Second Life Blogs | Pixel Scoop | Virtual Worlds News

Some time ago, when Linden Lab took over XStreet, I posted about how this was undoubtedly likely to be the end of the Xstreet Forums. Unfortunately, it seems I was right, as a post on the Second Life™ blog yesterday confirmed the forums would be moving over to the SL forums area. They were, as ever, scarce with the details. But I will sulk anyway.

Linden Lab remind me of a kid I used to know when I was growing up. Jordan, he was called. And he was right miserable little bastard, to be honest. We’d all be playing football nicely, minding our own business and he would come along every single time we played and ruin the game. Either he would run off with the ball or he would run off with the sweaters we were using as goal posts or he would throw stones. Why? Because he just could not stand to see anyone having fun. And don’t go feeling sorry for Jordan. He was invited to play frequently, but instead it seems he just preferred to be an annoying little shit. Well congratulations, Linden Lab. You just shat all over my game of football, burst the ball, ran off with the goal posts and are now sitting smugly on the sidelines rubbing your hands in a ‘muah ha ha ha, the power is all mine,’ style gesture.

Alright, so childhood grudges aside, what the Hell is the problem with those forums staying separate? The blog posts claim the overall look will improve and functionality will be made better. But if you look at the existing Second Life forums and compare them with the XStreet forums, you will see why so many prefer XStreet. The official Second Life forums are messy, difficult to navigate, awkward and generally shit. There is a thriving community on the XStreet forums who enjoy the banter, the advice and of course classifieds services. They are hugely well read forums and the likes of the merchant’s forum there provides sound advice for people who are PAYING LINDEN LAB for the right to sell items there. Surely the commission Linden Lab takes from such sales (which can be pretty hefty on pricier items) should entitle people to the use of such services as forums there?

I just can’t see the harm in leaving it there. Ok, so not everyone likes it. Some people prefer the official SL ones. Personally I hate the official SL forums. They are overly policed and really awful to operate. But even if Linden Lab prefer their own, why can’t they just leave the XStreet ones as they are? It doesn’t cost a fortune to run them and there’s a group of happy posters over there just minding their own business. Will children in Africa spontaneously combust if the XStreet forums stay open? No. Will the global recession be drawn out for the remainder of the century? No. Will martians land and annihilate the population? Probably not. So why not just leave them there??

And it’s ok people talking about using other forums entirely independent of Linden Lab. Of course, other independent forums are great insofar as you avoid the gestapo like moderating of the Linden Lab affiliated ones, but people simply become comfortable with what they know and this is just another fine example of a decision on which no residents have been consulted. In something that is supposedly a user created world and in which we are frequently reminded that the residents are what makes SL the place it is, you would think there would be at least an attempt to consult with us before stupid decisions like this.

Then again… that would be too sensible I suppose.

Now, can I have my football back please?

I was trawling the web a short while ago for Second Life related articles and news stories. I’m sad like that, you see. But anyway, seeing that there was nothing massively groundbreaking happening today, I went back for interest’s sake and looked at older articles. And what astonishes me is the sheer amount of press and publicity in the past two years all geared towards the idea that because so many big real life corporations have failed in Second Life, SL is therefore shit. Ok, so it’s often worded a little differently but the point remains the same.

What a load of bullshit.

These huge corporations who go into world throwing ludicrous amounts of money at more sims than they need, paying over the odds for amateur sim designers and then complaining that it didn’t work out for them after investing however much money are taking entirely the wrong approach. This is not the same as real life. The rules are different. In real life, would you ever find one single man with very little money able to set up a car plant and manufacture vehicles to compete with the likes of Nissan? No. In Second Life, anyone with some scripting and building knowledge can make a car and when they’ve built one, they can copy it as many times as they like with a click! They can sell as many of them as people will buy with no reliability on resources, employment or running costs. In real life, it would be hideously unlikely that, for example, a fashion design student would release a line of clothing and have it become as sought after as the relseases of Versace or Armani. In Second Life, a talented Photoshopper with an eye for what looks good can easily set up their own clothing store.

And therein lies the source of the problem. The corporations coming into Second Life have no understanding of the community within. This is a world created by its residents and its active inhabitants are fiercely proud of their content. It isn’t possible to just bring in a big flashy company name, announce your arrival and have everyone flock to your islands and worship you. No. It simply does not work that way.

For a start, why are these companies coming in? Do they even know? It is unlikely, I would imagine, given how irrelevant the sums of money would be to such large businesses, that they come here solely to retail virtual versions of their products. I would therefore assume that it’s for brand awareness, some form of publicity stunt or, my favourite…. because everyone else is doing it. I really fail to see the objectives of many of the corporations coming into game and have to wonder whether they even have them! Surely entering a venture without a plan, intention or aim is always going to end badly.

For those coming into world for brand awareness, the focus should be on building up a presence. Give people a reason to visit your island. And for Heaven’s sake, think outside the box! This is Second Life!!! Don’t give me a frikkin T-Shirt with your logo on! Give me a pair of wings that turn me into a rocket and launch me a trillion miles into the sky! Who, in Second Life, is going to go out of their way to visit a boring corporate sim for a bloody free shirt? Nobody. Come on, people! Let’s have some imagination.

The other issue is the real life marketing gurus who come into Second Life, hired by these corporations and who think that everything they learnt in Marketing 101 at their posh university will stand them in perfect stead in virtual worlds. And that doesn’t work either. Tear up the text books! In a community where 30% of the active residents are creating and selling content, your competition in tougher and your audience arguably more reluctant. Ok, so marketers are vital, yes. BUT… not as vital as the knowledge and understanding of those who have been actively taking part in the Second Life community and who have, by trial, error and sheer volume of time, learnt what works, what doesn’t and what never will.

So, Mr. Corporation, let’s put your toys back in your pushchair and stop whining about how crappy Second Life is because you were incapable of working it to your advantage. The platform is not perfect. Then again what is? But Second Life has everything a company would ever need to be able to completely immerse a person in a product, service or idea without that person even leaving their computer. But it won’t happen automatically just because you have a big brand name. There’s enough monopolising of markets by big brand companies in real life already. The SL audience is not as easy to win over! And personally, I like it that way.

On 19th January, Philip Rosedale (founder of Second Life™) gave an interview to Metanomics. You can read the transcript to that here. There are also links to the video files there too.

The part of that interview I think I find most interesting is his reference to the Teen Grid. When it was put to him by a former teen grid member that there is little happening over there and that the Lindens seem to be paying it little attention, Rosedale had the following to say;

“Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that’s the direction that we’re taking in our planning and our work. I think that the educational opportunities for Second Life are so great for all ages that we need to make it as available as we possibly can to people. If you look at what we’ve done with the Teen Grid, I think we’ve done a good job, as a small company, of being inclusive and creating an environment in which teenagers were able to use Second Life, I think, perhaps earlier than, I don’t know, we might have been able to. We pushed hard to get that working.

But, if you look at the problems with having a teenage area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.”

Now, there seems to be an implication there of adopting a There.com style of play whereby anyone over the age of 13 can be on the same grid. This is really a dangerous approach, it has to be said. While I can appreciate that there are a LOT of very talented teen designers who, the teen grid being so isolated, are unable to have their work seen by many, how can we really ensure maximum safety for minors on the main grid? Age verification is a painless procedure… I age verified myself some time back. If the main grid was going to be opened up to teens too, surely age verification would have to become completely compulsory and mature regions restricted to adult only access? Making age verification compulsory is something I am sure would not go down well with many of the residents of Second Life who see it as a violation of their right to some privacy. And certainly not a popular choice with those underagers who are already on the main grid!

However, in an environment where ageplay is overly rife as it is, surely giving the undesireables around the opportunity to take this to another level with ‘RL’ minors is something that is going to be entirely questionable and a very controversial decision.

My personal opinion (which, whether you care or not, I am going to share) is that there needs to be limited access to the main grid for designers who wish to sell their items there. How this would work, I am not sure. However, as for merging the grids completely, I think there are too many dangerous possibilities opened up.

Anyway, this was all a bit serious. Tomorrow I should write a poem about pixel gangstas again maybe.

Here at Pixel Scoop, we were getting somewhat irate with the recent poor performance of Second Life™ and general shitty stability. However, it seemed a little unfair given just how irritated I was to shout out my opinion. It would have been very biassed and unfair. So I caught up with Bob, the coolest, calmest kitty around, find out out his take on the matters!!

Here’s what Bob had to say……