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My analysis on how LL's marketing of SL can be even better while simultaneously increasing its cultural relevance


lucagrabacr
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So I was replying to another thread in the forum earlier regarding whether or not SL can be as popular as it used to be, and if the slow downward trend can be reversed. In it I mentioned how LL's doing a great job at marketing SL by the book using available data and statistical analysis, and I said it can be better if LL's willing to take risks and do a right-on-the-spot marketing which resonates with key very-high-retention audience. So in this thread I wish to elaborate further and we can discuss it, and hopefully if my assessment is or perceived as correct, LL is willing to listen and try.

Before I start I'd like to mention that I've seen a lot of SL's promotional materials throughout the years, both in banner ads and video ads formats. Looking at them and knowing the majority of SL's user demographic plus who is the most likely that they wish to target, it's clear to me that while LL certainly know what constitutes as a good traffic, LL still put an emphasis on volume over quality of traffic. Now, I'm not saying they don't target specific kinds of people and certain niches which they know have produced quality traffic, but even then those ads have this feel of being very superficial in nature.

I'm not talking about the technical skills or artistic sense of the people who are making the ads, they are superb and top-notch in those regards - but none or at least very few of them have this effect of, "Wow, that's spot on", the kind of ads that will make people who never even thought about a virtual world stop what they're doing and try SL, or make it more culturally relevant and in my opinion this has a lot to do with direction and LL's tendency to play it safe, which has its merits and proven records but in my opinion things won't change for the better that way. 

One of the major elements that caused this is the level of cultural sophistication and penetration of the marketing materials, they just don't tend to resonate too much in that regard and don't feel like they are in the same page with people's idea of a futuristic, best virtual world - which SL is in term of features and sophistication by a large margin compared to any other Metaverse or social VR out there. That sort of marketing could make SL stick in people's mind even if they don't use it or haven't

For example, I remember seeing a video ad showcasing Bryn Oh's very surreal and melancholic exhibit, yet it was presented through the eyes of a casual viewer or visitor instead of the artistic essence of said exhibit. There was this very huge gap between what Bryn Oh or their art seemed to want to convey with how it was presented in the video ad, and the resulting product was not as impactful as it could have been and seemingly hollow. Again, I'm not criticizing the people who worked on the material itself, but the seeming indirection by LL. And that was just one example.

SL is a trove of cultural wonders and arts which often transcend the two dimensional barrier of the monitors in which they are displayed, and carry the very essence and consciousness of the people who experience them through their sheer thoroughness and impact for being in spaces that people actually live in, they are dimensions to be explored and presented as their creators intended to while working on them with all their hearts.

So what do you guys think?  

Edit: Here's a simple visualization I made regarding what I conceived to be the effect of SL's marketing materials in regard to how much they leave an impression within their intended target audience / niche and the wider cultural fallout footprint

SLgraph2.thumb.png.a85654b2a9bbb59feae0ee8384916fa0.png

Edit 2: as examples of what knowing one's target audience, their culture and aesthetic preference can do in propelling something, Undertale and Hotel Hazbin are great recent examples - one is just a simple top-down RPG and the other is just your casual mid-budget cartoon on a technical level, but because of their creators' understanding regarding their audience culture and aesthetic preference, both became very popular within their particular niches despite being just mediocre products if the cultural and aesthetic relevance elements are removed from the equation. These are things that visually, auditorially and narratively touch, influence and appeal to people's innermost workings and perception, they transcended what's potentially possible by objective measures by tapping into people's subjective perception of things 

Edited by lucagrabacr
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12 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

What cultural relevance does SL have these days? 

I think many people still have a rough idea of what it is, and those who know knows that it's still the best virtual world platform in term of features and sophistication, but what you said is also part of my point, that SL can be perceived as THE virtual world again for the modern era if LL can navigate well enough 

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  • Lindens

Thank you! I saw the tweet. While I'm not part of marketing, I'll make sure they get a link to this discussion.

In the mean time, are there examples of other companies' marketing which you think our team should look to for inspiration or positive examples?

Have you seen Second Life user-generated materials where you thought to yourself, "the Linden Lab marketing team should have been the ones doing this?"

Those aren't just questions for Luca. I'm sure they'd value any useful examples or inspiration.

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6 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

, that SL can be perceived as THE virtual world again for the modern era if LL can navigate well enough 

We gotta beat out two other massive games.

1) VRchat

Note they’re only 3 years old and average about 8K players online at any given time, usually peaks around 10k. There are a minuscule number of bots, next to nobody is afk. What are they doing that we need to do?

2) Roblox

Target audience omitted , they’re up to over 20 million average players online at any given time. The single top popularity game right now has 304 thousand people playing.

Now what did they do right, that’s what SL should be trying to do. I can list some stuff but it’s a more complicated situation there. To tldr what they have for a virtual world, it’s instanced and non seamless, it runs on anything and it runs super well, it allows complexity to go from super simple (virtual legos) to super complex (theoretically has the capability to look like fancier SL places but it’s time consuming to do so). It’s all user created, monetization and currency cash outs are easy, and it’s incredibly easy to learn to create in.

If Roblox had a version specifically for users 15+ and 18+ like SL content levels, give it a year and half of the SL userbase would vanish to play Roblox of all things. I can’t even joke about it, because the tools are there, people have created some super detailed stuff, but since the majority of the userbase is kids it’s generally kept pretty simple, since the average 9 year old doesn’t really care if their virtual lawn chair looks like a real one down to the plastic molding flashing.

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2 hours ago, Soft Linden said:

Thank you! I saw the tweet. While I'm not part of marketing, I'll make sure they get a link to this discussion.

In the mean time, are there examples of other companies' marketing which you think our team should look to for inspiration or positive examples?

Have you seen Second Life user-generated materials where you thought to yourself, "the Linden Lab marketing team should have been the ones doing this?"

Those aren't just questions for Luca. I'm sure they'd value any useful examples or inspiration.

No problem Soft! c= and thank you!

Well there are several that I can think of right now other than the examples I've given, for example Hideo Kojima always seems to have this "awareness" when it comes to a very-indepth insight to the mind of the people who he made his games for, and from there he seems to always just know what to make and how to present them, the sort of genius which always made him and his creations seems to be in-tune with the collective ebb and flow of the communities he caters to and beyond.

For example if we're looking at his "Death Stranding" game trailer from the perspective of an objective observer, the kind of viewpoint that corporate-based marketing approach usually caters to, it may seem "silly" or "overly and unnecessarily dramatic and out of touch with the majority of people's collective idea of things", it might even seem whacky and insane - but it's not, it perfectly resonates and made sense to his intended audience, the aesthetic, narrative and feel of the trailer and the game itself is on-point in regard to what sort of emotion and construct it wants to convey to its audience, which is why it was a critical success.

A lot of successful indie RPG games also usually harness these aspects of cultural or subcultural awareness, like one of the examples I've given in my original post (Undertale) and some other like "VA-11 Hall-A" which on paper might seem just like your mediocre 2D RPG games with little to no innovation in term of actual gameplay, But they were both very successful by harnessing the aforementioned awareness

Now of course I'm not saying the elements of the things I mentioned directly parralel the variables of what SL can potentially do and its audience, but the essence of my argument is that when you're in-tune with how your target audience thinks, you make things that resonate with them on a very fundamental level. For example there are many vibrant "Synthwave" or "Retrowave" subcultures on SL (yes they are subcultures now and not just genres of music, because their distinct visuals are widely used as a basis or feels of things such as buildings or even whole sims on SL), which sometimes intersect with the "Cyberpunk" culture, but LL's promotion and exploration of these communities always seem surface-level, like, "Ok here's some cyberpunk things" without considering the essence, aesthetic and feel of the subcultures which make them resonate with their followers or people who live in the communities of those subcultures.

And yup! Not necessarily video or ad banner materials but Chouchou's sky cathedral was spot-on in term of aesthetic when combined with the music being played on the parcels, it's an old build too but it overcomes the lack of powerful 3D modeling tools which can be used for SL back then with a very strong sense of aesthetic and feel, it's the kind of genius which I've mentioned in this post, it feels just right and it conveys what it wants to convey perfectly

Some sims I know which are run by the younger users of SL also have many elements which indicate subcultural awareness for their respective niches which they harness, I know these examples might not sound very solid, but I'll see if I can take some examples and extrapolate some key elements which make them so for this thread

Edited by lucagrabacr
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2 hours ago, cheesecurd said:

 

2) Roblox

Target audience omitted , they’re up to over 20 million average players online at any given time. The single top popularity game right now has 304 thousand people playing.

Now what did they do right, that’s what SL should be trying to do. I can list some stuff but it’s a more complicated situation there. To tldr what they have for a virtual world, it’s instanced and non seamless, it runs on anything and it runs super well, it allows complexity to go from super simple (virtual legos) to super complex (theoretically has the capability to look like fancier SL places but it’s time consuming to do so). It’s all user created, monetization and currency cash outs are easy, and it’s incredibly easy to learn to create in.

If Roblox had a version specifically for users 15+ and 18+ like SL content levels, give it a year and half of the SL userbase would vanish to play Roblox of all things. I can’t even joke about it, because the tools are there, people have created some super detailed stuff, but since the majority of the userbase is kids it’s generally kept pretty simple, since the average 9 year old doesn’t really care if their virtual lawn chair looks like a real one down to the plastic molding flashing.

Spin off SL "TinyLand" (example name) as there are already Dinkies, Tinies and Titchies that are so darn cute it could be a No.1 Hit TV show and they talk and sing like "The Chipmunks" at times plus other absolutely adorkable voices.  

Roblox is very redundant in the video I watched of it.  It was just running your avatar through doors, tunnels and up and down stairs continuously to kill robots, and that is all I saw.  It was very redundant.  

The Dinkies can do the non-bento dances that already exist in SL and can dance about as cute as Shirley Temple.  I choreographed a dance for my Dinkie to the song "One" from "A Chorus Line"...absolutely adorable!   Then even do ballet quite well.

It's just all so cute.  If you want to compete with Roblox...it's "TinyLand" mixed with a bit of fabulous hunts to win prizes and/or lindens.  This is probably the catch here:  a way to win lindens and prizes, and/or maybe even a point status payout of some kind and or a special title.  

And, TinyLand as it is now is pretty much lag-free until too many biggie human mesh avatars show up.  

Edited by FairreLilette
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42 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Roblox is very redundant in the video I watched of it.  It was just running your avatar through doors, tunnels and up and down stairs continuously to kill robots, and that is all I saw.  It was very redundant

Roblox is a platform for user created games, there’s all sorts of whatever you want to make. It has a pretty good range of tools with a capability for detail and content created on par with SL. Mesh stuff, flexible objects, interactable things, guis both onscreen and on objects, etc

Theyre working currently on voxel based lighting and path traced lighting, realistic shadows and such. They’ve just recently implemented ingame video streaming plugins.

The studio program has user created plugins for assistance in building, a lot of its functionality is mimicking blender, insert a brick, turn it into whatever you want.

They have 6 and 15 segment bodies for avatars now, but users have worked in higher complexity ones for more human like avatars, with a few games implementing 36 or 128 segment bodies for full limb, torso, neck and hand articulation.

The point I’m trying to make before I get too off topic here, is that there a virtual world game with 20 million daily active users playing it.

What do they have that has drawn that userbase in?

-it’s stupidly easy to use and learn to create, anyone can figure it out and make a simple game, and the continue to learn and make more and more complex stuff

-it runs well, it’s a well optimized game, even super complex stuff and horrendously detailed builds and content run smoothly on even low end hardware 

-mobile, it has a mobile version to play the games 

-the game content creation aspect is entirely free, you can make whatever you desire without paying a dime, avatar stuff to create you need their membership but there’s no additional fees or anything

I actually have a short video I recorded ages ago about the lighting changes they were implementing into the game, it kinda shows off the studio program a bit and it’s ease of use.

This is why they have so many users. It’s non complex but can give you detailed results, you can make something super simple like that demo build I had, or you can make a fully fleshed our first person shooter with the same graphical complexity and feel of something like an older call of duty title, the tools are there. It’s not one set level of user creation complexity that’s behind dozens of menus and fees for importing stuff and mountains of documentation and guides, throw this at literal children and they figure out how to make games.

Thats why they have 20 million active daily users, and it’s something linden labs should be looking at to improve SL. Clearly there is a market for a game where people can make whatever they want, it just needs to be easier for a new player to learn, that will draw in users.

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2 hours ago, cheesecurd said:

Roblox is a platform for user created games, there’s all sorts of whatever you want to make. It has a pretty good range of tools with a capability for detail and content created on par with SL. Mesh stuff, flexible objects, interactable things, guis both onscreen and on objects, etc

Theyre working currently on voxel based lighting and path traced lighting, realistic shadows and such. They’ve just recently implemented ingame video streaming plugins.

The studio program has user created plugins for assistance in building, a lot of its functionality is mimicking blender, insert a brick, turn it into whatever you want.

They have 6 and 15 segment bodies for avatars now, but users have worked in higher complexity ones for more human like avatars, with a few games implementing 36 or 128 segment bodies for full limb, torso, neck and hand articulation.

The point I’m trying to make before I get too off topic here, is that there a virtual world game with 20 million daily active users playing it.

What do they have that has drawn that userbase in?

-it’s stupidly easy to use and learn to create, anyone can figure it out and make a simple game, and the continue to learn and make more and more complex stuff

-it runs well, it’s a well optimized game, even super complex stuff and horrendously detailed builds and content run smoothly on even low end hardware 

-mobile, it has a mobile version to play the games 

-the game content creation aspect is entirely free, you can make whatever you desire without paying a dime, avatar stuff to create you need their membership but there’s no additional fees or anything

I actually have a short video I recorded ages ago about the lighting changes they were implementing into the game, it kinda shows off the studio program a bit and it’s ease of use.

This is why they have so many users. It’s non complex but can give you detailed results, you can make something super simple like that demo build I had, or you can make a fully fleshed our first person shooter with the same graphical complexity and feel of something like an older call of duty title, the tools are there. It’s not one set level of user creation complexity that’s behind dozens of menus and fees for importing stuff and mountains of documentation and guides, throw this at literal children and they figure out how to make games.

Thats why they have 20 million active daily users, and it’s something linden labs should be looking at to improve SL. Clearly there is a market for a game where people can make whatever they want, it just needs to be easier for a new player to learn, that will draw in users.

The mobile thing could be what is the big difference.  Also, you can make Classic avatars here for free and find free clothing, too.  SL Tinyland could be incredibly easy to make stuff too as well as run well 'if' there were no high polygon human mesh avatars in SL TinyLand.  

The make up games part...I don't quite get but it sounds interesting.   The userface looks amazing!

What do the makers of Roblox get out of it?  I mean, how do the makers of Roblox make money?  

For me, it looks too sterile an environment I would like as I lean more towards the feminine but I will check it out.  I like pretty and cute things and if there were a SL TinyLand, I'd want a magical world with animesh creatures and flying butterflies for example as well as a sudden attack by a swarm of killers bees that if you kill them all, you gain points to win prizes or lindens and/or go up in rank. 

And, I can't even imagine how much money someone could make off a TinyLand kind of grid just in manufacturing the Dinkies, Tinies and Titchies into real life dolls or stuffed animals.  It could be a fortune!

Also, Dinkies and other tinies can wear unrigged items that already exist here.

If LL ever made a spin off, I'd be a SL TinyLand resident in a heartbeat!   It's so creative what already exists, most have no idea because they have not experienced it.  

As far as for human SL, sex and the possible end of loneliness in finding a partner could be the big driver of SL.   If that is the case, that is the angle frankly - sex and dating but people want more voice or ease of voice now that is why VRchat is so popular I'd assume. 

 

Edited by FairreLilette
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2 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

Roblox is very redundant in the video I watched of it. It was just running your avatar through doors, tunnels and up and down stairs continuously to kill robots, and that is all I saw. It was very redundant.

The irony of this statement perfectly highlights why many people are so quick to lose interest in Second Life even after they try it.

Edited by Wulfie Reanimator
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10 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

For example, I remember seeing a video ad showcasing Bryn Oh's very surreal and melancholic exhibit, yet it was presented through the eyes of a casual viewer or visitor instead of the artistic essence of said exhibit. There was this very huge gap between what Bryn Oh or their art seemed to want to convey with how it was presented in the video ad, and the resulting product was not as impactful as it could have been and seemingly hollow 

...

SL is a trove of cultural wonders and arts which often transcend the two dimensional barrier of the monitors in which they are displayed, and carry the very essence and consciousness of the people who experience them through their sheer thoroughness and impact for being in spaces that people actually live in, they are dimensions to be explored and presented as their creators intended to while working on them with all their hearts

...

These are things that visually, auditorially and narratively touch, influence and appeal to people's innermost workings and perception, they transcended what's potentially possible by objective measures by tapping into people's subjective perception of things 

yes

it gets mused sometimes what is SL culture ? Is there such a thing ? If so then what is it ? And if this is true then how can it shown ?

a way to think about culture, is that it can be (and most often is) an outward reflection of ourselves.  What others think about when they see us. When we reflect ourselves then people see this and think about who we are. And when we tell our story well then others know and understand us, and most important is when reflected, told, well then others can relate to and identify with some part of our story. Touching their heart and mind

storytelling is key

the story plot of Linden is:  Second Life - Your World, Your Imagination

changing this up for a moment.  Second Life - Your World, Your Story

Your Imagination is a tool to create a story.  Your Story is real even when it is imagined. Your Story is about you, you doing something that is happening. Is not about a tool in your possession

if I was the boss. I would make 2-3 minute promo vids, movie trailer style, which touches the heart and mind of the watcher.  A vid which tells a story about a greater story. The greater story being you, the person watching the vid

each vid having a central character, with supporting characters

examples: In the Bryn Oh case. Our character/avatar is an art lover and collector. They see the work thru their own eyes and relate to the audience what they think it is about. Then our character meets the artist character. O.M.G !!  Not Bryn Oh the real world person, Bryn Oh the inworld character who relates to our hero thru the medium of SL within the artwork itself

a more every day example. Linden Homes.  Our story character/avatar gets a home. There is nothing in this story about webpages or buttons to click on. Our story is about the new homeowner. Our character tells their story of moving in, furnishing it, making it habitable. Making it their home. With a few friends who drop by during the story, like helping out by moving stuff about. Ending in the kind of contentment being expressed, which every home/nest maker can relate too

another every day example.  Getting ready for the ball. Story opens in our dressing room. All the tribulations of what to wear. Our friend in the room, chatting away trying to give helpful advice, like they do, being nosey about who we going to the ball with. All the conversations that happen in these situations. Ending with our date, at the door. We make our grand appearance, and all swoons happily ever after

and so on. A story about a character riding a horse. Sailing. Encountering a mer. A road trip. Hooking up with some absolutely adorable person at a club. A story about a picnic and bicycles. etc etc

a story done live gamer podcast style. Looting on Linden Realms, and gamer styling other such action games in SL also in real time

culture can be seen as some higher level abstract. Culture tho is also seen in ordinary every day things, in ordinary every day lives. And for most of us in Second Life this is what we do - ordinary every day things. And when our story is told well then you, the audience, can relate to it, and when so then this is your story also

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4 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The irony of this statement perfectly highlights why many people are so quick to lose interest in Second Life even after they try it.

I know...I know...I realized it as I was typing it.

SL has it's redundancies.  

I have, myself, fallen into redundancies.  

But, honestly, in the video I watched here it is just running down corridors, up and down stairs and through doors to kill robots.

This is the video (my first view of Roblox)...I have not seen other videos.

 

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18 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

Your Imagination is a tool to create a story.  Your Story is real even when it is imagined. Your Story is about you, you doing something that is happening. Is not about a tool in your possession

if I was the boss. I would make 2-3 minute promo vids, movie trailer style, which touches the heart and mind of the watcher.  A vid which tells a story about a greater story. The greater story being you, the person watching the vid

Yes.  This is it exactly.

19 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

a more every day example. Linden Homes.  Our story character/avatar gets a home. There is nothing in this story about webpages or buttons to click on. Our story is about the new homeowner. Our character tells their story of moving in, furnishing it, making it habitable. Making it their home. With a few friends who drop by during the story, like helping out by moving stuff about. Ending in the kind of contentment being expressed, which every home/nest maker can relate too

That is what I am trying to accomplish in the travelogue posts that I have been putting in the Linden Homes subforum.  I could be simply posting a set of photos from a particular part of Bellisseria, but I find it more interesting to use the photos to tell the story of a short exploration.  I'm not just showing a set of slides, I am providing a narrative that says what I am feeling as I visit places, complete with the sort of silly asides that I would interject if you and I were looking through photos that I took along the way.  I have no idea how well I am drawing other people into my story, but it makes sense to me.  If I were making videos to "sell" SL to potential residents, that's exactly how I would do it.

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22 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yes.  This is it exactly.

That is what I am trying to accomplish in the travelogue posts that I have been putting in the Linden Homes subforum.  I could be simply posting a set of photos from a particular part of Bellisseria, but I find it more interesting to use the photos to tell the story of a short exploration.  I'm not just showing a set of slides, I am providing a narrative that says what I am feeling as I visit places, complete with the sort of silly asides that I would interject if you and I were looking through photos that I took along the way.  I have no idea how well I am drawing other people into my story, but it makes sense to me.  If I were making videos to "sell" SL to potential residents, that's exactly how I would do it.

Or find totally repulsive.  "I do this in real life.  Why the hell would I want to do it on my computer?"

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7 hours ago, Soft Linden said:

Thank you! I saw the tweet. While I'm not part of marketing, I'll make sure they get a link to this discussion.

In the mean time, are there examples of other companies' marketing which you think our team should look to for inspiration or positive examples?

Have you seen Second Life user-generated materials where you thought to yourself, "the Linden Lab marketing team should have been the ones doing this?"

Those aren't just questions for Luca. I'm sure they'd value any useful examples or inspiration.

The best "ad" I ever saw for SL was the video "A Year In the Life" created by Pooky Amsterdam (Pooky Media).  It's still up on YouTube and I don't know how many times I've watched it and smiled.  I think this was actually commissioned by the Lab, but I've never seen it anywhere but on YouTube.

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I think that if we were willing to tell our family and friends about SL, asked them to join, and offered to help get them set up would make a bigger impact than any marketing. 

Person to person referrals and recommendations are what most people like. 

So many people (not all) however wish to remain anonymous and don't want anyone in their RL to know that they're on SL.

However, what we can do, and still remain anonymous is tell online friends about SL in places where you don't have your rl info.

If some people have an online anonymous presence on social media, it's a great way of getting the word out. Be it Facebook, Inst, Twitter, blogs etc.

Regarding games like Roblox, etc, those are trendy things. They'll soon die out. But, guess how their userbase grew? Word of mouth. 

For those wishing to help grow SL's userbase, do similar things as mentioned above. Word of mouth advertising while still being anonymous!

Edited by ClariceRose
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8 minutes ago, ClariceRose said:

Regarding games like Roblox, etc, those are trendy things. They'll soon die out. But, guess how their userbase grew? Word of mouth. 

>trendy things 

more like constant extreme growth since 2015. When i first played as a kid in 2008 there there 1.1 million accounts. They’re up to about 950 million now, and still going.

Their userbase originally grew via word of mouth but also YouTube advertisements, banner ads on flash game websites, they also got in early to a social media presence. These days they’re massively advertised on YouTube, they have irl merch that kids buy, they even have TV advertisements. They are far from being shared via word of mouth by this point.

Its not good enough for SL. We need features that draw in users and we need to advertise those features to the audience that will want them. Make content creation simple and easy, advertise the easy to use virtual world where you can do anything. A 5 second youtube ad does more for Roblox than little Johnny telling his cousin about the cool new online legos game these days.

Think of Blender tutorial and showcase you tubers. Their audience is people interested in 3D modeling and casual creation. Stick an unstoppable 5 second ad about SecondLife in their videos and you’d get a lot of ad views towards a user base that would enjoy something like SL for the content creation aspect.

Pic related:

FEFC8E5F-BC48-42D3-90CE-A83881A33103.thumb.png.b5e0891feb4351bdafc152af049f4cbf.png

get SL on this guys ad provider list or sponsor him, that’s 1.1m subscribers, that’s 1.1m people exposed to SL at minimum, not including the audience that isn’t subscribed.

”Learn how to use your blender creations in a virtual world, SecondLife”


But off topic, considering Roblox or VRChat trendy and something that will die off soon is a very out of touch view. Every single kid under the age of 15 plays Roblox, and due to the age of the game, chances are a solid portion of anyone in their mid 20’s has played it at some point. It brings in a stupid amount of revenue, to the extent that developers of the larger and more popular games on the platform are no longer offering virtual currency as payment for new talent, they’re offering 5 figure salaries:

83F7E9DF-7847-4BE9-B0A2-EDCDFD8B73E9.thumb.png.b2401324e648c2bd784e128da19ce685.png
What SL property, club, rental, whatever is pulling in enough money via cash outs to fund a 40+ member development team with 60k USD a year?

VRchat is a different story, they got in as first and most usable for a virtual world with virtual reality headsets. Headsets being optional but if you want to wear your VR setup and do whatever in a virtual world, you do it in VRChat. They ain’t going anywhere unless someone can compete. While VR is far from an everyday technology it’s not going anywhere any time soon.

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To simplify my posts, the audience for SL is there, people want a casual creation game where you can do whatever you want.

But SL is archaic in its implementation. The creation features need to be changed, the monetization aspect of the game needs to be changed, the engine of the game needs to be changed.

Because content creation is too complex for a casual user to figure out easily, everything requires L$, and the game runs like complete ass.

Change the game to be more friendly to that audience, advertise directly to that audience, and SL will receive that audience. 
 

What does SL sit at every day, 50k users under peak hours? Slice off even a tiny portion of Robloxs daily user base, provide the older users with a more detailed creation platform, there’s a lot to take from 20 million active users at any given time. Add that to hobbyist modelers, aspiring game designers, even just people looking for a virtual platform for artwork. Properly advertise to the right people, via the right YouTube sponsors, advertisements or twitter and google ads, plenty of people will play SL.

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10 minutes ago, cheesecurd said:

To simplify my posts, the audience for SL is there, people want a casual creation game where you can do whatever you want.

But SL is archaic in its implementation. The creation features need to be changed, the monetization aspect of the game needs to be changed, the engine of the game needs to be changed.

Because content creation is too complex for a casual user to figure out easily, everything requires L$, and the game runs like complete ass.

Change the game to be more friendly to that audience, advertise directly to that audience, and SL will receive that audience. 
 

What does SL sit at every day, 50k users under peak hours? Slice off even a tiny portion of Robloxs daily user base, provide the older users with a more detailed creation platform, there’s a lot to take from 20 million active users at any given time. Add that to hobbyist modelers, aspiring game designers, even just people looking for a virtual platform for artwork. Properly advertise to the right people, via the right YouTube sponsors, advertisements or twitter and google ads, plenty of people will play SL.

I agree that marketing is needed. However to get some traction going, do word of mouth. 

Maybe LL has not invested in heavy marketing because it's just not in their budget currently. They were also focused on trying to grow Sansar until recently. 

Word of mouth can start to get the ball rolling. 

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Speaking of word of mouth...with a SL TinyLand...the parents could find out there is a separate world just for them called Second Life.  

When I tell my family and friends about SL or show them pictures...one of my sisters says "I could never understand how you make that!" she and her hubby have a pc but the pc is more for his business...the other would never give up her cell phone life.  Most others in my family are FB addicts...they want interaction with real people. 

But, word of mouth spreads quickly through children and then parents could find out there is something for them too when the kids go to sleep.

Just a suggestion because all those kids buying on Roblox aren't buying without Mom and Dad.  And so, this is how Mom and Dad find out about SL for adults through Second Life's TinyLand.   Or, the parents may want to be on TinyLand with their kids dodging killer bees or what-have-you.  

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5 hours ago, cheesecurd said:

Think of Blender tutorial and showcase you tubers. Their audience is people interested in 3D modeling and casual creation. Stick an unstoppable 5 second ad about SecondLife in their videos and you’d get a lot of ad views towards a user base that would enjoy something like SL for the content creation aspect.

There is actually someone who uses SL to present a year-long series of weekly Blender tutorials!  Maybe LL could showcase that!  Contact the group Blender Benders.

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I'm looking forward to seeing the iPhone client for SL. That will make SL more socially useful. Someone will IM you in-world, it hits your phone as an email, you tap the link in the email, the mobile viewer launches, and there you are, talking to them.

Hint to LL: make sure that in the mobile version, tapping on an SL URL launches the viewer, logs you in, and puts you there facing the person who IMd you, with no intermediate clicking or menus. One touch and you're in-world with your friends.

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I'd like to add that Roblox is mainly for children from about 6 to 12 years old. The graphics and gameplay are quite simple and definitely oriented for kids. I do get a sense that it has the tools and the game engine needed to create games. I see Facebook Horizon shaping up to have the same style of game creation tools and essentially making itself a Roblox 2.0 for teens and adults.

I wish that LL's mobile SL client will have graphics. Maybe just a 10 meter viewing distance would work.

As far as advertising goes, I think LL should give examples of what can be done in SL. Maybe a short video of an avatar singing at a small venue or an avatar shopping and finding the perfect clothes. Perhaps a video of a few avatars roleplaying as wizards and someone has to quickly build a magical book to use in their story. 

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