A suggestion to LL

[Alazarin Mondrian]

I've seen *alot* of moaning over the years bother on here and on other fora that SL has terrible new resident retention rates. Much of the debate that I've seen has focused on making the UI more user-friendly etc., etc. However I feel that everyone's been skirting around the real elephant in the room when it comes to SL: the requirement to have a powerful computer with an expensive high-end graphics card in order to enjoy the optimal user experience.

I'm a long-term SL resident in my 6th year. I build my own computers because I can't afford to buy them. I could buy a car for less than the cost of a graphics card capable of delivering all the latest visual bells'n'whistles. So I go through SL without shadows, depth-of-field, etc.

SL has so much more to offer than the countless Facebook games and yet those games have user bases and retention that SL can only dream of. Why? Is it because they're such great games, etc., etc? No,  it's because their system requirements are so low they can be enjoyed on fairly low-end computers. It may not be possible to lower the system requirements but from what I've seen and heard from RL acquaintances, that is the biggest hurdle. Tinkering with the UI is really little more than arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

I'm not a programmer or techie of any sort so I don't have any answers but I would ask LL to seriously consider everything and anything that can reduce the system requirements. For instance set a target of a continuous 15 fps on 'mainstream' home computers and work towards that. If LL can crack that people will flood in... which is what all of us want.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

The user interface is a major problem, it now creates it's own lag where it didn't before and it is much more difficult to teach new users how to do almost anything. When teaching new users I can now see their attention spam diminishing right before my... where did you go? I was still typing the long pathway to show you how to do something I wasn't ignoring you. It will be very interesting to see the new viewer when it comes out, I hope they get it right because it really does make all the difference in(the)world. Inworld is demanding enough with the textures and scripts so the viewer has to be as light as possible not only because it is logical but also because it can be done.

I am not sure that SL demands all that much of a computer since so many people can play a great variety of other video games, (not just flash games like face "sell your information" book) but actual games where you are in a 3D world playing online with others on a grid. The lag in other online grid games is now almost non existent other than the very rare freeze or crash over the course of hundreds of hours of game play.

[ralph Alderton]

@Alazarin,

People are already flooding in, 16k registrations a day, August was the best month for new registrations ever , blah, blah, blah

The problem is they're not staying and even enthusiastic users are walking away. The real deterrent and blocker to the adoption of SL, even to people who love it - is tier costs, they are just TOO HIGH

Imagine if it costs 125USD (Homestead sim tier) per month to play Farmville - nobody would play

Imagine if it costs 300USD (full sim tier) per month for a web site in the late 90's - the internet would still be a niche product just like SL

Yes people can play SL for free but that's not what it's all about. Having such high tier costs takes away options and makes people feel poor.

 Computer games and virtual worlds are about empowering people. These high tier costs are dis-empowering people

There are countless projects - educational, business, role-play projects, game projects, charity projects, fun projects, residential projects etc, etc - that are not done, abandoned, not even attempted, because of the high tier costs 

 

High tier costs = low concurrency

Low concurrency = low sales = weak economy

Weak economy = No SL growth = Stagnant ecosystem

 

p.s. It's nothing to do with computer spec - I can run Secondlife on a 6 yr old windows XP computer with a NVidia Geforce 9800GT video card and SL runs fine !

[ralph Alderton]

@Freecilla,

UI is not a major problem, it's a minor temporary difficulty. You can even choose different UIs with all the TPV available.

LL can improve the UI until it's slicker than goose sh*t through a tin horn !  It ain't going to make any difference to concurrency and land ownership

Doesn't matter what good things LL do. Unless they reduce tier costs SL will contiue to stagnate and fossilise. It's too expensive, they are pricing themselves out of their own market

 

[Orca Flotta]

I could buy a car for less than the cost of a graphics card capable of delivering all the latest visual bells'n'whistles.

No, a decent GPU costs you between 100 - 200 € / US$.

 

So I go through SL without shadows, depth-of-field, etc.

Like every one else. Shadows and DOF are for making photos but not for walking around in world.

 

SL has so much more to offer than the countless Facebook games and yet those games have user bases and retention that SL can only dream of. Why? Is it because they're such great games, etc., etc? No,  it's because their system requirements are so low they can be enjoyed on fairly low-end computers.

Yes. So what? A Ferrari is much faster than a bicycle but costs significantly more. Would you suggest Ferrari to lower their prices so they would sell more?

 

It may not be possible to lower the system requirements but from what I've seen and heard from RL acquaintances, that is the biggest hurdle. Tinkering with the UI is really little more than arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

The UI is an important part of the SL experience, as the V2 disaster has shown us.

 

For instance set a target of a continuous 15 fps

Haha, 15 fps is what I would consider serious lag.

 

If LL can crack that people will flood in... which is what all of us want.

Do we?

Really?

I, for my part, couldn't care less. The fact that so many people are not willing to invest in hardware already shows that not SL is wrong for them but they are wrong in SL! In fact I'm happy for everyone leaving SL since it means less lag and  less stupidity for the rest of us to suffer from.

 

Conclusion: Let's face it, SL is neither a social network nor a game. It is a virtual world, built and inhabitated by a minority of computer geeks interested in virtual reality, in social experiments, in building new society models. In expressing themselves artistically or trying new business models.

In order to get the most out of it a considerable amount of decent hardware is required.

 

[ralph Alderton]

@Orca,

SL is not a minority niche product. LL are making it in to a niche product with their excessively high tier costs, putting it out of the reach of most people's pockets. Even enthusiastic dedicated users can not justify the cost of sim ownership

Secondlife is actually the prototype of the 3D web itself, the generic virtual world that millions of people could utilise.

Secondlife genuinely has the potential to empower tens of millions of people, to improve their lives in countless ways.

Secondlife is the ultimate social network, it's just too expensive and tier costs are killing it's massive potential

[Ann Otoole]

New resident signs on, lands in unmoderated LL welcome area, gets derided and verbally abused by those whom LL will not remove, they never come back.

New resident lands in SL, is confronted with the learning curve that a new UI cannot help, leaves.

New resident lands in SL, is determined to make a go of it, uses LL viewer and goes to busy club with more than 5 avatars, crashes, crash logger crashes, they never come back for rather obvious reasons.

I could go on and on. LL needs to allow TPV and RP groups to run the welcome areas and ensure new arrivals are treated properly and are warned to avoid LL public sandboxes. And learn the proper response to mentally ill people is mute and ignore. IMHO

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Yes, I know what you mean about high tier costs, Ralph. It's certainly affected me. And we're certainly on the same page when it comes to 3D web.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

You might consider 15 fps 'serious lag' but it's still possible to move around freely at 15 fps.

[Claireschen Hesten]

from my own personal experience it's possible to move around freely and lag free with 1fps :matte-motes-agape: now days i am achieveing a lot more than 1fps

just trying to get inworld for the first time can put newbies off if they keep comming across errors trying to log in or they can't manage to stay logged in more than a minute some people will come here and look for help the rest will give up and not persue SL again

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Ann, you're right too. I'm glad I joined when I did.... and I thought the welcome areas were madhouses back in '05! We could really do with the mentor program again. It's not like it would actually cost LL much to bring it back.

[nikita Jefferson]

I know it's a tired old line now but with the MP (marketplace) and it becoming the place to shop now, and new users being introduced to MP early, shopping there becomes more and more the place to shop, and inworld shopping is suffering badly from it,leaving many merchants no choice but to go on the MP and open a shop there,after all, they don't have any tier to pay there, just a low 5% on every sale to LL and enhancements, which is a waste of money

I don't know if LL makes enough money from MP to make up for the land people are dropping because they don't need a shop inworld anymore to make up.

As i see it , LL would be wise to drop tier drastically and make land more affordable, with the world economy the way it is, LL s business model regarding land prices is out of date and they need to get their head out of the sand and see whats going on around the world regarding the economy, they run SL with the view everyone is reasonably rich and can afford $300US a month for a piece of virtual land, many did use their business to pay for tier, but with MP that is more and more unlikely and inworld search works against businesses.

And lets not forget emerging worlds, the price of land there is way cheaper than SL, so many are going to those worlds to start their business and get in on the ground floor before they become a business zoo like SL is with everyone trying to make a dollar.

I belong to the second inventory group so i see the chat, and i see a lot of people taking their creations out of SL to other worlds, unfortunately many don't understand they can only take their own creations, but the point is a lot of people are leaving SL to open their businesses in other worlds

We probably get a lot of people these days in SL trying to make money to try survive the RL economy, at least the MP is a low cost alternative, and really makes land obsolete to run a business in SL

I really don't know if LL is going to go ahead with the homestead land increase at the end of the year but if they do they have no brains.

I have always had a homestead on sl  ( 4 years ) and i have my shop there so my shop costs me nothing and anything i make from the shop helps pay the tier of course, but my island has always been for personal reasons so even if i did 'nt have the shop i would still want my island, but with the way inworld search is and poor business because of too many shopping on MP, if i had my island just for my shop i would give it up

If they were to lower tier to an affordable price they would see land sales start up again, but then again who knows, it keeps going back to the MP, why would anyone want land for a shop when MP is so cheap to open a shop

But i'm sure many would want their own island not necessarily for a shop,but for personal reasons. yes mainland is cheaper but i hate it there,it's just too laggy, zindra we gave up going there,too laggy,a homestead is nice but the 3750 prim limit is very restrictive, so a full 15000 prim island is preferrable but just too expensive regarding tier

 

[ralph Alderton]

Interesting to hear your comments and experiences Nikkei.

You are quite right, LL do have their head in the sand, worse than that they seem to have become rigid and frozen in regards to tier costs. They are stuck in a rut and the SL economy, land ownership, user hours, concurrency are all declining and reflect the deep rut caused by high tier

And as the OP said - LL are just rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic and they haven't noticed that the iceberg of high tier costs is sinking the good ship SL.

[Orca Flotta]

Yes, of course the high tier fees are bad. But they are not the initial deeal breakers.

I was a hobo in SL for almot 4 years before I decided to go premium and buy some land. It's perfectly possible to lead a meaningful and happy second life without owning or renting any land. What I don't get is the empowerment argument: Empowerment comes from within! It's a mindset and doesn't need any material **bleep**. If someone only feels empowered if they own a lot of land it's a sad mindset. I pity those fools.

And yes, of course it's perfectly possible to run SL on 15 fps. But it's not pretty. The breaking point is still the old 25 fps we know from the movies. From 25 onwards motion becomes smooth enough not to hurt your eyes and wreck your nerves. 15 fps is nothing LL should take as a measure or as a goal. When my fps goes down to 15 it's either my connection acting up or a bad SL sim. But your personal hardware should be able to run much better framerates.

Niche product? Yes and No ... I've read lots of discussions about that point but as long as LL themselves aren't able to decide which path to follow, what they really wanna become, I guess any further discussion is fruitless. But I guess LL wouldn't care one or the other way. If they make enough money they are happy, doesn't matter to them if Philip's original idea flies out the window.

Fact is: SL isn't ready for primetime yet. Quite possibly (and hopefully I might add) will never be ready for the mainstream, will never totally succumb to the facebook approach of a wide user base, will never become a consumers market, will never satisfy users on a 10 min/day basis.

Right now SL is like most RL hobbies and activities: you get out what you put in. No pain no gain. Invest to earn. I hope those fundamental facts will never change.

 

 

[Deltango Vale]

I'm with Ann on this.

First, SL is not a game. It is a virtual world. (Facebook is a social network. WoW is a game. North Dakota is a world.)

http://deltango.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/a-strategic-assessment-of-second-life-part-2/

http://www.peregrinesalon.com/2011/09/27/techfast-presentation-the-magic-circle-realistic-expectations-for-virtual-worlds/

Second, whereas the price of almost all technology has fallen significantly over the past five years, tier remains stuck at its 2006 level. The relative price of tier is now extremely high. The new tier schedule I designed last year is now itself outdated.

http://deltango.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/a-proposed-land-tier-fee-schedule/

Third, the entire V2 project was a catastrophe. We now have a Tower of Babble situation whereby no one speaks the same UI language. This makes person-to-person education much more difficult. It has also damaged SL's reputation, much like 'New Coke' damaged the reputation of Coca-Cola.

"There is a twist to this story which will please every humanist and will probably keep Harvard professors puzzled for years," said Keough at a press conference. "The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

Fourth, LL lacks strategic vision. The company is obsessed with improving upon the past instead of boldly reaching for the future. Having built a very sophisticated platform, the company remains stuck in an engineering mentality. We desperately need a 'Steve Jobs' or 'Richard Branson' to look beyond the codebase to the inherent desires of humans.

There are many other problems that I could list in detail (the ridiculous single namespace, the griefer accounts, the underage accounts etc.), but that is for a longer article in the future.

Bottom line: Linden Lab does not understand Second Life. In my opinion, this is because Linden Lab invented two overlapping products: a 3D IT platform and a virtual world. The company is struggling to improve the first, but is baffled by the second. Yet it is the second, the virtual world, the "self-projecting metaphorical interface with a user-generated economy based on a sophisticated private property rights structure" that represents the future.

I agree, though, that until LL improves the technology and solves the pricing problem, the amazing potential of Second Life will remain crippled.

[ralph Alderton]

"until LL improves the technology and solves the pricing problem, the amazing potential of Second Life will remain crippled.2

QFT

 

[Deltango Vale]

BTW, Alazarin, I have such good memories of sitting with you, Ceera and the gang around a table in her house five years ago. I was a pathetic noob at the time, but you guys made me feel part of a world. I still have your box of freebies, which helped me greatly, especially the LMs. It was because of people like you that I was highly motivated to learn the basic technology of survival in SL. It was through talking and learning from people like you that I did learn the technology. Without you, Ceera and many other residents, I would never have integrated into SL.

[ralph Alderton]

@Orca,

You may well be happy being a hobo - it's an interesting life choice.

But I assure you that 99% of human beings are territorial creatures and they want a place to call their own. Their own Sim, that's where the real fun is. Until land is affordable so that everybody and anybody can have their own Homestead Linden Lab are not doing their proper job - facilitating and empowering people to LIVE / PLAY / WORK  in a virtual world

The fact is that literally thousands of projects and grand ideas that could be materialized in Secondlife, are NOT BEING DONE because of crippling tier cost

Its a terrible shame that a medium as powerful as Secondlife is being neutered - basically Secondlife is like a eunuch, it's balls have been cut off. Linden Labs castrated themselves with the knife of high tier costs in Oct 2008. All growth halted at that point.

[Jo Yardley]

High costs is what scares long term residents away or keeps them from building stuff.

I know people who have been wandering around SL quite happy without ever buying or renting any piece of land.

I think that the main reasons new people don't stay is the way they are introduced into SL and the very steep learning curve.

A possible way to combat this is to make teleport start areas non accessable to people older then a few days or to give EACH single new visitor their own little skybox where they can experiment, watch a video with instructions, walk about a bit, rez something and eventually teleport to a sim.

As for the steep learning curve, I still think that a beginners viewer is a good idea that has the minimal settings, allows you to change your avatar, spend money, walk around, etc.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Jo Yardley wrote in part:

A possible way to combat this is to make teleport start areas non accessable to people older then a few days or to give EACH single new visitor their own little skybox where they can experiment, watch a video with instructions, walk about a bit, rez something and eventually teleport to a sim.

---

This is interesting.  The thing is, learning the basics without being harassed is one hurdle; but what really creates a motivation for retention is social interaction and finding the SL experiences that interest the newcomer.  It's tricky to give newbies both of these in the right doses at the right times.

Maybe everybody gets a completely isolated environment to play around in, whenever they want.  Individual private sandbox-like workspaces that don't interact with the rest of the grid at all, but are connected enough that Inventory works, IM sessions and notifications are still possible, in-world Search is supported, and the live grid is still just a TP away.  Maybe this environment is where "Home" is set initially.

It dare not be good enough to compete with entry level land.  Well, it would be isolated, not shared, not even by alts.  How many prims does it get?  How long are the prims retained?

At first I thought this environment might be hosted viewer-side, but that would increase resource demand on the viewer machine.  Plus, being grid-connected is important, otherwise it wouldn't be much better than a standalone OpenSim -- not a bad thing for builders, but if the goal is to improve retention, it seems pretty important that the rest of SL be just a click away.  Of course, if hosted by LL, it either can't be free or can't require much more resources than a standard login session for free accounts.

[Jo Yardley]

As I see it it is a small low prim version of the newcome areas.
Nothing too fancy, just a big room with some pictures or videos, maybe a chair to sit on, etc.

Doesn't have to be more then 10 prims, probably even half.

Here you will learn the absolute basics, walking, talking, using stuff.

Once you can navigate a bit you are taught how to search for a sim you may like and teleport out.

You shouldn't be in there for say more then a hour.

Just a little playground.

Once you teleport out into the wide world, you cant get back into that area.

This way wherever you will go first, will be your choice.

For most new visitors that will not be a random field with a bunch of naked rude weirdos.

Welcome to SL, this is how you walk, this is how you chat, this is how you use stuff, this is how you change your avatar, this is how you find a cool sim, bye!

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Deltango, you just made my day! I'm glad to know that I've had a positive effect on someone's Second Life.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Orca, I agree with you entirely about empowerment and land owning in SL. Of course it's not essential but it sure is nice to have a few prims to play around with even if one isn't going to be the next Renzo Piano or Vincent Callebaut of Second Life.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

Hi Ralph, the users interface problem is only a temporary if people stick with it to learn how to use it but they are not. One has to learn so many things while trying to explore SL at the same time to see what can be done in SL before they even hear of monthly land fees. Many new users are taking advantage of the free Linden homes which indirectly delays the time it would take them to even consider getting their own land and learning about tier fees.

The two questions I see the most in the form and inworld from new people are about 'what do I do' or 'how do I play' and how 'do I get a house' or 'how do I set up my new house, lock the doors' etc.

If they stay long enough to get passed that point then I totally agree when they learn about tier prices they are shocked and go and try to make their freebie house work for them again.

They only hear about TPVs if again they stay in SL long enough to learn that there are options and they only learn this by questioning why is their SL experience not functional or recently not login-able and then ask what can they do to improve it. Again this takes time that many wont bother spending.

You are definitely correct though, if land fees where lower many more would stay much much longer since they could afford it but only after they can justify ANY price by having an environment they understood and wanted to stay in.

[Jo Yardley]

The main problem is that SL is just too complicated.

I've been here for 3 years and am still learning stuff, when the viewer is changed I need to learn some stuff all over again.

I don't mind, I build, manage, explore, I don't mind it being complicated.

BUT for new users this can be very daunting.

That is why I think we need a basic simple viewer that allows you the basic things but won't bother you with all the extra stuff.

A viewer setting prepared for someone with basic or even low standard computer that you can use to explore your first sims, make friends, chat, change your avatar,  buy stuff.

And when you think you want to do more then what 90% of people in SL do, then you click the advanced button and your viewer will show you all the other stuff.

Because with all its options, how much do noobs actually NEED?

What do they do?

Do you need to build, tweak your settings according to your graphics card, do complicated stuff?

No, most of us won't need all of that the first couple of weeks, even months.