Doom and Gloom: For Drama

Here's a question I've been pondering.

We have a nice garden of anti-cheerleaders in SL who predict dire consequences for everyone unless their marvelous, half-baked master plans are immediately enacted. Surely you've noticed these dire prognistications. Give everyone money for free or SL will die! Make SL a game where you can kill trolls or SL will die! Make Linden Lab completely transparent or SL will die! Spoonfeed me a reason to use SL or SL will die! Make SL appealing to everyone, especially hot dog vendors and nursing home residents, or SL will die!

Anyway, this is my question.

If the system doesn't work, why does it work?

Where's the stagnant subscriber base and lack of growth?

Mind you, I'm not talking about the technology side of things. That's a question for another thread.

I'm talking about the concept. Where's all the death I've been promised?

If you know where the death is, please chime in. So far as I can tell, this is a pretty cool concept that works. Even if Linden Lab buries itself in its confusion, something very similar to SL will come along eventually anyway. Why?

Come on. Because this is really cool shit*.

(*When the technology is working.)

This thread will kill SL!

For the most part, aesthetics died a long time ago, run over in a large plywood racecar driven by LOLLERIZING hoochie-blingtards.

Don't even get me started on how people build....gah.

I buried the body in the desert...

... next to the prostitute's.


Don't worry, she won't complain.

Because not everyone can live the way they want to in the "Real World" and virtual worlds give them that opportunity. Everything from appearence to social contact that they may otherwise not get. Also it allows you to build and create what you otherwise just see in your mind and share it with other people, like drawing a picture and putting it up on a giant regridgerator.

While alot of games offer this too, they often are not built for socializing or creating, but rather some other goal in mind.

Why do you people always control our information flow? You know who I'm talking about, you FIC-pig-dogs! Let us know the facts, otherwise i swear the people will do something! And you WON'T LIKE IT! It might even involve your precious SHINY!

Eh. Serious response?


I know when I use that sort of doom and gloom, it's when I'm pointing out how another fledgling system can pop in and steal LL's lunch. Something like SL won't just "die," but very likely its setting itself up for a repeat performance of ActiveWorlds in the face of the Next Big Thing (tm).


Where would the death be? When virtual sex, casinos, and niches are "better" somewhere else.

Or maybe just that first one.

OH YES I WILL

I am thoroughly offended at the offense you, Enabran, take at the offense taken by those who decry our dear virtual world. Why do you have to be such an offender. Srsly.

First off, people who don't like the direction the game is taking, or feel some of the moves have been a mistake (or feel that removing stipends would be a mistake), do not "a garden of anti-SL cheerleaders" make.

Second off, yes, the basic account numbers are terrific. I lurve em! I was totally THRILLED to have 100k users. I was watching that counter by the minute. I hate to be in a stagnant or dying game. I love more than anything, more and more players, more action, more things to do places to go and customers to sell things to.

However, these numbers are basic members. They are not premium members. It is premium members we need, it is retention we want. Now the revolving-door basic members are wonderful, too, and they buy things, too. But premium members pay the Linden bills and they reflect the true growth of the game.

Somebody did a chart somewhere about members in world vs the total number of accounts climbing, and the people in world weren't going up like the number of accounts were. One might reasonably ask - why not? And one might further posit that future changes being considered might make the retention percentage even worse.

When they came up with the premium promotions, I participated eagerly and happily. I ADORED the idea of Blumfield, cause to me premium members are the Holy Grail.

Nobody is "promising death." Heck, even TSO hasn't died yet. Some people - myself included - are criticizing the direction the game appears to be going in. That's allowed, you know, even from an eager and enthusiastic player (who wants more basics AND more premiums).

Here's a tip (unsolicited, of course): Next time you start a thread to put forth one of your own concerns, see if you can do it without first stereotyping and marginalizing others with phrases like "nice garden of anti-cheerleaders" and see if you can still make your point.

Just because others have different ideas than you have about how the game should go, and what will happen if it goes a different way, does not make them the enemy, or anti-anything. We are all in this together, like it or not, and we will all have different viewpoints about how best to achieve those ends we have (I assume) in common.

coco

One can only see and point to the world that is.

When considering the possible effects of prior alternate courses of action, one will of course not be able to point to them in the present.

A different course of action by Linden Lab at some time in the past might have resulted in a much larger user base or a much greater net value for the Linden Lab company.

The loss or gain attributed to potential changes in past action is always the difference between what might have been and what is.

Is that the one you killed while playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? See, that is what is going to kill SL: the fact that nobody cares about the missing hookers.

Which game? Tringo?

I thought you liked Tringo.

SL is lots of things to different people.

What seems to happen, is if SL deviates from some folks' personal vision of how it should be, the doom and gloom is genuine.

But the doom isn't truly over the death of SL, as much as its gratifying to hyperbolize. Its the potential death of one's personal vision, that's all.

This goes for everything from Depreciating the DI to reimbursing folks for P2P. I don't think anyone is completely right, or anyone completely wrong. But if you can roll with change, and keep your 'vision' flexible, you're probably best suited to be happiest here.

I would think the adrenaline factor will play a part. We want the thrills, chills and spills. SL can offer those to the creative or social minded, but can it hold the interest of those that are used to dungeon crawling, life and death combat and critical choices at critical times?

The money factor also contributes. LL's choice of focus in advertising seems to be money oriented. Well, that can certainly attract some business oriented folks, but your basic users can or will only buy so much. Which leads me into my next Doom and Gloom segment...

Instant Gratification. SL does this well in some areas, and horribly in others. For those coming home after an 8-12 hour work day and on a tight budget, it is lacking in some areas. We want what we want, without having to pull double shifts to get it. More focus on fun and less on economy would help in this area.

Overall, SL is wonderful in it's openess, and LL is admirable in many ways for their hands-off attitude in a majority of cases. However, I still think it is weak in some key ways that leaves it open to competitors. It isn't very user friendly, though there have been strides in that regard. It isn't group-hug friendly in many ways, because LL can't afford, or doesn't wish, to continually assign Lindens to work on open community projects and events and because the world got too big, too fast.

I think LL will continue to tweak and work on things, and it may not only survive, but thrive as an economic model, and possibly a social and creative one as well. But as much as I love building, and as much as I love many of the folks I've met and grown with in SL, standing under an enraged dragon, or beating my best friend in Madden 2006, gives me a quicker and cheaper thrill.

The slowness of the system is also a frustration that many cutting-edge techno folks will not want to put up with. I have a great system and it takes a long time to rez my surroundings and clothes (if they ever rez) and vehichles are still disasterous (though this can be fun as well).

It is not a phenomenon that is unique to SL. Having spent considerable amounts of time reading the forums of both World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, I can tell you that every community has its share of people who claim to know exactly what is best for their beloved game, how to run the game better than the company is doing, how this feature or that feature is killing the game, etc... The same was true in There as well - though There did manage to pretty damn near kill it, and its doom was predicted.

I think the prognosis for World of Warcraft is clear - it could die tomorrow and has been more of a success than all of the other online games before it put together. Yet, its forums are filled with posts promising that this feature or that feature WILL KILL WORLD OF WARCRAFT. Mostly they blame the Chinese gold farmers, but every time some improvement is given to one class, then there are cries that it ruins it for everyone else - that that class has become too strong and all others are now pointless.

EQ2 is the little MMO that could - trying so hard to be able to bask in the spotlight that it believes is rightfully theirs, before those damn cartoony orcs and dwarves came along from Blizzard and stole their glory. They have been trying like crazy to simplify and make EQ2 glossier and taking ideas from WoW, and in the process, you have the requisite forum posts that they are dumbing down EQ2 and killing it. It's interesting - many of the recent decisions LL has made can be attributed to trying to get more new players to stay, and EQ2 is doing much the same thing.

From beta onward, there have always been the chicken little posts that claim this or that will ruin SL. One thing I do think is impressive is how responsive LL is to the input of its users - though I do actually see a lot of that from Blizzard and Sony Online Entertainment as well. They are villified in their own forums, told how stupid they are and how they are running the game into the ground. Pick any environment and you will see the same thing. One difference is whether the game is an upward or downward trajectory - that affects the tone on frequency of the "End is Nigh" posts.

2005 overall was not kind to SL - it was its painful adolescence, I suppose. Hopefully 2006 will continue on the momentum of the 1.8 upgrade and start to bring good things back to the world of SL. The one thing you can count on is that the more things change, the more they will stay the same - it is impossible to please everyone, and even the most loyal of customers can find fault with things they love.

I am in my third year of SL, and admittedly 2005 nearly killed it for me, but at the end of the year, I found my stride with SL again. I think many people are experiencing the same thing. I've decided to stop lamenting what SL was or what it should be, and just enjoy it for what it is. SL est mort. Vive le SL!

SL works because its citizentry works.

It is a [virtual] nation built on Capitalism.

And so it thrives.

No! I have never been able to figure Tringo out.

coco

Fascinating! Cause JUST before you said that, I was thinking of it!

I was thinking of the gloom and doom coming from the OTHER side of the fence regarding reimbursing people for P2P, and how that was going to be the end of the world and an inevitable slide down a fatal slippery slope, while I thought they did the right thing and a great thing!

And I said so - despite being one of the few in the thread who did, and was kinda scared to as a result. (Turned out okay, though.)

So there ya go, Enabran. Bet you were in that nice garden of anti-cheerleaders yourself in that instance.

coco

*gasps and reaches for the blindfold and chloroform!!!*

Heheh, I like this perspective.

Nope. Reimbursing telehub people won't kill SL. I'm not a big fan of the idea, but it's not going to kill SL.

edit: Might lead us down the road to killing the L$, but I can't wait for that day. I really like trading in USD much better.

Isn't it fun being marginalized into some shadowy group?

It works because there is no competition at this point in time.

I don't think the so called doomsayers or anti cheerleaders are talking about today or tomorrow but are looking to the road we're on and acknowledging that LL may not not emerge the leader. They like SL but in all honesty know that they'd switch, albeit sadlyand with regret, if a larger company offered something better. I think they just talk about their concerns here instead just leaving it to LL to either sink or swim because they really like them.

I think the lack of direct competiton is a bad thing. I am hoping that some of the emerging new social MMOs on the horizon - specifically the ones that cater to dating and sex (Linden Lab seems to be scared to death of the sexuality of SL) will put the kind of pressure onto LL that further drives innovation. I don't see a direct competitor emerging any time soon, but I hope enough niche competitors do emerge to at least make LL raise their game, so to speak.