30,000 people in SL!

Anyone trying to turn SL into the next Java is going to get some stiff arguments from me. I come onto SL to play, not to work.

LF

What Jessica said.

And there was a chance to have art and content-rich non-sex, non-mass-culture related stuff to happen -- two years for that chance to work. It didn't produce much. We see the results.

Who was going to go on paying for the development of the development platform? (dare I say it -- who would keep subsidizing the tekkie wiki?)

You had to bring in some other customers.

I actually don't think there are that many alts in SL. But I do see news who don't stick. They float in to play intensively, and then the first exam, girlfriend, mom, whatever that comes up on their screen, they leave and don't come back for a long time. They go to other games. I don't know how to increase the stickiness power of SL. But all it takes is 3-days of no log-ins to shake loose some, who are still reluctant not to dump their account.

There are only 1600 or so in the world out of those 30,000.

Yet the top-dwelling establishments have as much as 12,000 dwell. They get a lot of repeat customers. So can we safely assume that 1600 logged in at any one time is actully 15,000 throughout the day or some coefficient like that? In other words, half the world's unique population showing up every day? Anybody have a formula for that?

instead of debating each other that its a "game" a "world" or a "platform", how about we tolerate the fact that its something different for everyone. there are no two people in SL for the exact same reasons.

i think acceptance of this fact is a key to reducing drama and improving SL in the long run.

But it does affect the development path of SL as a program. If it's a world, it can't be a development platform. If it's a development platform, it's not a world.

Yes, you can develop within a world, but only for that particular instance of reality. A dev platform can make stuff for other things, but you strip away the "human" elements of the place.

LF

it's world running on what could be a great development platform (but isn't yet).

There's no debate really, the answer is simply because it isn't anything different for anyone, that's why. Linden Lab chose to produce the first working streaming 3D software on the planet as a commune rather than a useful development platform. It's sad that they did, but we can all still get along, have fun, and earn a bit of cash, with the cute little worldy thing.

Lordfly is right. Forgodsakes, when I dabbled in Matrix Online just before coming to SL, I was propositioned to go into a nearby alley and 'have sex'. And I can't count the times that's happened in other games. I always play a female who is pretty close to myself in terms of temperament, and I'll never understand the fixation some folks have with the appearance of my artificially designed & rendered polygons in a 'cartoon world'. But at the same time I don't have a stroke when someone makes a pass. "No thanks" usually works wonders.

Don't forget. Cybersex was invented before we even had graphics. All you needed was to know how to type. Our largest sex organ is actually our brain.


Khamon I think I know what you're saying, but if one SLer only plays in the world to exercise his brain with scripting and relax, while another one only plays in the world to socialize, doesn't that separate them by purpose?

I like the 'commune' analogy, though. Very appropriate. And as long as we see and use it as a commune that's ok. I would submit that, if SL were just a 3D Java development platform, someone would be footing the bill and have very little income to defray costs. A little commercial success isn't a bad thing, even when that success means a good portion of the content is adult-oriented. As I said, far better to endure that than the mind-cramping drivel of grade schoolers playing on Mommy's credit card.

Cindy

Buster is Bruce? Or was that a typo?

Bruce! BRUCE! Now THERE'S somebody who really is my hero.

coco

P.S. "So even though some of you may be offended or not appreciate the seedier side of SL life, personally I think it's part of what makes SL seem alive and vibrant, even if I choose not to participate in that part of the world."

Totally agree with that. Could have written it myself.

Anyway, the game isn't slanted toward that. People put it there. People who like it.

Is this what you meant?

" If you’re working on a research paper, an example citation would look like this:

Woodcock, Bruce Sterling. “An Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth” MMOGCHART.COM 12.0. 29 November 2004. 1 January 2005. <http://www.mmogchart.com>"


Pre-zactly.

In the infamous words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Yes ma'am, that is the Bruce I mean, the one who does www.mmogchart.com.

coco

does anyone have good charts on sl's growth?

Thats 30,000 active accounts. Counting all inactive accounts and active accounts there are about 145,300.

Buster is not Bruce.

what does active mean?

an active account is one that has been logged into in the last 30 days.

oh wow...

You can take all those numbers and and say "Yeeeah, thats all great for number speculators and statistic maniacs"... The interresting question is wether alt-accounts month-to-month growth rate is getting close to outperform overall growth, that's the only number that can make the speculations logic.
As mentioned in posts above you can only "alt-baron" yourself till you get bored (not till you get poor), each alt-account should generate about 50-150% operating-profit for doing nothing if you set it up with your head on the neck.

With SL hitting 30,000 active users on 5/20/05 and it now being 8/25/05 with 42,462 active users I pose the question:

Is the growth of SL

(1) Faster than Expected
(2) In Line With Expectations
(3) Slower than Expected

I have no idea. I know SL is supposed to hit 1,000,000 users at some point.

Actually, the growth of SL is much slower than the hype would want you to believe, unfortunately. According to Philip, who stated around September/October 2004 that there would be 1 million subscribers within 3 years. Even at today's inflated growth rates this is impossible.

SL total subscriber number increased a bit more then double since last year. Assuming it continues this growth, in two years there will be at most 200,000 users. Now, 200K is a great number of people but the devil is in details.

If you look at the simultaneous users logged on at the peak times, as percentage of the total users, this number is now around 6%, when it was around 7% 6 months ago. So I think retention rate is less than the total users, which means fewer of these are premium users, since people are more likely to be premium user if they log on consistently.

My prediction is about half of the 42K users now are premium long term users, or about 20K (this also fits with current number of sims). If you make the future calculations based on that, in two years we will probably have about 100K users. This maybe enough for SL to survive, but clearly a magnitude lower than that magical 1 million number. I'l be happy and surprised if make it to million by 2010.