What does a new mesh body need to take off?

[Arwyn Quandry]

A thread in another area got me thinking about all of the mesh bodies out there in the virtual world. We know the popular ones, the ones everyone creates for. Yet there are dozens that never manage to take off at all. They're made, they're briefly marketed, and they fail to gain a real number of users.

But what does it take for a body to actually take off and become popular? And I'm thinking beyond just getting creators on board - what makes a body desirable enough for designers to give it a chance? Is it features that are unique? Ease of rigging? A body shape that isn't well supported by the existing market? A creator with a lot of popularity? Regular updates? Active support? 

I've seen a few bodies that I was betting on taking off do very little. Bodies from popular brands flop. Unique shapes fall flat. What do you think makes up the special sauce of body popularity? 

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by Arwyn Quandry

[Chic Aeon]

My best bet would to have a group of good clothing and accessory designers behind the brand  -- like partners that got a cut of the overall profits.  The biggest deterrents all along have ben things available for that body. Legacy did a good job (not a personal fan for SO MANY reasons) getting creators to sell the body in their stores. Reborn has the monthly REBORN event (after not doing well with the original eBody.

I personally don't think we need MORE but I am not the person that needs to have a dozen bodies and heads and clothing and OF COURSE the newest shiny.  

[Marianne Little]

27 minutes ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

A thread in another area got me thinking about all of the mesh bodies out there in the virtual world. We know the popular ones, the ones everyone creates for. Yet there are dozens that never manage to take off at all. They're made, they're briefly marketed, and they fail to gain a real number of users.

But what does it take for a body to actually take off and become popular? And I'm thinking beyond just getting creators on board - what makes a body desirable enough for designers to give it a chance? Is it features that are unique? Ease of rigging? A body shape that isn't well supported by the existing market? A creator with a lot of popularity? Regular updates? Active support? 

I've seen a few bodies that I was betting on taking off do very little. Bodies from popular brands flop. Unique shapes fall flat. What do you think makes up the special sauce of body popularity? 

 

I remember the female Signature body, it never took off. The failed Cinnamon & Chai. The Gen X Belleza.

Is it more? I can not say I have seen dozens. The last two ones came out with an exaggerated price.

The market is pretty much covered in natural slim and very curvy bodies. One can simply not release new bodies copying that.

To succeed? It would have to be an eccentric RL millionaire who can pay a team of designers to make a perfect body, pay all the big SL brands to create for the body, get a region to hold big events for the body in, and then give away the body for free. I think it is so much competition, it is too late to have another body that look almost the same as all other bodies, and earn money on it.

Maybe a very thin body, ready to take advantage of offering something new and totally opposite of the SL trend could be the only thing different. And I mean stick thin. Totally no hips, and not possible to make hips, boobs and butt on it. The prepubescent boy shape. Thinner than what can be made with the thin bodies on the market now.

Because what is popular goes up and down? When the majority wear Reborn with Juicy, Maze and Rolls, it is going to be the common look. So much is hips, boobs and butt now. Maybe people get tired and say "I need something different!" And then it is stick figures that is the new thing people want.

I will not like to see such a body, but when it comes to stand out, it is maybe all that is left.

[steeljane42]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

Is it more? I can not say I have seen dozens. The last two ones came out with an exaggerated price.

Prima by Tonic (I think there's even more than one version of it now?), Erika by N-core, Kups by inithium. Others you have mentioned already.

For the male ones there are/were Geralt and Davis, I'd list Kario as failed too as the numbers are a bit better, but clothing support from good creators doesn't exist, Anatomy that is somewhat popular among forum members is a failure in a sense that it has been seen grand total of 170 times for two versions, same goes for the CZ Slim (56 users seen total as of today). I'm actually surprised some creators actually rig anything for those, although perhaps they do it for themselves and/or friends, and the selling it is even a few copies is just a little bonus on top.

---

As for what it really needs to succeed and take off; I'd say that targetting a small niche is not going to work as seen by examples above (Anatomy and CZ). Doesn't really matter if they are good or very good, if it will be a small niche of customers then they will remain the small niche bodies forever.

And if the big niche is already taken by something that is popular, then competing there will also be almost impossible. One has to provide a clearly superior product to compete, and have a good creators support behind right from the start.

Good examples would be Legacy and Reborn.

The former was released in the very right moment, when older Belleza bodies already were semi-abanonded, and Maitreya has started to age, or rather people started to grow tired of it and its usual problems (shoulders, butt, inability to do curvy shapes without deforming badly). There was no a "more curvy and smooth, but not exactly a thick body" on the market. They took that niche despite their awful TMP reputation (yeah yeah, the new team, as if someone would believe them given how they do business, and it's exactly like the "old team" did). PR campaign was pretty large at the start as well as we remember, with big (back then, not so big anymore these days) Blueberry gushing how amazing that body was.

It did work out and pretty well, even with 5k price tag, the above mentioned reputation, and the seams on high altitudes that were fixed much much later (and still not fixed for the regular male body).

The latter took the more thick/curvy niche, because at the time there was Kupra, which is a good example on its own, because it only managed to succeed due to the fact that people were starving for a thick body when Freya was already beyond dead. So even despite the fact just how much of caricature body it is (Kupra), it still got very big support and total user numbers, getting to top 10 most worn bodies in SL within a year.

But then objectively a better curvy body without broken waist was released (Reborn) and completely killed what was left of Freya's market, as well as Kupra, which sees extremely niche support now, with nearly zero big creators making anything for it anymore.

I'll throw in Legacy M bodies as a good example too, because they took the niche between "weird and bulky" Gianni and half abandoned Jake as well, while (subjectively) being the best looking average shaped bodies in SL. That niche was somewhat empty, so it was relatively easy. As of today total seen numbers combined for Athletic and regular Legacy M body (and given that they fit 99% of the same clothes and look nearly identical within somewhat slim/average proportional shapes it can count as one body) make it most popular male body, and daily stats by bonniebots also reflect that with athletic>jake>legacyM>gianni stats. I'd guess if they weren't 5k without any kind of sales then the numbers would be even more in their favor.

---

To conclude this wall of text I'll say that I think the most important factors knowing the history of SL mesh bodies would be: a very well timed and prepared release targetting either empty niche that is popular or the niche where the curret top body is not up to today's standards or just plain subpar. Combined with a very well made product with an adequate price (e.g. not like Belleza did it). And as we live in the era of addons/mods, then probably some kind of them right from the start.

That said, I don't see anyone managing to succeed and squeeze into the current market for sometime now, not before one of the top bodies will start showing the signs of dying. Current best candidate would be a newer and better replacement for the "mid range" body, which is Legacy. But it's still doing fairly well and if anything I would imagine they will try to release said refresh themselves when it'll reach the point of decline.

Edited December 25, 2023 by steeljane42
typos

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

Is it more? I can not say I have seen dozens.

There are a zillion bodies. Peach and Khara come to mind on the more recent end, but there are older ones floating around here and there - some complete with heads and some without. The Dev fitness bodies, the June 2, the Kemono and Avatar 2.0 are still out there floating around, Ruth 2.0. The old free and paid eBody bodies. No idea if anyone wears any of those that often as clothing is very limited, but the bodies are still on the MP and have reviews from 2023, so someone's rocking them somewhere.

 

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

Maybe a very thin body, ready to take advantage of offering something new and totally opposite of the SL trend could be the only thing different.

Inithium tried that with Khara. I very, very, very rarely come across items rigged for it, but some do exist. I can't even remember if I demoed it - it was released at an event without a demo at all, if I'm remembering right.

https://www.inithium.com/khara

 

As for what it takes for a body to become successful - good marketing and a price customers won't faint at the sight of. Not really sure if any body is going to rocket into space these days, though, as creators are already so swamped and tend to get hassled when they make necessary decisions to cut bodies out of rotation.

[Arwyn Quandry]

For the very, very thin bodies, there was also Prima Fine. Like Khara, there's not much rigged for it. 

[Nalates Urriah]

As with many things, there is a time factor and a matter of timing. Not time as in getting old or people getting tired of the body. But time, as in elapsed time gives people time to buy clothes and accessories. Every L$ spent adds to the "investment". This makes it harder to give up on an existing body and move to a new one. As time passes any new body must provide enough improvement to be considered worth abandoning the previous "investment".

Consider Slink's change from their "Classic" body to their new Redux body. This was a technical change, not a shape change. All the clothes for the Slink Classic body fit the Redux. So an upgrade only really costs the price of the upgrade. Plus Slink was way out in front of the competition.

With Slink's upgrade to Cinn & Chai (C&C), there was a considerable technological advance. However, clothes from Redux bodies would not fit C&C. So, the cost was not just the price of the body upgrade. Also, there were some technical flaws when it came to making the hips into a shape users wanted. The UV Map change was made, I suspect, because of the years of user requests for improved mapping.

The Physic Original led to the Physic Hourglass because people wanted a more curvy shape. I think the same thinking was used in designing C&C. But between Redux and C&C I've seen the interest in technical excellence in SL decrease. The result is the technical improvements in C&C, even though requested by users for years, they were not enough to make C&C competitive.

I suspect the LaraX is somewhat in the same position C&C was in. We'll see. The LaraX comes with the original Lara. So, for new purchasers, it is a deal. They also have no prior 'Maitreya' investment.

There is also some anticipation that designers creating for Maitreya will adopt LaraX and design for those bodies. I have that hope.

This brings me to the unquantifiable metric of what people want. Some people are trying to figure out what is most popular. For instance, Fatal Fashion (FF) runs an ongoing poll, here. But the obvious flaw here is FF can only poll their customers. That could lead to a misleading positive feedback loop. But it is better than nothing.

I suspect designers like Addams and Blueberry track stats on their sales and make more of what sells. That is the advantage of capitalism. People get to continuously vote with their dollars rather than try and convince a bureaucracy to give them what they want. We have no shortage of nice stuff in SL's free market.

SL Classic to Slink Physic to Redeux to Belleza to Maitreya...  We all have made our decisions on which body we want. I know for me it is not a simple choice. Cost and appearance are my main considerations. For appearance, I prefer a slim hard body. I find it amazingly difficult to find the butt I want. I still think the Slink Original best fits my taste. But... I am looking for a body that I can make into the shape I prefer.

...and that is what it takes to make a body that will sell. If there are enough people like me, it will be a success. 😄

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Nalates Urriah

[Ceka Cianci]

2 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

For the very, very thin bodies, there was also Prima Fine. Like Khara, there's not much rigged for it. 

 

They had the worst presentation and PR and opening day.. For one, they released the same day as the GenX body that had it's own event.. Prima got stuffed in  one of the mid range events off in some corner where you could hardly find it..

Then the content that was showing up for it was on the level of like when rigged mesh first came out.. Just all around  bad presentation..

Edited December 26, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Ceka Cianci]

Honestly I feel there are two main things.. Customer appeal and not just creator support but good creators supporting a body.. When you have the good creators supporting a body ,that's where the wider variety of things get made for a body.. A wider variety will draw more appeal from a wider range of customers.

Most of the rest that we see is, basic commercial rehashing of the same content, same mesh, same designs, over and over, like a fast food chain.. If you only have the fast food industry backing your body, you won't be sitting in the top three or four bodies way above the rest in wearers..

A body needs a well rounded body appeal and well rounded content appeal to be a real well rounded success..

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Walelu Summerwind]

Speaking from a consumer perspective... I was a staunch, militant Maitreya body (maybe not militant) ... I am now a Legacy Perky person. I would love to see Waifu type boobs for Legacy.. Should I sink big lindens into Reborn? Please give me advice before I do something stupid!

[Walelu Summerwind]

What do you need to make it all take off? Simple.. boobs. After 15 yrs, I can tell you,  Its all about the same thing in rl that it is in sl.. just amplified. have fun!

[steeljane42]

2 hours ago, Walelu Summerwind said:

Should I sink big lindens into Reborn? Please give me advice before I do something stupid!

Yes, if you like it. It's the 2nd most worn female body on the grid now with no signs of slowing down, and it has passed Legacy a long time ago. It has all the support for itself and its mods, waifus included. There's no official perky/small chest mod for it, though, and 3rd party one (Teacups by SB) is not supported very well.

P. S.

It's also on 25% off Xmas - New Year sale now until January 2nd, its mods are on sale as well.

Edited December 26, 2023 by steeljane42

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

A Tardis, to go back to 2014 and get out there before things were too set.

 

[Dorientje Woller]

And there is a ton of people, for what reason of their own, that simply are not interested in changing or updating their avatar and are simply happy with what they have now. I know several ones that are still running around in pre-mesh avatars and rather spending their lindens on tipping staff of clubs then following the latest hype or do have a mesh avatar and are happy with it because they indentify themselves with it as it is atm.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Dorientje Woller

[Katherine Heartsong]

Honestly? I don't think we need a new body, as much as complete overhaul in terms of what a body is in SL. Needing to understand this concept of separate heads, bodies, skins (and BoM) when SL attracts sandbox lovers who comes from other games where the concept of avatar customization is so much simpler.

Pipe dream, never gonna happen, blah blah blah but that's my take. In terms of the OP, a new body has a very little chance of succeeding, apparently, as the main human "styles" are already well covered by an established small clique of body makers, who even at times make errors in launching new products (Bell and the pricing debacles springs to mind), and you need support from major clothing creators to have any chance at all of succeeding.

LaraX will overtake Lara eventually because it's easier to rig clothes for, so that's part of the success equation. The other part of Maitreya's successful launch of X? You got the upgraded X free. I wonder if Belleza is regretting their decision to initially charge 5,000L for the new body for existing and loyal customers?

[Arwyn Quandry]

13 hours ago, Walelu Summerwind said:

What do you need to make it all take off? Simple.. boobs. After 15 yrs, I can tell you,  Its all about the same thing in rl that it is in sl.. just amplified. have fun!

As an avid small/flat chest mod user: Nooooooo!

[Lysistrata Szapira]

Fwiw, I noticed that Belleza GenX had a lot of clothes rigged for it coming out of advent calendars this year.  I purchased the GenX Classic when it first came out, but creators were so slow in rigging for it, I gave up and went back to Maitreya.   Anecdotally, it looks like GenX is slowly gaining creators.   LaraX was not in nearly as many advents though, but I suspect that's because most of these gifts were created before X got released. 

[Janet Voxel]

13 hours ago, Lysistrata Szapira said:

Fwiw, I noticed that Belleza GenX had a lot of clothes rigged for it coming out of advent calendars this year.  I purchased the GenX Classic when it first came out, but creators were so slow in rigging for it, I gave up and went back to Maitreya.   Anecdotally, it looks like GenX is slowly gaining creators.   LaraX was not in nearly as many advents though, but I suspect that's because most of these gifts were created before X got released. 

You’re not wrong. It’s not all that hard to find clothes and footwear for GenX. Much to the dismay of a couple posters here. If I wasn’t having a blast wearing Ebody, I’d probably be wearing it now.

[steeljane42]

5 hours ago, Janet Voxel said:

You’re not wrong. It’s not all that hard to find clothes and footwear for GenX. Much to the dismay of a couple posters here. If I wasn’t having a blast wearing Ebody, I’d probably be wearing it now.

Depends what you're wearing/like to wear. Basics like jeans, leggings, crop tops and so on available for the most bodies, although quality varies greatly, from actually decent things to FP garbage. Now the more interesting designs from better creators... that is another story. I'd say less than 10% of places I shop at support GenX, and it's even worse because some support classic and some curvy versions.

So if someone is happy with the generic "urban mom" outfit in 10 versions, then aside of the niche bodies aimed at very specific type of users (e.g. Peach) one can find such outfits for just about every body out there, from dead and abandoned Slinks to those more dead than alive GenX bodies. If someone wants something more interesting to wear, then the choice for the non Maitreya/Legacy/Reborn is very limited (but it does exist, for example Salt&Pepper for the classic GenX) when it comes to new things, although older bodies like Freya have some still very decent older pieces available.

Edited December 27, 2023 by steeljane42

[Gabriele Graves]

Tentacles, clearly it will have to be tentacles next.  When you have eliminated the mundane only the extremes remain.

[Persephone Emerald]

55 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Tentacles, clearly it will have to be tentacles next.  When you have eliminated the mundane only the extremes remain.

You might be right. We're getting more non-human mesh heads now. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[PJBear Bitey]

6 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Tentacles, clearly it will have to be tentacles next.  When you have eliminated the mundane only the extremes remain.

Reminds me when I went through a brief mermaid phase. Went swimming. Wandered across a  .. . not sure of correct word to use, but it was bascially a creature with man upper half, and tentacles lower half.

Edited December 28, 2023 by PJBear Bitey

[Anna Nova]

Interesting reading.  I was honestly of the opinion that a new body needed a fat ass, and huge boobs.  But recent event have proved that's not right.  I am having great fun finding clothes for Maitreya's LaraX Petite.  Maybe there is room for more human-scale bodies, like Lucybody Vania.  The key is clothing.

[MissSweetViolet]

I can only speak for what would make me invest in a body; Which is price, availability, design, and support. My first mesh body was Altamura, and while not bad by any means, wasn't something that ever really seemed to stick long term for me, this was just a bit before BoM came on, and I hated appliers, having spend several months prior to getting it using a system avatar. So I was so glad when they added a BoM hud. But I also hated the huge amount of script usage and complexity

After that I ended up going to LucyBody, also very nice, but like Altamura never really felt right and I hated the Maitreya clothing/slink shoe combo (this was before LucyBody got that update.

Then I went to Kalhene with their free test body Ariadna, and then over to their full Anya body once it was release. Everything was amazing at first, then came Erika, and she started to package her Anya body with her Transgender body Alexa into the new all in one Analexa, which was fine, I was good with that, but then she stopped updating with empty promises of Analexa getting Erika's updates. I even politely messaged asking if it would be updated, she assured me that it would receive them in a few days, it didn't days, weeks months, went by, and she became incredibly hostile to anyone asking about it [She had formerly be quite nice to talk with and get questions answered and I had loved how she handled support]. After nearly 6 months of this run around I finely told others to be careful, because it could easily start to reflect on Erika down the line. I was met with the "Rude responses of the Kalhene cult chat telling me I didn't know what it took to make a body and it would come in time and Analexa would get it's updates when she could get them (it didn't). I left the group and began demoing other bodies, Then a few hours after leaving said group got a nasty im from the creator alone with the supposed rubbing in my face that Analexa would receive updates that week, for simply pointing out what she had promised and failed to deliver half a year prior.

Needless to say I went from being a hardcore supporter of Kalhene [had she not done all that, I'd honestly probably still be using it, as I had being a major fan and supporter of Anya/Analexa], to completely disillusioned. So I ended up going with Maitreya since that was my whole inventory [since Anya/Analexa had fit Maitreya like a glove], and because I liked the over look of the body still, compaired to the others I had demoed. I've not looked back. I still miss how good the customer support was back before Erika came into play, cause no other place has had that same level of support that Kalhene once had, but over all have been far happiest with Maitreya, and have been loving their LaraX body.

So yeah, tldr; body design, support both clothing and customer wise and price [I didn't even glace over to Legacy, GenX or Reborn after seeing the price] are the things that motivate me to keep/drop a body.

Edited December 28, 2023 by MissSweetViolet
Spelling corrections

[Anna Nova]

15 hours ago, MissSweetViolet said:

...

So yeah, tldr; body design, support both clothing and customer wise and price [I didn't even glace over to Legacy, GenX or Reborn after seeing the price] are the things that motivate me to keep/drop a body.

Price has a huge impact on new body take-up, I think.  These are not goods that require the input of raw materials (the marginal production cost is almost zero), as it is true for most things in RL, and the 'price set' has to indicate 'value' to the buyer.  I had no problem shelling out L$500 for a Lucybody, as a test run,  but buying a new L$5000 body and just hoping it generates a clothing market is a big stretch for many people's SL budget.

I know what I am getting with Maitreya, and so do the clothing designers, so it's a safe bet.  Anyone else's body it is a risk, unless they do what Legacy did, and buy the designers in - I don't doubt that it has paid back, but it was a brave approach.