A wasteland ...

Zipping around SL is a depressing experience, now, that it is so huge that there will be few concentration of residents to animate a venue. I've seen so much creativity and effort in the deserted malls and clubs ... it's really very sad. I think SL has become a lesson in economics and the notion of elasticity of markets and growth that outruns the infrastructure. If the high fees corporations are willing to spend are distracting LL from the small businesspeople and the experience of SL, it's even sadder.

A lesson can be found in the 15th century when the Reconquista drove the merchant class (Muslims,Jews) from Spain, leaving nobody to animate the economy, develop capital, and create a vibrant country. Instead, Spain had to rely on shipments of precious goods from the New World to sustain its ambitions and, when it lost the mastery of the seas, the country sunk into an economic chasm from which it has only recently recovered. The riches of the Americas didn't stop in Spain but passed through very quickly into the hands of foreign merchants willing to provide the necessities of life.

SL is probably a good example of what happens when technocrats plan and develop a socio-economic entity, with no appreciation or awareness of the fundamentals of growth, be it real or virtual. Another notion would be what will happen when planet earth can no longer sustain healthy existence - or when banks call in credit card debt and nobody can pay - or when the dollar is finally revealed to be fully dependent on the good will of other countries willing to buy US treasury bonds and notes.

Curiously, I wonder if SL is really a strategy to prepare us for the Apocalypse of total system collapse - when we check out bank accounts and find them "Loading ..." or our possessions suddenly not available.

But, really, though, it's just a game ...

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

You obviously have not explored enough or simply have experienced a big stroke of bad luck! Sincerely, there are many beautiful places to see in SL, both new and old. I recommend the RelayForLife sims now, and afterwards, see what you can find! Do not give up!

With luve.

Dytska!

I guess i have noticed the same thing from time to time. Massive structures that have certainly taken alot of imagination and time to create left bare and desolate looking due to the lack of visitors.

A lot of people sign up, make their ideal home and then don't bother to log in again. This is quite normal. Not everybody in SL has come here to escape and live an alternative life. It's just a great home designer for some. I think home design is probably Second Life's strongest feature. Especially with all that user created content (furniture etc) that's available.

But people don't actually live in their virtual homes. Why would they?

Well yes, but no, its not the same as you example, although very good.

The sky is not falling, its just a bit of bad weather, and the residents are hunkered down.

grid problems are like a bad storm, I am staying in and not going shopping.

In the 15th century, how did a bad storm impact the economy then?

Did you ever visit someplace and the weather was bad? same thing..........

I spent lots of time in my virtual home. Then again it had Devpose!

Still, I have noticed vast areas of SL devoid of life, or at the most 1 or 2 avis on a sim, empty malls and so on. Generally when I see a big cluster of green dots I find it to be a bunch of campers.

Also there is lots of land for sale and unoccupied.

I tried to go out tonight in SL. I went to 3, no 4 seperate events that were so full of live people (no campers) I could barely find a place on the dance floor. I had a good time for a bit at each and then headed home to a peacful sim thankful to have a little breathing room to finish out the night in lag free peace.

Last time I wondered the streets of a residential area in RL I didn't see clusters of revellers and shoppers on every street corner, and I hardly assumed my society had collapsed.

Maybe the fault lies not in the isolation, but in our building metaphors.

It's always looked empty on the Mainland. It even looks empty for most of the day on many islands.

But consider... RL, I am still IN my house when I am asleep. SL, I've logged out. That house has no avie in it to tell the world someone sleeps there.

So it's the nature of all builds in SL to seem to be used intermittently at best, save for a very popular few.

Even a really nice club, with DJ's and a good regular crowd, at the off time of day can be empty for hours.

Another problem with our building metaphors is the number of prims available for complex builds. If, like me, you like a lot of detail, you'll have empty prim land in the sim. That 512 with nothing on it, and no one ever coming there, could be supporting a complex build nearby.

I own a vase of roses that, just by itself, takes up all the prims of a 512. That's an extreme example, but I think you can see what I mean. Clever use of sculpties will help in some of this.

Yet another problem is brought on my the swing of the camera. Buildings have to be disproportionately large for the avies in them, to work well and be comfortable to move around in. I found I could do many interesting things with one prim buildings, that is to say one prim for the walls and two more for the floor and ceiling. But while people found them cute, the complaint about having to camera around inside it meant they didn't hang out in them either.

All of these factors conspire to create architecture that is too large and spacious for the number of avies that are visible. The real solution is to make more thoughtful architecture, either by compressing the space or by making the large spaces inviting to be in, even if they are mainly empty. I think this is solvable.

Another possibility is to use a rezzer and not rezz your home if you're not using it, leaving behind a park with some trees instead. That would be a very pretty result, but until the servers are more powerful I don't suggest most people should be using rezzers. If my house isn't there when I am not there, I'm not adding to the emptiness.

I welcome other creative ideas for this.

Avilion always has a dozen people MIN on in there sims. (no the clothing bots don't count, I mean real people)

If that dozen people average half an hour a day (I am making this up) that would mean they get over 570 people a day, which is quite possible.

THAT is what I am talking about. What you see at any one time is an order of magnitude smaller than the actual traffic.

A building whose sensor records sixty people a day is pretty popular, if not famous. But it might be empty twenty hours a day and used only during some time zone's prime time.

Besides, you don't want too many people on the sim at one time anyway, lagging it up.

But we can still hear you, Brenda!

I live in a pretty busy part of RL, so I am used to seeing people on the street 24/7 in certain parts of my city. Much less so in the residential areas. This equates to my SL experience to some extent.

Still I wonder about all of the new land as of yet undeveloped, and a new continent coming on line. Is land selling on the mainland? There seems to be a glut, and prices have gone down a bit, but nothing drastic.

The island where I live is generally all sold out. Is this the norm on the private sims?

It would be interesting to know how many "home owners" exist in SL.

The ever curious Jannae Karas

I must admit it does make me wonder when people will realise that SL really doesnt need another mall, club etc etc

I still find a lot of life in some places, both public and residential communities, but it does take time to find them, scanning the events list, or just asking people where they go.

Personally im relishing space at the moment - have just move to a one room shack on a 55,000 sq m plot - just call me Hermit

Zog/Bella

I do have a piece of land in SL (max you can get for 40 us$ per month, in one sim and in one piece).

On that land I have my log cabin (which I actually love), photo-studio and gallery. High in the sky is a platform that I can use to build scenes for photo-shots.
All is for 90% ready... and it will stay like, because I am changing things all the time (someone in RL is very happy that most changes in the home decoration happens in SL and not all the time in RL ).

Anyway, if I look at the people I meet often, I think 95% are land/home-owners (by rent or bought land). Now these people are more or less SL regulars, so maybe not very typical to the complete SL population.

Morwen.

I think this is an America vs Europe thing. Spaces in America are a lot bigger, and the signals Europeans pick up that tell them something's popular (or not) are even worse off in SL than they are when visiting the US (in RL).

It seems to me that the whole space vs camera vs architecture equation in SL is broken, and an immeidate draw to experienced SLers in the next project to come along like this, will be "denser" environments. Whether that increased density (prim count) equates to a better virtual economy is a much deeper and stranger question. Certainly, having run clubs in RL (as I manage to say in about 1 post in 5 I make here ... ) I find the vast majority of SL clubs to be soulless oversized vboxes: neither LL nor club promoters have yet discovered the advantages in terms of how clubbers feel, when in a non-purpose-designed space, or that restrictions of some kind (having to jiggle your camera aangle, or having a "mouslook only" club, for instance) are not problems - they are sources of interest, of new experiences.

Put it like this: I have yet to score in a deserted aircraft hangar, in RL. I have however scored in a bombed-out office building, a multi-story warehouse designed for horses, a circus tent, a disused Edwardian Subterranean tea-house, and a riverside flat loaned to us specifically to annoy the upstairs neighbour. None of these places looked even vaguely like any SL environment I have found labelled as "a club".

Life is what you make it, that includes your second one, if you just choose to see malls and shops, thats your problem. Get some friends, create your own content, create your own piece of "non-mall" paradise. Whining on the forums wont help you in any way, shape or form.

You're mixing up your history here. Spain's economy was strong all the way through and beyond the reconquista. You don't wage major military campaigns like that without a strong economy.

What sunk the Spanish economy, ironically enough, was the gold from the New World. Spain coasted along for the next couple of centuries off New World gold, and when that source of revenue dried up, Spain suddenly noticed that it had let it's domestic economy fall behind the rest of Europe.

I used to think SL was pretty devoid of life, until the first time I zoomed out on the map with people showing. It ends up as one green mass from all the dots.

Go to the map once, make sure you can see the "people dots", and gradually zoom out. you'll see there are LOTS of people there.

I think it's perspective - SL is HUGE!

Of course SL needs another mall, club etc. etc. Those empty malls and clubs are people trying something new for themselves. If they are something that attracts a crowd, fine. If they flop, oh well at least the owner had the guts to try.

Agreed. People giving something a go is one of the incentives for coming here. Some people might moan about more clubs, more malls, but if that's the vision the creator has then more power to their elbow and it's all part of the experience.

I must admit there are times when i'm wandering around malls and residential areas when i feel like i'm on the set of 28 days later and just waiting for the zombie hordes to come rushing out
I'm from europe so i guess the times when i log on will vary alot from other continents and so i may miss out on when Sl is at its busiest times,still nice and peaceful doing your shopping.

It's not really my experience.

I mean, yes, there are a lot of places that are empty (sometimes that's nice, as when I want to get away for some quiet either alone or with a friend, for a chat or something, or just some quiet meditative time), but there are a lot of places where I "hang out" and where I have met some wonderful people that are hopping during prime time, and I mean *hopping*. Once I found the places with the sorts of people I was interested in meeting, SL became much more balanced to me between (1) spaces where I can be alone or together with someone and have us be alone and (2) places where I can go and feel comfortable with a lot of other nice people in the same place. Because of that, SL doesn't feel like a wasteland to me at all -- it's rather a question of knowing where you want to be, and when.

As for the home, I do spend a lot of time there. Why? Because it's a place where I can feel comfortable spending some quality time with a friend or a lover. I don't relate to the "design it and then don't log in" method of SL "participation" --- if I'm buying it and building it, I'm also going to be spending time in it. But then again, I'm one of the people who views my SL as a second, virtual life, separate and apart from my life in the material, "real" world -- I thoroughly enjoy both of my lives, and try not to neglect one for the other, so that tends to mean I am in-world fairly regularly and doing the kinds of things in-world that relate to my in-world life (which includes entertaining in my home).

The problem with wanting to have crowds of people is that CROWDS = LAG. I love crowds. I love bumping into people and starting up a conversation or watching some other people engage in idle chatter but I simply cannot stand the performance issues when there are too many people. I would love to go shopping and see other shoppers wandering by but if those other shoppers are causing me to walk in slow motion or making all the textures rez slowly why then I wish they would all disappear.

LL are not technocrats I would say. That implies they have done some kind of governing. They did not PLAN or DEVELOP any kind of socio-economic entity at all. They made land, gave us tools and said..."GO!"