Second Life Blogs | Pixel Scoop | Virtual Worlds News

Oh look. The BBC have written something about Second Life again.

This article asks the question, “What happened to Second Life?”

What a stupid question. Might I first suggest that journalist, Lauren Hansen, tries checking out the Second Life website for some usage statistics before opening an article like that.

The picture used is equally stupid.

According to this image, a prim sign on a glass store means that Second Life is a thing of the past. My own stupid question in response is – if the store was really closed anyway, why would the building be up? If the store owner is still paying tier, then surely their things would still be out!

While Second Life no longer has the hype of 2007, its userbase grows (though active user stats more slowly than inactive users). Read any Second Life blog or website, read the Google news feed and you will see just how many educational institutions are coming in. Yes, the businesses left Second Life…. but only because of their own failings. And besides, they have been replaced by more education and creativity, which is a far better use of the platform in my opinion.

In this article, the journalist quotes Wired UK’s editor, Ben Hammersley, who says in relation to businesses opening in world stores, “You could go and open these stores and no-one would turn up,” he says. “They would have 20 to 30 people there when it opened, and after that no-one would bother going in there again. It just wasn’t worth the spend.”

And that right there is what was wrong with every single business that opened its doors in Second Life only to fail soon after. They did indeed, like Ben implies, just open up. That was all they did. A bit of press surrounding their opening would pull in the initial couple of dozen. And then nothing. They just expected people to come to them. As I have said before in a post about Second Life business, you can throw out the grad school ‘Marketing for Dummies’ text books whenit comes to virtual worlds. The people who put the effort in are the ones who will reap the rewards. The biggest problem for the Fortune 500 companies who opened up in world was that they expected people to go to their stores just because of their name. Who gives a shit about a big arsed company’s name in Second Life? Nobody does, we’re all too busy flying, driving massive tanks, shooting off into the pixel space in a rocket and looking like supermodels. Why would we care about your brand? And so what if you offer free t-shirts at the entrance. This is Second Life, for heaven’s sake. Don’t give me a t-shirt, give me a Malibu style loft that appears on one click, complete with helipad and helicopter (branded with your logo if you insist).

The point is that just turning up doesn’t impress. And evidently, the extra effort required in virtual worlds is “below” the businesses who came, failed and left.

Good riddance.

I am one of those people who does have a profile snippet about where to get help for Cove Islands (the real estate company I manage). This is because I am often too busy to deal with individual requests and we have staff to do that. So I politelty ask people to contact those staff. I don’t claim to have my IMs capped on a daily basis (seems there’s a lot of people who have their IMs capped on a daily basis lol). And if someone does IM me, I will often just refer them to the right person, POLITELY. Ok, ok, so people often don’t read the rules, don’t read instructions and contact creators of items with stupid questions. That must be annoying, granted.

It wasn’t annoying when they were paying for the products though, was it?

It just seems there are some downright RUDE people in game. It’s rare I have to contact someone in regard to a product not working to be honest and I usually go through their request support channels if I do. But I went to a store earlier on (I won’t name it) and I was going to buy a product there for L$ 2995. That was until I read a sign on the wall about support.

I quote: “If you think you need help, you’re wrong. The answer’s in the notecard with the products. Read it. I will ignore your IMs or notecards.”

I didn’t buy it.

Attitude or what?!

Can you imagine walking into a store in RL and getting to the checkout before the check out assistanc says, “Now if this is faulty, you will not get your mony back. If something doesn’t seem right, we wno’t refund you. If you change your mind about the purchase, it’s tough luck and you will have to go fuck yourself.”

Welcome to Second Life™, where half of the population leave their manners on their desktop.

/end rant.

“Welcome to my store, I hope you have a wonderful time trying to get out from underneath the God damn prim you landed under. I hope your camera isn’t going all haywire as you try and cam around to find some means of escape and I hope you don’t swear and curse at your screen lots as you realise that you probably will just have to teleport away. So why is it I don’t make any sales again?”

Ok, so that isn’t actually a greeting I have encountered. But it’s a greeting that I swear some stores need to use. People, people…. PLEASE double check your landing points. There is nothing worse than being teleported to a place and finding yourself stuck. Ok well maybe there are worse things…. like starving people etc, but you get my gist.

It would be the equivalent of going to a store in real life and as soon as you walk through the door, a big burly security guard bundles you to the floor, punches you in the face a few times and pins you down under a few big rocks and things. Then he says, ‘Ok, you can shop if you can get out from under there.’ Once again, maybe it isn’t quite like that, but whatever.

It makes me laugh, however, when people complain that they NEVER make sales and then you go over to their store and the landing point is underground somewhere miles from the store entrance. Apparently the basics of making sales from a store starts with having a store people can access. I hear that helps… rumour has it!

Anyway, I just felt like a whinge and bitch for a change.