Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

Sigh. Once again, LL outsources a critical element of their business...and to the wrong provider.

Look, Benjamin and Katt: Second Life is YOUR product. YOU should be the ones to decide how to market it and make it easy to use, not some Madison Avenue ad-shmucks. Your users have already given you TONS of suggestions on how to improve the New User Experience.

And these "Big Spaceship" clowns...every one of those corporate websites you mention as their credentials...Adobe, Sony, Coke...are boring and opaque and hard to navigate. Adobe is maybe the best of the lot, but I'd wager it's because they themselves have a lot of input into the final look and feel. Or maybe they kicked out BS and did the place over themselves.

Stop trying to give away your golden goose. Marketing, user experience, help desk, forums, blogs, volunteer helpers, security, age checking...ALL of this stuff is metadata surrounding and encapsulating and showcasing and enabling your core product, the Second Life virtual world. It is all CRITICAL to your success. No one knows more about it than you and your users do. Or, if you DO happen to find the occasional genius or expert, HIRE them. Tie THEIR success to YOURS. Outsourcing is a cop-out. You are bleeding away your control. You should be seeking intimate involvement with all these aspects, not pushing them off on some uncaring third party.

Tell M I said so.

They would be valuble yes but the problem with that is after they are here a month or so they want a home and cannot afford it.
They get bored and sick of the problems with lag,lost purchases and just end up leaving so really it does not help to get new people in if they do not have options to afford things in SL™ and motive to upgrade to premium.
I wont upgrade to premium because of the unstable nature of SL™.
SL™ bugs and problems make new residents think it is the businesses ripping them off so we business owners LOSE money and lose customers because of the problems you all create for us.
SL™ is a joke now you cannot build a stable business here.

It certainly is. Currently I am a mentor and did so after constantly helping newbies, answering any questions they had, and even occasionally giving some lindens to get them started. I assumed if I was a mentor I would get the support of LL in continuing to help.

So what do I encounter? One thing after another designed to show mentors we are not relevant and/or change our mission to not be what it was when we signed up.

Gee, thanks a lot LL.

Katt..... I can remeber a time when I was new to SL that aprt of the fun about this place was exploring evrything and meeting new people. If I had questions all I had to do was ask someone and they would gladly tell me how to do somthing. I cant see why you all are wasting Money on this SpaceShip project. I have never come across anyone that wouldnt help another in SL. The only peole that would NOT help me were the people at LL. I was in a terrible hurricane back in Sept and lost just about everything in RL and was not able to get access to a computer or anything for an entire month. When I was finnnaly able to get access to a wireless computer clear across town the only thing I could do was to leave a note in one of your blogs to let eveyone know we were OK.. I had no other way of letting anyone know what happend to us and what did you do?? you deleted my post!! not once but twice! and when I came back in finnaly everything I had in world was gone...store.land..all. Now I think that if you want to make the user experince better and want others to refer people to SL I think you should think about how you treat the customers you have here first and NOT start jacking up Tier prices and all that crap. Life is hard enough for some of us here in SL and you all seem to make things just as hard or if not harder here in SL..this is "supposed to be fun"..remember???

I'm a Free acoount and I agree with you 100%. I downgraded because there is absolutely NO reason for me to be a Premium Member. I am not interested in "leasing server space" or having an SL home. I rent a small place to use as a login/changing point, I'd rather pay a resident business. For me , SL is an entertainment service, and LL is offering it for free, so I take it. *Thank You*

That being said, I think they should make everyone pay SOMETHING, after a trial period. It should start at a dollar or two and scale up based on features or services. For those that can't or won't put outside money into the game, come up with ways for them to make money inworld, and let that be used as payment. Stop unlimited free alts, maybe tie that in with membership level. Drawing in new people is fine and is necessary, but the established creators already here are what will kepp them interested, not some splashy commercial nonsense.

Like Lindal said, this should be done internally. LL should be determining the future of it's product. The last major threat to SL's future, Ageplay was farmed out for a solution. The result a broken brogram, from a company of questionable reputation that almost 2 years later is still broken, and pretty much forgotten.

Point number 1 - You sir are lucky, far luckier than most of us residents. I have had my issues with the linden viewers in the past. As well as the present. What strikes me most is that when I use one of the linden viewers, I can count on the fact that I crash within 15 minutes of use. Heck the other day I crashed 30 seconds after I logged in. Yet using a 3rd party viewer such as Nicholaz's builds or the CoolSL Viewer, I experience far less if any crashes.

I would say that 20 hours is a fair estimate to learning the entire user interface and SL's nuances/bugs. In fact, it's a pretty conservative statement if you are factoring in people who are technologically illiterate. (of which many of the new users tend to be)

The rest of your points, I wholeheartedly agree with. I think there was a time that stuff like this would have been put in the hands of the SL Residents. I very much dislike that it's going to be put in the hands of a company who has no experience with SL and has some pretty atrocious design/usability ideas (like their own website).

Well, since you asked... The slider for the draw distance put on the main screen where it is always available would be a nice way to deal with lag. Say in place of that search box thingy.

From what I see on their website, Big Spaceship's expertise is in Flash websites. So if you don't intend to build a Flash website, why choose Big Spaceship?

I'm convinced that the in-world content of Orientation Island is one of the major problems of the new user experience, so why is that ruled out at the start?

Rearranging buttons and menus will only alienate those who are used to having them where they are now. The solution is to make it customizable and perhaps start out new users with a different look if you think it will help. Have you forgotten the Dazzle debacle already?

Mike

Great idea Nad. I'm going to go see if there is a JIRA already for this and vote for it.

That's what it was like when I started. You got a free week, then had to pony up a one time $10.00 basic charge (or go one month as premium for the same fee) to stay.

#1 improvement for the new user experience: Make sure every new user gets a landmark for NCI and the Ivory Tower.

*sigh* Not another one. Not another one *weep*

How long must your residents suffer the injustices and torment you bring us?

But, more to the point, which is why is this necessary? Who determined it? I know we aren't a voting group. But, you do rely on our faith in you. And, lately that faith has been serverely tested.

Just cool it LL! And figure out how you are going bring the best experience to US, your paying customers!

Instead of spending more money on something that is not necessary you should be looking for ways to trim the fat and reduce your price gouging in these tough economic times.

Normally I am a big fan of Linden Labs, but this to me looks like frivolous spending.

It is very annoying to me because I am one of those who laid out some big bucks for 9 openspace sims, and I have not abused them. I spent a lot of time in terraforming and making them into wooded areas complete with some animals moving about. And now I cannot afford to keep them and I know I will not be able to give these sims away. I will have to abandon the one and reintegrate the other 8 back into 2 full sims. I feel gouged and ripped off.

My in world sales are also down about 15% for October which is significant and I atrribute it to reduced recreational spending in tough economic times. Given that I will try to sell one of my full sims to reduce my costs. That makes better business sense than raising my prices in tough economic times. Take a page from my books Linden Labs.

By the way, Sakai Openlife of Open Life claims in his forums that he has had 3500 new users register since your announcement regarding the openspace sims.

when I joined in 2007, it was not very difficult to learn the basic features of SL. within lets say 30 minutes or so, I could fly, walk, drive a vehicle, buy a shirt, touch things, hot a freebie torch, learnt about gestures and and and.
ok, I was lucky enough that a friend (who is NOT in the game anymore btw.) showed me around a bit.
with this person, I saw the first basic features like nightclubs, slpoders, sex beaches etc. (caution: irony).
I made friends and decided after a while, wow, it would be nice to have an own place to live. Ok, so I 'purchased' some gigantic sized 1028 plot and payed my rent regularily to the owner. Before I 'purchased' this land, I learnt that I wil never 'own' it because I have to pay to the 'owner' who again has to pay 'his owner' i.e. LL...... Clever economic model, I thought and O loved my tiny peace of land with the nice sunsets. Even the ugly houses of neighboring parcels did not upset me at that time of my SL existance. I thought it would be clever to invest in some SL firms and bought some stocks at one of the SL stock exchanges. Unfortunatley, most of the stocks I 'owned' were casino stocks besides real estate stocks.
I made more friends, many of them found partners, were engaged and married. There were a lot of parties and marriages and after the marriage party we went clubbing and played the sploders endlessly. I explored strange landscapes, temples, cities, the alhambra, paris, london, assisi and became member of 25 groups wuite quickly. many of these groups were vibrant, they called you to come to concerts, listen to any kind of music from classical to contemporary, I went to the opera, to ballet, to group meditations and shopped my brain out just to look GOOD.
I saw a lot of nice furniture and accessoirs and realized that my tiny 1028 m2 can not hold them because there is a prim limit.
I heard about a gambling stop and had a look at my stocks. Oooooooooooooh they were quite down. Also, in my portfolio, there were stocks missing as some firms just dissapeared. I TPed happily on in SL and saw all these creatures at mall and market places that clean the floors or just sit around doing nothing. I was curious about them and wanted to talk to them but they did not react. This made me look for the button where I can disable the 'away' function. Now I could sit eternally in world without being kicked, an improvement. I made more friends and there were still some sploders despite the gambling stop. Ok, I did not make much money with sploders, but they were fun. We had beautiful themed parties and some more marriages. What a drama when I heard that some friends of mine plan to be divorced. There was no party for this. Some more couples got divorced the next weeks. Amazing as they just married some weeks ago. Ummmm and then I forgot to pay my tiers and was due ONE day. This caused my SIM 'owner' just simply to put away my land. Ok, as the neighbors houses were ugly anyway and there was nothing interesting when spying in their sleeping rooms, this loss was not that important to me.
I made more friends but less speedy than at the beginning of my SL and I decided to relocate as I was homeless. In the meantime, some more couples divorced, hardly anyone married. I saw lots of strange avatars with guns in their hands and other ones with tails and wondered what a beautiful world this is. I bought a new parcel, 4096 m2 seemed to be appropriate I thought as I don't want to live like a dog in a small hut. I was always happy when LL allowed me to login and when they allowed me to TP and meet my friends and I was very happy when a shop took less then 5 minutes to rez. I built a nice house on my plot, created a beach etc. etc. but again, prims were not enough, so I bought some more plots on this SIM until I had 8x4096m2. In the meantime, some couples divorced, my favorite nightclub closed, the owner of my favorite clothes shop left due to content theft, instead of grey, avatars there were clouds now or sometimes just shoes, the friend of my best SL friend was accused for theft, more and more people who obviously need professional psychologic help came across my path, I had space again for new groups as some groups just stopped existing and finally my best SL went away.
I sat down for a moment and looked at the maps. Pretty much yellow I thought. I looked at my account costs: pretty much red I thought. I made me some tea and decided to sell some of my eight parcels because I became a little clearer again when I asked myself: why the hell should I pay so much money in tiers? what for?
So I sat on my beach waiting for the customers who want to buy my wonderfuly designed land as I saw that land can be sold for good prices in Bay something (or now Nautilus). Unfortunately, no one passed by who was interested in my beautifully designed land, but it still costed me tiers. Ok, I stopped waiting for investors and just abandoned some of my parcels. Now, we have 9 of 16 parcels for sale on the SIM I 'live'. I was conseiderung to buy an OS some time ago, but the prims there are not enough to have a nice house with nice furniture including a kitchen, a bathroom, a gym and some plants and animals outside, so I did not follow this plan. And I am happy now that I did not when I heard what happened to the OS 'owners'.
To make a long story short: this is SOME of my SL experience: a steady decline in being surprised, amazed, thrilled, challenged, touched, socially integrated. However, don't get me wrong, I still like the game for some reasons. This story shall only tell you LL outside there that it IS NOT the first hour that makes a SL experience, but it is LL's confused and confusing ever changing policy and mind and their greed.
The color of the year is yellow and this will be the color 2009, too (i.e. land for sale for those who don't understand). To attract more people to come in is one thing, to attract them to stay is another. I doubt you want them to stay, you want them to come in, see well shaped and dressed avatars in world that attract the new ones to spend some money to be able to compete. Once they look so so, may be have 'bought' some land, they can leave again, others may come and spend new money. This is not a sustainable concept as SL is also a social environment and this needs some stability, i.e. efforts to maintain some user basis.
You should open one or two windows of your ivory tower and look outside: SL is nice, sometimes even beautiful, but mostly ugly and superficial and above all: it is way too expensive. I have expected that you lower the prices of tiers in the near future to attract more people to invest and you do the opposite. Actually, you mostly do the oppsoite of what I expect, so I am still surprised by LL/SL hahahahaha. It was said several times, nothing is for free, so leave the concept of free accounts after a trial period, charge everyone a little for the game and create different types of memberships with different bonuses/attractions and LOWER tiers or you will wake up pretty soon jobless.

best regards, pantaiputih (not hiding and aware that there will be some responses like, so, just leave!) - and as always, pls forgive me my typos and my poor english

After experiencing how the French localization project is being run I can only encourage LL to use outside professionals.

If I may make a suggestion, inviting foreign new entrants to bypass orientation island and land on private sims that are supposedly dedicated to welcoming noobs is a mistake as they do not learn half of what you can learn on these islands. Why not spend a bit more money and localize both islands in different languages ?

With the higher cost of low prim sims you should be able to finance such a project

Did not see a Jira for this so I created https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-10307
(My first Jira. Don't make too much fun of me if I didn't do it right.)

~> Pantaiputih Korobase, nope I hope people don't say just leave, I think you have described the experience of SL in a nutshell. However, just one point, there are still amazing experiences being created in SL everyday, and that's probably why your still here, but it's more likely those amazing experiences come from other residents rather than from LL.

despite the high cost of LL itself already, after reading this article I guess that everyone will have to buy an APPLE ! read the article

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/bigspaceship/

xxx
wildcat

~> Pantaiputih Korobase, nope I hope people don't say just leave, I think you have described the experience of SL in a nutshell. However, just one point, there are still amazing experiences being created in SL everyday, and that's probably why your still here, but it's more likely those amazing experiences come from other residents rather than from LL.

signed: that is one of the reasons to stay
agreed: it is obviously not LL that creates amazing things, e.g. have a look at nautilus, it looks like a Florida infrastructure, lol, nice houses for retired people, streamlined, clean, uniform (p.s don't want to blame retired people as there are even some +70s in SL and very creative and active ones)

Thanks for reminding me. Get rid of JIRA as a general bug reporting mechanism. The average user probably has never seen anything like it. I can't deal with, I know that much.

On handing out a LM to NCI, a good idea, but go a step further. Have a REAL showcase, not the current Friend of Linden Scheme. And list places like NCI and others that new players would fine helpful, and hand that out as they arrive.

Just a little bit of information for the folks at linden labs...your most valuable customer is not the one that is coming over the horizon...it is the one that you already have...you will typically lose a certain percentage of your customer base thru attrition, and so an average website must add on ten percent of their customer base yearly just to stay even...that is if they are providing a customer acceptable level of customer service...and a good product.

It is a long-standing and very basic maxim in marketing that it costs much more to acquire a new paying customer than it costs to retain an existing paying customer. A company that does NOT provide an acceptable level of customer service to their existing clients, provides a poor product, or initiates policies that will literally drive customers away, will obviously lose them at a much higher rate than the 10% yearly average caused by attrition...

Short-sighted companies that find themselve in the latter position will often try to improve their new customer attraction, to replace the experienced formerly PAYING customers that are leaving due to poor customer service, a sub-standard product, or policies that their customers find unacceptable with new customers. They do this in an attempt to keep their overall customer base from shrinking, as people leave. This is a poor resolution to their declining customer base issue.

The reason this is a poor solution is that a company that does this, is like a man that has a tub with a leak in it, and so he runs frantically with a bucket to keep refilling the tub...when what he should be doing is plugging the leak...LL will be replacing existing PAYING customers with new, inexperienced non-paying customers. Because of the fact that they have not improved their customer support, nor addressed product issues, or reversed the policies that made their formerly loyal customers leave, the new customers will soon find the same issues the earlier abandoners did...and leave in turn.

The way to slow a decline in customer base is NOT to solely concentrate on acquiring new customers...you merely create a vicious cycle of residents joining, becoming discouraged, and leaving. Instead LL should work harder at retaining the PAYING customers you already have. Certainly, you must always strive to acquire new customers, but that should not be the main focus of your organization...instead work hardest on customer retention. Your most valuable customer is the one that has experience in SL, and is making the monthly commitment to own land, buy products, and maintain a premium account.

I have been talking to many residents over the past weeks...and many are moving their products and services to the several open sim grids that have sprung up rencently...with an eye towards abandoning SL entirely. They see SL as crashing and burning...On other opensim grids, you can purchase a region for $100 US, and $100 a month in teir...you can build to your hearts content, or export things you've already made in SL to these new grids, and they now have working asset servers and in-grid currencies working. There is very little difference between SL and these new grids, besides the cost.

If anyone at Linden Labs were to ask me what they should be concentrating on...my answers would be simple...five major things...in order:

1) work hardest on keeping the customers you have by improving customer service and thinking long and hard before implementing kneejerk policies that alienate your existing customer base...the reduction in land acquisition prices six months ago, that devalued everyone investment in their land, and the current issue with openspace sims come to mind.

2) improve the SL grid technically, and not with just flash and puffery...make real changes that improve the stability of the grid...fix group chat...fix the glitches in the viewers and the server code...fix sounds...etc.

3) take a long, hard look not at your land acquisition pricing but at your tier pricing...you lowered the acquistion price of land six months ago...which was simple because the cost of server hardware those new sims run on, has been declining to match your reduction...but you did it without an attendent reduction in the tier pricing, all you did was keep your profit margins at the same level...and devalue the land that anyone already owned in SL. Now other metaverse platforms that are direct competitors with SL, are offering the same prims, the same sq meters, for a fraction of your pricing. In SL, the land auctions are a joke, since the minimum price they are put at auction for, is about a L$1/sq meter higher than what land can be purchased from other residents.

4) Open source the SL Server code, to allow residents to host their own regions on their own hardware, charging them a sharply reduced tier to connect to the SL grid, much like the opensim business model is progressing to. LL would be able to forestall the growth of competitive opensim grids this way...if I could host four regions on my own server, or on a webhost someplace and pay $195.00 a month for connection fees to the SL grid, I would not consider a move to opensim.

5)...and after you have done all of the above...THEN look toward acquiring new residents...because unless you want to lose your new residents as fast as you get them, you have to address the other issues FIRST.

Temporal Mitra

completely agree with you, said something similar back at post 71..

I agree with Broccoli Curry. Linden Lab, care for the residents you have and make them happy. Start treating sim owners as business partners. Spare us further shocking surprises and your irrational pricing policy.
And then maybe think about redesigning the first-hour-experience. Funny though: all these people who build and create in Second Life survived their first hour. I thought it was pretty easy. I grabbed the WASD keys and was walking around happily. Then some tutorial told me I should use the cursor keys and I thought "WTF?".
Frankly, Linden Lab, you must think your users are idiots. Treat them like intelligent people and like business partners. And tell them about WASD and mouselook mode right away, it will make the newbies crash into walls less.

The sailors are still recoiling with the Open Sim Smack in the face. Timing is not good for telling us that you are now adding a consultant company. Maybe a survey of old avatars - how many have advanced degrees, how many are involved with computer design and programming and the actual IQ behind these puppets would give you a clue to who your paying membership really is. By insulting your membership.....

A lot of good advice has been given in this thread, Free of charge. Maybe the solution is not in always paying outsiders to solve your problems. Maybe it just takes listening to some of the people on the inside, who know your product arguably better than you do. Maybe even take the brightest of them, and give them a little something for their efforts.