Stupid forum breaks link.

Yes. As one of those mainstream, non computer whizz types, I agree. They can't have it both ways. If they want SL to remain the realm of the silicon head fine, it can stay in a niche. but if they want it to be the next best internet thingie, they have to make it reasonably accessible to the average user without a lot of hoop jumping.

well when you lie about how many users you have you get tiny averages when people do the math.

If they provided actual active user stats I bet the average is over 5 hours a week.

I try to spend 72 hours a day myself. 96 is optimal, but I haven't reached that in a while.

ok, why so many simutaneous alts, eh?

Apparently SL's usage figures are actually 24 hours per user per month (for people who actually log on, not for all registered users).

Of course we all know that many of those people are really afk, but even so, better than the press makes it sound.

The question still remains: Why the bad press? Why are the mavens unimpressed?


I wish there were some way to weed out those people who are "in world" 24/7, in order to find out where people are really going to enjoy themselves in Second Life.

He's a camping Lindenaire!

Got it in one.
I have no qualms about letting it be known that I do it (I in fact posted the 18 month route to permenent success, as long as you can manage a growing number of alts and find chairs for them to sit in with an increasingly unstable client).

Probably because of steadfast attempts by LL to boost numbers beyond reasonablilty and their atrocious handling of public relations.

Industry pundits usually don't have their "finger on the pulse" of a given market but hunchbacks can be visible to the untrained eye at quite a distance. Sorry for the stretched metaphor.