"Your target audience doesn't exist"

[animats]

Another background article, "Your Target Audience Doesn't Exist", which gives some insight into why SL has growth problems.

"Each multiplayer game is a cultural self-reinforcing phenomenon, relying on its perceived popularity more than on its market share. It’s not enough to just offer a superior product with better marketing and brand recognition to convince people to switch from League of Legends to, say, Infinite Crisis. Yes, the latter has DC characters, TV series, comic books and even some movies. But the former was here first and didn’t just create the market — it is the market."

it turns out that there are only about 1.3 million US gamers who try a lot of different games. Most stick to a very small number of very popular games. This comes from an analysis of Steam usage data.

Yes, it's games rather than virtual worlds, but the same principles apply. This is worth a read, and some thought.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Why should there be growth?

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Why should there be growth?

That's a great question! In business, "growth" is usually something that "public" companies (or those with stock) must strive for to satisfy stakeholders / stockholders / "the market". Gotta have hope that income and profits grow forever.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Why should there be growth?

If you don't grow, you're stagnant. If you're stagnant, you risk going under.

SL is stagnant, or at least that's my perception of this game/platform I've spent more than half my lifetime on. 😛

[Aiyumei]

Did you seriously compared the most played MOBA game ever with some DC wanna be? 

4 hours ago, animats said:

it turns out that there are only about 1.3 million US gamers who try a lot of different games.

And what about the rest of the world? Surely the US is not the only country that exists on the planet like it's depicted in most "saving the planet" movies. I don't consider myself to be a gamer at all, like AT ALL. And I have 40 games just in my steam. Typical gamers try everything that catches their eye, has good story and immersion and is able to keep them engaged for hours. That means even playing chess or some card game online.

Quote

Games aren’t products
But games, especially big ones, aren’t consumer products. I’d go as far as to say that each multiplayer game is a cultural self-reinforcing phenomenon, relying on its perceived popularity more than on its market share.

With this statement in the article the author proves he's completely clueless about gaming, as games ARE products, they fall under entertainment in the software development industry and are invested most in because it's one of the most competitive markets as it is the industry with the highest revenue and earnings.

Example: Dota 2 2022 total prize pool is 45,000,000 USD

There is no tournament in the world where the prize pool for winning it is such high amount.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Aiyumei

[Sid Nagy]

19 Years now. And still successful enough to put efforts in it to develop things. That can be considered as a very long successful run for a game\platform.
Impossible if there was no target audience.
SL caters to a niche market for sure, but the niche is big enough to get the ticker well over the 25 mark if RL economy doesn't go belly up in a real big way, in the near future.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[ChinRey]

8 hours ago, animats said:

Another background article, "Your Target Audience Doesn't Exist", which gives some insight into why SL has growth problems.

...

it turns out that there are only about 1.3 million US gamers who try a lot of different games. Most stick to a very small number of very popular games. This comes from an analysis of Steam usage data.

Yes, it's games rather than virtual worlds, but the same principles apply. This is worth a read, and some thought.

Yes but this also explains why SL has the staying power it has. It is not an attractive product for new customers, that's a fact. But it is the only attractive product for most of its existing customer base. They wouldn't move to a different platform even if somebody came up with an alternative that was vastly superior in every way.

Edited June 15, 2022 by ChinRey

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

If you don't grow, you're stagnant. If you're stagnant, you risk going under.

SL is stagnant, or at least that's my perception of this game/platform I've spent more than half my lifetime on

Those two statements seems to contradict each other. Has SL been risking going under for the past decade? Were there any signs?

Also, are 'stagnant' and non-growth really the same at all? You can still change and improve, but not grow, right?

Edited June 15, 2022 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

If you don't grow, you're stagnant. If you're stagnant, you risk going under.

SL is stagnant, or at least that's my perception of this game/platform I've spent more than half my lifetime on. 😛

Well you know how it goes..we all gotta die someday!

Even Sears went out of business!

*Edit* Another word for "stagnant" is..."stable"!

Edited June 15, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Sid Nagy]

31 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

 They wouldn't move to a different paltform even if somebody came up with an alternative that was vastly superior in every way.

Well, I would at least test the waters there if a vastly superior alternative would show up.
Especially if it had better in world building and creation tools and/or a way easier avatar enhancement system.

But I don't think such a new platform would cater to a really new and bigger user group that SL is doing right now.
The world as a whole isn't waiting for this kind of platforms, that we love so much, IMHO. It is definitely a niche market.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

41 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Those two statements seems to contradict each other. Has SL been risking going under for the past decade? Were there any signs?

Also, are 'stagnant' and non-growth really the same at all? You can still change and improve, but not grow, right?

So far SL is the only really profitable product in the LL basket. So they have to live with a not-growing reality of their product.
That doesn't mean that LL did not try to land something that could hit a grow market (Sansar, Tilia, Blockworlds, Patterns, Desura) So far not really successful, but they know they need to keep trying, because SL will close it's gates somewhere in the future.
Maybe in a few years, maybe after another decade, but it will stop to be profitable at one point in the future, because SL is not growing in a healthy way.
They need another success to stay alive long term, because SL is going nowhere despite a lot of efforts like the shiniest added and Bellisseria development.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Ayashe Ninetails]

7 hours ago, animats said:

it turns out that there are only about 1.3 million US gamers who try a lot of different games. Most stick to a very small number of very popular games. This comes from an analysis of Steam usage data.

This article was written in 2015? So then, that 1.3 million number isn't even accurate for Steam anymore (and neither are his other stats). Also, a ton of other platforms now exist. If you're interested in up-to-date Steam data, try poking around on https://steamdb.info/. 

Keep in mind that Steam is only one platform among many. Epic didn't even exist in its current form when he wrote that (Epic Games Store released in late 2018), and tons of people use that (thanks to Epic exclusives and the hundreds of free games they've given out weekly over the last 2-3 years). So it's hard to say what games gamers "stick to" when only looking at Steam.

Just using myself as an example, the majority of my game collection is not on Steam, but spread across many, many different portals and launchers. I have Game Pass for PC, Epic, Origin, Steam, GOG, Itch.io (houses my largest collection at 1,700+ games - thanks to an insanely cheap charity bundle that went viral), independent MMO launchers not tied to any platform, Battle.net, Big Fish Games, Ubisoft/Uplay, and...I'm probably missing some others in there. Yes - I use them all. Many of us do - at least until Microsoft eats everything. 😂

There are also quite a few popular games that aren't on Steam at all (Epic exclusives, games you download direct like Escape from Tarkov, etc.). And of course - consoles. And mobile. Both of those markets are insane on their own.

I game daily (across numerous genres), but open Steam only a few times a week. 

GOG might be a better thing to analyze, if possible, considering there's now a launcher (GOG Galaxy 2.0) that allows you to link all of your platforms and compile your complete gaming library into just one single launcher. Not sure if anyone can get usage stats on that, though. And I'm not sure how many people even use it. It's still in Beta, I believe.

 

Besides being out of date, though, that article is kind of confusing. I'm not really sure what he's saying there, but it could be a lack of caffeine on my part.

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

They wouldn't move to a different platform even if somebody came up with an alternative that was vastly superior in every way.

If that were true, I would still be in AW, not SL.

[Silent Mistwalker]

27 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

This article was written in 2015?

So, no longer even relevant in 2022. 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

Most games I see out these days have another team already working on the next version of the game..

Lifespan for most is like 3 to 5 years..

They get their target audience and then resell them the next version after it's ready for the market.

 

ETA: I would compare SL more to steam or Upaly or something with many versions of things than just a thing on it's own..

Edited June 15, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Ayashe Ninetails]

3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

So, no longer even relevant in 2022. 

 

Not sure how relevant it'd be in 2015 either. There's a lot of conflicting info in there. At least, to my uncaffeinated brain.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

5 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

If you don't grow, you're stagnant. If you're stagnant, you risk going under.

SL is stagnant, or at least that's my perception of this game/platform I've spent more than half my lifetime on

Those two statements seems to contradict each other. Has SL been risking going under for the past decade? Were there any signs?

Also, are 'stagnant' and non-growth really the same at all? You can still change and improve, but not grow, right?

Most people who are aware of SL are either long-time residents, aren't residents and are surprised it still exists, or know it as "that place with the weird people."

Sure there's new people, and private sims ran out during the pandemic, but SL doesn't seem very attractive overall to new people who aren't interested in all the sex stuff.

And sure, you can totally exist for a long time with a non-changing userbase. Just look at EVE Online. But once you hit the point where you start losing your long-time users, it becomes very difficult to recover unless you can quickly innovate into something that'll bring in new users. That's why it's risky. The signs are all over the place, from the "veterancy" of current residents (new users don't stay, high veterancy), to the new user experience, the massive technical debt of the viewer and (lack of) its accessibility and modernization, the "never break existing content from 20 years ago" policy, and so many other things that affect how the platform can (not) change for the future.

Second Life is a monolithic project and LL keeps adding stuff to it while maintaining backward compatibility with as much of the past as possible, slowing down development over time. They'll need more people, and time, but it'll get tough if the userbase can't accommodate it. It'll get even tougher when the long-time employees start leaving as well, causing more work for new employees that come after them. I think there's still stuff in SL that nobody really knows how it works.

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Well you know how it goes..we all gotta die someday!

Even Sears went out of business!

*Edit* Another word for "stagnant" is..."stable"!

Not wrong!

Edited June 15, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

6 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

non-changing [...] innovate [...] modernization [...] change for the future

It still seems to me that these would not necessarily require growth at all. Just improvement.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Just now, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

It still seems to me that these would not necessarily require growth at all. Just improvement.

I added more to my ramblings about why I think that's not viable in the long term with how things are. 🙂

[Lindal Kidd]

49 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Just using myself as an example, the majority of my game collection is not on Steam, but spread across many, many different portals and launchers

Wow. I must be the other end of that spectrum. I have about four Steam games, and SL. I tried downloading some titles I'd enjoyed from my First Ever PC days (Wing Commander!) from Great Old Games, but could not get them running.  That's All, Folks!

[Love Zhaoying]

It's just "very controlled growth".

Whaddaya want, cancer-like growth?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Well you know how it goes..we all gotta die someday!

Individual life forms, yes. SL, like Sears, on the other hand, is a collective. A social colony, as it were. Like entire species, or taxonomical clusters, it has the potential to far outlive an individual lifespan. Similarly, life itself, as we know it been around for about 3.8 Gigayears. Interestingly, it seems to me that, after all these 3.8 Gy, we are, right now, at a unique moment in time, in which information transfer is about to switch from DNA replication in cellular and multi-cellular life to digital data exchange of information through radio waves and in silico. It may take a few more centuries or even millennia, but that's a blink of an eye on the geological timescale. However, this switch in mechanism of information transfer is profound, far beyond the significance of even the survival of the human species. Who knows what role Second Life and its potential offspring may play in that.

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Wow. I must be the other end of that spectrum. I have about four Steam games, and SL. I tried downloading some titles I'd enjoyed from my First Ever PC days (Wing Commander!) from Great Old Games, but could not get them running.  That's All, Folks!

Some of the older games can be super finicky on newer systems, yeah. If you got them from GOG.com, they should work in theory, but you still might face technical issues sometimes. Occasionally, a mod is made to help with that, but not always. It kind of sucks! I love playing retro stuff, too, but thankfully, GOG has all of my old favorites on there now - tweaked to run on newer systems.

Did you peek at the game forum on there? There should be a link to it on the main sales page. Sometimes you can find solutions to tech issues there.

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Well, I would at least test the waters there if a vastly superior alternative would show up.

33 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

If that were true, I would still be in AW, not SL.

Yes but I don't think either of you are representative for the majority of SL users. The fact that you are active on the forums is enough proof of that.

[Rachel1206]

I find that article hard to take serious, it is like the old academic saying: There are numbers, lies and statistics! [trustworthiness highest on left]

Numbers of users on the different game platforms indicate potential target audience is much higher.

EA Games: 500 million
Epic: 194 million
Steam: 120 million

Sony Playstation: 114 million
Micosoft XBox: 100 million
Nitendo: 100 million

Some numbers from single games where Minecraft has a staggering 738 million users and Microsoft Solitaire (still!) has 400 millions users. In top it is the free games like Battlegrounds, Candy Crush on social platforms topping. While the big games like Grand Theft Auto V, APEX Legends has 100-120 million users.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Rachel1206
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