Second Life Gets Embarrassed on Live TV

Me too!Know thine logic.

just because the server crashed for the talking head doesn't discourage seasoned RPG players from trying SL now, it's free and everyone has something other than their favorite thing they like to do so as have a little variety.

As long as G4TV said Second Life a few times it will increase traffic and if we can talk to those newbies they might ditch the world of killing big homo-erotic-art monsters for treasure and better weapons, or neopets or the sims or whatever computer game they play, for something a little more challenging.

ok I feel horrible for abandoning my neopets.

hi I'm building a real life girl out of blocks of cheese in the basement!

Negative publicity is publicity in the same way a cricket ball hitting your nuts at 70mph is a vasectomy...

It sorta does the job - but it's messy and lacks finesse.

what was maybe mentioned above - i scanned it verrrry quickly, but wanted to chime in two cents' worth additional. i didn't see the show myself, so pardon if any of this was already thought of/prepared/used...

i bet they'd take a second chance on second life if offered, with a slightly different arrangement... go ahead and announce it, as a logathon, and have the host be escorted (hamlet being a likely possibility through a previewed/prepared set of locations and hotspots. everyone's invited to just do their thing, wherever they are (though there would be the understanding that broadcast activity will be from pg-areas only - so go build some more on your cool project, go shopping, go clubbing... all three should be featured as attractive, primary three 'sim-ish' activities to consider.

start by host and escort walking and 'making friends,' then have the host target the escort, then the escort (targetting their first location) takes the host flying. showing the screens of each host and escort would show how easy and useful that is, off the bat. (highly suggest demonstrating switching between mouseview/pov and camera views.)

host is flown around to at least three sites, more if possible, of the escort's random choice, again, from a prepared list - so say, for a couple week's prior, hamlet can go on an exploration/quest to look for a great build-in-progress, an interesting and varied shopping center (clothing, freaky avis, maybe a 'car/cycle/spaceship dealership'?).

oh, and for a crowded capper, a cool club - demonstrate it on maxed-out machines (or at least one - would be interesting to show the contrast between host and escort in display speed, say same settings between 128 and 64meg cards) - i'd recommend the host get the hot machine; if i read right about him being interested and excited about the possibilities of 2L, then let 'im get the primo machine. blow his mind.

so, discuss minimum/recommended system requirements (of both pc -and- mac and sorry, linex... but whatever current scuttle there might be about other clients??). discuss cons of such environments (as demonstrated in the first show against the normal 'everyday' usage the servers get - though also noting that a 'logathon' is ongoing, just to show off a bit. discuss the pros - build everything yourself, or buy other's creations for sale; fully scriptable, 'infinitely playable.' and cap it off with the price/features of just your basic ten-freakin'-buck lifetime membership... too much potential fun for too cheap.

it can be done right. call the producers back; propose another shot.

I laughed so hard.

No doubt this would show SL in the best possible light. As LL is interested in "conversion" of trial accounts to paying accounts, it seems that this would only increase the disjunction of experience between marketing and reality.

People have very little tolerance for games that don't behave as portrayed. You can get people in the door with a pretty demo, retention is much harder especially when you've violated their expectations within their 10th minute.

I recall Dan Bricklin's DemoWare program that was used to mock-up software applications to get customer approval on design and work flow. The biggest problem with the use of Bricklin's program was that the customers were invariably disappointed upon delivery of the working product. Why? Because the demo worked so smoothly (as it didn't have to do any real work) that the application paled in comparison.

If LL is indeed interested in obtaining paying customers, they should avoid demo videos that do things like pan around a pre-loaded scene. These visuals serve as nice shiny attractants, but only serve to increase disappointment with the performance of the actual product. Absent real gains in game performance, their marketing should concentrate on the creative expression possible in SL. Pretending it is Quake or There or even Doom plays to all of SL's weaknesses and none of its strengths.

This is why 99% of TV is not live.

what happened what nothing more than an honest experience in sl shown on national tv. ppl should know what they are buying into. I disagree that it should be shown as a lag free experience with no worries and no cares as that is simply not the case in sl. Go to any club, event or mall. Lag kills. LL have not solved that backend issue that has in fact existed for far to long. Guess that was another poor business decision that just bit them in the ass. Oh well its their co. and they know best, right? A smooth experience would of been nice... for pr? naw more like "for everyone". I'm not down on LL but I'm not going to lie to make them look good either. I dig the truth far too much.

I know this was both meant and taken as joviality, but it does allow me the opportunity to amplify a point I'm trying to make to help LL help themselves in increasing revenue (thus benefitting all players indirectly).

No, TV is not live, you are absolutely correct. However, the product in television is television, so by virtue of you watching it, you are already a "paying" customer.

Contrariwise, the promotional materials for SL are advertisements, or inducements to try SL in the hopes that you'll become a paying customer of LL. The promotional materials, G4TV spots and "loss leader" basic accounts are all intended to prompt people to become paying customers of LL. Unfortunately, as I have noted above, unrealistic promotional materials have a strong likelihood of causing potential customers to reject SL as it does not meet their prior expectations. Worse still, every active basic account not only costs LL money, but makes every basic account less likely to "convert" to a paying account because of the system-wide performance degradation, and also increases the likelihood that high-tier customers will tier down because of the performance degradation; I've seen the latter happen more than once.

It reminds me of the old joke "Yeah, we lose a little bit on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume!"

I saw the show and although I think it could have gone much better with some planning, I don't think it was catastrophic. You have to remember that anybody watching AOTS is going to be pretty geeky by nature. Most would understand that featuring this place on TV would cause tons of people to flock to the area and that server issues could result (even if they do not understand them, or they are wrongly labled "crashing.".

In fact, I spent about an hour at the welcome area after the show and spoke with quite a few new-borns who created an account as a result of that presentation. As bad as it was, Kevin certainly sounded excited about Second Life. The castle build that he flew around was impressive - even in the dark, and the AOTS build looked interesting - even from a distance. I think Kevin did a pretty good job of conveying some of the passion that keeps us all so engaged in SL.

So over all I think it was a net gain for SL. Not perfect, but certainly helpful.

I bet, if we all put our head's together, there is a way to get Kevin back into SL in a more controlled way, so that he can demonstrate more of the power of this place. There must be some project or build that would make for an interesting segment on a future AOTS ...

Perhaps in the future someone at LL will consider a viable backup plan. A shame.

Ah, we dont need no steenking "normal" people!

Normal.....NORMAL!??!?! Sorry no-one is normal Thats why i like sl, its unique when 'normal' people learn to build the craziest shitaki in second life. There is no normal in sl, and i'd never want things to ever become normal....then where heck could we have fun in normality? That's like reading the new yorker on the crapper, and wiping ur bottom with the front page.

The coverage may not of been perfect, but it did give us one things....more coverage, to a wider audiance of gamers. This should attract more people then the news or any silly web blog.

Excellent! thread, it's all been said.

Wow, life after SL!

yes, and I think the creativly curious people out there will try SL regardless of one unfortunate incidence (if they have time and know what it is). We can all put SL out there and in a good light with our postings in non-SL bbs.

My lord what an amazing thread! I thought everyone had some incredibly valid points about the potential for the future and the short-falls we have all experienced in our SecondLives I definitely agree that disappointment is what I hear the most from newbs. Next on the list would be, what's the object of this game? heh

A couple of comments Malachi made about the stress upon the asset server got me to thinking...

Now I agree that SL's gameplay is no comparison to something like WOW where the bits and pieces are all a part of the software itself. There is a library of things that can be created, and that's it. Here obviously, no one ever knows what's going to pop up next.

Bare with me on this explanation of what I am thinking heh...

When anyone is playing SL, it goes through a caching system in order to make locations easier to rerez or travel through for that user. On our individual computers we only get a very small segment of information. What if SL slightly altered the software so that it accessed more information on the clien-side. For example, "to improve your gameplay, order a free SL CD which includes ALL Linden-created textures and objects". You could then install this into a Library folder in your SecondLife main folder. Additionally you could give users the ability to SAVE their inventory into their Library folder as multiple objects and textures (or atleast items that clearly state they were created by that user). Then you could actually order other SLers Libraries, or trade them via P2P networks on top of the options we already have. I realize this would only relieve the Library issues for the asset server, but that would by itself help atleast some of the gameplay lag. I may be crazy in this observation and can't quite explain it the way I mean, but maybe you all can help me work it out or find the idiocy of it lol

The good side of this possibility is that it would prepare us to move toward the open-source ideas for the future and the possibilities of people running their own servers. When I think of a good example of this technique, I think of something like NeverWinter Nights. You can play on any server on the web as long as you have the Mods or HakPaks for it. Hope that makes atleast some sense heh

**ok the more I go back and read this the more problems I see, but I'd still love to hear thoughts on it

Exactly why SL isn't as growing as fast as it should. I was badly dissapointed when I got the actual product and pierced through the hype of SL, perpetuated by LL. I've invited several friends, about half a dozen of them, and each and every one of them was dissapointed when they actually logged into the game and started to see it wasn't as it was hyped up to be.

In fact I think a lot of them would've probably enjoyed SL more if it hadn't been hyped so much. The dissapointment itself contributed to several of them never taking to the game, and hell I sometimes feel frustrated still because SL isn't all that it was cracked up to be. Better that people know what they're getting into and avoid the dissapointment and frustration, than to lose potential players mostly to those two factors.

EDIT: Long story short, what Malachi said.

The SL advertising when I first entered SL was abominable. I joined in spite of it, not because of it. What got me was a demonstration of actual game play on a webcast. People were showing their avatars off and some were amazing to me.

Before I found SL, Poser was where I tried my hand at 3d and didn't really go very far. The avatars in SL were better than what I could make in Poser plus I could interact with the world and not in a static manor like Poser. After seeing the webcast I looked around the website and and watched the clips.. woo it was bad. If I hadn't seen what it was really like, I would never given SL a second glance.

I have a question, and this was the most related thread I could find to post it in.

What happened to the building after the show aired? I joined SL just today (Saturday,) teleported there, and there's nothing, though the land is still labled as being Attack of the Show's. Just wondering.

Bye!

The person who designed the building did so just for the show and took it down right afterwords.

Awww.....dang. Are any pictures from the event going to be on the SL site? I didn't see any on G4's.

If you go to www.slpics.com and look on Wednesday the 28th you should see a bunch of pics that way.

(Ahem)

Some of us "normals" practice proper hygene, TYVM!

Was it Juro's Castle that they featured? That thing is a friggin' work of art.

Peace,
Joseph

It was built by Versu something and Obscuro something something.