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.