Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Linden Lab finally posted its big budget commercial we discussed last week on its YouTube channel, so it's a good time to post this long analysis by longtime virtual world user Pulsar on the challenges it faces:

Look at SL presence on social media: it tends to be negligible. Not just on Facebook or Twitter, but you can see that on YouTube too: Novata's videos rarely have more than 10k views and she is among the best SL YouTubers today. Usually SL YouTubers can be happy if they reach few hundred views. Only "outsiders" that cover other games, but sometimes also SL, as Carmen King, get more views. On Reddit too: The r/secondlife sub is much less active than r/VRchat, let alone Roblox. But even r/KerbalSpaceProgram, a creative single player simulation game from 2011 is way, way, more active than SL today…

Related to Pulsar's point, the ad has only been viewed about 5,000 since being posted on June 23 — suggesting it's getting little or no social virality.

"So, yes, a marketing campaign is certainly a good idea," he goes on, but then goes deeper into the commercial itself — and what needs to happen so it doesn't seem like bait-and-switch:

[T]he difference between the ad and the actual product may feel like those clickbait thumbnails on YouTube.

While it is common to see ads that depict games as better than they actually are, it may be a little too much here.

Honestly SL is not as it's shown in the video. I have seen art in SL, I have seen SL18B, [with a] pretty sky… for Second Life standards at least: It seems nice within SL, but when you log off and you look at the screenshot again… you can see it's not Unreal Engine, no matter how much you push it to its limits, making people "lag" and crash, or with a poor framerate anyway, even with modern hardware. And still you don't even have working mirrors in SL.

The experience, too, isn't like [the ad]: not as "realistic", not as dynamic…forget wind on your gummy hair (or on the ancient "flexy" ones that enter inside your body), forget flapping mesh clothes (Sinespace has those), forget the movie-like dynamic cyberpunk scenery or the cool avatar-changing transitions.

There have been ads/video showing SL as it is (more or less) before, but I don't think it was very successful. A good marketing campaign begins with something that captures your attention, then there may be follow ups.

However, why didn't it work in first place? Look at newcomers in r/secondlife too, there are often [asking] the same questions: "Wherever I go, there is nobody or bots, in the popular places I only see avatars just standing and doing nothing, how do you make friends?" or "I have seen tutorials on YouTube, but I still don't know how to setup an avatar". Let alone the load of bugs and issues and the poor user-friendliness, that SLers are used to, but that doesn't help with newcomers.

While I still like SL, I'm aware that the engine is outdated, the UI isn't polished (look, the marketplace is a web browser slammed inside the client, compare it with Roblox or anything modern), the user-experience has serious issues, and so on.

Therefore a marketing campaign may help, but don't expect astounding results without improving also the product and if the new user experience and retention remains the same. Marketing works if you have at least a good-enough product or an underdog that is actually a valid product that only needs more attention.

If with (possibly before) the campaign also comes an engine and client ("viewer") rewrite and maybe a mobile client, then it would be something. But that would be a lot of work, time and money (already wasted you know where).

So I suspect the the "improvement" is already here: the AWS servers, the Environmental Enhancement Project and the new continent with new linden homes. If that's the case, I'm not overly optimistic, I expect a few newcomers, most of them giving up out of frustration as usual.

But whatever Linden Lab does, I hope it works and the SL economy stays afloat. However it goes, to not ruin the expectations entirely, I hope the Lab will offer at least new default avatars for newcomers, somewhat reminiscent of those in the advertisement.

Agreed! I definitely don't see the video driving much user growth without some kind of major software updates, to back up its aspirational images.