Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

I am glad to hear this is what the LL pulled out of their Ahem... creative void... in response to the fires that still burn after the openspace debacle.

But fine, so be it, good idea, yes please for god's sake improve the registration and first hour in SL experience thing.

And in your defense, the company you chose just made an incredibly usable fun site for Adobe. My coworkers and I were marveling at it for minutes on end. It was very well done and attractive. Let's hope they can do the same for explaining to a new user why they have to "wear" their coffee.

I am however weary of the impact a consulting company can make on LL and/or SL as both of these seem to have deaf ears for any shape or form of advice. It's not like I did not volunteer enough free advice over the last 4 years. What guarantees that you will listen to these folk? The bill? Ah.. .now it is all so clear.

Best of luck, hope it works out. In the meantime I will be in my corner ignoring LL as much as I can so that I can stay excited about building in SL. Feel free to return the favor as you have in abundance in the last 4 years.

cheers....

Ps.: I think even an interactive "welcome area step-by-step" contest or something, created by SL users would be a lot more really useful, fun, and cheaper

I would reckon Big Spaceship will've sent their people in to have the newbie experience firsthand. It might result in a new take on the old problem, who knows?

Another thing I think would be good is if the new resident, instead of being bogged down in a laggy noobie region, is sent off across the grid (maybe with a HUD that gives landmarks appropriate to the answers to simple questions such as, "Do you want to work on your appearance?" or "Do you want to explore some cool places?"

The experience COULD be turned into a kind of game, such as a scavenger hunt, but made very easy. I think the key is getting them to move and spread out across the grid.

Right now the problem is made much worse by the pile-ups. Once the lag increases no one can do much; they think that's SL and log off.

I have been in SL for a long time now. Reflecting on why I stay and why I became so involved, I have to say land ownership was pivotal. It made me invest in a paying account and gave me a place that was mine!
What started the path to that happening was the first land project. Something along those lines would surely keep more ppl in SL and make them more vested in the world.
As to the current trend to "buying" land on private islands, that is a scam. The estate owners are making a profit over tier and the renters (not owners at all) are not vested in SL or the SL experience like mainland residents.
LL, please relook at the basics and stop catering to the profiteers!

So does this mean a new client?

And who defines "relevant content"?

Or better yet, what is "relevant content"?

What's so hard about signing up? You enter in a few bits of information and you're good to go. Are you aiming for children? How "dramatically" simple can you make it? Took me, over 2 years ago, all of 5 minutes to sign up; when it I suppose it was "dramatically more difficult" then it is now.

And why so caught up in the first hour experience? It wasn't hard 2 years ago, it wasn't hard 1 year ago, why would it be hard now? Again I pose the question in a different manner, what's your target audience? It sounds like children.



And finally, please, no more trying to "revamp" the client, just work on the bugs that you create with each new client...It'll be okay, we've learned to live with it.

A good rule of business thumb..... never let the coders write manuals.. 2nd rule, never let anyone who has used a programme for 2 minutes, write manuals...

I was a Greeter/Mentor on SL Orientation/Welcome islands during a 2 year period. Back in the days when Lindens were seen inworld. We had our little Greeter/Mentor gatherings, talks etc.. one thing that I continously shouted about was.. why doesn't Orientation Islands cater for anyone who doesn't speak English?
I had a perfectly useable 'translator' device, which was better than nothing, as long as you kept sentences short and precise... but.. we couldn't drop objects and or run scripts.... so mute point. Instead, we struggled onwards, trying many techniques to help the new members, whist LL did the decent thing and left SL to hide behind their ticket support systems.
After 2 years, I became dissolutioned, as LL disbanded the Greeter group, then didn't offer training for anyone outside US office hours to enter the Mentoring groups.

After creating a raft of multi language Orientation movies, that could be played to every new user on a wearable media HUD system, then trying to offer them to LL free of charge (even when we were hosting and streaming them ourselves), I got ZERO responce from LL.

My point is quite straight forward... LL stop looking outside the community for resolutions, when there is already a wealth of expertise within the platforms community, give some of those people/organsiations a break... or don't you view your current userbase to have any business creditability? And.. I'm sure they would offer greater value for money.

Also consider the value of the userbase... big corps maybe great to have their association/logos splashed across your website, but when you look at the stats, even IBM only own a small percentage of sims paying you revenue compared to your biggest revenue streams. Many internal SL based companies and business people own far more sims than the big corps put together, giving you larger revenue streams, yet you overlook them everytime.

Developing this platform for 'real business' is something you will never attain, the community rule within. Developing from within is where your greatest longevity will be. 'Real Business' will see this platform as a great breeding ground for innovators and percieve it as a great source of learning business, within the VR world, maybe adopting many practises that are already honed, and then approach those with good experience to act as consultants, maybe even direct employees/partners.

This isn't just a place to move a portion of a RL business into along with all the standard practises, it is in fact a brave new world of how to conduct business within the new realms of Virtual Business, which require knowledge of interfacing with accessibility to a wider audience than they have been exposed to before, that must be done in a unique way or they will fail. We have all seen the come and go of many RL established companies/corps, disilusioned by the lack of any purpose and or direction.

Judging by many of your own business practises, you also have a lot to learn of how to deal with this new form of business. You could only possibly see that, by the reflections of a third party looking from the inside outwardly. If ever there was a need for a community to have a elected representation on the 'governing' council, SL is a prime example. Somehow, I believe you view us all, either as your children, or maybe lab rats.

hows about this as part of the Surl thing have a way to rez a "new resident beacon"
so if i put up a website (maybe with a tutorial on secondlife) then after the new resident gets in world instead of going to some semi random welcome area they go to MY LAND (and the initial "home" location gets set to where i want them).
Of course the NRB would have a set of Linden LandMarks (and any other things Y'all want a new res to have) but if i do the footwork in getting somebody inworld maybe i would also want to
A sell them some stuff (yeah i would have them pick up some lindens on the way in)
B issue them a "Company Standard Inventory"
C parts of A and B

Don't underestimate the language problems. Its important that anyone working on this realises that there is a change in population over 24 hours, and at some times of day many of the new arrivals are not english speaking.

Having done mentoring on the HI, I'm very much aware that in introducing SL to new arrivals, one size does not fit all.

In the end the best introduction to SL for many of the 'less certain' is one on one with someone like a mentor. Its not just the technical education, how to build, wear clothes etc - it's as much about conveying enthusiasm, seeing that the marketing bullshit may actually have something real behind it ...

So, LL - SL is fun, please don't break it ......

Agreed, if you want to improve the SL experience, just fix the bugs you have created in the last month alone, and stop creating new ones daily. Overall the major impediment to a positive experience in SL is game performance and the main cause of poor game performance is the horrible job you guys do in avoiding the creation and/or worse the reintroduction of bugs into the game. Its seems to me that if you really want to improve sl experience you would just fix this problem or spend the money you spend on these cosmetic changes to hire people that can fix it.

Until these bugs are fixed and game play is again relatively stable you are deluding yourselves if you think you are going to improve anything at all and most likely will wind up making things dramatically worse, as you have managed to do over the last three weeks.

Katt, I'm not well acquainted (actually at all) with Big Spaceship so I have no thoughts one way or another regarding that firm.

I have felt for quite some time that LL needs to improve the new user experience. My only concern is that such will employ (as one prior poster put it) "fluff", and fail to convey the real heart of Second Life. Eye-candy special effects will only raise new user expectations beyond levels which the average SL experience will fulfill.

So if Big Spaceship is going to be successful, I do hope they go for actual experience, beneficial tutorals and user interactive experience rather than hype and fireworks.

However, as has again already been pointed out... the failure of SL to retain new users has not been due to poor login experience. It is a consequence of overall system performance mixed with pricing that shocks people away from Second Life. There is no denying that millions and millions of people have logged into Second Life, never to log in again. Most of those people gave it the good college try, but severe lag, failed teleports, extremely slow texture loading, etc etc all contributed to a poor user experience.

No matter how fancy the entrance to your restaurant... it's the food that will keep people coming back.

Someone a page or two back mentioned the Flash only site falling foul of the UK's 'accessibility' laws for partially sighted people.

As the website is a one stop worldwide portal, and you clearly provide services based in the UK (by nature of a) having a UK office and staff, and b) taking our money) then I think you'll find that the site's physical presence in the US is actually irrelevant.

Not only that, it's poor practice overall, plus simply bad design. As a general rule, a company's own website should be an example of its best work; in the case of Big Spaceship (which is a silly name anyway) then we aren't necessarily in for a treat.

I found this other announcment: http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/news/big_spaceship_wins_second_life_ux_project_99475.asp?c=rss

"Using Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, Lebowitz said his agency will develop prototype interfaces for the web and the viewer. We'll just have to wait for one to surface before we understand what that will look like. "

So it seems we aren't the only ones that haven't got a clue what a company whose entire portfolio appears to be fancy Flash presentations (which SL doesn't even support) is going to bring to a virtual world, something that Big Spaceship don't actually appear to have any experience in.

As for "Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs" ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs ... I'm not sure that a 65 year old psychology 'theory' has any meaning in virtual worlds. Instead of perhaps getting just a 'press release', maybe the guy running this company that persuaded you guys that they were the right ones for the job needs to come here and face some tough questioning from people who are clearly far more experienced in virtual worlds than they are, and then you'll see if they're really up to the job - and that we, the people, are not impressed by fluff but substance.

Well, perhaps it's a good job they hired supposed professionals to do it for them. I remember trying to create an alt about a year after I'd been playing my main and I literally couldn't finish the intro quest thingy and it took me half an hour to work out how to get off the freaking island.

To be honest, I think the fundamental problem with the new user experience is that they try to create it out of the normal user accessible SL tools like HUDs and clicky buttons and lsl scripts. Ditch all that crap it barely works and is buggy as hell and build some kind of hard coded thing into the viewer that actually works.

They've already done a lot of that. Orientation Island is gone, and the training HUD was replaced by a little browser window that walks you through the bare essentials. Even Help Island is optional now, you can sign up with a link that plops you at any spot in world.

This latest 'brilliant' idea is like the captian of the Titanic ordering more fuel as she sinks.

I have a question ... WHAT ABOUT US? What about those of us that some how, apparently against huge odds, managed to sign up to SL before the saviours at this spaceship place (btw, their website is not exactly *pretty*) came along to guide us through the difficult website? Oh silly me! We are getting hosed by one bad/stupid decision after another!

Do you honestly think that some glitzy, overdone website will return the trust you've lost with those of us that have put time and MONEY into SL? If you do, you need to remove your heads from your nether regions.

This is just a shiny bobble meant to distract us from the OS issue. Katt can hide all the 'bad news' in the forums all she wants but when all the new people come in that are too stupid to sign up using the current website what will they find? Oh right! Campers!

And the suggestion that *we* recommend people to sign up to SL is downright stupid! We already have to spread the new in-world because the "communications officer" doesn't communicate. We already help noobs because the help system is hit and miss. Should we start giving out our phone numbers too?

Off topic or not ... OS IS an issue and will continue to be one! You can all play ostrich all you want but to put it bluntly, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Congratulations to my fellow PhD candidates! Obviously are are geniuses for being able to sign up to SL before it was dumbed down for the masses! YAY US!

I don't have any bitches about this. I think anything that helps bring in and hold new users is good for all of us.

It is BUSINESS as usual folks - nothing less nothing more - LL follows a strategy and they will execute that strategy step by step to make SL more attractive towards RL companies investing further in LL - do you really think LL will make there income with a handfull 'me & you' customers whining every day in which most of them are Bots and dont listen or whine anyhow .... lol!

increasing the OS prices is only one of the means 'to keep' there operational cost & overhead paid - LL is suffering also due to the RL economics, dont worry - they need to find the money somewhere - therefore making SL more attractive towards RL investors is ofcourse a good strategy seeing from the point of the LL company itself!

Personally I stop telling people in RL about SL cause in 95 % of the cases my friends tell me if I am crazy or something - how can I spent time and money into something that even doesnt exist - also most RL documentaries that are seen in RL about SL are showing some f*ck*d up families addicted to there computer screen and sh*gg*ng each other in RL .... lol (+drama)!

above personal experience is also how LL is seeing our world and now they are going to change this to become more attractive on the global market!

ofcourse it is a pity that LL is non transparant towards there customers and that they only leak 5 % info time to time just to see the reactions.

xxx
wildcat furse

A: Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research...

Is it a "extraterrestrial Spaceship" and the Lindens will be dissected?

8D

Ever given any thought to the fact that the majority of people don't give a hoot about this news, despite the fact that it's us who's paying for it?

GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT. No-one cares Katt. LL is pricing people out of the system. Why should be give a fig about something that won't concern us (as existing residents) or make us any the welathier within the game?

I think the most telling part of your quote was the last sentence: this thread won't be read by Jack. I'll be astounded if anyone at LL but yourself is reading any part of these forums.

What's very sad to me is that so many people have offered up suggestions over the years on improving the new users' First Hour (or whatever it's called) and LL hasn't really bothered to even respond to, let alone acknowledge them. So Katt, why should we bother now?

Massive emphasis about money... 'special' experiences, glitzy 'all fluff and no substance', big spaceships... are we sure that LL hasn't been taken over by Scientology???

It's very important that the new user experience be dramatically *distinct* from that of any other "game" those users may encounter. If they come in expecting WoW, they'll not last an hour--even if they would really enjoy what's actually here.

+++

These Big Spaceship people, they know everything has to be open-sourced, right? And they understand that this imposes constraints on what libraries and packages they can use, right?

It will be open-sourced, right?

If not, please do yourself a favor and cancel the whole thing. The last thing LL needs is another white elephant that it can't adapt and maintain with the help of the developer community.

LL just cannot afford this to be another mistake like the SLim client: a proprietary approach to a problem with existing--and superior--open source solutions.

+++

The relatively recent NAV project is a case study in what not to out-source, and how not to manage the out-sourcing. If there hasn't been an after-action review to identify what went so horribly wrong there, it's urgently needed now, lest this initiative fall victim to the same problems.

+++

I almost posted this last comment in the OpenSpaces thread, but really, it's about *this* thread: I feel a bit sorry for Benjamin. There really could not have been a worse time for this announcement, unless the grid were down dead for a week; even that might have been better timing. And understand that it's not because everybody is upset by the OpenSpace policy; it's because everybody is upset by communications about the OpenSpace policy. There's been no substantive update for almost a week since the initial policy post, and even non-substantive communications have fallen silent since Thursday.

It's perfectly understandable that Benjamin wouldn't be aware of that situation. But Katt, surely you are. You might have suggested he hold off on this until Jack was able to stanch the worst of that bleeding.

Enjoying reading the posts here both pro and con. Actually agree with points on both sides.
Bottom line scenario: there's really nothing wrong with LL hiring a firm to improve their front end... if that firm is qualified to do so.

But like someone pointed out a few messages ago... it does have a flavor of welcoming people aboard the Titanic. That's all well and good... but it might be good to scan the ocean for icebergs at the same time.

To be totally honest, LL's foresight to this point hasn't been all that impressive. Their vision in regard to the design of Second Life was somewhat unique; their vision in handling their customers and in becoming all that they COULD have become... to be blunt isn't going so well.

So yeah, welcome new members. Bring in new members. Just make sure the boat they're boarding isn't full of holes.

I play Toontown Online. While the game itself is a game and therefore offers a definitive first-hour experience as any would to set the premise and get an in-world participant started, Disney's game site AND new interactive site are IMHO not very conducive to getting anyone started anywhere. They dont make anything easy there for you, much less for a kid unless you automatically like what's offered there already.

If you want an excellent first time visit experience, track down whoever planned the rozerem.com website. (I wont be taking the stuff anytime soon, but I do come back on occasion to play with the dream interpretation or check out changes to the beaver/Abe stuff)

Agreed I seem to be on the wrong side of every popular opinion these days. LL obviously struggled with the new user experience and although this new company has a really crappy website and no-one has ever heard of them the worst case scenario is LL wastes their money. It's got to be worth a shot though, retention rates absolutely suck while according to the (possibly flawed) statistics hundreds of thousands of new players try the game out every month.

Interesting you should mention this Elanthius. I've been keeping an informal track of SL "last 60 day" user rates. According to those stats, the user-rate of Second Life can jump as much as 20% or more in a single day. That's about 200,000+ people.

Now, imagine the population of the United States changing by 20% from day to day. That would be what... 60 million people?

Myself, I find that just a little hard to believe. It doesn't bother me because I figure their user stats software is just as borked as their texture handlers. Why do I mention this here? Because part of making the experience good for not only new users but existing users... is to tell the truth about system operations. Failing to do so leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. I know this is very non PC but... no one likes a liar. And those who tolerate liars usually do not tolerate incompetence. System stats that are blatantly questionable pushes the buttons of both groups.

Just one of those little, nagging things that needs corrected to improve the user experience overall.