I admit that I’ve heard a lot of good things about Second Life — so, I continue to just think that I must be too old to get it. I heard Eric Rice talk about it with such animation and excitement at GnomeDex last week that I decided to give it another try.
Alas, it was another disaster.
Their Tagline – Your World. Your Imagination.
Broader Intro – Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by 307,031 people from around the globe.
* From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you’ve explored a bit, perhaps you’ll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
* You’ll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.
* The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world currency, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online currency exchanges.
Welcome to Second Life. We look forward to seeing you in-world.
What Second Life Does Well:
– 3D graphics are really amazing, especially considering the online world that you play in
– Fairly easy to get the basics of moving around the Second Life world
– Promoting itself — again, I’ve heard so much good about Second Life from people who tend to understand new technologies before everyone else (Eric Rice, Adam Curry, etc.)
What Second Life Doesn’t Do Well:
– Making it relevant for newbies — honestly, I’ve now lost 2-3 hours trying to figure out Second Life, and I’m not getting those hours back! I mean, why aren’t there tutorials screaming themselves out to newbies literally escorting new people like myself around the Second Life kingdom? Explain the top 5-10 things someone may want to experiment with, and then give an easy way to take future lessons
– Filtering the porn. I know, I know… that porn is always the first supporter of new technologies. But, honestly, I don’t really want to have it be MY first experience, especially given how difficult it can be to navigate around in the world for the first time.
– Maybe mail out an instruction guide (to the game, not the porn 🙂 ) a week after a person signs up? Especially if you’re not seeing high conversion of trial to user.
I can see how Second Life could be very interesting for people, advertisers and technologists. In Eric’s words, it really does bring together blogging, gaming, instant messaging, fantasy, 3d modeling, economy, etc. But, it just still seems incredibly hard.
I’ve signed up on MeetUp for the Seattle Second Life Meetup group, if it ever forms. I’m betting that some more experienced second-lifer’s would be able to make it more relevant for me, and others. So, if you can help, let me know!
Great post. It illustrates a huge issue with the marketing of something as abstract and wide open like SL. Linden Lab has built this platform that is *so* participatory that it’s up to the people inside the world to do the marketing and PR for their own content, and perhaps that might spill over for the rest of the world.
The new user experience is awful. In fact, I just unearthed an account I created two years ago… I was trapped someplace in the new user area. My computer couldn’t run it and I left it for dead. The experience then, like now, for new users, sucks.
There’s no right or wrong with it, but it’s one helluva real-time case study.
Dave, I agree with you and with Eric — the new user experience is not very good. I have been in there for a couple of months and I still feel that I have a lot to learn about things like gestures, social conventions, and so forth.
Until you learn how to find, fly, and teleport, you will be left with a misleading and bad impression.
There are some in-world classes on building and scripting, and there are also some people who like to serve as guides. This is a social environment after all, and it would be good to avail yourself of help from people who already know what’s going on.
I have been trying to document some of my SL experiences on my blog. In fact today’s post was written, at least in part, as a response to yours. My hope is to show people what SL is like from within, hoping to raise their curiousity level to the point where they can get past the initial confusion.
I could not agree more. I have a background in 3D, dev, etc. and it is truely overwhelming on first entry. I’m in the thick of writing a RL book on SL to address just such an issue. Would love more concrete opinions on subject matter that should be covered. What is so hard???