Content or control?

Suppose you were a new user again, and you arrived in SL to find that a perfect environment and community, that was just what you wanted to live within, already existed pre-built. What would your reaction be?

My reaction would be to make three identical threads.

Ack, sorry! I didn't realise that every time I backed up from writing the poll answers, it still went ahead and posted the message WITHOUT the poll.

Can I get the help of a kindly moderator with a big broom?

O just report your own post and ask Jeska to merge. Easiest way.

Well, anyway, it's kind of a trick question isn't it? I mean, it presupposes that there was such a thing as a perfect community for you that could exist in SL (and if it would get boring after a while, it wouldn't be perfect).

If there was such a thing, you'd be mad not to stick with it... because it would be perfect. By definition.

Well, the difficult thing for me here, and I'll paraphrase the advice of a good friend... CHECKBOXES not radio buttons.

In all reasonability, each of those four answers has been true for me at a given time. Not all at the same time, but sometimes, two at a time, or at least... one after another.

The only perfect community is that of the grave. No strife. No conflict. No complaints.

Come on, we've got folklore and myth by the metric buttload about perfect comunities, from the Garden of Eatin' (oops, must be hungry) all the way down to more modern slants: Logan's Run, Zardoz, The Matrix, Stepford Wives, et cetera. Okay okay, maybe those aren't all strictly about utopian communities But add in tons of SciFi shorts and novels which do directly apply.

A perfect community would be stagnant, which means most of us (I hope) would get sick of it pretty quickly.

If I couldn't make stuff I wouldn't have lasted 90 days.

If I couldn't have made stuff I would have gone back to the MUD I was working on.

I stopped by SL after reading Slashdot while having a break..

"Hmm that looks nifty" said I "I'll take a 10 minute break and have a looksee"

Is there something to do besides make stuff?

coco

I know someone you can ask - a good friend of yours.

They don't make stuff - and they're here.
Theres socializing.
Buying and selling land.

lotsa stuff.. however it was the making things that got me here..

I don't want to live in someone else's Barbie Dream House, I want to make my own. Without the creative outlet, SL has little else to offer me.

I think this is the hardest thing to do, to remember being a new user. Torley's comment that "each of those four answers has been true for me at a given time" probably best reflects the ongoing user experience but I think customers of home builders are more likely to be newer users. The perception of community may have less significance to users who have already established a network of friends.

Hell yes.

I know, Siggy. I myself have waxed loquacious if not eloquent about the value of non-physical content on numerous occasions.

Hence the little smiley. I am meaning to indicate that for myself, there is little else but making stuff, in addition to indicating that making stuff is indeed far and away the major draw of SL.

It was not the making things that got me here. I thought that would be coding and too complex and technical for me. I thought I would do the Game Show Channel here, which turned out to be unfeasable. Then I discovered that making things wasn't about coding and I could make things.

It's not the making things that brought me here, but it is the making things that keeps me here.

coco

I don't see content -vs- control as opposing, exactly.

To answer your question, if there was anything else compelling, I'd stay until I was no longer compelled. For me - even if content was fixed - I could see the land market by itself very interesting.


Consider the userbase of Lineage2. Far larger than SL, yet you aren't going to create anything.

Well, not more than a 8x16 pixel clan flag, perhaps some clan titles, and adding "+1" to weapons/armour.

Yet, people enjoy it.