Deja Letov Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I don't know if you guys saw this or nothttp://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Second-Life-is-Expanding-to-Steam/ba-p/1637751I'm actually really excited about this. This is probably the first real form of advertising I've seen SL do in a long awhile and I think this will be great for the community. Steam is HUGE. I know my husband and I, play many games through Steam and just knowing the number of gamers who play will now have SL thrown in front of them, makes me a tiny but happy.I'm really anxious to see how it does for us merchants. As a Steam member myself I can't even begin to tell you how much money I've spent on paid games and free to play games on their network, so it gives me hope that maybe people like me will do the same for SL what it has done for other games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Well, I'd only point out that SL's problem has little to do with getting new people to sign up. I like that SL will be on Steam, and I do feel it is a good thing. I just don't think it will make a significant difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 Medhue Simoni wrote: Well, I'd only point out that SL's problem has little to do with getting new people to sign up. I like that SL will be on Steam, and I do feel it is a good thing. I just don't think it will make a significant difference. I agree, they ALSO need to figure out better ways to get them to stay once they get here...or the whole thing is pretty much a waste of time and money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 If 10% of steam users would try it out and 5% of them stay, this would make for 200,000 new users. So it might help, but a boom or even a new hype is not to be expected IMO. Gamers have a far higher expectation towards graphical quality and frames per second (60 is considered bad among gamers) and the official viewers just do not provide that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I hope you're right. The SL economy could sure use a shot in the arm if the players coming in are willing to spend money. Certainly this hasn't been the case lately as most newer people I run into now days seem to think everything shoud be free or so cheap it is hardly worth the creators time to make things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syo Emerald Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Bittersweet Lime wrote: If 10% of steam users would try it out and 5% of them stay, this would make for 200,000 new users. So it might help, but a boom or even a new hype is not to be expected IMO. Gamers have a far higher expectation towards graphical quality and frames per second (60 is considered bad among gamers) and the official viewers just do not provide that. Also I doesn't see how gamers in general should be a huge pool for new residents. Most games have goals, action, fights and get judged by their graphics and their design. Second Life has rarly the things most gamers are looking for. I think even working with EA, and getting the attention of the Sims community, might be more helpful. But as it was already said: LL true problem is to make people stay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Medhue Simoni wrote: Well, I'd only point out that SL's problem has little to do with getting new people to sign up. I like that SL will be on Steam, and I do feel it is a good thing. I just don't think it will make a significant difference. I agree with Medhue on this point. Its neat that SL may be on Steam at some point but the environment of SL is still not a pure GAMING play like almost all other steam offerings. So I think unless Rodvik has other plans not well known for the future of SL (like converting SL into a pure gaming environment), Steam wont be a big impact. I am much more excited that LL officially announced their development of Material System for the grid! This was the critical missing half to mesh on SL. When that comes out - it will greatly improve the experience on the grid and this might attract new communities into SL or make existing communities grow instead of shutting down sims or moving to other open sims where land prices are cheaper - all things being equal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 Bittersweet Lime wrote: If 10% of steam users would try it out and 5% of them stay, this would make for 200,000 new users. So it might help, but a boom or even a new hype is not to be expected IMO. Gamers have a far higher expectation towards graphical quality and frames per second (60 is considered bad among gamers) and the official viewers just do not provide that. That's probably true to a point. But...and I can't speak for everyone, i'm just one person...I am a Steam user...yet I play Second Life. I play all the big games offered on Steam...I also play some of the crappy free to play games. So obviously we can't say all gamers have higher expectations. Or rather we may have those expectations but many are willing to settle for something less if it's good. I mean just take a look at Minecraft. It blows my mind that people play it. I can't get into it. But gamers...even hard core gamers, still play it. And it looks like horse poop in terms of graphics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Well, that is true with Minecraft - it attracts a huge amount of people due to that you can build in it. With SL the land prices are far too high. This is a main problem of the SL grid. Prices should have been down for long already, to attract more people to buy land and invest time and be more likely to stay. As it is currently, they sign up, get to a welcome zone, voice is active by default, they don't find the button to switch that off easily enough, are nerved and might never come back again. Those are the little things, which hinder people to stay, most might not even get so far, to even look at other sims than the welcome zone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 It's been suggested (by someone who has professional RL experience of this area) that the obvious place for SL to be listed in Steam is under the "Creative Tools" category, which would help direct it towards the people who're most likely to find it interesting. To my mind, it's a very positive move. It gives SL access to a list of some 40 million people, some of whom are surely going to find it enjoyable, and also rather undercuts all the people who've been writing it off since all the wild hype of 2006/2007 failed to materialise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 True as well. My experience in the gamer community is, that SL is well known, but most think, it is dead since long. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 Or that it's for cybering. LOL One of my gamer friends is convinced that is all it's used for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 To list it under "creative tools" will attract content creators, but not consumers. We need more consumers, who are likely to spend money. Seen from LL's point of view, content creators are nice, because they might buy a sim for their main shops, but what we really need are more consumers willing to spend money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Bittersweet Lime wrote: To list it under "creative tools" will attract content creators, but not consumers. We need more consumers, who are likely to spend money. Seen from LL's point of view, content creators are nice, because they might buy a sim for their main shops, but what we really need are more consumers willing to spend money. I dunno. It's precisely because my business partner and I are reasonably successful content creators that we can afford to buy, and do, pretty much anything we feel like in SL. I certainly wouldn't have half so many skins, shoes, clothes and hairs if I was having to buy the L$ with "real money" rather than use my SL earnings. There's a big psychological difference, at least for me, between transferring money from my bank account to SL as compared to just cashing out a bit less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Ok, but all of SL is paid by those who actually transfer money from their real life account to SL - so a huge amount of people are actually doing that or SL would no longer be existant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Bittersweet Lime wrote: Ok, but all of SL is paid by those who actually transfer money from their real life account to SL - so a huge amount of people are actually doing that or SL would no longer be existant. Sure, but I certainly think that the overall net effect of having more high-quality goods available in SL is going to be increase, overall, the amount of money coming in and decrease (at least proportionately) the amount going out, at least out to anywhere but LL's accounts. It's not just personal stuff like skins and so on; if I see something I particularly like, I'll tend to buy it and put it on the sim, be it as a landscaping feature or a toy, for both me and visitors to enjoy. The more fun stuff there is available, to play with or explore, the more likely people are to stick around, at least to my mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bittersweet Lime Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Ok, now I got your point. I misinterpreted it at first. I have myself an inventory, wihich I had to reduce by 40,000 items lately, because the time it took, to open it the first time, started to take ages. Alone my outfits would last for 25+ years, if I would change 3 times a day and never wear something twice, I have not even tried most of them and then there is this huge folder "stuff to unpack", where I throw in those items, which I cannot immediately unpack, where I buy it. I am not likely to ever unpack those, I just bought them to have them "just in case". But when I actually need something, I rather buy it newly before I even bother to search in my unmanageable inventory. :smileyhappy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I think this new venture will utlimately be called a "success" .. primarily because of how they choose to measure it. (New User Signups) But overall I think its ultimate fallout will be a greater distancing from what SL is really "about" .. and more movement toward a poor imitation of a 3D game. I go into a lot more detail in my blog (duh) but in the end .. I just see this as yet another example of how LL doesn't really understand what they're selling or creating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 >If 10% of steam users would try it out and 5% of them stay Out of new users, no more than 20% will ever log in again after 6 months, no matter what. And I think it's pretty safe to say that more than 90% of potential users on Steam have either already tried SL or already decided not to, ever. So, really, we're not talking about 5%, but about 2% or less. But the specific numbers don't necessarily matter. What matters is whether LL is even up to the task of providing to those new users an experience that will be of greater value to them after a year, or of lesser value. And you already know what I think about that, huh. Anyone who thinks SL's problems can be solved simply with better marketing shouldn't even be working at an internet company. The fixes - REAL fixes - need to start falling in place more quickly than new problems are already being created if there's any hope of persuading new users that there's some kind of light at the end of the tunnel they've just been asked to step into. So unless LL simply wants to produce a whole new wave of volunteer spokespersons for never trying SL in the first place, the time to take decisive action on deep-rooted company problems is RIGHT NOW. Not tomorrow; TODAY. Step 1: The individual identifying as CommerceTeam Linden has to go. She's had long enough to fix things that were not broken in the first place, and she's mostly just made them worse. That experiment is over and it's time to move on before all those excited new Steam people end up getting subjected to the same consistently deficient technical utility and abusive customer service style we've all well observed at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I'm not sure about your conclusions, Darrius. Seems to me that LL's business model is based on the fact that residents are Prepared to create almost all the content in SL, for free, so LL don't have to pay desgners; and Prepared to pay ~$200 to ~$300 a month to host the sims required to display and use their content/ I can't see LL switching from that any time soon, so unless people decide they want to try to create and then pay to host imitations (poor or otherwise) of 3D games, why should it happen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Innula Zenovka wrote: I'm not sure about your conclusions, Darrius. Seems to me that LL's business model is based on the fact that residents are Prepared to create almost all the content in SL, for free, so LL don't have to pay desgners; and Prepared to pay ~$200 to ~$300 a month to host the sims required to display and use their content/ I can't see LL switching from that any time soon, so unless people decide they want to try to create and then pay to host imitations (poor or otherwise) of 3D games, why should it happen? Those two points are exactly dead-on. Which is why it amazes me that LL keeps introducing features and changes that damage, inhibit or otherwise lobotomize that cash cow. However once LL publishes the new user signups stat showing the number of people rushing in from Steam, the hungry merchants of SL will begin producing content just for that audience. LL is banking on people being willing to help change the platform into a game .. complete with tools and goals. RP Sims will become GP (Game Play) Sims complete with intricate NPCs and melee played out in visual 3D, not via role playing and health meter wearables. Of course the max they'll ever fit on a sim won't come near the numbers that can play WoW at one time, but the follow-on thinking isn't something they're concerned with now .. they just want a big new New User Signups number to justify all the tools they're designing and releasing .. and planning. Do you see this partnership altering SL in any respect Innula? If so, how? What will SL "look like" after any alterations fully propogate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hexem Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Here's a big issue I see. If any other Steam game had as many bugs as SL does, they'd have to refund the buyer the purchase cost. Since SL doesn't have a purchase cost, the refund will be for the L$ purchase(s). LL will then claim they're not liable, like they always do, so the user will go to Valve with the complaint and refund request. I see Valve kicking LL to the curb in less than a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I'm not sure I understand the question, because I don't really understand what you mean by, "producing content just for that audience". Why would my business partner and I want to switch from making content we enjoy making for markets we understand (and from which, in SL terms, we do pretty well) to something with which we're unfamilar and don't find particularly interesting? I mean, if these GP sims want bdsm or vampire stuff, we'll happily supply it, and if we see potential there for something we think it would be fun to make, we'll go for it, but we're not going to get into weapons making, or building NPCs with pathfinding just for the sake of it, any more than we got into breedables, lucrative though obviously they are. Are you saying that the weapons and combat system makers will decide to ditch what they're doing, abandon their existing markets and make stuff specifically designed for some new form of content? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Innula Zenovka wrote: [snip] ... Are you saying that the weapons and combat system makers will decide to ditch what they're doing, abandon their existing markets and make stuff specifically designed for some new form of content? Yup. Anytime there is a market that appears to be growing, you will find people lining up to provide products for that market. If the "numbers" published by LL indicate that there's a whole new crop of fat-walleted users looking for something more like 3D Gaming .. complete with NPC's and real-action combat .. it's a pretty safe bet that there will be merchants switching gears (or diversifying at least) in order to sell to them. The problem I see though is that the SL Platform was never designed, and IMHO can't be warped into providing a viable platform for that sort of use. Just like breedables quickly became primarily lag monsters and ostracized by the majority, the content makers that put a lot of eggs into the Gaming basket will quickly find their plans scrambled and dripping through the cracks. Overall, I think it's a misguided attempt to attract a new type of customer, in spite of the fact that what is available here and what can eventually be implemented here will never measure up to the stellar graphics and game play found on dedicated gaming programs/platforms. So while they'll be able to generate numbers that look like a success, they will instead be flooding the grid with unhappy and disillusioned newbies who quickly leave, spread negative opinions among their peers, and further bog down the platform with stuff that no one ultimately uses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrable Amat Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 I had a bunch to say..and before post I just figure I keep it to my self. Do the math,more sellers then buyers will always lower the economic results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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