What happens when SL becomes very popular very fast?

[Alwin Alcott]

17 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

What happens when SL becomes very popular very fast?

don't worry ... it won't

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, SeattleChris said:

I came back a second time for lurrrrrve.

Thought I heard my name!

* wink * Hey, there!

[Love Zhaoying]

24 minutes ago, animats said:

Could we tone down the drama a bit, please, before the ban hammer people get here?

Seriously! I thought THIS thread got whacked earlier, but 'twas another. 

My personal hope and thought is: These other metaverses are probably not going to work out, for all the reasons we know - and someday people will notice us over here, "not dead yet" - and by then, who knows? Maybe we'll get some attention again?

[Istelathis]

25 minutes ago, animats said:

A key point is making the first hour fun. That's hard. SL is terrible at that.

Perhaps if they were to expand upon user generated content, where people could easily make their own games it would provide a larger audience for those seeking independent game creators.  The benefit for such creators would be that there is a base of users that already exists in Second Life that would be available to play in that new content.

SL I think, needs to build off of its strength's that already exist.  Provide more tools for creation, expand upon those that already exist, simplify it where it can be done, and market the hell out of it.  For creators of projects, provide inexpensive land where they will feel more incentivized to come to SL, at least until they have established themselves.

SL may not need to make the first hour fun, they might find they have a lot of people will do it for them.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

Perhaps if they were to expand upon user generated content, where people could easily make their own games it would provide a larger audience for those seeking independent game creators.  The benefit for such creators would be that there is a base of users that already exists in Second Life that would be available to play in that new content.

SL I think, needs to build off of its strength's that already exist.  Provide more tools for creation, expand upon those that already exist, simplify it where it can be done, and market the hell out of it.  For creators of projects, provide inexpensive land where they will feel more incentivized to come to SL, at least until they have established themselves.

SL may not need to make the first hour fun, they might find they have a lot of people will do it for them.

I am actually trying to create tools to make "games" within SL easier to create. So, I agree with you.

[SeattleChris]

21 minutes ago, SeattleChris said:

I've often thought a "training wheels" hud might be a good offering for noobs. Sort of a video game style panel with movement buttons (and keyboard commands listed in smaller type for reference), etc. Just until the basics feel less like rocket science and more like ... left foot, right foot. But maybe another possibility would be achievement tracks. Visit 10 of these places and get a badge or something. I don't know, I don't want to video-game SL too much, but I sort of think we might have to trick people into realizing they get to create their own fun.

Other things I thought (in my extremely un-expert opinion) might be good moves for Second Life: for Linden Lab to introduce an OpenAvatar project, sort of the way they did with OpenSimulator. With the idea of moving forward a standard for avatars that could potentially facilitate maintaining appearances across platforms.

Or to un-fork OpenSimulator and work to introduce some meaningful security, then make the Second Life asset dabatase a service an OpenSim region owner could subscribe to.

If something kills Second Life, I suspect it will be the same thing that kills many companies: the rate at which change happens is changing. Companies become rigid and inflexible as their bones settle. Decentralization might not be the worst option for SL, but there are probably better ways to mix things up and still keep it together.

[Arielle Popstar]

14 minutes ago, SeattleChris said:

I've often thought a "training wheels" hud might be a good offering for noobs. Sort of a video game style panel with movement buttons (and keyboard commands listed in smaller type for reference), etc. Just until the basics feel less like rocket science and more like ... left foot, right foot. But maybe another possibility would be achievement tracks. Visit 10 of these places and get a badge or something. I don't know, I don't want to video-game SL too much, but I sort of think we might have to trick people into realizing they get to create their own fun.

Instead of "stinking badges," using a similar thing that has been very successful for IMVU is Promo Credits, or in the case here, "Promo Lindens". They are basically valueless other then for the new people to have a goal and get a start in using the Marketplace. For the stores they are of little to no value but at least gives those new people a goal and reason to come back if they for a daily login, were to receive as an example 50-100 Promo Lindens. The alternative is for the Lindens to put out the old money trees that some of us at least used in the early part years as a motivation to keep coming back. Giving new people something tangible that can motivate them to continue coming and furthering their education of S/L as they run around to pick up free Lindens and then learn to spend and benefit from the purchases.

[Flea Yatsenko]

I think the real problem with SL is stability and availability. In early SL days, there wasn't much competition. When I first logged in, it was something amazing and there really wasn't anything like that a long time ago. Now, there's a lot more. But if you are trying to get into SL, and you don't really have anything that's motivating you to go in, and you try and log in and something's broken, you just go somewhere else. it used to be you'd keep trying to get into SL because you didn't have any sort of alternative.

We are almost two weeks into October, of those 13 days, the 1st, 9th, and 10th are the only days there wasn't any sort of issue with the grid status (maintenance or restarts). Now, when SL was the only thing like it, people could deal with that maintenance. Now, if SL has problems they just start up a game or a different service (like VRChat) and forget about SL.

I actually think SL is still a great platform, even with all the legacy cruft that comes with it. Even with VRChat being a copyright infringement free for all there's still more quality content in SL.  But the times have changed, SL doesn't stand out like it used to, and if there's something wrong with the grid, it's a lot easier to just leave for something else than it is to try and get in.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think SL needs some sort of crazy new feature to thrust itself into the limelight for huge growth. It needs to fix what's stopping people from staying around. And personally I think it's due to the overall stability of the grid. People today have zero patience compared to 10 years ago, they aren't going to deal with problems. They're just going to leave.

[Persephone Emerald]

4 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

People need a little forced interaction in their lives. Like those times in real life when you are shopping for groceries, going to the mall, or standing in line at the post office. A place in SL where you will find yourself thinking about what you are going to do in SL and decide to just ask the stranger standing next to you wondering the same thing. Maybe all LL needs to do is make a small change in the login algorithm and send people back to public welcome areas at random time intervals. If the whole population of SL is sent back to the welcome areas once in a while this may generate more interaction and socialization.

Imagine someone has logged out naked. Then instead of logging in at home like they expected, they find themself at a random socialization hub. Still sounds like a good idea?

Edited October 13, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Persephone Emerald said:

Imagine someone has logged out naked. Then instead of logging in at home like they expected, they find themself a random socialization hub. Still sounds like a good idea?

Sounds like a great excuse to TP into socialization hubs nekkid!

[Sid Nagy]

If SL ever wants to be booming again, it will need new features, that brings new usability.
What exactly, I don't know, but I'm certain that it isn't provided in the technical fields like better shades, more realistic graphics, nicer avatars, more shiny homes and other stuff.

The market for people who want to shell out money over and over again to look nice and live in a nice place online is already cornered. There is very little growth to be expected in that department.
People need to be able to do other things than we can do now. Big question: What?

Edited October 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[vanettda Lassard]

18 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The following is a true story. It happened in 2007, just before the television and hollywood writers strike. Massive numbers of television viewers logged into Second Life. What happened next is both amazing and depressing....

How to build a Metaverse - Part 3

I found it interesting to think about this time period as being similar to what happened with the COVID lockdowns. People logged into SL who had never used a platform like this before. Some stayed, but most didn't. Why?, and what could Linden Lab do now to keep the SL user numbers from crashing again?

I wrote a very insightful response to this question that would have surely influenced everybody who read it, and cleared the fog of uncertainty, then the internet ate it. I think that was a sign. So… 800 words distilled down to this: I can’t speak for why people leave or stay. I stayed because of the empty echo of the grid and the call to put my fingerprint on it. The learning curve wasn’t an obstacle, it was a boss challenge. The lack of narrative wasn’t daunting, it was compelling; what would I make of this Second Life? Some people want to be thrust into a world of other peoples creativity, I wanted to create a world for other peoples thrusting (Laugh track here). I stay because of the endless potential of each sunrise in SL. I’m not sure how to market this. Philip wanted to create a place of community where residents make the rules (Be Nice). Meta wants to create an office building with a mall where every avatar is tracked and monetized.

Edited October 13, 2022 by vanettda Lassard

[Love Zhaoying]

I thought new users WERE given a HUD to wear while learning the basics. Someone mentioned that earlier as a "SL should have".

[Gabriele Graves]

3 hours ago, animats said:

I'm trying to figure out how to make SL better. SL isn't growing. But some of the competitors are.

Isn't it true though that the "competitors" that are growing are in fact primarily games with a side-serving of virtual world aspects?

Are we really surprised that games are popular?  It doesn't necessarily translate to being able to switch that around to make a virtual world with a side-serving of games as popular.  I don't see the two directly equivalent and clearly the mass market of gamers doesn't seem to be interested in SL.

Has anybody else done better at growing the is-a-virtual-world-primarily market into mass market appeal?  We should really only be examining any that have because services that are primarily games will always be popular amongst gamers.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

2 hours ago, SeattleChris said:

Other things I thought (in my extremely un-expert opinion) might be good moves for Second Life: for Linden Lab to introduce an OpenAvatar project, sort of the way they did with OpenSimulator. With the idea of moving forward a standard for avatars that could potentially facilitate maintaining appearances across platforms.

Or to un-fork OpenSimulator and work to introduce some meaningful security, then make the Second Life asset dabatase a service an OpenSim region owner could subscribe to.

If something kills Second Life, I suspect it will be the same thing that kills many companies: the rate at which change happens is changing. Companies become rigid and inflexible as their bones settle. Decentralization might not be the worst option for SL, but there are probably better ways to mix things up and still keep it together.

That was what High Fidelity and Sansar was the walled prison version of it. both failed.

We are not going to see a SL replacement as no one is going to spend lots of money in a possible replacement because it will be based on controlling everything you say or do (remember in sansar they made it to were you logged in you have to rezz in first at the welcome center but before you could log in at home they just decided for you for there reasons) all the data mining and trying to link it to your real life its all going to fail.

Second Life might be clunky at times but I still have most of my RL freedoms in it.  western society is dying and maybe decades from now when new countries & cultures emerge maybe some of your ideas might be feasible & beneficial but for now we have the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer. so all these open projects your dreaming of will likely have to wait we cannot have a free internet when as example in the USA 1% of the elites own or control 87% of the land and resources in the country.

Any open free internet has to be backed by a real free open real life. SL was just ahead of the curve like a joules Verne novel. many decades.

[SeattleChris]

1 hour ago, NevaehHeartstrings said:

That was what High Fidelity and Sansar was the walled prison version of it. both failed.

We are not going to see a SL replacement as no one is going to spend lots of money in a possible replacement because it will be based on controlling everything you say or do (remember in sansar they made it to were you logged in you have to rezz in first at the welcome center but before you could log in at home they just decided for you for there reasons) all the data mining and trying to link it to your real life its all going to fail.

Second Life might be clunky at times but I still have most of my RL freedoms in it.  western society is dying and maybe decades from now when new countries & cultures emerge maybe some of your ideas might be feasible & beneficial but for now we have the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer. so all these open projects your dreaming of will likely have to wait we cannot have a free internet when as example in the USA 1% of the elites own or control 87% of the land and resources in the country.

Any open free internet has to be backed by a real free open real life. SL was just ahead of the curve like a joules Verne novel. many decades.

I don't know how this turned into a geopolitical discussion, but let me try to get back to the subject at hand: there are open standards for how the internet works. Always have been, or we wouldn't be able to send and receive emails, view web pages, etc etc. I don't think we'll need to achieve a shining age of reason before we see new ones.

What I'm thinking is about the opposite of what I felt in Sansar, which just seemed like the SL destinations panel that one used to tp to various boxes of other people's things. I'm just watching the world of virtual spaces slowly shift and am thinking for ways LL might shift with it. Adopting standards and having more than one way in which to use Second Life's assets seem like possibilities. That's all. Just SL; not most of the civilized world.

A subscription model to the Second Life asset database for use on other virtual grids that run on already extant software LL gave away for free years ago I wouldn't expect to be a free service at all, but a way for LL (and perhaps content creators) to further monetize their efforts and keep the whole ship afloat.

Yeah, I'm all for SL sticking around and having a future. I just don't think that future will look exactly like the past, so I'm sticking in my two cents. I'll leave worrying about the fall of humanity to better minds than mine.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, animats said:

I'm trying to figure out how to make SL better. SL isn't growing. But some of the competitors are.

The thing is .. 

We can't do that (especially not here, on the forums).

LL are not going to pick up hints and ideas, strategies, talking points, vision, or any of the thousand thing they need and don't even recognize they need from anything we say here.

Even really dumb and obvious stuff like .. 

Replace the crappy mixed vague messaging on the front page with a single simple statement - JOIN SL - MAKE FRIENDS

.. not just because they won't, but because they can't. 

 

We're here everyday and will continue to be here everyday, sinking our time, creative energies, hearts, hopes and dreams into SL.

LL are ... off doing whatever LL do. As a corporation they've proven demonstrably bad at building and growing SL (or any other entertainment product or platform). As individual Linden's & Moles (the ones who interact with us anyway), they're awesome and committed and passionate.

This isn't a shocking. This is over a decade of slowly coasting into the floor dragging the fallen corpses of 'branch out' products behind us. Where would we be now if we had gotten a Sansar's amount of Linden enthusiasm .. rather than a development drought that ended in the cloud. How's Tilly doing, gotten any new customers lately .. sure wish the money had been spent here.

Virtual worlds, the future of everything, your world, your imagination .. has fallen a long long way since those heady days. Tilly .. the future of .. the virtual gig economy where high skilled digital artists get ground to the bone for pennies .. yaaaaaaaaaay. Look at the fee structure .. woooooooo. 

 

SL should be the most fun you can have on the internet.

 

It's not us. SL wouldn't be better if it had people other than us. This isn't up to us. We can't fix this. Neither can LL as it stands.

In the early days, LL were breaking ground faster than they could run, the hype was infectious, Philip was our king and we would follow him anywhere. We took that energy and we evangelized. We dragged everyone who would listen here in the hope they could see the magic too.

[Andred Darwin]

I think SL is getting better, after the new ownership, things are changing fast than ever, and changing for the better, it will take a little while to see the full results, this "world financial crisis" is not helping much either.

Will not be easy to crack that new user experience... not everyone is equal... you could guess and be creative as much as you want.. it will never be one thing fits all, maybe instead of one way, have a few options or "first things to do" aligned to what they want or expect?

Be that see places of interest/landscapes, visit a club, meet new people, cultural places (XXX lol)… provide a really nice, modern starter avatar (picture worthy), so they can “look good/feel good” (close to what they see on pictures, blog, flickr, etc.) at first rez and not scare the c**p out of them to learn and spend a lot of money to customize your avatar right out of the gate. (If they stay, they will to get to that later!)

For sure, the first few people they meet, and the first few places they visit in-world will shape half of what they will think about SL, and half way through the "Will I come back?" answer.

The viewer performance got a lot better... the new "materials" work looks promising! I just wish they fixed or improved some things first, before adding more stuff, it got to be easier to tweak the viewer to match your machine performance and current scene you are visiting.

A fellow with a gaming machine should be able to easily (if not ready from the start ) enable all the cool features that generates a nicer SL experience, way higher LOD setting from the start, it just "su**s" to login with a new installation of the official viewer, half, if not more off all objects are just deformed,  "texture blurring", LOD changing in some places at every turn (which is really irritating on the official viewer )…, that's not  what they expect using their "gaming machine" … my own machine is by no means the latest, but it can handle almost everything to the max (I only keep draw distance low at 128m), and the viewer, after tweaked, provides a completely different experience compared to a new installation... does first impression matters? (I hear a lot of people saying its only old avatars in SL… login with a default installation of SL viewer on a gaming machine and compare what you see with what it is advertised on the Blog, Destination Guide, Flicker, and you will understand right away…)

On the same note... someone using a machine not really designed for gaming or 3D rendering, should be able to reduce some settings easily enough to make the most of their experience... and the viewer should let them know, in a nice way, that there is not much that can be done about their current machine, it’s a 3D world! Who are we kidding... a built-in graphics card will never be able to handle SL or any other relevant 3D game per say, but options could be “easily” available, so they can enjoy it with what they have at the moment.

Right now it’s like a nightmare for current users and new users to tweak the viewer, a bunch of menus, sliders (I guess its ok for fine tunning, experienced users),  and most of the settings don’t really make a noticeable difference in performance, would be good I guess if they knew right from the start, viewer performance will vary a lot depending on the places and number of avatars present in the same region they are visiting… and a simple screen, was easily accessible to toggle the top 3 main settings that affect performance according to the scene (ALM/Shadows, LOD/draw distance, avatars rendered), the user should be able to toggle them easily since performance perception varies a lot from person to person.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Andred Darwin

[EliseAnne85]

7 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

If SL ever wants to be booming again, it will need new features, that brings new usability.
What exactly, I don't know, but I'm certain that it isn't provided in the technical fields like better shades, more realistic graphics, nicer avatars, more shiny homes and other stuff.

The market for people who want to shell out money over and over again to look nice and live in a nice place online is already cornered. There is very little growth to be expected in that department.
People need to be able to do other things than we can do now. Big question: What?

Find a group or groups of people you connect with.

I build and meet with my friends but I don't want to just go to dancing parties.  However, I am going to be a Dinkie now and give up being human and the tinies of the Shire have a lot of games...many, many games.  Plus, they do other fun stuff or get unusual musicians to come and play like a solo violinist and a person who played the hurdy-gurdy performed for us.  Lots of fun stuff is not very explanatory but I am so tired and exhausted right now.  But, honestly, it is fun.

I have not been in SL the whole near 20 years SL has been here.  I've taken my breaks because sometimes one is just burned out on going to dancing clubs or the music.  There are ways to seek out other interesting music but one has to work at it, imo.  A Dinkie I know is playing all kinds of  unsual music  and that is one thing the tinies do, play all kinds of unusual and interesting music.  It's rarely hit radio style if at all.  

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[NevaehHeartstrings]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The thing is .. 

We can't do that (especially not here, on the forums).

LL are not going to pick up hints and ideas, strategies, talking points, vision, or any of the thousand thing they need and don't even recognize they need from anything we say here.

Even really dumb and obvious stuff like .. 

Replace the crappy mixed vague messaging on the front page with a single simple statement - JOIN SL - MAKE FRIENDS

.. not just because they won't, but because they can't. 

 

We're here everyday and will continue to be here everyday, sinking our time, creative energies, hearts, hopes and dreams into SL.

LL are ... off doing whatever LL do. As a corporation they've proven demonstrably bad at building and growing SL (or any other entertainment product or platform). As individual Linden's & Moles (the ones who interact with us anyway), they're awesome and committed and passionate.

This isn't a shocking. This is over a decade of slowly coasting into the floor dragging the fallen corpses of 'branch out' products behind us. Where would we be now if we had gotten a Sansar's amount of Linden enthusiasm .. rather than a development drought that ended in the cloud. How's Tilly doing, gotten any new customers lately .. sure wish the money had been spent here.

Virtual worlds, the future of everything, your world, your imagination .. has fallen a long long way since those heady days. Tilly .. the future of .. the virtual gig economy where high skilled digital artists get ground to the bone for pennies .. yaaaaaaaaaay. Look at the fee structure .. woooooooo. 

 

SL should be the most fun you can have on the internet.

 

It's not us. SL wouldn't be better if it had people other than us. This isn't up to us. We can't fix this. Neither can LL as it stands.

In the early days, LL were breaking ground faster than they could run, the hype was infectious, Philip was our king and we would follow him anywhere. We took that energy and we evangelized. We dragged everyone who would listen here in the hope they could see the magic too.

Well you stole my thunder with your logic & reason as always Coffee, you said everything perfectly having stole the words right from my mouth but told more cohesively.

I've got nothing else I can say. talk to yawl next year.

[Maryanne Solo]

"Seconded Life"
Supported by officially approved mentors for 6 months, given gifts of some description/s and *"shown the ropes".
Just change current free stuff to being gifts to make new peeps think they're a bit spesh. ☺️ 
*And I DON'T mean tied up like ye-olde popular rumour might portray SL inworld events. 😱🙄

[Love Zhaoying]

6 hours ago, Maryanne Solo said:

"Seconded Life"
Supported by officially approved mentors for 6 months, given gifts of some description/s and *"shown the ropes".
Just change current free stuff to being gifts to make new peeps think they're a bit spesh. ☺️ 
*And I DON'T mean tied up like ye-olde popular rumour might portray SL inworld events. 😱🙄

"Adopt-a-Newbie!"

[Blaise Glendevon]

I doubt that the Lindens have the time or resources to vet the multiple prospective mentors to make sure that they are genuine, helpful individuals and not incipient cult leaders or creeps.

And any company supported mentorship program would have to be vetted.

[EliseAnne85]

13 hours ago, Andred Darwin said:

On the same note... someone using a machine not really designed for gaming or 3D rendering, should be able to reduce some settings easily enough to make the most of their experience... and the viewer should let them know, in a nice way, that there is not much that can be done about their current machine, it’s a 3D world!

You started your post about the economy, yep.  And this morning I just read we are possibly going into a long period of stagflation which means higher prices, higher unemployment and slow growth.

I believe what will take the Western world out of this slow growth is newer energy.  The whole world will change, including computers.  Chip makers are already now making energy efficient chips; those are in the pipeline being made now. 

ALM is a resource hog and what happens if Nvidia stops updating those resource hog chips? and full stop

In my country where I live our power grid is maxed out now and we get notices to reduce our power useage in emergency messages. 

ALM and PBR are both going to be resource hogs and LL and the need to reduce energy are two speeding trains out of control heading right towards each other ready to collide. 

By the time LL gets to trying to introduce PBR, people will have less money and Nvidia may just not even update these kinds of gaming chips that exist now which are power hogs.  Also, with PBR, I don't want to spend more money on stuff nor have to pay to upload four textures.  All companies trying to push up prices will find people will go elsewhere where it's cheaper.

Edited October 14, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Flea Yatsenko]

While we're talking about the global economy, generally recessions and such have been good for my sales in SL. It's a lot cheaper to go shopping in SL, live your alternative life in SL, etc than it is to go out. It always seems like when times are bad in RL there's more demand to have a "not a lambo" parked outside your big virtual mansion in SL.