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Is SL's Player Base Declining?


WinTrain
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SL has changed a lot.  We chat here instead of at Ahern.  I mostly build in Blender rather than inworld. Friends I've had have either gone full-party-animal or creative-recluse.  

I think over time, Linden Labs will back-port Sansar improvements into SL, when the VR craze levels out.  

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1 minute ago, CoffeeDujour said:

To do so would dilute the product edge Sansar offers over SL.

Perhaps.  However, Sansar appeared when the Stock Market was frothy for VR.  Occulus Rift sold for US$2 Billion.  Sansar might have done the same, but now the opportunity is past, and we'll see how it plays out.  

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1 minute ago, Erwin Solo said:

Perhaps.  However, Sansar appeared when the Stock Market was frothy for VR.  Occulus Rift sold for US$2 Billion.  Sansar might have done the same, but now the opportunity is past, and we'll see how it plays out.  

LL said years ago they wouldn't be moving Sansar features to SL. Sansar is virtual worlds; SL is a virtual world. After that, the code is too different and the architectures are way too different.

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1 hour ago, Parhelion Palou said:

LL said years ago they wouldn't be moving Sansar features to SL. Sansar is virtual worlds; SL is a virtual world. After that, the code is too different and the architectures are way too different.

So they did.  

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11 hours ago, Erwin Solo said:

I think over time, Linden Labs will back-port Sansar improvements into SL, when the VR craze levels out.  

Wouldn't make sense to be honest.  They are better off converting Sansar's VR UI to a desktop friendly UI.  Sansar has a lot of UI problems for desktop users and making text-chat easier would be a huge improvement for communication.  SL already does this pretty well.

If anything, LL would be better off selling Sansar and create an SL 2.0.  I'm pretty sure the SL community would've been more excited for the latter since 99% of them didn't own a VR headset when Sansar was announced.

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5 minutes ago, Nextio said:

Wouldn't make sense to be honest.  ....

Well, for example, this post of mine:

 

SANSAR has really good support for importing Maya files, or so I read.  I've not done it.  I used Maya for about a year for SL, but had to pass everything through Blender first to then use Avastar to make a good clean DAE file for import to SL.  I think the support for Maya that SANSAR enjoys could be back ported to SL.  Of course, now the maker of Avastar has a product called MayaStar.  Maybe that does the job.  I'm just much better trained-up in Blender now that I haven't tried it. 

Its things like the Maya/FBX support of SANSAR that I'd like to see in SL, and I would not be surprised to see them arrive at some point.  All those Moles making the new Linden Houses are using something; I wonder what?

 

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Anyway, here was the Linden Lab answer, which was essentially, 'post your problem in JIRA.'  Well, it's not something to be fixed.  I have JIRA entrees on a couple of LSL bugs, and know that process.  I think the answer kind of missed the mark, but famous avatars fell all over themselves 'liking' it anyway. 

 

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Woops. I mis-read the title and thought it said Is SL's Bass Player Declining. That would have been a new and interesting question...

But since I'm here anyway: no, the SL user base is not declining at the moment. The numbers have actually increased slightly recently.

Edited by ChinRey
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  • 7 months later...

Decline is real, maybe is a transition period and it will revive like phoenix but I'll tell now from my perspective of SL designer/creator. 

There fewer people playing and is a fact reflected in sales of my store in world and MP. In 2014-2016 was earning from SL sales USD $1500-$2000  monthly main income being from in world store not events. Customers have much higher requirements now the more realistic the better plus due to heavy competition too many designers too many events for so few customers and  even if releasing high quality stuff main stores just dead honestly and good events with high traffic bring some income but is like 3-10  times less then was till 2016.

Check Catwa store traffic used to be 60k+ now is like 4k-16k. Genus sim as well has poor traffic 4-6k even though is most bought and used mesh head currently. Many people oriented on good looks are mostly young people they pop on events and hardly even go main store as they don't want buy old stuff they need new ones only, high quality but low priced, those products making taking more time then used before but prices slightly had to be lowered due to battle of designers for the customers share. 

Other thing SL used to have a lot of mid aged and even older 40-50 y.o people, many of them did not have high requirements in products they bought. They were main store buyers mostly, that is a segment of market that has left  SL for different reasons i assume. 

Plus Linden Labs has increased the fees for money withdrawal and linden currency $ value has decreased again drastically. At moment there are just a hand of designers that earn good money. Mostly because are consistent with high quality releases at events. You have to be in 4-6 events monthly to get 1000$/month with good quality products, if there is no quality product (real looking) business will die within months, as will cover maximum just event fee expenses. 

Conclusion, don't panic! just move on or wait for rebirth. As to myself I barely make 100$ a month which was my income at the start of my SL business when it was a hobby in my 1st year or so in 2012, in 2014 it became full time job but now I'm just forced to look elsewhere for an income this doesn't cover my bills for the amount of time put in it, just waist of skills and time. :( 
P.S. This is not my business account

Edited by ChiA Windstorm
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There’s also this thing called diminishing returns that are very real. If everybody is wearing a catwa or genus head, at some point you aren’t going to get as much traffic because everybody that is going to buy your product has it.

So for catwa, Catya came out and it was the only bento head out. Everybody has a catwa head in their inventory, figuratively speaking. If you wanted a bento head, you were getting a catwa. Over time, more and more competition arose, some customers went to other brands, some customers stick with the head they have.

You have to expect that. Sales falling off is not a good indicator of user base falling off. Concurrent user data is. It’s about the same as it was 5 years ago 35-55k users at any given time. That indicates inertia not a decline. 
 

Compare that to something like Everquest, which has been around almost as long and their user base has truly declined.

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Despite popular belief, SL has maintained a steady userbase.

I keep track of SL's user numbers:
Apr 2007: 19,005
Apr 2008: 34,685
Mar 2009: 68,710
Jul 2010: 42,990
Aug 2011: 33,628
May 2012: 36,854
Aug 2013: 32,974
May 2014: 38,056
May 2015: 39,336
Jul 2016: 39,031
Jul 2017: 31,930
Nov 2018: 45,301
March 2019: 44,854
January 2020: 34,133

It really depends on what time you look at the online user count, but I can say with honesty, I do not believe SL has a declining userbase.

You will typically see more people online on Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays, or before/after work hours in U.S. time. I've also observed higher user activity on major holidays and during summer(HMMMM...).

Anyway, userbase tends to stay above 30k and below 55k. Lowest I have seen was 16 users because LL restricted the grid to Lindens only when there was a major issue back on 2019-05-14.

Edited by Chaser Zaks
I unfortunately do not have a time machine
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Also, in case you haven’t heard...video killed the radio star. 🤩

I heard that “SL was dying” very soon after I arrived in 2008. I thought, “well d@mn, I’d better hurry up and start enjoying myself before it goes away”. 

 

72E3F1C4-E970-4440-82B7-7A1208DEDD7F.jpeg

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Second Life has, over the past decade, kept a remarkably steady level of regular monthly users (that is, people who sign in at least once a month to SL). That figure is somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 regular monthly users. The most recent confirmation of these figures came directly from the Firestorm developers, with whom LL shared recent usage figures:

https://ryanschultz.com/2019/09/18/why-second-life-still-has-600000-regular-users-after-16-years/

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On 1/15/2019 at 10:45 PM, WinTrain said:

Is SL's user population decreasing? It seems SL isn't active as it used to be, or at least for me rather. I remember year 2009 being pretty active and big when I first joined. The whole bloodlines thing was going strong and full blown, I remember 2014 being really active (especially in the summer).

The last two years have seemed a bit more quiet in my experience. I remember Ambrosia always being full all day, all night, 60+ people. Now hardly anyone goes there and there's only about 12 people.

Are people quitting, or lowering their play time, or is this just my experience of just aging and becoming less engaged with SL like the whole (been there, done that?)

It's kind of hard to tell.  For one thing, you have the AFK sex thing - people earning money while being logged in (I'd assume on as many accounts as their computers can handle) and doing nothing.  Then there is the whole "fishing" and other things that are nothing more than camping - and again people logged in but doing nothing.  Therefor you really cannot tell based on how many people are logged in at a given time, because they are probably busy IRL fapping to prons.  And of course LL has every incentive to inflate their user stats.

I do know that the sorts of places I like to go are becoming fewer and fewer, and tend to have less people there at any given time (or at least when I am on).  It often seems to me SL is dying a slow death, but for all I know there are 100 people on every Linden Homes sim at a time enjoying BBQ and hodowns (sp?)

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The days of mega sims and gigantic groups of people just hanging out on a sim are over. It’s too laggy. Once any hangout starts getting crowded, people start leaving.

People tend to hangout in smaller groups and smaller sims because the lag is more manageable.

Going to any popular shopping event the first few days they open will tell you SL isn’t dying. Group chats are usually very lively, it just depends on the group.

The game has changed, but the numbers really haven’t.

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28 minutes ago, Vanity Fair said:

Second Life has, over the past decade, kept a remarkably steady level of regular monthly users (that is, people who sign in at least once a month to SL). That figure is somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 regular monthly users. The most recent confirmation of these figures came directly from the Firestorm developers, with whom LL shared recent usage figures:

https://ryanschultz.com/2019/09/18/why-second-life-still-has-600000-regular-users-after-16-years/

Thanks, I had not seen this. I just read the Atlantic article you linked https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/  was very good, wonder how I missed it.

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1 hour ago, Chaser Zaks said:

Despite popular belief, SL has maintained a steady userbase.

I keep track of SL's user numbers:
Apr 2007: 19,005
Apr 2008: 34,685
Mar 2009: 68,710
Jul 2010: 42,990
Aug 2011: 33,628
May 2012: 36,854
Aug 2013: 32,974
May 2014: 38,056
May 2015: 39,336
Jul 2016: 39,031
Jul 2017: 31,930
Nov 2018: 45,301
March 2019: 44,854
January 2020: 34,133

It really depends on what time you look at the online user count, but I can say with honesty, I do not believe SL has a declining userbase.

You will typically see more people online on Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays, or before/after work hours in U.S. time. I've also observed higher user activity on major holidays and during summer(HMMMM...).

Anyway, userbase tends to stay above 30k and below 55k. Lowest I have seen was 16 users because LL restricted the grid to Lindens only when there was a major issue back on 2019-05-14.

Are these numbers avg concurrency? Because the user base, according to Firestorm data, is more like 600k. 

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