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.