What are your hopes and fears for Second Life Mobile?

[Arwyn Quandry]

As most of us know, LL is working on a mobile viewer for SL. It's been in the works for a while and they've shown some very interesting previews of how it looks and operates. Second Life has been almost exclusively desktop for its entire life. The development of the culture and experience have focused on computer users. Though there have been lite clients and small apps like Speedlite and Lumiya, nothing has pushed to bring the full SL experience to mobile users. 

Bringing SL to a mobile app is sure to provide a very different new user experience, one that no one in SL has had before. It's opening our world up to a new userbase with new expectations. We don't yet know what people will be able to do in mobile, whether they'll be restricted from certain activities or content, like if they can build or upload mesh. We also don't know what kinds of people will come through the mobile app. 

What are you hoping that SL will gain from mobile? How would you like to see our world change with new mobile users? And similarly, what are your worries about how mobile will effect SL? What are you concerned about with the mobile viewer experience or users? 

[Sid Nagy]

My hope is it will bring in more new users. That is good for the future of our wonderful world. A lot of younger people don't even use a PC for leisure purposes.

My fear is that it will be released too soon. One gets only one chance to make a good first impression.
The new generation expects that things work as advertised and not only after a few more years. They will judge the application as it is when they try it.

[Paul Hexem]

My hope is that they fix the way the entire grid works to have more robust content delivery and more redundancies on connections.

My fear us that they'll do nothing to account for the added latency and packet drop on mobile and the entire thing will just be an expensive joke they wasted their time on because they think "mobile will get more signups" while still totally ignoring the concept of retention like they always have.

Which do you think is more likely?

[diamond Marchant]

1 hour ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

What are you hoping that SL will gain from mobile?

Hope that it works well enough on an iPad mini that is no longer necessary to take a laptop when I travel.

[Seicher Rae]

Wasn't there already a mobile app for SL that failed miserably?
I forget.
I didn't know they were working on a new one. I'm so out of the loop, which is why I returned here a few days ago (I have to keep reminding myself that is why I returned, because my head is otherwise screaming, "whhhhhhyyyyyy?"). I don't have a FOMO. I have no hope or fear for such a thing because I will never use it. I would think they could put their resources towards other things, but then again, attracting new users, a mobile app might do that. Dunno dun care?

[Arielle Popstar]

3 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

What are you hoping that SL will gain from mobile? How would you like to see our world change with new mobile users? And similarly, what are your worries about how mobile will effect SL? What are you concerned about with the mobile viewer experience or users? 

I'm hoping that at the very least the mobile viewer would regain and enhance the experience we had on Lumiya which were broken when they changed inventory and animation protocols from UDP to Http. In addition to that, I am hoping that the Lab will make the whole shopping experience of unpacking, demo'ing, final purchasing as well as organizing the Inventory more user friendly and efficient to better work with a smaller screen sized appliance. Some of that has the potential to even enhance the desktop experience making it less frustrating for us fashionesta's and dress up Barbie's. 

[JUSTUS Palianta]

I hope the mobile viewer brings us a new generation of second life players or second life has no future, I really don't think young peeps are using desktop computers at all.  

 

I don't even want to buy a new mobile phone because I can't download Lumiya anymore.  So I hope linden release this ap before my phone blows up!

Edited August 30, 2023 by JUSTUS Palianta

[Arielle Popstar]

21 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I don't even want to buy a new mobile phone because I can't download Lumiya anymore.  So I hope linden release this ap before my phone blows up!

If you have Lumiya already, you can easily transfer it to a new phone. I have done that over 5-6 new phones since I downloaded Lumiya.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

The potential to break stuff is too big, lol.  Besides we are getting a nice shiney new ap any day now right?

Edited August 30, 2023 by JUSTUS Palianta

[Arielle Popstar]

47 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

The potential to break stuff is too big, lol.  Besides we are getting a nice shiney new ap any day now right?

Beta testing is expected to start towards the end of the year. Considering past new features, it would likely translate to middle of next year before that actually starts. Beta testing likely to be 6 months minimum so "any day now" could well be early 2025.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

Hopes:

That LL will realise the MobileLife Fail Viewer is a collssal waste of time, effort, and money, and dump it in the toilet where it belongs.

Fears:

That they won't, and will release some half finished bork-ware drek, in the hopes of attracting a "vast untapped new market of thumb typing 2 digit IQ score, 15 second 'goldfish' attention span, NPIOF users with NO interest in SL at all", who will only come here a few times JUST to grief the "old sad pathetic fuddy duddies over 25 who are nearly dead" for the youtuber streaming lols.

That this thing will make SL unbearable for most of the people ACTUALLY paying to use it.

[Randall Ahren]

No hopes or fears. I'm expecting a glorified message app, pretty much like Lumiya. The net effect will be avatars standing around AFK on their phone.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I hope they run a viewer on a server and stream the video to the user, which has been demonstrated to work well.

I fear that they will run a viewer on a phone and that it will not work well.

[Jaylinbridges]

If there are ports on the smart phone for a keyboard, mouse, and desktop monitor, then there is hope for the SL Mobile.  Batteries not included for the 27" monitor...

New excuse for logging out of boring situations.  My battery is running low.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[AmeliaJ08]

I really don't want or need SL on my phone so I just hope that the grid and its content doesn't change too much to accomodate it. Sounds selfish, is selfish but I'm being honest.

I expect to find a lot of people walking awkwardly due to touch screen controls and a lot of people trying to battle their way through HUD interfaces that were not designed for this either. I suspect the impossibility of some of that will result on a very clear dividing line between users on different devices.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

hope ,, that the people who use it will like it.
Not to be negative, hope they do a better job as many other projects.

Fear nothing, i won't use it.

[Arielle Popstar]

46 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I really don't want or need SL on my phone so I just hope that the grid and its content doesn't change too much to accomodate it. Sounds selfish, is selfish but I'm being honest.

I expect to find a lot of people walking awkwardly due to touch screen controls and a lot of people trying to battle their way through HUD interfaces that were not designed for this either. I suspect the impossibility of some of that will result on a very clear dividing line between users on different devices.

 

Not really. Lumiya had that figured out already 10 years ago so one could activate their ao and walk and move just as well as when using a desktop viewer.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

If there are ports on the smart phone for a keyboard, mouse, and desktop monitor, then there is hope for the SL Mobile.  Batteries not included for the 27" monitor...

New excuse for logging out of boring situations.  My battery is running low.

Bluetooth keyboards and mice work fine on most phones as well as an ability to be cast wirelessly to large screen TV's. There is also the speech to text capability for android devices which allows one to text chat much easier then having to type.

[Gabriele Graves]

I have a USB-C hub that plugs into both my Samsung phone or tablet and that gives me a wired network connection, a HDMI monitor connection, ports for mouse/keyboard and takes a pass-through charger to keep the device charging while in use.  Didn't cost very much and this setup would be ideal for someone who just has a mobile viewer, assuming the viewer works well with mouse/keyboard.

Just hope that the viewer works well.  Not sure how much use I would make of it myself but I'll certainly play with it out of curiosity at least.  I don't have any fears really.

[Spiffy Voxel]

My hopes would be:

• The development & testing of the Mobile app kickstart improvements on the back-end (at the Lab's end).
• Similarly, that designers & builders see how their products work (or don't) on mobile, and change their processes.
• It spurs rethinking of the design of the current Second Life Viewer and/or third-party viewers.
• As others have mentioned, a new generation of users who will hopefully like what they see and help Second Life grow.

My big fear would be that none of the above happens, and several years of development work are for naught. But I'm hopeful at the moment that the Lab are serious about this project.

[Love Zhaoying]

My hope is, that it is successful.

My fear is, that it does not immediately work ouf, LL gives up, and misses a golden opportunity. We all lose!

 

 

[AmeliaJ08]

I suppose one big thing will be that it's going to be Unity based isn't it? Will it be using the Vulkan core? that may have some positive contributing effect on future desktop development and the rumoured switchover.

 

 

 

[Constance Finchy]

I have three thoughts:

1. If you swipe out of the SL app to quickly use another app, does it log you out? Or if you swipe back within a few minutes, does it keep your progress and you don't have to log back in again? How would this appear to other users -- you're AFK or something?

2. If the SL app turns out to be very popular with new users, is that then going to be the standard for a lot of people -- that things will be oriented toward mobile users? I think SL runs better and you can do a HELL of a lot more on desktop.

3. SL app comes out before it's really all that good and it turns new potential users away because they think that's "all there is."

[gwynchisholm]

On 8/30/2023 at 2:08 PM, Sid Nagy said:

My hope is it will bring in more new users.

This

All of the other social games are dead or on life support because after the dawn of the smartphone and mass adoption of social media websites, casual use of social world games plummeted. Smallworlds, started in 2008, dead in 2018 because after about 2011 the game saw a consistent decline in users, and Outsmart LTD didnt take advantage of a mobile platform quick enough. Habbo Hotel, still around but they saw their peak player count in 2011 as well, and then drastic and rapid decline within the next few years. They had merged all their regional Hotels into one hotel through 2010 which bumped their player count up quite a lot, but those users didnt stick around.

Secondlife has the exact same story. We saw our peak player count in 2009, and then a steady decline ever since. The game only still exists because there was enough of a long term playerbase already much like Habbo Hotel (a similarly aged game). Smallworlds didnt make it because they were much newer with no long term playerbase. Similar things apply to many of the other virtual worlds. All the old facebook connected social games are way dead because they were throwaway from the start.

Which ones thrived? The ones that innovated or took advantage of the mobile social experience as quickly as possible.

Roblox, also saw a player peak and subsequent decline in the early 2010's. Guess what they did? Made a mobile version of the game in 2014. 

Number of users joining Roblox each year | Roblox Wiki | Fandom

The numbers speak for themselves. They have 60 million active daily users. Because that social world isnt bound to a computer and runs at more than 5fps in a crowd. You can go talk to 100 people at 60fps while on your phone in the shower. 

SL mobile i see as potentially too little too late, if it runs well and just generally works well, i think itll be a great thing to get some users in here. However doing that will require the rest of the game to be brought up to 2023 standards and not 2003 standards. Im tired of my gaming PC in all its capabilities being brought to its knees by 5 avatars in my line of sight and people defending that for some ungodly reason.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

Younger people don't just get phones and are done shopping for electronics.. They get desktops and lap tops and consoles as well..

Many have all of the above..

Myself , I'm trying to stay away from the hype, because then there is less expectations and  disappointments.. Too many times  I let the hype take over.. hehehe

I think my only fear is, will there be new loopholes of some kind for scammers..

I do hope it brings more people, just not too many of the bad ones.. hehehe