Theory of Community Burnout

OK, now re: this.

It boils down to this: Why should I start, from scratch, learning to build houses, when already there are not only plenty of houses in the game, but plenty of big names who have been such huge names since before I even got here that I'm supposed to not even have the audacity to call myself a builder in their presence?

Obviously, I'm going to have to learn to build from scratch. Then build the houses, just like the people before me did. Why should I even bother? There are the big names, and there are for sure plenty of houses to go around to everybody; nice houses.

Not only that, I'm not even going to be able to do some of the things these other people do. I can't make my own textures, for instance, much less make textures that cause you to just have to use one prim for an entire side of a house complete with several windows, shutters, a decoration around the top, and anything else you want to have show on that wall. I can't do that, so why should I even bother making houses?

I can't script my house, either, beyond some simple scripts.

So there we are - I don't know how to build, I can't make my own textures, and I can't script, plus there are already dozens of builders in the game, with businesses that have long since predated my existance on the game, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

And yet - I have learned to build, I have a business, I have sold my houses, I enjoy the work, and my customers enjoy what I make. All builders aren't alike. Some can make textures, some can script, some are more famous than others, some have more time to devote to their SL business, some have been around a long time, some have huge inventories, some have partners, some have free land they do their business from, etc. etc. etc.

To that I say, so what? If I'd paid any attention to that - and decided, well nobody needs any more builders, then I wouldn't have had all this fun, and I wouldn't have given my customers things that make them happy.

I wanted to make houses, dammit! And I wanted to make MY houses, with MY vision of houses. That other people were already successfully making house didn't have any effect but to inspire me further.

Whether there is already a built-up society or not isn't really important. Even if there WEREN'T already the existing product, you would still have to build your thing from scratch anyway, just to learn how to do it if nothing esle. And even then, I would add, it is not necessarily a matter of making the product better; merely different!

Not only that, but all these existing people - they actually have a disadvantage going against them: They're old news. One person can only do so much, have only a particular style, etc. A new person comes along and everybody goes ga-ga over the new thing. The old people, they don't have that advantage; everyone is already used to their stuff.

Not only that, these preexisting people have already done a lot of the legwork for you. They have already found tricks and shortcuts and methods that took them ages to work out, but you can have knowledge of these methods in the time it takes for you to ask a question.

Within you, within each one of us, there is SOMETHING that no one else has. A way of seeing things that no one else sees. A touch of style that is no one else's touch of style. A sense of humor that isn't identical to anyone else's sense of humor. Once you find that within yourself, and express it, you will find you have no real competition, because no one else is YOU.

That is what I have tried to say in my earlier posts, and that I know to be true. There is something Yumi has to offer that can be offered by NO one else, because no one else is Yumi.

coco

It's not just that.

It's that when the first few people start building item X, suddenly they're doing something that hasn't been done before, so people get interested. They might help, and they become a customer base. Then, they request feature Y and improvement Z and those features and improvements get added in, new updates get sent out, and similar, and everyone evolves together.

But when the next person comes along and wants to improve the item - nobody's initally paying attention to them. When they get their basic start, they're not doing anything special this time. Y and Z are now part of the minimum they'll have to have to be noticed at all - and then they'll have to add something more in order to be better than the existing one. Now, there is no reason why they can't do this, but it's going to be far less an "enjoyable journey" than the first creator had. And after that, when the feature bar is even higher and there's already a split in the customer base, the third person who comes along is going to have an even less enjoyable journey. Sure, building can be fun for its own sake but building with a community beside you is more fun, and building with a community against you is much worse.



Well, that can be an advantage too, of course.

Well, you're kind of talking about abstractions, I think, while I keep harking back to my own experience, so that makes this conversation a bit difficult. And my own experience doesn't jibe with the comments and observations you are making. That may be why I have a hard time following some of the things you are saying.

But - going back to my own experience, I suppose it wasn't as pleasant a journy or as exciting as it would have been if I had been one of the first house builders ever.

But it's not unpleasant at all. I DO have the community beside me! After all, I have a number of friends who are newer to the game and are learning how to build, or who predated me by just a little. There are just whole BUNCHES of people coming into the game now, and they form a sort of whole new wave of builders, and that is exciting in itself, for them.

You're right, the basic start of building the new house for the new people - as it was for me - can't possibly be as exciting as when Adam and Eve SecondLife built the first new Second Life house together. But it is still plenty exciting. Plus, players tend to hang out - in this and in other games - with players more comparable to their own join dates, I think, so for them and their friends - or me and mine - it is all new and exciting.

So I am - we are - building with a community. And beyond us, there will be more, even newer players, building with their own communities. SL is, after all, a very large place. And a new player coming along to buy something isn't even AWARE that there are already only a few famous people they are "supposed" to be buying from. They just buy what they like!

And I don't think there is ever the sense that you are building with any community AGAINST you. I have always felt (perhaps wrongly so) that I am building with the community with me. Everyone has always been very helpful in helping me learn - April Firefly, for instance, singlehandedly figured out a problem that had kept me from finishing my first house for two months! And others have helped within the game, like Barney. Plus there are the building, scripting, and texturing, etc., forums, where everyone does help each other! And I enjoy helping others now, as well.

So I think you are mistaking how vast the SL community is, or how many communities there are within it. It doesn't just consist of a few well-known old hands, or even the few loudmouths like me who like to populate the forums.

And you don't have to be "better" than others to sell plenty. You don't have to be "better" than anyone - you just have to be GOOD. In clothing, for instance, there is only so much you can know and do to make a well-made dress. Yet there is such a variety of dresses and styles, one would never run out! The same is true of houses. So I think whatever you choose to do, you will bring enough of yourself and your own style and personality out in it to ensure that you are noticed by others.

coco

I agree.

Furthermore, every single SLer's experience here is different to an extent. Everyone's perception (as is evidenced by this the content of this thread and it's predecessors) is different. That is why speaking in absolutes is dangerous business in this case.

Well, all I can say is that while I agree with your logic, it doesn't seem to be the case. In the UK where I live, for example, it's well known that the population is rising and not only that but many people are coming in from other countries - which should be creating a massively diverse market. Yet in fact, all the reports indicate that less small businesses are starting up, and there's even talk of requiring government intervention to prevent every single town winding up with exactly the same shops in it. Now, I agree with your logic and it doesn't seem to make sense, but it really is observably happening.



There are useful inventions getting killed off. You just don't think there are, because you don't hear of them. I think the most well-known example that people have heard of is the "D-Pot".



(nod) Well, what you call "lack of inspiration" sounds like it's exactly what I've been talking about - the point at which something reaches the point where people consider it well done, and therefore don't (and in an oblique sense, can't) work on improving it. That's the community burnout thing - when everything is well done enough to cause newcomers to suffer that same "lack of inspiration", even if things maybe could actually be done a bit better.



Well, exactly. But most people who see Four Seasons are going to suffer that, well, "lack of inspiration" you described. And, do you know the background of Four Seasons? The girl who built it got something like L$100,000s worth of stuff and tier, free to build it with! As far as I'm aware, it's still tiered by Ice Dragons. You can bet that wouldn't have happened if Spitooney had still existed at the time and you can bet it won't happen again as long as Four Seasons continues existing. There's nothing wrong with that - in fact, if it wasn't for that Four Seasons almost certainly wouldn't exist either because, well, it's a 57296 square metre area with traffic in the 1000 mark and almost no money collectors inside it - but it does mean that that particular community is basically solved. (Although IMHO Four Seasons isn't that great a community builder because "carnival attendees" isn't a defined community, and - and I asked Jvizzle and Kyau about this - it doesn't support "carnival entertainers/denizens" other than themselves, not even unpaid ones. Shame, it'd have been fun to turn cartwheels down the pathways, except it's kinda laggy out there. )



Doing it better isn't quite the point - that doesn't help if nobody notices that it's better, or if nobody needs to buy the better product because the outlay isn't worth it for the difference. (Has been trying to script a vendor that can give "competitive upgrades", but wonders about the ethics issues. And the issues resulting from the changed() event being crap. )



What I was saying was that I didn't want to script only things that were custom ordered by other people. Scripting stuff that I myself like is what I'd like to do, but even that doesn't get the focus quite right, because my decision about whether I'd like to make something or not isn't governed by how complex or interesting the script is. Umm. Still, I don't know. Someone asked me to make them a treasure chest this morning and I built one with a few Linden and GNU textures on it - I thought it'd just be a demo for the script, but in fact she was delighted and said it was exactly what she wanted for the whole project. Eh, guess I was lucky.



Well, it's not that - it's that the variations on a particular script typically don't get noticed by users. You can make countless variations on "a prim dress" and they'll all have real difference in the world and people will favour different ones. On the other hand with a scripted item you can have different interfaces, lag effect, and similar but most people don't care.



Sure, but again, those all fall into the category of "doing a custom script for someone else". If someone actually built a scripted ironing board and sold it, I doubt you'd buy it now, and I doubt you'd have wanted to buy it in the first place because part of your enjoyment was creating your own ironing board.

Well, I have the whole solution: I will tell you, Yumi, what I need scripted, and then I will include your name in it - made by me and Yumi! And give you some of the profits! How's that!! Or I could give you a piece of land to use in return for my (few) scripting jobs, in addition to creator credit!

coco

Yumi, if you spent as much time trying to come up with something marketable as you have in this thread.......

This statement is very telling.

I think there's a difference here between RL and SL. SL doesn't have much in the way of large companies. I think this is partly due to the permissions system, and the lack of much of a legal system, meaning it's difficult to be able to trust an employee with your content. There aren't economies of scale in production, as there are in RL, and it's probably also that the things you need to do to run a big company aren't that much fun, and so people aren't often doing them in SL.

Anyway, the upshot is that without large companies here yet, a content creator is often doing customer support as well, and there is only so large such an endeavour can get, even with full time work.

What?

I know this was an old post but I just started responding to these forums today...after spending much time lurking around and reading. However, the statement above is brilliant!
I have been guilty of not appreciating the journey myself and I just love those poster's observation here.

Thank you very much, Roberto

That albatross reference, that's like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, isn't it? I remember there was once someone who had a really kewl av based on that... I wish I could remember who it was now.

People do care about interfaces! For people that are not as tech-savvy as the average scripter, the UI is what makes or breaks a product. I remember the happy outcry in the New Products forum when the first AO hud was introduced - no more typing "AO off" in chat. Or when people ask about vendors or televisions or radios - "even I understand how to configure it" is a selling point. Or take the AV attachment market - how many channels, how many cryptic commands does one have to remember to do simple things like change an items color or bling and turning "sexy walk" off?

Designing good UIs is not glamorous work, and neither is writing good documentation. Nobody will say "Oh my, this UI conforms so well to the XYZ usability standards, I'm proud of you!". But I believe that if you have a product range that uses a consistent interface, is easy and intuitive to use, comes with good documentation and good customer support, word of mouth will bring you success - simply because so much of the scripted content has dismal UIs.

As for the community burnout theory - my (RL) experience is that the gothic community is an expert at reinventing itself, and at the same time fragmenting itself into more and more sub-sub-sub-cultures. I don't see why this couldn't happen here too. A community is not a static thing - it lives through its members and their interpretation of whatever makes it a community. Every new person has their own view of that community, puts their own spin on whatever they do in that community (be it social interaction within the communal norms or creating items for the lifestyle).

Or, to take up your other example, the BDSM lifestyle in SL - I honestly can't believe the market is saturated already. There are so many kinks out there! And even with the more standard fare - there will always be the need for yet another paddle, with better textures or another anim, or a more realistic sound built in.

I guess that in the end, it's all a matter of perspective. Almost everywhere I go to in SL, I see so much potential for new, different, better things, I see niches that haven't been conquered yet, subcultures that might grow big and hungry. Even with amusement parks - and yes, even with Snapzilla. Though competition for that one might not be viable yet, but if SL grows to a certain critical mass, I'm sure we'll see another Snapzilla.

Jackal, that was brilliant and enthusiastic. You nailed a lot of points that I've been thinking about too. The analogy I like to use is as follows: I see myself in an airport, holding up signs for Resis who are not yet in SL but will make a big difference here through their passion. Each one a unique individual, contributing to the combined community.

I'm personally looking for a lot of lateral-minded folks who might not be able to give reasons for why something can or can't be done, but they're like hungry Renaissance dogs getting their food, seemingly irrational but drawn by instinct to consume and then create. The food gives their paws opposable thumbs and all sorts of synapses to generate enjoyable artistry.

There are so many gaping holes left to be filled.

Well, if "coming up with ideas" was something I could consciously choose to spend time on...

Gosh Yumi! I'm sure you have marvellous things inside of you that haven't been released yet, and maybe you don't even really have to consciously think much about them. You ever have epiphanies, eurekas, relevations, that sort of thing? Any times when you've thought about something for a long while, and then let it drift off into the background, and then one day, something hits you? Like an intuitive leap of logic?

It is something you can consciously choose to spend time on - it is a process. Great ideas often involve out of just starting with simple ones - or even completely unrelated ones. People come up with ideas all the time by actively trying to think of them - by researching things, by finding what they like and don't like about things, etc... There are many ways to come up with ideas, though I don't think complaining about lack of them is an effective way.

I appreciate that interfaces are an issue. The question, though, is if you'd actually buy one product over another based on its interface. Most people won't, because most things don't describe their interfaces, so they don't compare them. Another question is if you'd hold off buying a product at all because it has a bad interface, in anticipation of a future one having a better one. Again, most people won't - but since they won't, the best strategy becomes to get the product out there with a bad interface to capture the sales and then patch it (ie, the JEVN/QWERTY effect)

Also there's the issue that there are basically only 3 interfaces possible in SL - listener, menu and HUD - and listener and menu often aren't ideal, while HUD is fairly awkward to set up in its own right... I honestly wouldn't have thought that having to attach a HUD object and experience the associated strangenesses in the SL interface would have been a net user interface benefit, but if you say so..



Well, I think what you're describing - "fragmenting into sub-sub-sub-cultures" - is something that I initially mentioned, that communities on SL can be split apart as a result of folks being inspired to create different variations of things. But just as in the real world, as these communities get smaller, the amount of coverage they have tends to shrink. I have some Goth friends who think nothing of driving or being driven an hour or so to get to a club because it's the nearest one that's a good hangout for the "type" of Goth they are. In SL geography isn't such a problem, but support is, bluntly, because making money = repaying tier = more stuff in world, not making money = not repaying tier = less stuff in world.



Well, I'm always a bit cautious about that. If I see something and quickly think of a way it could be done, I tend to check myself - after all there are plenty of people who have been here longer than me and I'm not going to be so arrogant as to assume they've all missed it, so I figure there's probably some problem I haven't thought of with it (based on the projects I have done it certainly wouldn't be unusual ) or that they've just realised it wouldn't sell (JEVN/QWERTY effect again). Four Seasons already doesn't seem to be doing that well, and Snapzilla's a free service.

Yes, ideas are something you can consciously come up with, and MUST come up with, actually.

My first magazine job (in the office), I was given the opportunity to write a short travel piece, about how to travel with pets. So I did. My boss, the articles editor, read it and said, "These subheads are boring. Punch 'em up."

I went home and thought - hey, you can't just DO that. You either have the idea or you don't, right? These are the subheads I had. How am I supposed to make them delightful?

So I thought and thought and thought - throughout the weekend - about traveling with pets. And suddenly this subhead popped into my head: "Up, Pup, and Away!" (For the section about airlines.)

Aha - so THAT'S how you do it. You don't get it popping into your head UNLESS you think about it and work at it. I never forgot that subhead; it taught me a lot. Nowadays, of course, I do it a lot faster, cause it gets easier to tap those ideas you don't realize you have within you, with practice.

It's important to remember that not every idea (subhead) is going to be as wonderful, because all ideas are not equal, so don't expect that. But you DO work to get them, and that raises your whole standard level of subheads (or houses, or whatever it is you are making). The trick is to know when you need to punch up something you have, or come up with whole new ideas, or new visions. There's where you can ask your friends for feedback (in lieu of an editor). And you try to achieve the things they think it needs.

And you ask yourself. Over and over, whenever you find yourself not quite satisfied with something. Cause within yourself, there IS an honest editor, and she is smarter than you think she is.

coco

Haha, Torley - my eurekas and epiphanies and revelations generally go something like this:

Hey (methinks while playing Slingo) - I have land and a shop, and the other night I made a Catertonia (a caterpillar) that absolutely has no use and I wouldn't dream of asking money for it. So why not - put it on my shop, as Freebie of the Week? The customers would like that! And then keep on doing that, which will inspire me to make more frivolous and useless things (which allows creativity to run totally free), and I might even come up with some unusual things to actually sell that way. And meanwhile, I can have this nice Freebie thing for everybody.

And then I think - how stupid am I, for not thinking up such a simple thing sooner! So my "eurekas" are generally of the "how could you be such an idiot" nature. lol

coco

Don't do that. Don't check yourself. Don't EVER check yourself. That's where you are going wrong (if I may say so). You are checking your own talent and brains when you do that, before you even give them a chance.

It is not arrogant to think you could do just as well if not better. It is NEVER arrogant to think that. After all, you aren't thinking, "Of course I can do better," which would be arrogant. You never know if you can do better or just as well and/or all the ways you can make it different until you give yourself to the project.

As I have said before, you think you know what the eleventh step will be, and you don't. There are so many aspects to any given thing, once you get into it, something will occur to you that will make it just as good, or even better, or merely different, which is also good. You can't give something your own unique twist until you work with it long enough to know what that twist(s) might be.

Life would be simple if we could just look at everything around us and think, "Well, this is crap! I can do better than this just using my little finger!" Wouldn't it. But it isn't, and we can't, so it's not going to be that easy.

And even if you don't end up doing better or just as well, or even differently, you'll probably sell the thing anyway, cause people just aren't that picky.

If you don't get into the process, you will never find that something(s) that will make it just as good, better, and/or different, because you will have checked yourself before you even started. And you certainly won't get the practice that will make you better and faster.

coco

No one achieved success by assuming that they were incapable of competing. Your presumptions require that the entire community be as gun-shy about taking risks and entering competition as you are. Not everyone is terrified of taking risks nor comfortable presuming failure in competition before even entering the ring. Because of this, there will always be opportunities.

Do not assume that everyone shares your limitations. Do not build entire theories based upon unique inhibitions. Hundreds of years of free-market economics and over two years of laissez-faire SL trade have already shattered your theory of "People Are Too Scared And Lazy To Compete."

I'm working on my theory of community apathy..but I can't be arsed to type it all out.
Besides, noone would read it anyways...

I do understand your point, but at the same time I think you're making things a bit too black-and-white again.

If someone has a dream of making a mobile weapons platform in SL but then decides not to do so because the siegeBot already exists then I suppose you could argue that they must be "scared and lazy" (which I wouldn't necessarily agree with but I can see where you're coming from). But on the other hand, if someone is wandering around SL looking for something to make, sees the siegeBot, and as a non-conscious result does not feel the inspiration to create a mobile weapons platform because they are no longer struck by the lack of one, I wouldn't call that "scared and lazy", but I would call it something that might push them away from a community to a different one where they do feel that jolt of inspiration because there are more obvious holes.