Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

recent posts

about

Dear Linden Lab: Advertise Second Life’s Huge Geography Compared to Most (All?) Online Games — Comment of the Week

Blake Sea Second Life Marketing

The new test ad for Second Life attracted quite a bit of opinions from longtime SL users, including some on-brand snark — and this smart suggest from longtime virtual world explorer Kaylee West:

As a regular user of both SL (17 years) and VRChat (6 years), one of the big things that keeps me in SL and frustrates me with VRC is how much easier it is the change up my avis look and wardrobe in SL than VRC.

I also feel, strangely, that the continents are a big selling point. Many AAA games boast about how big their maps are, how you can endlessly explore every corner of their maps. [Emphasis mine! -WJA]

VRC has some biggish worlds, but nothing like SL’s continents and Blake Sea. Only in SL can you buy a luxury yacht and sail for hours on end, stopping at different port and explore the surrounds, or jump in a car of your choice and drive around an extensive road network.

From another perspective, there appears to be a growing number of people looking for AI companions. I have made one for myself so that I have “intelligent” company when I travel around SL (not all of us are good at the socialising thing). Maybe making the creation of AI companions (actual avatars not animesh which can’t be rezzed) easier and highlighting this as a feature of SL (as against Replika or Kindred) might draw these users in? 

I believe something like those AI companions are coming soon, so set that aside. The map size point is a very good one, especially since SL is a single-shard virtual world with truly massive areas that are contiguous by land, air, or sea. (Yes, region crossings usually involve hiccups, but still.) It’s a key differentiating feature of Second Life!

Consider: Currently Second Life’s size is roughly that of Los Angeles (as Philip Rosedale recently noted in an interview), i.e. 1300 square kilometers.

Contrast that with some leading AAA online game worlds:


And so on. I think it’s fair to argue Second Life has the very largest online world compared to all others. (Correct me if I’m wrong here.) Also unlike SL, all of the above worlds have load screens between large areas!

So yes, absolutely advertise Second Life’s large size — and also, I’d add, include some game-like challenges for new users. Such as:

  • Win a fancy car/motorcycle/yacht, if you can travel 250 uninterrupted miles on it.
  • Explore the mainland in a scavenger hunt with many multiple prizes.   

Not to mention all the existing games already making use of Second Life’s size, as Iggy writes in another post:

After [educators] largely left SL, I found Pirates Destiny by accident; the naval battles made me stay. I support creators by buying ships… The roleplaying at Pirates Destiny is light, but the fun of sailing enormous. 

And contrast that with Sea of Thieves, a fairly popular online pirate game from Xbox Studios, with a world size of approximately… a seriously wee 18.8 sq km.

Image from my 2014 explorations of Blake Sea using SL Go cloud streaming, a predecessor of Project Zero.

Please support posts like these by buying Making a Metaverse That Matters and joining my Patreon!

Become a member!https://c6.patreon.com/becomePatronButton.bundle.js

Posted in ,

5 responses to “Dear Linden Lab: Advertise Second Life’s Huge Geography Compared to Most (All?) Online Games — Comment of the Week”

  1. Zidders Roofurry Avatar
    Zidders Roofurry

    The issue is a lot of that isn’t navigable thanks to people putting up barriers be they physical like giant mountains surrounding their property or ban lines. You can’t sail around the continents or even within the mainland. The Blake Sea is really the only place you can do that.
    Advertising its geography like you can easily drive/fly/walk/swim everywhere ignores the fact that it’s a complicated process. You have to either know your way around OR be part of a group like GTFO & even then it’s not like things are mapped out. It’s a real pain to get around.
    IMHO what SL needs to do is not advertise at all. The people most likely to benefit from SL probably already know about it, and everyone else really isn’t interested in dealing with its HUGE learning curve. The only other option is to dumb sl down, & that will just ruin it.

    Like

    Reply
  2. Zidders Roofurry Avatar
    Zidders Roofurry

    Also, considering all the abandoned land there is in SL I feel it’s disingenuous to say it’s this big, huge place compared to other games because unlike games like Elden Ring or GTA online in most of SL there just isn’t all that much to do. Private sims don’t count, and there are entire regions that are mostly empty. I live in Tehama over by Luskwood, and I’m almost always the only person in the entire sim.
    The fact is the average new user isn’t going to find anyone to talk to, and if they do it’s either going to be a bot or someone afk. IMO what Linden Lab needs to do is focus on improving customer service, lower land costs, and stop firing long time staff. Stop worrying about bringing new people in. If you keep your current customers happy you’ll get plenty of new people coming in via word of mouth.
    Right now I wouldn’t recommend Second Life to any of my friends, and it’s because SL’s current owners are treating all us users like crap. We’re having to deal with asset server lag, sims going down, features not working, and the service we’re getting not worth the price a lot of us are paying.
    You can tie a silk bow on a steaming pile of manure, and it’ll still stink. Stop treating your user base like pig slop, and start providing a service worth peoples time, money, and effort, and satisfied customers will do all your advertising for you.
    Right now LL’s customers aren’t getting the treatment we deserve.

    Like

    Reply
  3. sirhc desantis Avatar
    sirhc desantis

    Good point. I have been getting lost in SL since.. 2 days after I joined. Even now there is a rez zone about 2 sims over and one down from my crib that I have still not followed all the way round yet =^^= And that even with my slow moving, sim crossing at ease, park anywhere, all terrain, all mod cons (including micro disco) bus. A wee jump and I can test drive over – and under – the Blake – sorry for the sonic boom 🙂
    Whenever I see something that says ‘infinite generated via wossname’ I switch off. The only thing that ever got that right was Elite on the BBC Micro – and that just felt big.
    (How odd. Can’t find ser ‘Zidders Roofurry’ within SL. Still on Xitter so that seems to be a clue)

    Like

    Reply
  4. Haridsam Avatar
    Haridsam

    Nice post, James. Kaylee has a good point, and I generally agree that SL’s sheer size is a marketable plus. As for the Blake Sea, that alone is, at a guess, at least 20-30 sq. km.of navigable waters, and at least several hundred km. of coastlines, much of which makes for wonderful sailing. A lot of mainland areas offer long stretches of unimpeded roads. At the same time, the ban lines surrounding a lot of parcels on the Blake can really ruin your flying or sailing. And the vast areas of empty/abandoned space…hmm, maybe LL could turn them into nature reserves, forests and wetlands, in a massive rewilding project! Fill them with wildlife. And of course make them easily discoverable and promote them. Crazy, but why not?
    Sure, SL is far from perfect, and these discussions are good. And while all of us have a laundry list of pet peeves, I can’t help but wonder about people who offer little but criticism and negativity yet stay in the world. A confrontational “us and them” attitude isn’t productive.

    Like

    Reply
  5. Kaylee West Avatar
    Kaylee West

    @ Zidders Roofurry… sorry to be contrarian, but, my experience of driving and sailing around the continents while at times frustrated by ban lines (which I totally agree are a pain in the proverbial and should not be allowed to impact on public areas and throughways) has been that I have come across serendipitously many fascinating places built by SL residents past and present. From art galleries to cute little coffee shops, camping grounds, haunted castles, office buildings, you name it, I’ve come across it. Last year I did a week long cruise (roughly 1-2 hours per night) circumnavigating the Nautilus continent (starting from the airport at Santa Catalina) in my classic wooden cruiser. My partner and I stopped at a range of marinas and mooring sites over night (paying for a berth sometimes for two or three nights) to explore the areas around the marinas (you can see a travel log here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14sqvHkZ8VU/). We did scuba diving, visited a maritime museum, ate in open air restaurants, danced in bars, wandered through Italian style village and listened to some residents there speaking Italian, among other activities. Don’t get me wrong, it was challenging at times (I wrote about that in my travel log too), but the challenge is a part of the adventure. Many people that play AAA games are not afraid of challenges and have the skills to work things out. While not all new SL users will be AAA game players, having this freedom to be adventurous and meet some challenges might (I say might) be attractive to them. There are also groups like Drivers of SL who hold regular driving rallies with pre-planned routes and maps and prizes, and who are a very active community. In terms of running into people, if you sail out from Santa Catalina airport to Blake Sea – Siren Isle at almost any time of the day you will find people dancing on the sand or their boat, or just chilling on the deck of their motor boat or yacht. The airport itself usually always has someone taking off or landing, and the group Passengers of SL posts about flights people can join as passengers regularly. If you want a more structured itinerary, the BBUG (BBB Users Group – Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy (BBB) User Group) even has virtual passports that you can obtain for free and has lists of locations you can visit and obtain a stamp (for free) for your passport as a memento. None of this is to say that doing these things is always smooth running, but I believe there is potential for LL to make these things easier to do and to promote them.
    I respectfully disagree that LL doesn’t need to advertise and that they should just focus on the users they have, and I disagree that word of mouth is enough to bring in new users. We have all had the experience of talking to our IRL friends and family about SL and seeing their eyes go blank and then quickly changing the subject. LL is a company, not a charity. It needs to be economically viable for us to continue to enjoy our lives in SL. I agree that land costs are expensive. I am retiring next month after 17 years of taking students for lessons on our university’s region in SL called Chinese Island. Over 2000 students did lessons on the island. However, because I am retiring the university is not going to continue the lessons and I can’t afford to pay for a whole region. Fortunately in my case an academic colleague from Taiwan is taking the island over, but, I personally could never afford to pay for a whole region. That being said, I can afford to pay my premium account and have had for 17 years my own plot in SL with a home of 17 years.
    Like Haridsam I also have some pet peeves about SL, but on the whole I have found LL to be reasonably responsive and, despite how many years of people saying SL is dying, the technology is too old, etc., etc., LL has continued to improve the technology and the platform year after year. Some things have been slow, but even now, under Philip Rosedale’s guidance, they are continuing to develop new features and functionality. I was there through the whole Sansar experience and had my own builds on that platform and attended concerts and all kinds of activities on the platform, but ultimately agree that it was a waste of a lot of money that could have been used to better develop SL. Still, LL may well have learned a lot of things from developing Sansar that have and will benefit the ongoing development of SL.
    I have also always felt that while other 3D multiuser virtual environment platforms have had their champions (one obvious one is Meta & Horizon Worlds, albeit it they didn’t do a very good job) to advocate for their platforms and for virtual worlds in general, SL has never really had a champion to advocate for it other than, say, Philip Rosedale in the early years, and now again in recent times. I for one am glad that the current team is so motivated to try and keep the business alive and develop it further. New users and better ways of getting the message out there, plus better ways of onboarding new users (I still feel having live greeters, despite all the potential problems, is one of the best ways to encourage new users to stay longer – nothing better than a friendly “face” to make you feel less confused and lost) are essential for the future of the platform in the face of rapidly advancing technology and competition from other platforms like VRChat, Roblox, Fortnite, and other such platforms that are capturing the younger market.
    Apologies for the long post.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment