First, What Did They Get Right?

When I first entered Second Life in November of 2006 I was completely unaware of the state of the art in virtual world technology. Hence, I was completely blown away by the 3D world with little avatars running around and chatting with each other. It wasn't until I read Edward Castronova's book Synthetic Worlds that I realize that there were other virtual worlds - largely massively multi-player online games. In fact, Castronova barely mentions Second Life. After reading his book, I decided to become more familiar with video game virtual worlds and took the plunge into World of Warcraft. Since then, I have tried a number of other, similar, games which have provided some useful data points for comparison.

To understand what Linden Labs got right, we can compare Second Life with a MMO video game. In a MMO video game the primary purpose for users to join the game is to go on quests. A secondary goal is to socialize and that is usually for the purposes of engaging the help of others on more complicated quests. A third goal is to customize your character. This can be done initially by making some character design choices and later by acquiring better clothing. Forth, vastly more sophisticated players can create custom objects which can be used or sold to other players.

Second Life can be most easily understood in the way it treats these basic goals. First, there are no quests in Second Life. People enter the world and can do pretty much as they please. Since users are not focused on satisfying quests, the environment opens up enormous possibilities for creativity and personal exploration. Not having quests has its downsides. But, this is really the distinguishing feature of Second Life. Linden Labs got this right and only later dropped the ball.

Socializing is improved as well in Second Life. Granted IM, voice chat, and groups are not unique to Second Life. But with nothing to do but hang out and be creative, the social aspects of the virtual world move to the foreground. Whereas users come to a video game to complete quests, people come to Second Life to hang out and socialize. This leads some people to claim that Second Life is just a 3D chat room. While this may be true at some level, the impact of a customizable 3D should not be underestimated. Bringing virtual world technology to the world of social interaction was another thing the Linden Labs got right. But, it is hard to appreciate these accomplishments with the sound of all those balls dropping in the background.

Second Life truly excels in the extent to which you can customize both your avatar and the environment. And it is unequaled in the extent to which users can create in world content. These final goals and how they were handled or mishandled will be taken up next.

The Staggering Ineptitude of Linden Labs

Albert Einstein once said "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." I think the staggering ineptitude of Linden Labs is giving human stupidity a run for its money. Yes, I am beginning a rant, if you haven't figured that out already. To paraphrase another quote that I have no idea who to attribute to, Second Life has enormous potential and always will. That is to say, that the prospects of Linden Labs actually exploiting the potential of Second Light grow dimmer every day. It will remain, forever, a promising technology with unexploited potential. Why? Because of the staggering ineptitude of Linden Labs.

If I sound a little angry, I suppose I am. I came to Second Life just a little over two years ago and was astonished, as many people were, with the future potential of this amazing technology. Over the past two years I have invested an enormous amount of time believing that when this technology catches on, playing catch up would not be an option. And now it looks like this technology might never catch on the way I thought it would. And that is because Linden Labs has just dropped the ball. They simply do not know what they were doing. They created a gold mine and had no idea how to mine the gold.

In my early days on Second Life, I added some pages to my website to discuss my experiences. Way back then, I wrote "I am fully aware of the fact that by the time this technology becomes mainstream the name of Second Life might be little more than a historical footnote like the name of the first PC operating system (CP/M) or the first electronic spreadsheet (Visicalc)." As I was writing that, I had no idea how prophetic that might become. So, I thought it might be worth while to digress on a new thread to explore just how they managed to screw up so badly. What did they get right? What did the do wrong? What should they have done instead? Stay tuned.

The Mall vs the Red Light District

In real life we have a wide variety people pursuing a wide variety of interests. And, in general, this is a good thing. Within reason, people should be able to find socially acceptable vehicles for their self expression and need fulfillment. But, we also realize, in real life, that one person's pursuit of well being might conflict with another person's pursuit of well being. So, we segregate interests. You would not expect to find, for example, an adult book store next to a church, nor a half way house for pedophiles next to a high school.

These are extreme examples but more subtle examples are not hard to find. Most cities and towns have zoning restrictions. So you cannot place commercial establishments in residential neighborhoods. People need to live and people need to shop so both are legitimate needs. But, most municipalities feel that orderly development is preferable to letting anyone do whatever they wish where ever they wish. In fact, a town or city who followed that philosophy would deteriorate and become unlivable in very short order. And that is exactly the problem that has occurred in Second Life.

Linden labs makes a faint and almost perfunctory effort at segmentation by marking islands as PG or Mature. However, this is grossly inadequate for the variety of activities found in Second Life. The answer, somewhat glibly, is that Second Life needs zoning. Actually, the answer, somewhat more seriously is that Second Life needs to develop a segmentation scheme so that conflicting interests do not collide. Using very broad strokes their needs to be areas in Second Life where you go for business or education, and other places you go to explore personal expression and needs. I would characterize these broad strokes as The Mall vs the Red Light District. And over the next few posts we will explore the possibilities and pitfalls of segmentation.

What ARE These People?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a socially alienated individual. For some reason, life has not gone well. Perhaps, you were mercilessly bullied in Junior High School. Perhaps, you have a physical limitation that prevents you from fitting in as well as you would like. Perhaps you grew up in a majorly dysfunctional family. Perhaps you are driven by compulsions that you cannot fully control and do not fully understand. Most people grow up with some sort of adversity and overwhelmingly most adjust. However, some don't. Some just become increasingly more alienated and increasingly more angry. In real life there are behavior traits that might tip us off to be wary of such a person. They may avoid eye contact. They may have very limited social interaction or poor interaction skills. They may dress or behave in ways that reveal their underlying rage. We cannot totally avoid such people in real life, but we do get warning signs.

What is such a person comes into a virtual world? What if they purchase a very normal looking avatar and dress is in a moderate and acceptable way? What if their entire purpose for being in a virtual world is to get you to lower your guard so they can punish you for all the insults that they have suffered in their life? Or worse, what if they wish to make you miserable just because it is fun?

I was told a story once, by someone who was visiting my Academy. They had gotten to be friends with someone they met in a chat room long before the days of Second Life. At one point the friend appeared to be becoming despondent and talked about committing suicide. Then, the person simply stopped appearing in the chat room. The person who was relating the story was frantic and contacted the chat room administrator. As it turns out, this person 'faked' a suicide to disturb (or 'mess with') the person who was relating the story. And this person, from the chat room, had done this a number of times before.

I don't know whether or not the anecdote is fully true, partially true or made of whole cloth since I did not investigate the incident myself. However, it rings true based upon experiences that I have had. And it certainly represents, if only anecdotally, a malicious form of griefing.

Why would somebody do a thing like this? How could they enjoy such a thing? The problem, of course, is that when you are dealing with anonymous people in a virtual world, you never know, for sure, who is at the keyboard and what there motives might be. And all you need is one bad experience with this sort of thing to put you off of virtual worlds for a long time.

So, anonymity has some major benefit and some major drawbacks. If you prevent anonymity you limit the ability of basically good people to explore who they are and express themselves in ways that they may not be able to express themselves in real life. On the other hand, anonymity can be a hiding place for psychopaths, sociopaths, and all manner of maladjusted individuals. Is there a solution? Yes, there is. And that will be the topic of the next post.

Who ARE These People?

In the last post I discussed the problem of griefers and trollers in Second Life, and how they can seriously diminish the enjoyment of others. And yet, however annoying these people might be, they rarely rise above the level of 'annoying'. A much bigger problem is the friends you make in Second Life, who might not be as good of friends as you think they are.

When we meet people in real life, we usually evaluate them in some sort of social context. We gravitate towards people who are similar to ourselves in terms of values, education, and social status. This isn't to say that we never venture outside of our social circles. It is only to say that a friendship or a relationship has a much better chance of succeeding if you share similar values. In fact, dating and matchmaking websites often use this premise as the basis for finding matches.

Unfortunately, when you meet an anonymous person in Second Life, you do not have access to this information. If you met this same person in real life your warning alarms might go off and you might well get away as quickly as you can. But, since you don't have this information, you lower your guard and get to know the person a little better. This is not entirely a bad thing. You get to meet some lovely people that you might otherwise never get to know in real life because they have some social markers that would cause you to avoid them. However, some social markers can be very important.

At a superficial level you may get along fine. You might even find it very interesting to get to know somebody who is unlike anyone you have ever met before. You might even become very good friends. And then once you have invested in a friendship or a relationship you find out that this person is nothing like you thought they would be. They may not even be a 'bad' person. They may just hold different values than you hold with regard to simple things like loyalty, trust, obligations in a friendship and so on. Before you know it, they have done something horrible, from your perspective, like betrayed a confidence, talked behind your back, failed to hold up their end of the relationship, or some similar violation.

I have heard time and time again from people who have read my note cards at Cosmos Academy and IM'd me about this kind of experience. This can be innocent and benign and yet painful. Two people may have very different standards of acceptable behavior. Their guards were down. The values collided and somebody got hurt. This is unfortunate and unpleasant. And it arises from not knowing who you are dealing with.

But, it can be much worse. What if the problem is not just a collision of values. What if the other person is bitter about their role in life; vindictive from past failed relationships, sociopathic, or just has an axe to grind about life. Then it can really get ugly and that will be the topic of the next post.

The Blessing of Anonymity

It is easier to be yourself in Manhattan that it is to be yourself in a small town of a few hundred people. Overwhelmingly, most people in a large city do not know who you are and do not care. So, if your behavior is a little quirky nobody even notices. When everybody knows you, the pressures on you to conform are much, much greater.

Everybody has quirks in their behavior, most of which is harmless and only some of which would be cause for real concern. So the anonymity of a large city where the boundaries of acceptable behavior as less confining provides individuals with greater freedom to just be who they are.

Carry this a step further, and consider the anonymity of a virtual world. In a real city, you have a physical presence. People might know where you live. They might know some of your friends. They might even know some members of your family. So, even though there is a great deal of freedom, it is not unlimited freedom. In a virtual world you can change your appearance, your ethnicity, your social class, your age, and even your gender. Try doing all that in a big city. You’re short? No problem, just make yourself tall. You’re aging to fast and want to recapture your youth. We can handle that too. You are lower class and have always wanted to be a refined aristocrat? No sweat. It is within your reach. People come to a virtual world to be whoever they really want to be and your wildest imaginings cannot cover the full range of possibilities.

And one of the elements of a virtual world that makes this possible is anonymity. So, anonymity is a blessing, a real contribution to individual freedom of expression.

Who Are the People in Second Life?

Another problem with retention in Second Life is the cast of weirdos and oddballs that you are likely to encounter. These pathological misfits show up in a variety of forms. The most obvious instance is griefers. Griefers are people who come to Second Life for the sole purpose of diminishing the enjoyment of others. They have some fairly standard tricks. Perhaps the most common is a particle generator that floods a sim with pictures that range from annoying to deeply offensive. Another instance is trollers. Griefers generally do not mind get Abuse Reports. They are pretty flagrant. But, Trollers are more subtle. They like to annoy people but carefully stop short of getting reported. They may act like newbies and ask a lot of questions that may or may not be offensive depending on how you interpret them. They act confused and ask the same questions over and over. They just want to be annoying. Since a lot of people, especially in Welcome Areas, try to help others out, this can be not only annoying but frustrating and upsetting. Many a good mentor has been turned off by trollers.

The problem here, of course, is that Second Life allows anonymous free accounts. This is a HUGE mistake and I cannot imagine what was going through the heads of the people at Linden Labs who made this decision. I know why it initially seemed like a good idea. They wanted the press they would get from having millions of accounts. And, I suppose, that did work in the short run. But, in the longer run they have subsided a lot of non paying customers to come to Second Life and drive away potentially paying customers. There is no way to justify a strategy that pays people to drive away your business.

But, it isn't just griefers and trollers that create problems. Anonymity is a huge problem for other reasons. And I will turn to that next time.

How Do You Learn in Second Life

In the last post, I stated that the most serious problem for Second Life with regard to retention was the lack of structured activities. I suggested that quests might be a way for people to structure their time while getting familiar with the environment. Following on the retention theme, I think the second most serious problem in Second Life with regard to retention is the learning curve. People show up in this virtual world and are swamped by the number of things they don't know. Granted the Orientation Islands attempt to address this but they fall way short of what is needed to keep people engaged. I guess the people at Linden Labs had to learn all this stuff the hard way and feel that new visitors should learn the hard way as well.

Second Life is a lot like a 3rd world country. If you know the right people and you know the right questions to ask, you can get things done. But, if you don't spend endless hours making contacts, or hanging out at Welcome Areas waiting for tidbits of information to be dropped, your chances of making any progress are very low. For example, if you happen to be hanging out on Help Island when there is a greifer attack and a knowledgeable mentor handy, you might learn that you can suppress the particles by simultaneously pressing ctrl-alt-shift-=. I think it is fair to say that the SL interface is not intuitive.

What they need to do is to organize the things you need to know into categories and develop usable tutorials in each of those categories. I know there are people who would say that there are tutorials on building and scripting. There is even a place where you can learn about particle generators. However, if you really believe those tutorials are adequate then I can only assume that you know absolutely nothing about either education nor normal people.

What Do You Do in Second Life?

There are a number of reasons why retention in Second Life is a problem. The learning curve is too steep. There are griefers. There is lag. There are crashes. Inventory gets lost. Many of the people you encounter would make your skin crawl if you met them in real life. Yes, all of these are problems. But they are not the major problem. The major problem is that there is no structure. You show up in this fascinating but overwhelming world with a desire to come to grips with it all and you are left to your own resources to figure out how to entertain your self. If you ask somebody "What should I do here?", they will answer with the questions "What do you want to do?"

Imagine a country where the Division of Tourism does not produce any information about tourist attractions in the country. Imagine further that a brave visitor shows up anyway. They go directly to the Welcome Center and ask "What can I do in your country?" The receptionist in the Welcome Center answers with the question "What do you want to do?" How well do you think the tourism industry would do in this country?

To Linden Lab's credit, they do make an attempt at some tourist materials. There are note cards on Help Island that give you links to new places. However, people do not come to Second Life as tourists. The come to learn or to socialize. Treating them like tourists makes them tourists. The look around for a few weeks and then go on to something else.

The solution to this problem is simple and I am astonished that Linden Labs has not figured it out. They should take a look at video games. When you show up in World of Warcraft, for example, you show up in front of a quest giver. The quest giver gives you an assignment and as you pursue that assignment, you learn things that you need to know in order to function in the game. This technique structures your time and give you goals. The structured time makes learning more interesting and the goals make learning more satisfying.

The Orientation Islands are a weak attempt at quests. But they only cover the very basics of how to get around and communicate. After that you are on your own. They keep redoing the Orientation Islands as though that is where the problem is. It is not. This is like inviting friends over for dinner and only serving them soup. When they stop coming you think it is your soup and put your energy into making better soup. Maybe the soup is OK and you need to work on a second course. Maybe the Orientation Islands are OK and LL needs to work on a second course. Yes, a Second Course for Second Life. It has a nice ring to it.

Retention Problems

Second Life has a serious retention problem. I have provided some statistics on this at my Academy. You can look at this any number of ways, but, if you look at the number of residents that have logged in during the past month or two you will find that only about 10% of the Second Life accounts could be considered as active - meaning that they show up in Second Life on a regular basis and interact with either the environment or other people. So, even though LL boasts that they have in excess of 10 million accounts, that is largely marketing hype. There are probably less than 1 million active accounts at any one time and less than 100,000 paying accounts. This makes the world much smaller than the hype might suggest. A typical evening in Second Life will show around 60,000 users logged in. Even if it were a different 60,000 users each day, that would only add up to 1.8 million users over the course of a month. This is bad news for Linden Labs because their product is not nearly as popular as they try to claim. It is bad news for advertisers who are trying to advertise products in Second Life. It is bad news for vendors who sell products in Second Life. And it is bad news for residents of Second Life who have invested a lot of time and other resources in this virtual world betting, basically, on Second Life futures. Over the next few days, I will look at the retention problem, speculate on the reasons for it, and suggest some solutions.

Complete Sentences

I was standing on Help Island one day talking to a friend who was filling me in on a lot of the recent gossip.

"How do you get all this gossip?" I asked her.

"I just hang around chatting with people in IM," she replied, "and people fill me in on what ever has been going on."

"But, I hang around a lot, too," I protested. "And people never fill me in on the gossip."

"Well, people don't talk to you as easily, because you are intimidating." she informed me.

"How am I intimidating?" I inquired.

"Because you tend to chat in complete sentences," she replied.

Complete sentences? There is negative social value in completing your sentences? Apparently so. But there is also positive social value. I had another friend say that I was unlike anyone she had ever met. I asked why. Yes, you guessed it, the complete sentences thing again. I can imagine an inscription on my tombstone... "He Completed His Sentences" Yes, the sum of my life's work may be no more than completed sentences.

I have always wanted to make my mark in the world. But being known for completing sentences was not exactly what I had in mind. I can imagine the following interaction in an English class of the future.

"Incomplete sentence. What's wrong?"

"lol"

"No idea."

"dunno"

"??"

"not a clue"

"np. IM me for answer"

"lol"

Maybe mortality is nature's way of saving you from such indignities in the future.

Being Fictional

It isn't so bad being fictional. I come from a large family of several dozen alts. We each have our own personalities and interests. We argue over who gets the screen time. Some alts disapprove of the behaviors of other alts. Some alts think they are better than others. It really is just like a family. And just like a family we can be really cruel to each other. I can tell you, for example, that Mason Dixon picks his nose. And Honey Lemmon has been in Second Life for almost two years without ever changing her underwear. Ewwwww!! Good thing they don't have blogs. I would hate to think what they might say about me. But, I am special. I built Cosmos Academy. I control the money. And, lately, I have been getting most of the screen time.

You probably think that you are special because you are a real person and I am fictional. But, bear with me as I disabuse you of that silly notion. There is a body at the keyboard and in that body there is a brain. That brain constructed me. I am a product of that brain. Somewhere else there is different body at a different keyboard. In that body there is a brain. That brain constructed you. You are a product of that brain. You may think you are real. But you are every bit as much of a construct as I am. Now, you may think that since you have a real body and I have a virtual body that you are, some how, a leg up. But, my virtual body looks better than your real body. My virtual body does not get aches and pains. And my virtual body has no fear of stepping on the scale. So, I suggest you get over it. You are stuck with that unruly slab of meat and I am not. So there. We will see who is really better off. I may go dancing later. I don't have to worry if my clothes will fit and I don't have to worry about getting tired. And, I can fly. So top that!

Introducing Doctor Cosmos

Let me begin by disclosing the fact that I am not real. I am a fictional persona created for a Second Life avatar. I am not, at all, the same as the guy at the keyboard who will remain anonymous for the moment. I have a mind of my own and he and I will often argue about issues of importance; or at least issues of importance to me. I am younger, better looking and much cooler than that keyboard guy. I am smoother, more charming, and less modest than he is. In fact, truth be told, he is a dork. But, don't tell him that. He sometimes puts words in my mouth in retaliation for things I say and this creates some horribly awkward situations. But, enough about him. Let's talk about me.

I created an Academy in Second Life called Cosmos Academy which I encourage you to visit. At the Academy I have numerous scripts, note cards, and other items to help you learn about, and think about, Second Life. There are notes on technology, philosophy, character creation, education, and even a few on the economics of virtual worlds. Visitors to the Academy often IM me with very flattering and favorable reactions to what I have done there. But the audience is somewhat limited. In order to find my Academy people have to search using the right keywords and then choose to visit the Academy based on a little blur in the Search facility. This draws anywhere from a couple dozen visitors per month to as many as a hundred in a good month. The problem, of course, is that you have to be in Second Life to visit my Academy. You have to be curious enough to use the Search facility. And you have to select my location out of hundreds of choices. I thought that in order to reach a wider audience, a blog would be just thing. So, here I go..... If you choose to follow, I will do my best to make it interesting and worth your time.