SL Smaller Than It Ought To Be!

Couldn't get 5,000 people? Reflection of minor market share?

What does LL need to do to grow AND retain the user base?

I dont think growing it is the problem. The promise of SL is a lot better than the experience, in my view. A good number of people sign up past the trial, pay their $9.95, sometimes even tier up and get land, then get disillusioned by the experience and move on. So there is a small revenue stream there, despite a lot of early dropping out. Just like buying a video game and then never playing it after the first week or so. Except its a small enough price to pay that you can afford to forget about it, and the love affair is usually a bit longer

And then some of us that have been here a long time, love the concept of SL and indeed have paid a small fortune to play in that time, have lately decided that it really wasn't justified to keep forking over the cash and getting nowhere when it comes to getting help or support. But then again, if, like me, you sell up an island sim, invariably there is always someone else ready to take it on and replace you in paying tier. So I think the revenue is kind of steady, the growth as far as new signups is steady - but the actual retention of players is not so steady.

I've seen a lot of this, especially lately.

If LL want to retain customers - and to take a cynical view, maybe they don't put such a great significance on that since as I said the signups and revenue is steady - then I think they need to focus on customer support.

As I see it, in the time I've been here, they simply haven't expanded their operation in line with their expansion of SL. They've marketed it far more aggressively than they can really cope with, considering the changing and evolving nature of the product, its demanding technical requirements and the fact that that brings with it some problems and bugs of very individual natures.

I feel that I ended up quitting SL because my bugs were a bit unique, and I wasn't worth the effort of retaining when no one else suffered the problems I did. If you experience problems but can be lumped into a 'generic problem' category, you probably stand more chance of getting some help, persevere through them and stay in SL I guess

*looks at post*

fuck me. I should go back to trolling.

Most of all, they need time.

Time to catch on with the public, time to improve the product (how much more interesting will SL seem to the casual viewer when we get the long draw distances promised for 2.0?).

Time for the residents of SL to fill the world with compelling content (not that the content creators are doing a bad job of it right now, but I think SL still lacks its own killer app).

My biggest "complaint" about SL at this point is that it's like a ghost town. I spend much of my time in-world wandering through lovely, empty office buildings and residences. In some ways it's like a Hollywood set, waiting for filming to start. In the absence of a large in-world population, we need more automated entertainments. I still want robots.

Anyway, what LL really needs is time. I hope they get it.

My thought was that of the people who logged on, that may well have been a majority of the current community, and of those, a majority probably are new and will leave after not too long. So, perhaps there are only about 1,000 current SLers who will continue to be SLers a year from now.

My guess is that the costs for SL are too high.

I also think people get bored of SL and move on.

For people who have the most basic SL account, who own nothing and buy nothing, SL probably gets boring fast. I think LL needs to make SL more entertaining for that group with the most basic account, who are not into chatting or building or scripting or Tringo or SLingo. Perhaps a link to some straight-ahead entertainment game similar to WOW or half-life. Maybe a partnership with dating sites or other games. Get an account with <insert online application name> and you get an account for SL too.

I hate to bring up an old name, but SL seems remarkably like ActiveWorlds, which also never grew beyond a very select group of long term users - especially when they raised the membership price. In AW, ten years ago, my impression was that it was cool, interesting, but boring. You can't charge for boring.

I still would not be surprised if it was just that a thousand people in Europe decided that staying up til 3:00 or 4:00 AM on a Sunday night was just not worth it for the one in 4,000 shot at some free land.

.

But, as I said in another thread, did LL really hit 5000 different logins, just not 5000 users on at the same time? So if they did hit 5000 different logins, then the world isn't as small as we think it is.

I'd have to agree that they chose a terrible time, Monday night might have been slightly worse given population trends.

I also think there is much merit in what Kris said, but I disagree that they need more time; they ought to have forseen this as a direct consequence of their actions. Linden Lab has been aggressively pushing enrollment while support seems to have even lower staffing than it did a year ago.

Their decisions still baffle me.

Might be a sign of the mighty alt factor! *runs n hides*

Another point that is still not taken seriously enough by LL is the international market. True, they now have Lindens online now 24/7, and they even managed to get Hotlines in two countries outside the US (which are staffed at US times only ...). But when it comes to scheduling Events, talks and other good stuff, the world might as well end at the borders of the U.S.A. Latest example the Logathon. I am quite sure we would have had more than 4000 people online if LL had not discounted their international customers as an inconsequential part of the userbase.

It is more than imperative, that american companies (not just LL) understand that the world is more than just the USA, and that the international userbase available can easily surpass the american if correctly handled.

Till Stirling

Or maybe people with alts logged in for 30 minutes then relogged under another ID in order to increase their chances at winning the prize as Billy mentioned.

so here's some thoughts o'my own...

1) "the sims" (aaiiigh sorry, but the only prev. reference point i have) took, what, eight years to develop and finally box? sl has only had six years, is so much more ambitious a project, and ll has 'da balls' to do it live with anyone welcome to participate... so 'buyer beware'... (but i think it's the most fun one can have with ten measly bucks, short of something illicit - oh wait, i think sl counts as that too...

2) sl's graphics prefs (and some others non-gr) are just set too darn high by default... new users should experience the best framerate first, then discover the bells-n-whistles for themselves later. this'll retain them better than showing off sparklies. framerate is king, and bad fps makes it hard as hell to even walk straight!! (it took me three days to learn, lol...

3) speak o'which, i think a 'navigating/flying/mouseview school' would be terrific near 'welcome park' - scripted instead of mentored, for those too shy/inexperienced to find and ask someone for help (which i suspect to be the majority of newbies). may not even realize they have a 'walking problem', lol... i say, teach 'em to fly like neo in the matrix... that'll retain 'em.

4) sure agree 5k could have been broken more likely on a late sat. afternoon, u.s. - a lovely morning in asian, a peaceful european evening - should've been press-released too, if it hadn't (unless it was feared that an event crash would take place... -that- wouldn't be good promotion). would've been a helluva party!!

5) 40k to 5k - hmm, 12.5% retain? at this stage, i don't know whether to consider that a good stat or bad. sl is a much more experimental environment, with rather stiff cpu/vid requirements, and is not even a 'game' (which would give ll a shorter goal, and make the overall development less complex). does it have an -intrinsic- appeal to a broad user base?

eventually, yeah - another two years, 128vram will probably in everything; net delivery speeds will continue to increase and spread out distribution; bugs stomped; features added; yadayadayada... speculating, smaller pda/cellphone clients; availability of individual grids for corporate, private and public; etc etc.

ll's taken the concept farther than anyone else, and will probably continue to blaze a bumpy new road... always that way when pioneering something. s'all preperation for the future...

The problem in this case is that to get the maximum number of people in-world as possible at the same time, LL pretty much had to cater to the North American crowd.

But I agree with your larger point. Heck, even I find the use of PST as the SL timezone inconvenient, and I live in the U.S. (albeit on the East Coast).

LL claimed at a Town Hall that they wanted more compelling user content; that it was the key (or something) to growing SL. I'm not sure they'll be able to accomplish this goal. Why would a creative type want to enter this environment? Why now, when both Microsoft and Sony have endorsed virtual products and a whole new potential market is opening up (already open actually)? If a skinner thinks they're making money in SL, what happens when they can sell a skin for a new XBox360 or PS3 game - for sale at US$0.50 a pop and to a player base of hundreds of thousands? There are already companies in Asia set up for this. You think ringtones are big? To be honest, I'm wondering how many SL businesses leave for greener pastures.

I think you're confusing creativity with commerce.

In SL, the most successful creative people seem also to be heavily driven by commerce.

Success in what sense?

I know Kris has alluded to some fairly serious problems and I certainly believe her, but I have never experienced anything but superb support. Of course it goes to what she notes herself about the relative obscurity of the problems encountered and how many folks are experiencing them.

I like other Mac users have this in spades in that there are often things that affect only us and take forever to get fixed for the simple reason that we are a minority of users. This drives me nuts of course but, I understand the whys and wherefores.

It would be nice if LL could address these sorts of things better, but then with increased staffing the price would likely skyrocket as well.

Then we will likely see the forum filling with ""LL is gouging us" kind of posts.

Plus, we're just plain happy that there is a Mac version at all.

Prolific

If the issue is "creativity", then in an economy filled with ripped RL content, we'd be in even worse shape!

Filtering out the non-creative stuff, I see two types of content creators:

- those creative types who have either a successful SL business which at least pays their tier
- those creatives who lately have seemed to be shutting down due to financial reasons (e.g. Spitoonie)

So long as people have to pay tier, SL content is largely at the mercy of market forces afaic. Unless of course residents are comfortable paying much higher monthly fees for the opportunity to show off their "not-for-sale" original content. If people are hesitant to move to a Premium account, what's the chance they'll go from US$5.00 to US$40 or US$75/mo? Not good, I'd venture.

You would expect that from someone trying to make money. Where does creativity enter the picture?

Copyright issues aside, you must understand that good art is rare, right? That's just the way of things.

I notice you only list two kinds of content creators, and you categorize them as either successful or failed businesses. Once again, you are not really talking about creativity.


If making money is part of your creative makeup, this is probably true. But what if it isn't? What if you're driven by something other than $?

Foreign customers (ie non-american/canadian) are something like 15% of the total accounts, if I'm not mistaken. So not enough to restructure everything ever for their benefit.

The main reason why I think this failed was that it was done, very late, on a Sunday. Friday would have been better, and then only for an hour. Two hours means people logged in, stayed for the half hour, then logged to sleep.

LF

1. I, too, was disappointed at not hitting the 5,000 mark. I imagine in the future they will pick a time, such as suggested above, more conducive to both U.S.A. and Europe and Asia.

It would be interesting, also, to know how many different accounts logged in, just not at the same time - though you could discount a large proportion of these from being separate individuals, if you are interested in that, since many would be alts.

Largely, though, the numbers do represent, I think, the currently playing and interested player base. By current, I mean those who log in several times a week - otherwise they would not even know this has been going on. And even considering alts, 4k is a pretty good number of currently playing and interested players, I think.

2. From above:

"sl's graphics prefs (and some others non-gr) are just set too darn high by default... new users should experience the best framerate first, then discover the bells-n-whistles for themselves later. this'll retain them better than showing off sparklies. framerate is king, and bad fps makes it hard as hell to even walk straight!! (it took me three days to learn, lol.."

Boy and how I wish they would! I very nearly quit over this until Barney took pity on me and gave me the rather arcane info on how to change the settings. (I notice that Karamel Kitchen now has a nice kiosk giving information on how to reduce lag, too, and I learned even MORE from that!!!!!)

As I've said before, God knows how many new players log on, get to the welcome area (a lag-fest even with settings at their lowest), spend a while trying to move, waiting two minutes, then finding themselves somewhere past where they intended to move to, and quitting right then and there. I almost quit over the settings problem, and I'm a very persistant person.

I think the suggestion by the poster above is probably THE most important change LL could make to the game. Maybe that person could bring this suggestion to the attention of the Lindens through the voting proposition portion of these forums.

3. The problem is not lack of creative content. The problem is lack of anything to DO. Because (a) you can't charge for entertainment and (b) it costs a fortune in tier to provide entertainment, such as Spitooney, there is less to do now. There is no support for and very little built-in incentive for providing entertainment in the game. Until LL cops to this fact, the situation will, I believe, only deteriorate.

coco

my thoughts exactly till. while the lindens insist they were not trying to leave out european users intentionallly, making the test at 3am does not exactly make it easy for those users to participate. that, in combination with other sl factors (no 24 hour clock option, etc) seem more likely to push international users away, rather than draw them in.

hmmm...re-reading your post just popped an idea in my head. if there are a significant amount of international users, why wouldn't those users schedule their own events at times convenient for them?