Is SL's Player Base Declining?

[Chaser Zaks]

8 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

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

Yes, concurrent count, i don't have access to how many unique logins per day.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, ChiA Windstorm said:

 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.

in my opinion it is too simple to hang the decline to individual sellers info.  Only when having the whole market visible you can make conclusions.
There are thousends more shops than some years ago, and often offering the same items everywhere, and often for significant lower prices.
Also the traffic on that headcreator says not a lot on it's own, there are so many others now providing good heads ...
They all fish in the same pond, so get less.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Pamela Galli said:

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.

Ummmmmmmmm.... Pamela dear?

 

[ChinRey]

1 hour 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.

That is not correct. According to Ebbe Altberg, the number of active users was 1.1 million at its peak, by June 2014 it had dropped below 1 million and by March 2015 it was around 900.000.

Sources:

• https://www.businessinsider.com/second-life-is-still-around-and-getting-ready-to-conquer-virtual-reality-2015-3?r=US&IR=T (or actually from Google's quote of it - the article itself is behind a paywall)
• https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/06/second-life-users-900k.html

If it really is as low as 600,000 today, we've had a dramatic drop.

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

in my opinion it is too simple to hang the decline to individual sellers info.  Only when having the whole market visible you can make conclusions.

That is true but I still haven't seen a single indicator, neither anecdotal nor statistical, that is pointing upwards and only two dubious ones that aren't pointing downwards.

You have to be in serious denial not to see that Second Life is declining. I'm not saying it's going to die anytime soon; it has enough momentum from its heydays to keep going for many years still unless something unexpected happens. But although there are things that can be done to slow down the decline, I've yet to hear of any plan that can possibly stop it.

 

3 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

There are thousends more shops than some years ago, and often offering the same items everywhere, and often for significant lower prices.

Do you have any data on that?

I did a quick survey on MP stores last month for another thread and found that there has been a dramatic decline in new stores created on MP. During the first six years there were 160,000 stores added, during the last six years 60,000. (There also seems to be far more stores closing down than new ones opening but I can't say that for sure. I only checked 40 stores and we need a larger sample than that to draw a conclusion.)

Edited January 15, 2020 by ChinRey

[Pamela Galli]

41 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Ummmmmmmmm.... Pamela dear?

I would say I have no memory to speak of,  but the weird thing is I remember details of making things. Everything is murky but then bright lights on my work products. 

 

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

I would say I have no memory to speak of,  but the weird thing is I remember details of making things. Everything is murky but then bright lights on my work products.

That means you remember the important things.

[Pamela Galli]

40 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

That means you remember the important things.

Would be a nice explanation if I didn’t forget my Anniversary every year.

[TVTuner]

The definition of "active users" may have changed.  What causes an account to be counted as an "active user"?  Login once in a 24 hour window?  ...7 day window?  … 1 month window? … etc.

"Concurrent users" is much easier to define.

One could claim that the death of a large retail chain indicates a significant decline in the number of people shopping.  Well, making purchases THERE, sure.  Ask Target.  Ask Save-A-Lot, etc.

Seems like a matter of perspective.  Those saying their sales are down are telling us like it is, from their perspective.

I was looking at the World Map with the sales overlay turned on and wondering "What's going on here?"  After visiting 50 of those parcels I decided there was a long, storied history behind "what's going on here".  Some were owned by someone, or group, that owns many parcels.  Just my small sampling across 5 continents, 5 regions each, two parcels each, isn't enough to really be telling but I starting thinking that somebody out there gets one hell of a discount on land use fees.  Land that is for sale and is owned by a resident, or a resident group, still incurs land use fees, payable to Linden Lab, right?  If so, land for sale isn't a death knell for Linden Lab's finances, is it?  So much land for sale does seem to indicate a glut, of sorts.  But looking at those parcels that I visited, I suspect some refurbishment could be helpful.

/me finally stops rambling and goes back to watching the cable TV business die.

Edited January 15, 2020 by TVTuner

[ChinRey]

5 minutes ago, TVTuner said:

The definition of "active users" may have changed.  What causes an account to be counted as an "active user"?

For all the figures I quoted it's the number of accounts that logged on at least once during a 30 days period. I'm not sure if that's how the recent figure from Firestorm was calculated though and that's why is said "if".

There certainly aren't and have never been as many as 600,000 actual human beings who use SL regularly though. It may well be less than 100,000.

[Janet Voxel]

Lol...y’all really want SL to be on a decline.

[ChinRey]

13 minutes ago, TVTuner said:

Just my small sampling across 5 continents, 5 regions each, two parcels each, isn't enough to really be telling but I starting thinking that somebody out there gets one hell of a discount on land use fees.  Land that is for sale and is owned by a resident, or a resident group, still incurs land use fees, payable to Linden Lab, right?

That is correct. There is a loophole that in theory would allow you to own more mainland than you pay tier for (I'm not giving any details for obvious reasons) but it would be so labour intensive I can't imagine it's worth the effort for anybody. I know for a fact that none of the three largest mainland landowners use this loophole.

As for discounts, Crunchbase has estimated LL's total revenue to be a little bit over $40M/year. This fits well with info from other sources, including what LL has accidentally slipped over the years. Gridsurvey calculates LL's income from tier (including private sims) to more than $60M/year.

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, janetosilio said:

Lol...y’all really want SL to be on a decline.

I don't but facts are facts.

[Janet Voxel]

1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

I don't but facts are facts.

That’s true, but you’re kind of ignoring the concurrent users staying relatively the same, aren’t you?

[ChinRey]

7 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

That’s true, but you’re kind of ignoring the concurrent users staying relatively the same, aren’t you?

It isn't, it's dropping too although interestingly much slower than the active users count. That can only mean that an average account is logged on for a longer time period than before. I can think of three plausible explanations but none of them can be seen as indications that SL is stable or gaining ground.

I probably should mention something about the two dubious indicators too.

The number of private regions increased in 2019 but only by 17 and it's too early to say if this is something permanent, especially since the number has dropped significantly the last two months.

The LindeX transaction volume has stayed remarkably stable for as long as LindeX has existed. The problem there is that it's too stable to be reliable. There have been several incidents over the years that should have affected it one way or another. The only plausible explanation is that the volume of speculative transactions is big enough to drown the bona fide ones and that of course means the figure doesn't say anything at all about the actual activity in SL.

[Beth Macbain]

49 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

Lol...y’all really want SL to be on a decline.

There is a group of people who will jump through fiery hoops of fresh diarrhea to find some way to complain about something LL is doing, has done, or will do badly, and how they should have or should be doing it differently, while at the same time vehemently defending how much they love SL. 

While in no way does this compare in seriousness in any way, shape, or form, it does remind me a little of abuser logic: "I hit you because I love you."

[Pussycat Catnap]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

There certainly aren't and have never been as many as 600,000 actual human beings who use SL regularly though. It may well be less than 100,000.

Yeah. The largest figure for any Virtual World of concurrency was Guild Wars 2 on launch day. They noted they had topped somewhere past 350,000 online at once, higher than World of Warcraft has ever achieved. It didn't last, but that's the highest point I've ever heard stated publicly.

Everquest in it's heyday, had just a little more than 100,000 total subscribers... which means it's active users would have been smaller... that's just the people who were paying the bill after all.

600,000 may be a decline - but it still tops the subscriber numbers of most non-Chinese MMOs. Given that SL is a nearly 2-decade old MMO, that's pretty amazing.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

There is a group of people who will jump through fiery hoops of fresh diarrhea to find some way to complain about something LL is doing, has done, or will do badly, and how they should have or should be doing it differently, while at the same time vehemently defending how much they love SL.

There's also a group of folks who jump through those hoops in the other direction... no matter how absurd things are getting on some issue.

If you don't criticize something, you never actually really cared for it at all. Got to be constantly pushing to improve, or you're in decay.

[ChinRey]

3 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

There is a group of people who will jump through fiery hoops of fresh diarrhea to find some way to complain about something LL is doing, has done, or will do badly, and how they should have or should be doing it differently, while at the same time vehemently defending how much they love SL.

Well, to put it this way, I have some relatives in RL who are well past the repair age and well into the long (hopefully) tail of physical and mental decline. I still love them just as much as I always have - perhaps even more.

[Beth Macbain]

4 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

If you don't criticize something, you never actually really cared for it at all.

Wow.

Maybe my comparison to abusers wasn't so far off...

[Luna Bliss]

4 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

9 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

If you don't criticize something, you never actually really cared for it at all.

Wow.

Maybe my comparison to abusers wasn't so far off...

I don't know if the following is what Pussycat meant.

But I think it's easy to love something you imagine is perfect.  But if you love something in spite of its imperfections...well I'd say that's true love.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Existence is a process where you struggle to improve and make things better, then you stop because you're dead.

Some people want to just land in the dirt, put their head down, and accept anything and everything as it is...

Others build stainless steel trucks and aim them at Mars. Maybe it's the Californian & Silicon Valley Techie in me... but I'd rather shoot for Mars and only make it to the Moon than sit in the dirt and slowly watch it bury me.

If wanting everything and everyone around me to aim for their best and strive for improvement is the definition of abuse to one who sits in the dirt and waits to be buried... then so be it...

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Jameson2001]

  Excellent discussion on SL player usage.  Ironically William Shakespeare asked this same question in his play Hamlet when he stated:

"To be in SL, or not to be in SL, that is the question." 

 

[Beth Macbain]

9 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I don't know if the following is what Pussycat meant.

But I think it's easy to love something you imagine is perfect.  But if you love something in spite of its imperfections...well I'd say that's true love.

I don't know if it is or not, but as someone who works with abused children and sees the cycle of abuse being repeated on a daily basis, a statement like that is a red flag. Children think abuse (and criticism) is normal when they're children, and then they think it's normal when they grow up. They have children and start the process all over again. To them, attention = love and abuse = attention. 

"Mom is screaming at me but at least she's paying attention to me so that must mean she cares about me..."

[Luna Bliss]

3 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

16 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I don't know if the following is what Pussycat meant.

But I think it's easy to love something you imagine is perfect.  But if you love something in spite of its imperfections...well I'd say that's true love.

I don't know if it is or not, but as someone who works with abused children and sees the cycle of abuse being repeated on a daily basis, a statement like that is a red flag. Children think abuse (and criticism) is normal when they're children, and then they think it's normal when they grow up. They have children and start the process all over again. To them, attention = love and abuse = attention. 

"Mom is screaming at me but at least she's paying attention to me so that must mean she cares about me..."

It can be hard to identify when someone is justifiably angry about something and expressing their frustration, vs when someone is just wanting to 'hate on something'.....making another 'all bad'....demonizing.  It's the latter I'd say is abuse.