Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Longtime urban fantasy author Victor Ziblis is — or rather, was — a longtime member of the Second Life roleplay community, who first joined the world to promote his novels. 

"[I]t was actually a marketing stunt suggested by my publicist," he tells me, "The advertising stunt went off pretty well, but I found Second Life to be so enjoyable that I stayed for over three years.  I remember Club Caribe/Habitat on Quantum Link, and this gave me the same feel except it was 3D." And so he stayed in Second Life, even becoming entrenched enough in the community that he was promoted director of medical services on a major collection of roleplay sims.

But he recently left Second Life, "because it occurred to me that I was spending a lot of money on a thing that wasn't really returning me with anything but an hour or three of roleplay a week, and mostly was just my character lounging around in front of his home.  I'm not trying to get laid, and clubbing is played out to me so what was the point of sticking around?"

Before completely leaving, however, he posted a long and passionate rant on /SecondLife cheerfully entitled "Fortnite is eating our lunch." And while I don't necessarily agree with it all, it's worth considering by other members of the SL roleplay community — and for members of Linden Lab itself, as they consider how to better serve that community.

Reprinted with permission (with some editing by the author), here's Victor's rant in full below: 

Fortnite is eating our lunch.

by Victor Ziblis

Most of y'all probably think Fortnite is just a shooter. It also has creative spaces. Do you know what I can have for 2 bucks a month with Fortnite? I can have a full region size with 50 people visiting any time, and I can build pretty much anything there. If the region fills up, another is spawned, and folks can simply go about joining the cloned region instead. See this link? Follow this link and expand a bit. 

These people get everything Second Life has to offer, except it doesn't run like crap and making it persistent is free if you allow 16 avatars on your space. You can up it to fifty by getting publishing rights which ends up costing the aforementioned 2 bucks a month in upkeep, but it also enables you to make money by people giving you Fortnite currency. 

Every player is given their own "island" to create on regardless, which is like an SL region, except it doesn't cost 200 bucks a month to run.  I could write a lot about how it works, but why not just let the documentation speak for itself? 

I recently took a powder and left Second Life because, while my character had been elevated to Director of the medical services on a major RP collection of sims? I was paying them 24 dollars a month to have a house there. Why am I paying 24 dollars a month to live on four postage stamps on something that runs 45 FPS if I'm lucky, at a draw distance that my character can walk past in 10 seconds?  My computer is not the problem. My computer can run Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K resolution with all the bells and whistles turned on at a draw distance best described as "the curvature of the earth is a factor" yet a draw distance of 128 in Second Life cripples me. 

"My brain is preparing for this to drop down to 28 frames per second if I see another person because I'm still thinking in terms of Second Life performance"

Yeah, Second Life is currently profitable but guys? I am 44 years old and am pretty much the youngest person everywhere I go. FORTY FOUR.  I have more life before me than I have in front of me.  I should not be young blood.  When asked why we can't retain a userbase I just point at Fortnite.  The only things I can do in Second Life that I cannot do in Fortnite are use sex animations, perfectly customize my avatar, or watch movies of my choice in-world. 

Fortnite has a rolling avatar store, and unless you're into Dinkies or Ferals you're sure to find an avatar you like even if it requires some patience.  As for building?  Well, you can use shapes and prims like SL… wait I'm doing it again, aren't I?  That thing where I can let a short demonstration speak for itself.  Here's one of literally thousands of videos showing what you can do:

Something needs to change. I shouldn't be paying 24 bucks a month for the "privilege" of working for Fox Hollow. I can't be angry at them… the prices they have to pay for those regions necessitates the insane rental costs.  That's a systemic issue, not a "them" issue. 

Don't get me wrong, I've had some fun, but I'm throwing good money after bad at this point. Something needs to change. Your Chief of Medicine/Magnolia Medical Director will always remember Fox Hollow, but I had to GO… and one day you will also unless something changes.

Newbies aren't gonna stay for this crap performance and default settings on Firestorm that AGGRESSIVELY hate modern conveniences.  Oh, hands raised to the Sun and Moon, I could rant endlessly about Firestorm.  Everyone is told to ignore the official client and use Firestorm. 

Holy crap I hated onboarding new people, spending 10 minutes teaching them how to make WASD move you, and how to get shared media working, how to friend me and join my group and it's just exhausting.  These things should default to sensible choices, not "safe" ones that only matter if you're playing on a computer with the power of a wristwatch.  I once brought this up in a Firestorm group, asked why it defaulted to arrow keys and not WASD. 

The answer I got amounted to "Well, this is how it was originally and it's gonna stay.  If you're too lazy to figure it out, you don't need to be in Second Life."  The same answer was given to the default media setting.  Yeah, that's not how playerbase growth and retention works.  Someone is going to download Firestorm, hit the big learning curve and go "Nah.  This is a pain in the ass.  I'm gonna go play Fortnite!"

Not gonna lie, it hurt real bad to leave. I've spent thousands on cosmetics, buildings, toys and tier over the years, but at the end of the day I was paying 24 bucks a month plus my monthly premium and 4 more dollars on a parcel that was tiny compared to what Fortnite gives me. Even if I never shopped again, I was still paying 40 bucks for what was essentially nothing but a 'run a hospital' simulator. I had to rip the band-aid off.

Please… Second Life needs to do better. I love it. I already miss it… but I also miss my first love who thought cheating on me was a challenging fun activity and not a horrible thing to do.  I'm not going back to her, and I'm not going back to SL unless something changes.

…and so an already nearly empty landscape loses yet another player, and another parcel of mainland is abandoned.  Hi ho.

I hope you all enjoy what's left of SL.  I'm sure it will stay on so long as even a cent of profit is being made, but for me?  It doesn't provide what I'm looking for.  Not at those prices.

Peace, love and chicken grease!

Find out more about Victor on his homepage.