Article about second life in the Atlantic

[Pamela Galli]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/?utm_source=atltw

[Pamela Galli]

999/1000 are not going to get SL. I would like to read something by the 1 who does.

[Vanity Fair]

Well, the article is certainly wide-ranging and Leslie Jamison interviewed a lot of people who use SL. However, if Linden Lab was hoping for a puff piece then they must be disappointed. She doesn't shy away from criticism of the platform.

I'm surprised that it is so negatively titled, though. The actual HTML webpage title is the much more optimistic-sounding "Second Life Still Has 600,000 Regular Users" so I wonder if that was supposed to be the original title, but the article's title is "The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future." OUCH.

[LittleMe Jewell]

There were some good observations in there and some good interview comments. However, it is obvious that the author is definitely one of those folks that just "doesn't get it".

I did chuckle at this part near the end:  
... no one ever says “afk” in real life. This sentiment inspired what Boellstorff calls the “afk test”: "If you can go ‘afk’ from something, that something is a virtual world.”
Maybe only because I work in IT, but my co-workers and I use the AFK phrase all the time when we are working remotely and need to let our team members know that we will be away from the computer for a while for any number of reasons.

[Maureen Boccaccio]

Agreed, Lil.  I use the expression in RL all the time.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I did like the one gal that insists on putting her avatar to bed before logging off - and that being equated to the offline world (aka RL) being a dream to the avatar.

[Vanity Fair]

13 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I did like the one gal that insists on putting her avatar to bed before logging off - and that being equated to the offline world (aka RL) being a dream to the avatar.

I used to do that! Only I wouldn't actually log off....I'd just go to bed and leave her sleeping her bed until the next morning when I woke up and went over to my computer where the SL viewer was still running.

Yes, I realize that was very weird.... And I don't do that anymore....

[sirhc DeSantis]

Yes Quiplash it is a conundrum

[Maureen Boccaccio]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I did like the one gal that insists on putting her avatar to bed before logging off - and that being equated to the offline world (aka RL) being a dream to the avatar.

 

53 minutes ago, Vanity Fair said:

I used to do that! Only I wouldn't actually log off....I'd just go to bed and leave her sleeping her bed until the next morning when I woke up and went over to my computer where the SL viewer was still running.

Yes, I realize that was very weird.... And I don't do that anymore....

I used to do this every night! Got into jammies, turned off lights, and hopped into bed.  ?

[Pamela Galli]

Given that Atlantic is one of the top (and oldest) opinion/news/arts sources in the US, it might stimulate interest from a wider readership than a tech source. Maybe some can read between the lines..

[ChinRey]

15 hours ago, Vanity Fair said:

The actual HTML webpage title is the much more optimistic-sounding "Second Life Still Has 600,000 Regular Users" so I wonder if that was supposed to be the original title, but the article's title is "The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future." OUCH.

It says 800,000 in the article and I really hope that is the correct number.

Semantically "600,000 Regular Users" and "Digital Ruins" have the same meaning - it's the difference between a bottle being almost empty or not quite empty yet.

600,000 regular users would mean a 40% drop over the last two years, and it should also mean the actual SL population (that is human beings who log on to SL reguarly at least once a month) would be somehwere between 50,000 and 100,000.

So let's hope 800,000 is the correct number.

Edited November 11, 2017 by ChinRey

[Talligurl]

3 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I did like the one gal that insists on putting her avatar to bed before logging off - and that being equated to the offline world (aka RL) being a dream to the avatar.

I used to do that, now i really don't have a bed to do that with, at least not one rezzed in a place that works for me

[Darcy Kingmaker]

every time i read an article about SL, they miss all the fun of it. we get to cross paths with people we never would have in RL. sometimes i just stand and chat, that happens all the time in RL,  why is it looked down on because it happened in SL? so what if some people use it as an escape from RL? i enjoy hanging out in sl more then i enjoy watching tv. i guess i'm annoyed because almost every article puts sl down. yes, some bad things happen here but worse things happen in RL. ok, rant over 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I tend to put my av's to bed,  typically me and a friend used to have a night time ritual we would put the skunks in bed to sleep, while we logged off. it was cute.

[Dillon Levenque]

14 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

999/1000 are not going to get SL. I would like to read something by the 1 who does.

I don't know how accurate that ratio is, Pamela, but for sure it's quite close: the ones who get it almost certainly do not get into the double digits. Frankly, I can't see how that can change. Those of us who love and/or have loved this place do so because of what it is. We 'get it'; it speaks to us of imagination and boundless possibilities.

There was a time in almost everyone's life when that feeling was a constant. For me, it was the time between when I was three or four and the time I was seven, probably. There's a stanza in a song we'll all be hearing over and over in the weeks to come, but I still like the song: I have a dim but consistent recollection of getting out of bed once on Christmas Eve after the lights were out, and sneaking to the window to watch the sky. You know. Just in case.

"And every mother's child is gonna try
To see if reindeer really know how to fly"

I believe SL's true lure is that it lets us go back to that mode of thinking. And that's okay. A very good friend of mine has said (more than once, but then practically everything we've ever said to each other we've said more than once) that while being childish is a bad thing in an adult, there is nothing at all wrong with being childlike now and then.

[Pamela Galli]

26 minutes ago, Dillon Levenque said:

 

I believe SL's true lure is that it lets us go back to that mode of thinking.

Exactly. I kept thinking “I’m eight again!” 

Nothing like it before or since. 

[ChinRey]

16 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

999/1000 are not going to get SL. I would like to read something by the 1 who does.

That's 99,999/100,000 actually.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Dillon Levenque said:

I believe SL's true lure is that it lets us go back to that mode of thinking. And that's okay. A very good friend of mine has said (more than once, but then practically everything we've ever said to each other we've said more than once) that while being childish is a bad thing in an adult, there is nothing at all wrong with being childlike now and then.

For a very long time now, it's been my intention never to grow up. And I've been reasonably successful at it too. I was in my 40s when someone described me as being like Peter Pan - and that was a long time ago

It's difficult to pin down the reason why SL doesn't retain most of those who sign up. It's probably true that most of those who don't stay also have a childlike part of their makeup and would play video games a lot; i.e. get into the chidlike parts of their imaginations. But SL still doesn't appeal to them. So I don't think that the lack of a childlike aspect to one's nature is the main reason for the low retention rate.

[Skell Dagger]

A very interesting (and - in my view - balanced) article. As to the AFK-in-real-life thing, I do that every time I meditate. Sure, my real life body is sitting there in the room, with all of the external sounds and stimuli going on, but my mind goes AFK when it turns inward, and I think that a lot of this identification with the avatar (and, thus, 'sticking with SL') is down to how individual minds work, which is why some people 'get it' and some people don't. Different people 'get it' in different ways, too. Those of us who have stuck it out have all found something here.

With particular reference to this part of the article -

Quote

I thought of Bridgette in Atlanta, waking up early to sit beside a virtual pool. She doesn’t get to smell the chlorine or the sunscreen, to feel the sun melt across her back or char her skin to peeling crisps. And yet Bridgette must get something powerful from sitting beside a virtual pool—pleasure that dwells not in the physical experience itself but in the anticipation, the documentation, the recollection, and the contrast to her daily obligations. Otherwise she wouldn’t wake up at 5:30 in the morning to do it.

- I've had many discussions about self-identification with the virtual avatar, and how - for me, at least - it's perfectly possible to lounge in a virtual hammock beside a virtual shoreline with the sound of distant waves and chilled-out music coming through my headphones, and actually feel my tension slip away. I don't need to smell the ozone or the sunscreen, but possibly I have a mind that can more easily associate seeing something happen with experiencing it myself, without needing other sensory stimuli such as the olfactory input of sunscreen and ozone. Is it a kind of virtual empathy? (After all, the author of the article certainly felt embarrassed in real life when her avatar did something daft.)

I don't know, but that's where these kinds of discussion turn into things that go on until the wee small hours, accompanied by a few good drinks. I guess you could also correlate it with some people preferring to read books and identifying with the characters as they depict them internally, and others preferring to watch movies and be entertained by someone else's depiction of those characters. (And, yes, some people like both, but how many times have you read a book and loved it, but been disappointed by the movie version?)

For me, the crux of SL is summed up in the penultimate paragraph of the article:

Quote

Second Life recognizes the ways that we often feel more plural and less coherent than the world allows us to be.

As I said: lots to discuss, since the whole subject of self-identification with online depictions of oneself is a wide-ranging one. But, as also said, it's best discussed at 2am with a good drink in-hand

Edited November 11, 2017 by Skell Dagger

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

It's difficult to pin down the reason why SL doesn't retain most of those who sign up.

No it isn't, it's actually very easy.

Newcomers first have to face unrealistically high hardware requirements and a horrendously clumsy, outdated and bloated user interface.

If they can sort out those obstacles, they are likely to make it to Social Island where they have to run the lagged down slo-mo griefer gauntlet.

If/when they survive Social Island, they are presented with the three main activities in SL: Dolling up avatars, collecting gacha knick-knacks and looking at digital tableaux vivantes by artists they have never heard of. The only one of these options that can possibly have any appeal whatsoever to a newcomer, is the dolling up your avatar and if they chose that, the first thing they get is the bill.

Yeah, I know I'm simplifying and exaggerating and all that jazz but basically, that's it! What is hard to pin down, is the reason why a few of the new signups actually stay for a while.

All those opportunities for playfulness and creativity are still here but they have been toned down and stowed away so they are hard to find even for experienced old-timers. Newcomers aren't likely to ever hear as much as rumours about them. The only playfulness and creativity they ever experience in SL is what they get fromt he griefers at Social Island and the infohubs.

Edited November 11, 2017 by ChinRey
Typos

[Phil Deakins]

You're right, of course. I never went through any of that because I was introduced to SL by an existing user, and guided around, etc., so it's not something that readily springs to my mind.

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

All those opportunities for playfulness and creativity are still here but they have been toned down and stowed away so they are hard to find even for experienced old-timers. Newcomers aren't likely to ever hear as much as rumours about them. The only playfulness and creativity they ever experience in SL is what they get fromt he griefers at Social Island and the infohubs.

Because, of course, there's no information on what Second Life was, or is, anywhere on the Internet outside of Second Life itself and newcomers are swept up by press gangs and forced to log in rather than making a conscious decision to join.

 

Oh, wait...

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Because, of course, there's no information on what Second Life was, or is, anywhere on the Internet outside of Second Life itself and newcomers are swept up by press gangs and forced to log in rather than making a conscious decision to join.

 

Oh, wait...

Sorry, Theresa, your attempt at sarcasm failed this time. I'm not even going to bother write a proper reply but please don't hesitate to try again.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Sorry, Theresa, your attempt at sarcasm failed this time. I'm not even going to bother write a proper reply but please don't hesitate to try again.

All right, let's try this.

There is a new user out there who we've seen on the forums. They started Second Life less than two months ago, completely from scratch. They asked plenty of questions on the forums (in an annoying manner, mind you, but being annoying on the forums is practically a given.)

This user is already taking on projects and has grandiose plans which they are trying to carry out. Doom is hanging over these particular plans because they are built around things like people renting apartments they don't know about, buying old products from affiliate vendors and rezzing boats at a boat slip that has no connection to significant open water, but they've got a plan and they're trying. Perhaps someday they'll develop a good plan and succeed.

This is the kind of person who sticks with Second Life despite the "barriers" that you mentioned, which sound quite a bit like the "barriers" I faced seven years ago (I remember walking around the empty streets of Miramare and wondered why I periodically sank deep through the ground only to pop back up - I now know that I was hitting region crossings.)

I'm still here because I also started making plans and asking questions. And that's what it takes to stay in Second Life.

 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

There is a new user out there who we've seen on the forums. They started Second Life less than two months ago, completely from scratch. They asked plenty of questions on the forums (in an annoying manner, mind you, but being annoying on the forums is practically a given.)

Chin Rey sighs.

Yes, there are some, there will always be some, I know a few myself. But one swallow does not make a summer.

Since you insist, here's my proper answer. I better warn you though, this is going to be a long one even by Rey Rant standards. Are you sitting comfortably? Bathroom business taken care of? Got a cup/mug/glass of your favorite brew? Do I sound patronizing?

Good! Here we go.

First a bit about the background data and its reliability.

I take it for granted that any information we have from Linden Lab is correct although often a bit vague.

I assume the data quoted in the Atlantic article is from Linden Lab and correct. I assume the 800,000 active users mentioned in the article itself is the correct number, not the 600,000 from the discarded title. Other sources mentioned below seem to explain the disrepancy. I assume that when the article says "20 to 30 percent are first-time users who never return" they mean that literally as first-timer who never ever log on even a second time and that the actual figure is at least 30 percent. Conisdering the slightly older data from Motherboard (see further down in my post) it is probably a little bit higher but not so high it can't be justifiably rounded down to an even 30. The reason is that although Linden Lab wouldn't lie about the situation, the certainly don't want to make it look worse than it is so if the actual number is 20, they would have said so.

Finally I assume that a figure somebody mentioned in the Project Sansar group a while ago, is correct: there are 9,000 new SL accounts created every day - that is 270,000 every 30 days. I have not been able to find out where that piece of information comes from and can not confirm that it is correct. It does however match fit reasonably well with the number of green dots you can see on the Learning Islands at any given time, it fits fairly well with the info in the Atlantic article and the blog posts I'm referring to and it was mentioned and even discussed for a short while in a forum where there usually would have been somebody ready to correct it. So unless somebody has other info, I think we should take it at face value.

Please feel free to argue against any of these assumption as long as you keep it factual. These are the best figures I have been able to find and I've really looked everywhere I could think of but there is always room for improvements.

---

Before I discuss the retention and what affects it, I'd like to take a closer look at the active users figures.

In June 2015 Ebbe Linden mentioned that the number of active users had dropped below one million for the first time.

In an article in Motherboard, 29th April 2016, he is quoted as saying that about 900,000 users log on to Second Life every month, 600,000 monthly active users and 300,000 "first-time visitors who try it once and never come back." (I suppose this is where Atlantic got the 600,000 figure from.)

In New World Notes 16th February 2017, the number of active users is 800,000.

We are talking about a steady drop in the official numbers of about 10,000 a month - 120,000 a year. If the trend has continued (and there doesn't seem to be any reason why it shouldn't), the number is close to 700,000 by now. The actual drop is bound to be even bigger since there will always be a tendency for people to compensate for less traffic with more bots and more alts - it's worth noticing that the concurrency figures have remained fairly stable throughout this.

---

If I understand correctly, the official figure of active users is the number of accounts that have been logged on at least once the last 30 days. It includes:

• Newcomers who only log on once.
• Newcomers who stays a week or two and log on two or three times before they vanish.
• "Rip van Winkles".
• Bots (at least those that aren't registered as scripted agents) that are logged on permanently or at least regularly once a month or more.
• Alts that are logged on once a month or more - if only to transfer the Lindens to the user's main account.
• Genuine unique users - humans (and possibly other sentinent beings) who peruse the services of Second Life on a regular basis.

I probably should explain what a "Rip van Winkle" is. It's a phrase first coined by Desmond Shang in a guest article on the New World Notes blog 27th September 2012 as a term for old Second Life users who still keep and pay for a home but only visit every now and then, if ever. By all accounts they outnumber the active SL users by a wide margin and also make up the majority of premium members, which is pronably why the number of paying customers - according to the 2017 NWM blog post - is fairly stable. I have exteded the definition a bit to include all accounts that are logged occasionally but not often enough to be regarded as active.

The number of genuine active unique users can be calculated with this formula:

G=(O-N-B-(R/F))/A

• O is the official number of active users
• N is the number of one-timer and short-time newcomers
• B is the number of active bots
• R is the number of Rip van Winkles
• F is the average number of months between each time a Rip van Winkle logs on
• A is the average number of active alts a genuine active user logs one regularly

Let's fill in some numbers:

G=(710,000-270,000-50,000-(1,200,000/12))/3

The result with those numbers is 96,667. Does that sound like a lot to you?

Please feel free to do the calculation with whatever numbers you feel are plausible.

---

Now, the retention rate.

Looking at the data above, it seems there are 270,000 new accounts every month and 300,000 of them never log on a second time. That doesn't look quite right. But remember the 300,000 number is a bit old. It has to be lower today. It's recent enough it can't be much lower though. That means only a tiny fraction of the new accounts ever log on for a second time. And even from that tiny fraction, many are "two-timers" or "three-timers", they log on again but they're gone next month. Many are new alts for old users. A few are, like Phil was, fortunate enough to have somebody inside to hold their hands through the first weeks.

There have to be precious few people who make it through one of the official introduction programs to become permanent SL users and I think we need to ask why.

I presented one plausible explanation. There may well be others and if so, please present them so we can discuss them. But do not write off the whole issue with poorly phrased flippant remarks.

What I think is absolutely clear is that the newcomers don't find what they're looking for.

---

Now of course the final question is, do we want those newcomers anyway?

Apparently Theresa wants to restrict access to people are essentially already insiders - they just haven't gotten around to sign up yet. Others have hinted on these forums and elsewhere that SL should only be for people with high end graphics/game computers.

Both those views elminate the vast majority of people who would have been interested in joining an online virtual reality community but you can't argue against them, they are perfectly valid opinions. Personally I find them very disturbing, they represent exactly the opposite of what I tought I signed up for. But that's me.

However, by placing sush strict limitations on who we are willing to welcome to Second Life, we also seriously restrict the potential userbase. That means less revenue for Linden Lab, fewer customers for the mechants and other entrepeneurs, fewer sims because there are fewer people to pay the tier, fewer people to attend all kinds of events and generally less activity.

If that's what people want I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

 

Sources:

• https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43mwj/why-is-second-life-still-a-thing-gaming-virtual-reality
• http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2017/02/second-life-monthly-users-800000.html
• http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/09/second-life-land-barons.html
• https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/?utm_source=atltw
• Project Sansar group chat

Edited November 11, 2017 by ChinRey
Typos - and forgot to list sources