Now, if you are already on Second Life you most likely fall into one of two categories: Either you are somewhat new and/or don't play a lot or you have been around for a couple of years and you hate what Linden Lab (those who run the thing) are doing to your world. If you fall into the first category you probably use the official viewer (the program that run SL), you chat with your friends and don't even know about the fuss I'm about to write about.
The other group probably use either the old 1.23 version of the official viewer or a third-party one based on it. And a lot of you would agree with this person claiming that "Second Life is not for everyone".
And, quite frankly, you are ignorant of how the real world is affecting the second one.
I'll aim to debunk a few myths:
- Linden Lab is pushing down its vibrant community
- The official viewer (2.0 and onwards) is ugly and unusable
- SL is an amazing 3D world...
- ...with limitles possibilities.
- It's a cool game,
- not a social network!
- This is the end of SL.
First of all: Second Life is still around, but it's dying. No, this is not because Linden Lab is mistreating people so they leave - the "life expectancy" of an account that has been activated a few times before that person is no longer active hasn't changed much. What has changed is the rate at which new players come to the platform.
It is not because Viewer 2 (the new viewer launched about a year ago) is ugly. Personally, I find it a tenfold more attractive than the official 1.23-viewer. And more to the point, several studies have shown that new users find it a lot more user friendly and easier. I know you guys find it a lot mroe confusing than the viewer you have been using for years. Practice does mean something. And I know there is a lot of functionality that is poor in V2, but new users won't notice that until they have played for quite a while. And then you can point them to Phoenix Firestorm.
Now, you might argue that people should get on Second Life anyway. After all - we who play have all found amazing things to do in that world where we can create to our hearts' content. It's a world that you can build and anyone should be able to see just how cool that is. But no. When people log in to SL they will have seen real-time rendering like CCPs Incarna engine. They will have seen easily understandable reasons to stay like in World of Warcraft. And they will have seen easy-to-use-controls like in the Sims. By comparison SL is extremely ugly (even with the new shadow rendering and mesh) - especially the things you see as a newly created avatar, hard to use and without purpose.
And you can build lots of things in SL... If you know how. The build tools (and I mean in every viewer) are too advanced for most and pathetic for anyone used to working with 3D-software. It's possibly to build good-looking objects... in a professional program and then import them. In effect, most users will not be able to build the really cool things. They might find interesting things to do with all the stuff that's already there however - but there is no guide to what can be done.
Another problem facing new players is that they think they've downloaded a game and they want to play. But where are your stats? How do you win? Second Life isn't a game at all (not more than anything can be a game anyway) - it's an online platform that can be used as anything from a very complicated chat program to a 3D-shooter game to an immersion into historical roleplay. One can play in Second Life, but one does not generally play Second Life. You have to figure out what to do yourself.
But if I'm saying it's a platform, do I mean it's a social network? Yes, that's what I mean. Now lots of second lifers will be screaming that SL is nothing like Facebook. I know Fb isn't very popular - I'm not a big fan either. The fact that you're not you're not using your real life name and might interact like a vampire doesn't mean that you're not networking socially with that were-fox/cyborg. Made-up people have relationships too. You might want to connect this social network with your other ones. Or you can keep SL separate - your choice. You might like some of the features coming that is inspired by other networks (the "feed" that will be like your "Wall" for instance) or you might not. But don't claim it's not a social network. With a 3D world as an overlay, which I think is cool.
My final myth to dispel is that this will be the end of Second Life. It could very well be - for all of the reasons I've mentioned. They need more users - stat. Either that or the number of active residents will just continue to dwindle until Linden Lab is out of business and the grid is simply shut down.
The new users will eventually be like you old people - either just show up every now and then, don't realize what's going on or complaining about all the new people who don't realize what a great world SL can be. But for now they need to know why they should spend any time on this thing and not either some of the better looking games where you know what you're supposed to do, or one of the social networks that don't require you to run real-time-rendering software.
Second Life needs to become a lot better looking (mesh will go a long way, as will the GPU-intense shadow-rendering). It needs to present people with things to do (it's destination guide built-in aims to do this). It needs to be as avaliable as possible when not running the heavy application (web profiles and the short-lived attempt at a web based viewer are attempts in this direction). We might not like the exact implementation of all of this, but Linden Lab has seen the statistics and they know that either they help new players by rethinking some things about Second Life - or in a few years there will be no Second Life at all.
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