The Importance of the SL Destination guide.

[Loki Eliot]

It's all well and good to spend a lot of time building interactive gaming experiences for everyone on the grid to enjoy, but it's pointless if no one knows about it.

 

Before destination guide we had to rely on the rather dodgy search feature. Thats like searching for a game on google. You are more likely to search for a site that reviews games.

 

Along came Destination guide and it's quickly become a major thing. Simply having your place on the destination guide will divert thousands of users (mostly new) to game. But be warned, place it in the wrong category and the drop off will happen quite quickly as your destination moves off the front page and is filed away in a category that does not appear on the login screen destination guide.

 

 

As an old user i rarely use the DG because i have have a mountain of specific goals in world already. New users and casual users use the DG a lot.

 

When submitting to the destination guide try and choose a category that does appear on all versions such as the login screen, the in world version and the SL website version. GAMES last time i looked only appears on the website version, but that may change soon 'HINT LL'.

 

Also be warned that LL can totally use their own image. While submitting the underground base i sent an image depicting the underground tunnel you gain access to. For some reason they chose to use their own picture of a woman by a camp fire which i found perplexing. After emailing the editors they changed to the image i submitted. They've since changed it again to one of the entrance to the cave. So just be wanted they may change your destination pic at a whim.

 

What i would like to see happen next

At the moment destination guide is geared toward new users. I see it more like the featured front page of the iTunes app store used by all SL residents of different experience levels.

 

I'd like to see the destination guide become more dynamic such as showing destinations based on how old your avatar is or what you have selected as your interests in your profile. This would require people submitting their  experiences/destinations/events to rate or keyword their submissions.

 

It would be nice for me to create a game that is for people with experience in using SL and target them in the submission to destination guide, Like wise would be good for New Users to be targeted by destinations specifically catering for their level of experience.

[Sonja Strom]

Thank you for your post.  I agree with you.

I had the exact same experience with the picture for our submission to the Destination Guide:  I went to a lot of trouble to get a really nice picture of our village square with several avatars in it, talking around a burn barrel.  Our submission to the Guide was accepted, but the wording of our description was changed to be more generalised (in a way that did still make sense), and there was a different picture!  The "Lindens" had taken their own photo with no avatars at all in it, and in which some parts of a building did not appear.  I don't understand why they did that, and still think my picture was a lot better.  I am very glad our little community got into the Guide, though.  Many visitors since then have found us through it who did not know about us before.  I think the Destination Guide is a great improvement in the experience of SL.

Similar to your thoughts about what could happen next with the Guide, something I think would be great would be to come up with a game based on the Second Life world itself, maybe specifically using the Destination Guide.  One idea I have like this is for avatars to be able to have the equivalent of a passport or a pilgrim's stamp book, where they could receive "stamps" in it from having visited a community or sim.  Since actually looking at such a small book in SL might be awkward, maybe these "stamps" could show up as a list on the avatar's profile page, or something like that.  Naturally since there are different age levels for different sims, somehow there would have to be different types of "passport games" available to Second Life participants.  This is only an idea I have for people to better enjoy their experience of being in different places in SL.  If anyone has thoughts on how to improve on this idea, I hope they will share them.

[Loki Eliot]

Intersting that you should mention a passport style system for destinations. At the start of this year i mocked up on my blog an idea i came up with for what Linden Lab could possibley do as a mobile App. It was basically an App that allowed you to browse all the destination guide places, mark destinations as places you'd like to visit next time you log in , share destinations and review places you have visited. It's interesting how our two different ideas cross similarities

[Sonja Strom]

Loki, I love your idea.

I think for the inworld side of it, maybe there could be some type of kiosk that people could find and click on.

[Sonja Strom]

Maybe this isn't the best spot for this idea to be posted, but I don't know of a better one so here it goes!

There could be a guide for places in Second Life by country and/or language.  My community of Arosa SL, for example, is currently listed under "Parks."  To my pleasant surprise we did end up in the list of "Winter" areas for this season.  It has occurred to me, our community could also go under listings of "Switzerland" or also "Language: German" if they existed.

Maybe this issue is better now, but when I first came to SL it took me a few weeks before I found the kind of community I was looking for.  Looking back now I am sort of amazed at how patient I was about it.