Secondlife declining player base

[Love Zhaoying]

43 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-reports-values/auction-sold-prices/1935-duesenberg-model-sj-sells-for-incredible-4-5m

Wherein the expression comes from, "That's a doozie!"

[ChinRey]

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

more sensible paths have been clearly laid out.  Repeatedly and in thorough detail.

I think you better repeat it because I've read through all the posts now and I can't see it anywhere and apparently I'm not alone in that. This time, start with the goal, that's often a good idea when planning ahead.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a typical non-SL'er.

• You have no particular interest in or knowledge about computer technology.
• You have no particular interest in or knowledge about graphical design.
• You don't know anybody in SL.
• You may play a computer game every now and then but only on a fairly basic level. Even so, the graphics quality you see there is still what you expect from your little light duty computer/tablet.
• Your computer handling skills are basic. if you ever use Word to write a letter at all, you mark the headers in bold and right-align your signature with a row full of spaces. Style palettes and texture alignment tools in a word processor are alien to you.
• Coming up with an effective Google search phrase can be hard. Search phrases in quotes? No, I don't want search results in quotes. Boolean? That's a spaghetti dish, isn't it? No wait, it's a town in Italy of course. SIlly me.
• You have no ambition of getting rich in SL.
• You are not particularly confident in social situations among strangers. If they don't talk to you, you don't talk to them and you leave as soon as you can.
• You are not willing to spend a lot effort and hours of work "getting into" SL. You expect to find what you're looking for at the click of a button.
• You do not expect to spend a single cent on SL. (You'll only start thinking about spending money after you're hooked.)
• What you expect from Second Life, is some nice, smooth, professional looking and interesting ready-made experiences. And, as I said earlier, you expect some of that to be presented you right away, no tricky searching, no learning curve worth speaking of.
• If you have to wait for ten seconds before anything happens, you get distracted. After a minute you're doing something else. Ten minutes and you've completely forgotten about the whole thing.
• English is probably not your main language and you may not understand it very well - and not nearly as well as you think.

The prospective new users are not going to change, at least not until they've well and truly become SL'ers. Phrases like "make your own entertainment" may work with people you know well enough. But when you say it to or about a perfect stranger, it becomes a patronizing snide remark and a sure way to guarantee that they remain perfect strangers and that you never see them again.

That was the first quarter of the job, defining the target group. And I've done it for you, ain't I nice ? Never mind, it wasn't actually that difficult. Feel free to adjust the target description if you like but don't change it too much because then we'll end up with way to narrow a recruitment base.

The second quarter of the job is to define how a Second Life for a person like that needs to be. Describe it from that person's point of view. What do they see on their screen? What esperiences do they get? How much effort do they put into getting those experiences? How many built-in distractions are there to keep them away from experiencing? Don't use alien words like "mesh" or "LoD". Just describe what actually happens.

Step three: Compare the scenario to how Second Life is today.

And finally, of course: Dsecribe the road from here to there. Which changes need to be made? You can use as many technical words as you like for this step.

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by ChinRey
Just correcting some typos

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I think you better repeat it because I've read through all the posts now and I can't see it anywhere and apparently nor can any others. But this time, start with the goal, that's often a good idea when you want to get to something/somewhere specific.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a typical non-SL'er.

• You have no particular interest in or knowledge about computer technology.
• You have no particular interest in or knowledge about graphical design.
• You don't know anybody in SL.
• You may play a computer game every now and then but only on a fairly basic level. But the graphics quality you see there is still what you expect from your little light duty computer/tablet.
• Your computer handling skills are basic. if you ever use Word to write a letter at all, you mark the headers in bold and right-align your signature with a row full of spaces. Style palettes and texture alignment tools in a word processor is alien to you.
• Coming up with an effective Google search phrase can be hard. Search phrases in quotes? No, I don't want search results in quotes. Boolean? That's an Italian dish, isn't it? No wait, it's a town of course. SIlly me.
• You have no ambition of getting rich in SL.
• You are not particularly confident in social situations among strangers. If they don't talk to you, you don't talk to them and you leave as soon as you can.
• You are not willing to spend a lot effort and hours of work "getting into" SL. You expect to find what you're looking for at the click of a button.
• You do not expect to spend a single cent on SL. (You'll only start thinking about spending money after you've hooked.)
• What you expect from Second Life, is some nice, smooth, professionally made and interesting ready-made experiences. And, as I said earlier, you expect some of that to be presented you right away, no tricky searching, no learning curve worth speaking of.
• If you have to wait for ten seconds before anything happens, you get distracted. After a minute you're doing something else. Ten minutes and you've forgotten about the whole thing.
• English is probably not your main language and you may not understand it very well - and not nearly as well as you think.

The prospective new users are not going to change, at least not until they've well and truly become SL'ers. Phrases like "make your own entertainment" may work with people you know well enough. But when you say it to or about perfect stranger, it becomes a patronizing snide remark and a sure way to guarantee that they remain perfect strangers and that you never see them again.

That was the first quarter of the job, definign the target group. And I've done it for you, ain't I nice ? Never mind, it wasn't actually that difficult. Feel free to adjust the target description if you like but don't change it too much because then we'll end up with way to narrow a recruitment base.

The second quarter of the job is to define how a Second Life for a person like that needs to be. Describe it from that person's point of view. What do they see on their screen? What esperiences do they get? How much effort do they put into getting those experiences? How many built-in distractions are there to keep them away from experiencing? Don't use alien words like "mesh" or "LoD". Just describe what actually happens.

Step four: Compare the scenario to how Second Life is today.

And finally, of course: Dsecribe the road from here to there. Which changes need to be made? You can use as many technical words as you like for this step.

 

You can't get there from here, and the problem is your "target group" is hopelessly unsuited for the product. If you make musical instruments, especially ones that take quite a bit of practice before they can be played properly - say, a violin or (God help us all) an oboe, you might think that a good target group would be the people in the pre-recorded music section of a discount store because they obviously like music. However, you have no evidence that they like it enough to put in the time and work necessary to learn how to use your product, so if you do somehow sell a lot of your instruments in that setting you're probably only going to get a tremendous amount of unpleasant noise and frustration. This is no reflection either on the personal qualities of the people in the music department (who, after all, have plenty of other things they need to be doing that are probably more important to them than learning your instrument) or on the technical qualities of your instrument itself. You just tried to market a niche product to a wide audience, and there's no way to make your product usable for that audience without fundamentally changing it in such a way that it will be useless for the niche it was intended for originally.

[ChinRey]

40 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You can't get there from here, and the problem is your "target group" is hopelessly unsuited for the product.

Thank you, Theresa, that's exactly what I've been trying to say all the time.

The target group isn't going to change. So unless the product can be modified to suit them or somebody somehow manages to pull a different target group that is big enough out of their hat, there isn't much more to say.

[Penny Patton]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I think you better repeat it because I've read through all the posts now and I can't see it anywhere and apparently I'm not alone in that.

Fine, but I'm going to ignore the rest of your post because I'm not trying to make a sales pitch to potential new SL users, I'm talking about technical aspects of SL to SL users who know what terms like "LOD" and "mesh" mean. You use those terms in your own posts and you want me to explain where you're mistaken while not getting as technical as you do? How about no. 

 Anyway, let's define our goals. The ultimate goal is better user retention and making SL more appealing to a broader range of people. But, I do have other things to do today so let's make it simple and focus on one part of this: Performance.

Here is the goal: A general improvement in SL performance. Higher framerates (aiming for around 30fps on an older or  mid range desktop) and less lag (faster rez times, few if any freeze-ups).  The main problem here is poorly optimized content.

 First, let's define by what we mean by poorly optimized content:

• Content that is excessively high-poly and/or uses excessive amounts of texture data.
• Blended alpha textures used where not required.
• We also need to change the SL user attitude of cranking up Object Detail so they only ever render the highest LOD models.

For this conversation we don't need to get much more specific than that. The Lindens should have access to all the data they need to determine what target numbers they should be aiming for. We just need to talk about the methods in how LL will get us there. To that end I'm going to explain the problem causing performance issues, a solution to that problem, and the challenge of implementing the solution without having too much of a detrimental effect on the userbase. I'll try to include a timeline in this section.

 Regarding high-poly content:

Environmental Content (aka: stuff rezzed in world):

Problem:  "Land Impact" already does a generally good job of keeping objects rezzed in-world low-poly. The main problem there is content creators exploiting LOD use in Land Impact calculations by removing the lower LOD models altogether and telling consumers to increase Object Detail so they only ever see the highest detail levels.

Solution: Linden Lab is already working to solve this problem by changing how LOD factors into Land Impact. If they change LI so that there is no benefit to gutting out lower level LOD then there will be no reason for content creators to continue doing it.

Challenge: This will of course affect some existing content. Not all existing content, but some. I predict there will be complaints but not a mass exodus from SL. It will not, as some people seem to think, destroy all SL content and force everyone to abandon everything they've purchased since mesh was introduced. Some affected content will even likely see updates from the creators.

However, I would add to this that the changes in Land Impact calculations should not be dropped on everyone overnight.

• First, LL should announce that the change is coming, and put the new information into the viewer, so people can see how the content they currently use will be affected.
• LL should work with the content creation community in explaining what changes are made, how content will be affected, and what content creators can do to minimize the impact on their creations, or even how they can update existing content.
• Implementing the new LI calculations should come later. I'd give people at least a year to adapt, with regular reminders that the changover to the new LI will be happening. Plenty of time for content creators to put out updates for that content which is affected.

Avatar Content:

 Problem: Here is where the biggest problem is and where the biggest impact will be felt. Since there is nothing like Land Impact for avatars, content creators have never felt any pressure to lower the mesh complexity of avatar attachments. Actually, that's not wholly correct. When Jelly Dolls were introduced, content creators felt pressure to lower the draw weight of their creations, and they did. The problem is, the same LOD exploit for Land Impact works with Avatar Draw Weight, especially rigged mesh which never displays lower LOD levels.

 Solution: A "Land Impact" like resource cap for avatars so no individual avatar can excessively overdo it with high-poly attachments. This would, of course, take LOD into account just like regular Land Impact. I might even ignore "avatar rendering cost" and go with a straight triangle limit of about 600,000.

Challenge: Some people are going to feel this one for a bit, unavoidable, but LL can minimize how much people are affected just like they can by implementing changes to Land Impact.

1. LL should introduce new tools so people can actually see how many triangles their attachments total up to. These same tools should allow people to see the triangle use of attachments they don't own. such as those on other avatars. 
2. Marketplace listings should have a section for sellers to list how many triangles the object uses. Maybe they could incentivize the use of it, such as waiving or a reduced marketplace fee for a time after the item is first listed.
3. Soon after, LL could add an avatar triangles cap. Avatars with attachments in excess of the cap get the jelly doll treatment. People could of course adjust this to suit their preferences or turn it off completely, but the information is there, as well as he ability to see a performance boost by using the feature.
4. After these features are all implemented, LL should announce that a cap is coming. Just as with LI changes I would give people at least a full year to adapt. Having the above tools and information at their disposal will allow people to do this much more easily. LL may even want to wait some time before making any sort of official announcement, as simply putting the above tools out there will have some effect, making it even easier for people to adapt once the cap is announced. A timeline of 2-3 years from introduction of the tools to the cap becoming enforced is not unreasonable.

 A lot of the avatars I see in SL are already well below the 600,000 triangle limit I'm proposing, so not everyone will be affected at all.

Regarding heavy texture use:

Problem: Most mesh content in SL uses an excessive amount of textures. It was bad before mesh, but the introduction of mesh made it so much worse. So much so that this problem is arguably a larger factor in performance issues than high-poly content.

Regarding in-world content:

Solution: For in-world content I'd simply make texture use affect Land Impact. The more textures you use the higher the LI increase for the object.

Regarding avatars:

Solution: I'd introduce a texture memory cap. Probably set around 150MB.

Challenge: Land Impact works well enough and people already more or less understand it. Like the changes to Land Impact I suggest in the previous section, I'd announce the change and have the new LI displayed in the viewer, alongside the current LI, at least a year before the change goes into effect. Since changing how LI works is disruptive, I'd include this change along with the other changes LL is currently making to LI, so LI is only being changed once. I'd also use a similar timeline between rolling out the tools people will need to understand and adapt to the change, and the eventual enforcement of the new LI calculations.

For avatars, a lot of them already come in below 150MB so not everyone is going to be affected. For those that are I'd want to give similar tools and a similar timeline to the triangle limit proposed earlier.

1. Introduce new tools allowing people to see how many textures content uses, the size of those textures, and the total memory cost.
2. Marketplace listings should have a spot for sellers to include the above information, and be incentivized to use it until it becomes regular practice.
3. I'd introduce a jelly doll feature for texture use similar to the one proposed for triangles. Again, people would be able to adjust this to their preference or turn it off altogether, but the information will be there and people will be able to see the performance boost for themselves.
4. LL should work with the content creation and TPV community, explaining these changes and best practices for optimizing content. A creation blog aimed at content creators with official guides and information direct from the Lindens themselves would help a lot. Patch has expressed a desire to do exactly that.
5. Only after all of the above is in place would I say LL should officially announce a hard cap on avatar texture use is coming. By this time a lot of people will have already made changes to how they dress their avatars, many content creators will have already begun making changes to the content they are producing. As with the previous section I'd say there should be a timeline of 2-3 years from the introduction of the new tools to the cap being enforced.

And like that, the Lindens could tackle the biggest performance issues that have been plaguing SL since the beginning with minimal disruption to the community. A key part of this is not enacting any restrictions overnight, and not making those restrictions excessively strict. SL doesn't need to look and run as well as a professionally optimized game, but getting it to where most people checking SL out experience 30fps or better with little if any lag, would be a huge improvement over how it is now.

[animats]

13 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

And like that, the Lindens could tackle the biggest performance issues that have been plaguing SL since the beginning with minimal disruption to the community.

All of which will have zero effect on existing content. Which is most of SL's world. This just dumps the problem on creators. Who aren't really making that much money now. Only automated solutions can help with the world as it is.

[Penny Patton]

1 minute ago, animats said:

All of which will have zero effect on existing content. Which is most of SL's world. This just dumps the problem on creators. Who aren't really making that much money now. Only automated solutions can help with the world as it is.

What are you on about? I guarantee there are people who'd read my post and argue it affects existing content too much.

And content creators, the people making the content, should be affected more than more casual SL users who just want to buy something and have it work.

As for "automated solutions", they can help but they're not a magic wand that can fix everything if you ignore the core problems. People keep trying to explain that to you. There is no magical computer with the AI capable of making the necessary changes to each and every piece of content out there to make it not kill everyone's framerates. You'd need an AI capable of looking at a model with poorly made UV maps, figure out how to remap the entire model more sensibly, and edit the textures accordingly. It needs to be able to look at a model and make a judgement call on how big certain textures should be. It would need to be able to basically completely remodel certain objects so they look the same but use a fraction of the polygons. By the time you reach that point the software has become self aware and either started cranking out robot skeletons with Austrian accents to kill us all or started posting it's own Blender tutorials to YouTube.

[ChinRey]

35 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

Here is the goal: A general improvement in SL performance. Higher framerates (aiming for around 30fps on an older or  mid range desktop) and less lag (faster rez times, few if any freeze-ups).  The main problem here is poorly optimized content.

Oh yes, I'm with you there. In fact I agree with everything in that post. Except maybe for a few minor details and practical implementations that need to be discussed further.

But none of this is going to attract many new users to Second Life and I thought that was what we were discussing here.

Edited August 6, 2018 by ChinRey

[Penny Patton]

1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

Oh yes, I'm with you there. In fact I agree with everything in that post. Except maybe for a few minor details and practical implementations that need to be discussed further.

But none of this is going to attract many new users to Second Life and I thought that was what we were discussing here.

I'm glad you agree, the post of yours that I cited expressed very different ideas on what you seemed to believe LL needed to do in this area.

As for what this has to do with attracting new users; How poorly SL performs is something I'm sure we've all seen a lot of people cite as to why they didn't stick around. Maybe not the only reason, but one of them. Improving that won't be a silver bullet to newfound success, I agree, but it will help significantly and it's a necessary step towards improving SL in other regards, such as usability and presentation. I'm sure you can see how they're related and why they're important to attracting new users.

The greatest flaw I find in how people discuss these topics is that there is a tendency to reduce causality down to one single issue. It's a lot more nuanced than that.

• Performance
• Usability
• Presentation
• Engagement

All of these issues and more need to be addressed if your goal is to attract more users to SL and improve the experience for the existing userbase. And I could spend at least as much time writing about each issue but I'd be here for days. None of these issues presents challenges that would make it impossible to improve SL in that area without somehow ruining SL for the existing userbase. None of them.

[animats]

7 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a typical non-SL'er....

Chin has this right. Chin's points break down into three areas: "It's hard", "It's boring", and "It's lonely".

"It's hard" is mostly due to technical weaknesses. About half of the menu items are there to help with technical problems. (The others are mostly for building, selling, real estate management, or developers, and could be less prominent.) Does GTA IV need "Avatar health" with 5 sub-functions, or "Rebake Textures"?  No. It Just Works. Which is what SL needs. LL needs to get serious about QA. They need to do proper user testing, where new users are sat down in front of a computer and recorded (screen and user face) as they do things. That's how you find out what's driving users nuts.

LL should do a mobile version just for the discipline of having to simplify the user interface. That's what made personal computing really usable. It was a massive effort within Apple to simplify things for the first tablet-like devices, one not known much outside the industry. (Internally, within Apple, there was a tablet project before the iPhone. They worked through the problems of making it all work on a small screen.) But now everybody gets this.

What does LL do? This.

You've got to be kidding. New users are shown this. There's one of these signs at each safe hub.

Your call is very important to us. Click here to be taken to blog.secondlife.com, where you will find very little of use.

LL sucks so badly at onboarding that they should outsource it to Firestorm and Caledon Oxbridge.

While I was typing this, a message came in:

    Group Notice From: Firestorm Support English
    At 1pm I'll teach a TEXT ONLY class on Menus 1.
    We will be covering the menus on the top bar, from Avatar through Help. 
    Afterwards I'll hold an open Q&A.

It's great that the Firestorm group offers such classes, but a big problem that they're needed.

I'll let others address "It's boring" and "It's lonely".

[ChinRey]

49 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

I'm glad you agree, the post of yours that I cited expressed very different ideas on what you seemed to believe LL needed to do in this area.

No, I neer disagreed with any of that. It's what LL needs to do to stay on that long tail and keep those stats from dropping like a stone. But we've been talking about stopping the decline and even turning it around and that requires much stronger medicine.

 

49 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

The greatest flaw I find in how people discuss these topics is that there is a tendency to reduce causality down to one single issue. It's a lot more nuanced than that.

Indeed it is and everything you listed are important. The usability in particular is something that requires serious improvement. The user interface needs to look something like this (I actually had to log on to Sansar for this screenshot - don't tell me I'm not making sacrifices for the sake of this discussion!):

Full screen view of the scene, a few buttons discreetly tucked in along one side. If you start clicking on those buttons, you eventually end up with the same kind of horrible mess as the SL UI (only in slow motion and occasionally with horrendous background muzak) but at least they got the front end of the user interface right in Sansar. Can we have the same clean interface in SL please? And in depth too, not just on the surface.

I can go on commenting on your points. But they're all good and as you said, we can talk about each for ages.

There's one point missing though: Who is it for? Who are those new users who are going to join us in Second Life? Do we agree that the person I described is - as Theresa put it - unsuitable for Second Life? If so, who else?

Edited August 6, 2018 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

29 minutes ago, animats said:

LL should do a mobile version just for the discipline of having to simplify the user interface. That's what made personal computing really usable.

That was what made Facebook popular too. And... ummm... that job was proposed and led by a former Linden Lab CTO who was promoted to vice president of engineering at Facebook for the effort. Just saying.

(Sorry, couldn't resist it.)

[animats]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

You'd need an AI capable of looking at a model with poorly made UV maps, figure out how to remap the entire model more sensibly, and edit the textures accordingly.

That's called "auto retopology". It's relatively new, since about 2015, but now lots of vendors have that technology. The mesh gets evened out and the textures are morphed to match.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

31 minutes ago, animats said:

That's called "auto retopology".

No it's not....

31 minutes ago, animats said:

It's relatively new, since about 2015,

No, it's REALLY not!

(unless you're trying to suggest that auto-retopology is new but we've had time travel technology since 2011, which was when the above video was posted)!?

[Penny Patton]

On 8/6/2018 at 4:30 PM, ChinRey said:

There's one point missing though: Who is it for? Who are those new users who are going to join us in Second Life? Do we agree that the person I described is - as Theresa put it - unsuitable for Second Life? If so, who else?

Second Life has, since it's inception, attracted far more people than it's kept around. People who are very much interested in the whole idea of a "virtual world", but for whom SL has fallen short of their expectations.

Some of those people even did stick around for years, but ultimately left because the flaws they found in the product were never addressed, or were even outright dismissed, by a developer that didn't seem to actually care. While I'd generally say it's more difficult to bring back a customer you lost than an altogether new customer, I do think it's import to look at the type of people SL has attracted and lost over the years because there are a lot of people like that out there who have yet to try something like SL.

• They use computers regularly. Not an IT professional, but comfortable with everyday use of consumer technology.
• Most of them have no knowledge or interest in graphical design, but some of them very much do and SL needs to appeal to both types.
• They may or may not know people in SL. It's not a prerequisite but in addition to those who don't, LL should be turning SL into a product its users can easily get some of their friends into.
• SL should appeal to gamers. But let's define "gamers" because a lot of people have this strange idea that a gamer is some hardcore, tech savvy computer junkie who would come to SL expecting AAA graphics at 500fps and would lose interest if there were no "bosses" to defeat or game goals to achieve. This stereotype is laughably incorrect. So let's define gamers as anyone who plays videogames. And let's narrow our target here down to those who play games on their computer or tablet devices. There's a lot of crossover here as most who play PC games also play tablet games. I'd say there's probably a lot of tablet gamers who only play tablet games and I think SL could appeal to them as well, but even if we narrow our attention to those who are comfortable with PC gaming that's still a multimillion dollar demographic.
• Our target demographic probably uses Google or some other search engine everyday.
• We want SL to appeal to people who would have ambitions of making money in SL, but not exclusively such people. It needs a broader appeal, to those who have no such ambitions. We want to appeal to consumers as well as creators/sellers. These are not mutually exclusive.
• Our target demographic is not willing to spend a lot of effort and hours of work "getting into" SL. They expect features to work without cludges and work- arounds.
• They will not come to SL expecting to spend money, some might never spend money in SL, but many of them will after they've been hooked.
• Most of them will come to SL expecting some nice, smooth, professionally made and interesting ready-made experiences without having to search for it, or get past a large learning curve before they can find the content that engages them.

Something like SL needs multiple target demographics. SL needs to be made appealing to artists and creators. People who enjoy modding games as well as playing them. People who just want to create simple content like shoes and clothes, and people who will come to SL and immediately get visions of creating their own mini-MMOs. At the same time, SL needs to appeal to people with no such interests, but who would very much enjoy the content created by those who do. Such an audience for SL does exist, people like this have been passing in and out of SL for years. We can't assume there is no way to keep people like this around just because SL has failed to do so in the past. Instead we have to look at why SL has failed to hold onto these people, and we will find no shortage of answers.

• LL has not, in the entirety of the past 15 years, even attempted at anything resembling professional polish in how SL is presented to their market. This is a mistake that has cost them dearly.
• LL has not, in the entirety of the past 15 years, even attempted to provide content creators with anything resembling competent tools. Everything from the appearance editor to SL's mesh import features are broken or badly designed. SL is lacking critical features it should have had years ago. Instead, the people who make development decisions regarding such tools and features are exclusively people who would never use such tools and features themselves. People who have no idea how such tools and features should work, or even why they're important.
• When LL did recognize the shortcomings of their social engagement features, their big idea was to copy Facebook. They didn't even do that well and when it failed to shore up their numbers they gave up on social engagement features altogether and now no longer consider them worth developing.

 All of this is actively driving users away from Second Life.

 None of these problems are somehow intrinsic to virtual worlds. None of them are unavoidable consequences of the platform. Most of them have obvious solutions that LL has, for whatever reason, never attempted. We don't need to find a new market for SL. We don't need to narrow our ideas on who SL might be able to attract. We don't need to somehow make SL attractive to people who have never used a computer. Linden Lab needs to get their act together and fix the problems that have been hamstringing their efforts to draw users since the beginning. The problems that caused SL's bubble to burst back in '09-'10.

 Their big 15th anniversary announcement shows that they seem to finally be recognizing this and making some attempts to address some of these issues, but they have a long road ahead of them and it's clear that they're still blind to many of SL's problems.

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Second Life has, since it's inception, attracted far more people than it's kept around. People who are very much interested in the whole idea of a "virtual world", but for whom SL has fallen short of their expectations.

I think the novelty value that made virtual reality an experience in itself is well and truly worn off by now.

Air travel used to be a Big Thing too, remember. Those Flying Men In Magnificent Machines or something like that. Today it's everyday humdrum routine - unless you count airport congestion as an experience that is.

The future of virtual reality is not about what technology it's based on or how great the pictures look. It's about what it can be used for. Linden Lab realized that at the beginning of the Sansar process. It was all focused on experiences. Another one of those mutually exclusive goals they eventually had to abandon.

The future of virtual reality lies in the question what can it be used for? There are actually quite a few good answers to that but to find them we have to look beyond the technical solutions and the race for ever more "realistic" graphics.

But I digress.

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

 I do think it's import to look at the type of people SL has attracted and lost over the years because there are a lot of people like that out there who have yet to try something like SL.

[long list omitted]

Yes, that is a fairly good description of the current and past SL demography and you say that is the kind of people SL shold focus on. I do not disagree with that. It's the prudent course.

And you say SL should try to cater for that group as well as possible. Well, obviously.

But I don't see much room for expansion within that niche. 10-15 years ago those people either joined SL and stayed or they didn't. And if they didn't back then, there's not much chance they'll do it today - they'll have other things to occupy their time by now. Or maybe not. Some of them may find they have more time for Second Life now that they are older. I did. That factor may well give SL a significant boost for a while.

But it won't last because it's still a dying race, not just in Second Life but everywhere. SL is not the only virtual reality that is declining, remember. The whole industry is struggling. That's why I'm convinced if Second Life was to expand, it would have to break out and reach wider, much wider. You believe otherwise and I'll be very happy if you're right but I can't see it. I can't see it at all.

Sorry.

Edited August 8, 2018 by ChinRey

[Pamela Galli]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Those Flying Men In Magnificent Machines or something like that.

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

The future of virtual reality is not about what technology it's based on or how great the pictures look. It's about what it can be used for. Linden Lab realized that at the beginning of the Sansar process. It was all focused on experiences. Another one of those mutually exclusive goals they eventually had to abandon.

Well I have been watching this debate. I'm afraid I agree more with you, ChinRey, than Penny......although I appreciate your hard work (Penny) in determining what we can improve here. Second Life was a special place for a particular time, and although I think it will go on for a long while it will continue diminishing, and I don't really see anything that could help it too much.

But, the paragraph above I do not agree with at all. I think Sansar is just getting started and I don't see any "mutually exclusive goal" they eventually had to abandon, or that their goal is "how great the pictures look" as if they intend a static world...….it's just not developed fully yet. And so I don't see how the Sansar analogy fits. 

My take on Sansar?  They don't particularly want  us gatcha-grabbing shopaholic, pixel-bumping, butz enhancing fashionista commoners who grace the sims of SL over in Sansar. They'll appreciate us hooligans if we help develop the world in preparation for what they hope is to come though, which is more representative of people with these kinds of goals:

http://virtualrealityforeducation.com/

In other words, those who want to use VR for playing are not their primary audience. Attracting education, art, film, museums, business, medical applications and more is their goal.....and researching these areas I can say VR is booming!

 When they tried to get Enterprise going for businesses in SL it just didn't work...most businesses wanted more control. In Sansar they can easily have their own little world (Experience) with less cost.

 

[ChinRey]

45 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

But, the paragraph above I do not agree with at all.

Yes, I was a bit too quick to jump to a conclusion there. But practically everything that has happened so far since Sansar opened for beta testers, has been pointing away from public experiences and more towards private spaces and I do believe that is the way it is headed. There is no incitement to make experiences for an audience there so everybody make something something for their own sake.

When it comes to mutually exclusive goals in general, they started with everything but the kitchen sink so something would have to go, that was always clear. Maybe it's more proper to say they kept all options open at the beginning and gradually narrowed it down as the development progressed.

And as for the first goal I mentioned had to go, the mass market, that's official. Ebbe has been very clear they don't regard budget priced consumer market VR headsets as interesting, it's all about Rift and Vive. The hardware requirements are even higher than in SL and although they've promised that there will eventually be a Mac OS X client, so far there has been no mention of Android, iOS or Linux. Except for some vague thoughts about a streamed video based cross platform service that is.

Edited August 8, 2018 by ChinRey

[Penny Patton]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I think the novelty value that made virtual reality an experience in itself is well and truly worn off by now.

I don't think it has, because there has not been a successful attempt at a "Ready Player One" or "Snowcrash" style virtual world. Not one. Second Life has been the nearest miss, but it was still very much a miss.

 At the same time, I don't think LL (or any other virtual world developer) should bank on novelty value. Do you really think SL's current userbase only sticks around because they're wowed by the novelty of it?

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

But I don't see much room for expansion within that niche. 10-15 years ago those people either joined SL and stayed or they didn't.

I think you're overestimating how many people looked at SL and said "Ok, let's give this a try." I'd wager far more people took one look at it and said, "Hah, nope!" Again, one of SL's major issues has always been with presentation. LL has always been their own worst enemy in marketing Second Life. They have successfully managed to make it look far less appealing than it actually is and I believe that has kept the majority of their potential market away.

I'd also point out that addressing the problems that have pushed away users over the years, continue to push users away. If Linden Lab can take a good, critical look at SL, identify and address the problems that have lost them users in the past, it will make it easier for them to hold on to the users they have right now. And while it's more difficult to bring back a lost customer than it is a new one, I do think if LL made significant progress on tackling those issues, they could start to draw back at least some of the users they've lost over the years. And that's in addition to stronger retention of their current customer base, and drawing in people who've yet to give SL a chance.

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

The future of virtual reality lies in the question what can it be used for?

While I can see a myriad of uses for VR I'd say the greatest draw of virtual world style platforms like Second Life are as a pastime. Entertainment. Socializing. Having fun. We don't really have to find a more practical use for it than that to justify enjoying it.

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

But it won't last because it's still a dying race, not just in Second Life but everywhere. SL is not the only virtual reality that is declining, remember. The whole industry is struggling.

Let's say someone moves to a town that has never had a pizza place and opens the town's first pizza place. Problem is their pizza is terrible. They use vinegar instead of pizza sauce. Dog food instead of pepperoni. Their delivery boy is so bad that half the time people never get the pizza they paid for.

If that pizza place was struggling, would you say no pizza place, no matter how good, would ever have a chance at succeeding in this town?

Second Life is a horribly designed virtual world that has enjoyed nearly 15 years of success despite mountains of glaring problems. That success is waning because it's been 15 years and the problems were never fixed. It's long since lost it's initial novelty and luster and even those willing to forgive it's problems have their limits on how long a broken product can hold their interest. (And, again, I do want to give the LL of today credit for beginning to address some of these problems. I hope they keep at it despite the long road ahead.) And every other virtual world that has sprung up over the years, including Sansar, have been even worse in key respects. Given all that, saying the market for virtual worlds just isn't there is like shoving a slice of cold vinegar and dogfood pizza into your mouth and commenting, "There just isn't a market for pizza."

And...don't actually put that pizza in your mouth. It looks like someone stepped on it.

[Phil Deakins]

14 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Those Flying Men In Magnificent Machines or something like that.

'Those magnificent men in their flying machines'

[Phil Deakins]

Just a quickie on what's been written about Sansar in the last few posts...

Unless LL's thinking has changed, or unless I've had it all wrong for years, they don't have a "target audience", and they are not aiming it at anyone in the way that's been described. To the best of my knowledge, all they are doing is creating a system whereby anyone who wants to can pay to use their system to create their own environments/worlds. It's not too dissimilar to a computer. The manufacturer creates the computer (the system) that will run the programmes you want it to run, but it doesn't have any programmes in it. It's then up to you to create (or buy) the programmes you want, and put them in it. It will probably be that, when Sansar is launched, LL will have a range of basic environments for the customer to choose from, similar to what they have now.

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

'Those magnificent men in their flying machines'

Works both ways.

(Completely off any possible topic but the misquote is from a song I once started writing but never finished. I swapped the words around a bit partly to make them fit the tune but just as much because I... ummm... I do love playing with words. It's one of my countless bad habits.)

[Phil Deakins]

"Those magnificent men in their flying machines" is the first line of an old, and well-known song, so I wrote it down for you, thinking that you couldn't remember it exactly. It's the title song for an old film called, 'Those magnificent men in their flying machines'

Edited August 9, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/1/2018 at 7:12 PM, Theresa Tennyson said:

Butthurt has a natural tendency to be in two halves separated by a narrow gap. It's a quirk of anatomy.

Complete viciousness that is uncalled for entirely.

Some people have trouble with conceptual thinking. The original poster means that given that the user base is declining, would solving the problem of fraud (one could add griefing) enable more people to stay and enable the Lab to retain membership?

Well, it's wishful thinking because the TOS which we are all compelled to sign as a contract of adhesion spells out in two places that player disputes are not the problem of LL and it will not get involved. So it's buyer beware, the end.

And this stems from the Communications Decency Act, which Silicon Valley lobbied to hobble, ensuring themselves "safe harbor," so that they have no responsibility for the crimes of their users, i.e. copyright theft, which is of course "the California business model."

Few understand the deep connections between this criminality and where we all are now with social media companies eroding privacy and helping the Russians to interfere in elections.

There is one actual way to get around this, and that is to have LL, or any of these gaming companies, to give up their policy of never letting players publicize criticism of third parties. If they allowed this, at least publicity would go a long way to curbing criminality and warning people, and also establishing the truth when false accusations are made by griefers. But again, their omerta policy on criminals stems from the "safe harbor," again -- they don't want libel suits that relate to what players say about other players. 

Not a happy prospect for a future when we all have to live in virtual worlds but it will change.