There's been much interesting reader response to my interview with Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager, but this one from "EmptyEyes" intrigued me most — pointing to core problems that are hurting Second Life user growth/retention, but are core features embedded within the platform:
Second Life's social stagnation is representative of fundamentally how the game works and the culture that it exists in.
Teleportation is the anathema of local communities forming near each other.
IMs encourage private conversations which leads to a quiet world.
Infinite space fractures groups, as people spread out away from each other to get their own small domains completely outside of others interference.
The [online] Marketplace means that there's pretty much no reason to be present to shop in-world.
These all end up having second and third order consequences that are also produce negative social outcomes. For instance, the activities in Second Life are building, character customization, talking, shopping, NSFW, sightseeing, and games. Because of the above reasons only shopping, character customization, and NSFW provide experiences better than or on par with other modern games. Pushing people towards these experiences and away from the others, making them feel empty. That emptiness reinforces itself forward.
Also to be clear, I'm not saying that I don't like these things, lord knows shopping and NSFW are single handedly holding what exists together. I'm just saying that they encourage isolation and anti-social tendencies. Which I don't know how a mobile client and a trust and safety team are going to fix.
Notably, argues EmptyEyes, the isolation and anti-social can't just be solved only by focusing on the mobile app for user growth (Oberwager) — more is needed:
[N]o shade on Bradford, these are just my impressions based on his comments about making changes for the long term — this seems like chasing a dragon of short term user growth (which is better than short term monetary growth) instead of introspecting the social dynamics of SL and engineering fixes or making policy changes to correct them.
SL is a deeply social game, just like EVE Online hires economists to ensure their markets are rock solid, SL should be hiring sociologists, psychologists, and MMO designers that focus on community building in games to ensure that its social environment and perception is rock solid.
Strong agreement with the last point, and much of the preceding. As I discuss in my book, the core challenge is ambiguity as to whether Second Life is more like a game world, or a fully open-ended platform. If it's a game, Linden Lab can (and should) add constraints to make SL feel more immersively world-like.
Relatedly, I think there's some relatively easy fixes to some of the problems EmptyEyes mentions. For instance, add a small L$ charge to teleporting, and bring back free-to-use telehubs that are available across the mainland, and an option for sim owners. That would subtly encourage players to walk/fly/ride in vehicles and socialize more.
Image from Cajsa's post on Lola Ghost.
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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