Penny Patton

Participating in several threads here on SLU recently put it in my mind to write up an article about how Linden Lab can greatly increase the visual appeal of SL in an effort to draw in and retain more new users.

As the article was turning out longer than I expected, I've decided to split it up into multiple parts. Since the first section, covering the SL avatar and avatar creation, was more or less done I've posted it to my blog.

Beautiful Second Life Part 1

Part 2 will cover environments and, unless it winds up being too long for a single post, the plethora of SL default settings that create the overall visual experience of SL.

Editing to add the link for Beautiful Second Life Part 2, where I go into how Linden Lab could improve the public, Linden owned environments, the default visual settings (windlight, camera, FOV, etcetera) and nurture more creative and inspiring builds from the community at large by fixing some of the tools, adding some new tools, and providing good examples to beginning builders.

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Lance Corrimal

keep in mind that "beautiful" and "ugly" are 100% subjective...

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Penny Patton

That's not entirely true to a practical extent, especially in the context provided.

Very few people are going to say these avatars are as impressive as the ones above in my previous post.



And there's some pretty solid objective reasoning behind that.

Of course there's the issues with the inconsistent quality of the clothing and attachments in LL's starters, but that aside there's also the issue of proportions. Human beings have remarkably consistent proportional cues that carry over across a broad range of body types and styles. When a figures falls outside those cues there's a nagging voice in the back of your head telling you something isn't right. Someone unfamiliar with human proportions might not be able to put their finger on it, in the case of a virtual figure they'll likely just chalk it up to "bad graphics".

And would you really try to argue that this;


is every bit as well made as this;



And if anyone thinks differently it is due entirely, 100%, to subjective tastes?

Pardon me if I say, "Poppycock."

Lance Corrimal

"beautiful" and "impressive" are two different things.

Darkley

usually boobs are smaller than peoples heads

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Lance Corrimal

Russ Meyer would so disagree with that

I would like to point out that some of the "bad proportions" are a side effect of the default camera which points down from behind... so shape makers involuntarily try to compensate for that. result: tall, slim avies.

eku Zhong

yes but the only way youre going to get uniform looks in second life is to do away with user made content...

kick me in the face if you didnt build worse that the first example when you were new..
and if you hadnt had the opportunity to build then.. you wouldnt have what you have at your place now.

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Ann Otoole

Penny Patton: Studiously ignored by LL since 2005

You get more with honey than piss&vinegar.

Instead of focusing on the negatives and making yourself look an ass (something I am deeply familiar with) you might focus only on positive recommendations. Of course LL will still ignore it all because they are never making the changes you recommend even if they are valid.

How's LL response time to your support tickets and ARs Penny?

However, no matter what you think of someone else's build you should avoid making an example of them. Especially a rather successful and lucrative business that in no way requires a jungle to operate.

Elysium Hynes

I honestly donīt understand the hate on the cute hut, sure the sign is a bit tacky, but is a good build. Yeah sure i prefer forests myself, I even have one, when i get of my ass and go back to landscaping, but these are different builds for different porpuses.

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Aki Shichiroji

I would have preferred to read the article on the forum rather than on your blog as generally a post like the OP does come across as a bit spammy, but I do think you bring up some interesting points.

I do agree that a stronger stance on art direction of LL-provided assets is necessary. There is a clear slant towards allowing contractors to create in the style they are known for, however I'm not sure whether this is the best course of action to take. I do think it's a good thing to involve well known residents, but i don't think the resulting creations are cohesive; many lack obvious understanding of anatomy and many assets are just out of date.

The tools are broken and designed by someone who obviously doesn't understand anatomy - they were also designed by someone who clearly didn't take in to account the existing scale being assigned to measurable assets or camera placement. That the agent height hasn't been fixed since its inclusion is pretty damned silly and belies the whole reason for its existence.

I was a little disappointed recently to see a pretty new welcome area... with no tutorials at all; just a bunch of portals that take new users to various places around the grid. But thinking back to my initial new user experience (the one with the editing, flying, chatting tests, the one with the parrot), even back then there were no guides towards making a believable shape. Considering most new users come from a background of either gaming (where most body shapes are constrained to fit within the realm of believability within the context of the game) or casual to no experience understanding human anatomy, it'd be a pretty good idea to provide at least some clues from the very start or set the standard av shapes within the realm of reason. (Ideally, BOTH!)

On beautiful vs ugly -

Is a beautiful thing something you like? Is an ugly thing something you do not like? What if you like ugly things? Or what if you just have bad taste? (again, highly subjective)

Is a beautiful thing well made? Is an ugly thing poorly made? Can a poorly made thing be beautiful? Can a well-made thing be ugly?

I do think the use of 'Ugly' and 'Beautiful' in this context is somewhat poorly considered for this reason. Generally speaking, your article is well put together and brings up well reasoned and objective points, however the addition of subjective terms can be rather divisive and at least in part don't serve your argument well.

Charlotte Bartlett

I really don't like the avatars in the OP. Does that make them ugly to me? I guess so. They may be well made of course and correct for the purpose.

I read a lot of your posts Penny and I think you have valid points on some of the core aspects. However my general thoughts have always been, what makes SL adorable is the fact it's like a giant sandbox of immense content that ranges from wow to wtf. So I agree huge improvement is needed with the usability side of improvement e.g. things like camera placement, building tools, the avatars and improving entry points, fixing search and on-boarding etc.

However, content once past that entry point I am more in the mindset of I love it how it is - a crazy world of mismatched stuff.

I am probably in the minority I know but even in the last few days I saw somebody had created on the beta grid this monster face. It was so ugly and and even had flicker on textures. But I LOVED it - it was pure crazy creation from somebody.

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bubblesort

I like the OP's ideas. The rest of you seem to be arguing semantics.

Do you really think that SL can not become more beautiful? Don't you think that part of how something becomes beautiful is a constant process of differentiating between ugly and pretty? How is that going to happen if you're too afraid to hurt somebody's feelings to say what you think? Sure, ugly things eventually stop being made so much even if people do not explicitly say what they think about ugly things, because people are drawn to beauty and ugly things are not supported much on the marketplace. Explicitly stating that 'this is ugly' is a productive activity, though. It opens the door to further debate on aesthetic qualities until people start playing politics and worrying about hurting somebody's feelings with their honest reactions.

So we have debate on the hut being ugly or pretty. I think it's ugly. The gaudy advertising on it makes me roll my eyes instantly, the design is uninspired and derivative and even the textures are boring. There are no interesting lighting effects. The Easter Island head next to it is like ugly, misplaced lawn kitsch, the kind you get in trouble for if you put too much of it on your front lawn. Why is this so close to a road? It seems that kind of structure belongs on a beach. This is not the kind of place I want to hang out in.

eku Zhong

if you raise the bar too high for what is 'acceptable' (read beautiful/well made/asthetically pleasing wotever) then youre crippling new users who want to venture out into creation..

youre effectively crippling Second Life.

sure the LL areas should be more attractive.. even awe inspiring..
but aspiring to prettify the main grid is aspiring to kill imagination when its at its most vulnerable.. the very start.

Ann Otoole

I am quite sure you and penny would find my main store to be ugly. However, on my lowly gt240 video card, I get 30 fps inside the store. It is precisely designed and engineered that way. People can get in, find what they want, and get back to whatever they were doing when they decided they needed something.

Penny Patton

No, a lot of people have surmised this is the reason after the fact, and it makes sense that if the camera is angled downward at a steep enough angle that it skews proportions, so people made up for it with shorter arms and longer legs et all, but the fact is, avatars shapes are not edited from that camera angle and the proportions LL has always used for avatars are commonly found in the works of inexperienced artists.

This is a scarecrow, tho. (If unintentional.) I have never, ever, in the history of ever suggested SL needs to uniformly look as good as the examples given. Right from the the subtitle of the article onward, I tried to make it clear this was pointing out how LL could make their promotional materials and the new user experience more visually appealing.

That's why all of the "bad" examples are taken straight from LL's marketing materials and the SL website and I say, specifically, this is about how LL can make SL more visually appealing in their attempts to draw in and retain new users.

You....didn't actually read the article, did you?

I don't need to file support tickets that often but when I have in recent memory LL has always surprised me with prompt action.

The hut itself isn't bad, that's not the point. The point is which screenshot serves LL better in marketing SL to people who currently don't use SL, or worse turn their nose up at SL due to bad marketing and a bad prior experience?

That screenshot of the hut is taken directly from the SL website.

I fretted about that a bit before posting. The truth is, it's not a matter of cut and paste to repost an entire article like that across different forums. That's actually why I created the blog in the first place. Also, I don't get paid anything from more "clicks".

I decided to compromise by posting the link down here in Content Creation, which seemed to fit, rather than General where it might have been seen by more people.

You know, I was trying to think of a catchy title when this song came on;


Maybe you're right. I'll put some thought into a new title before moving on to part 2.

Alexa Lioncourt

Funny, in 2004 I thought my avatar was the bomb, that the builds were breathtaking and we were really pushing the limits. Funny how time and perspective changes things and it's actually something I love about SL.

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Penny Patton

I could hit "agree" with this, but it'd be no different from me posting "chocolate ice cream is great and kittens are cute!" It's true, but it's non sequitur. Nobody suggested kittens aren't cute, or that chocolate ice cream should be removed from all birthday parties or any such thing.

Similarly, nobody suggested all less than amazing content needs to be culled from the grid so that only amazing looking, professionally made content remains.

What has been said is this;

Much of SL's marketability is hurt by a perception of poor graphics, in fact it's one of the top complaints. LL can address this by showing how good SL can look via starter avatars and Linden builds (tutorial sims, welcome areas, etcetera) and fixing the many problems found with the tool set which currently make it difficult for anyone, of any skill level, to create the best work they can in SL.

Aki Shichiroji

It is possible to design a store space to both perform well and not be a resource hog. And yeah, for your purposes and goals, your store is beautiful to you.

I don't think the point of the article was to point at your store and say 'that's ugly, that's bad'. The argument whether the hut Penny posted is pretty or ugly is beside the point. Folks can and should design how they want; that is the charm of SL.

The bar for what is good and what is not within the Resident community is adjustable depending on context; one of my most memorable and favourite times in SL was being a part of the tiny (96sqm!), overly simple Elbow Room, which used to be super busy and fun to hang out at. For the times I had there, I easily found beauty in the community, the comedy, the people who came and went.

But that's not a typical experience and without context, potential new users look at stuff like that in SL, compare it to Skyrim, perhaps say to themselves.. 'wow... really?', and more often than not, leave.

To a certain extent, I look at that other 'SL Promo pic' thread and worry; LL recently invited a small group of bloggers to create up to date promotional material for the platform, yet the newbie offerings do not reflect what is pictured in the promotional material in the slightest. I can't help but feel like LL is setting themselves up for more negative criticism because of it.

Ann Otoole

I read the entire article. Your problem penny, is you are a negative person. Everything you write comes across negative. You shit on LL all the time. There are other grids to go to you know. Maybe they will listen to you. Not. Nobody gives a flying fuck what you think Penny. Nobody. Never did. Never will. You should have got the clue by now. I got the clue over a year ago and stopped giving a damn because nobody will ever give a shit what I think. If I won the lottery and burned a billion buying up most of LL stock then LL would care what I thought. That is real life.

Elysium Hynes

And while you talk if you log in to sl today some of the pics there where recently taken by some of the best bloggers in sl.

Second Life Interesting











I dare you to call that ugly, and wonder of all pics to pull from LLīs website why not pick those? Cause they go totally against your point that the lab does nothing to improve itīs image.

Penny Patton

I have changed the name of the article to "Second Life the Beautiful". I don't think anything in the article itself needs to be changed as the entire article was about providing solutions and fairly positive.

Aki Shichiroji

Not necessarily. Has the Lab updated the default av offerings so they look like anything similar to the avs presented in these pics? Keep in mind the majority of the Library avs are at least a year or two old by now. These are pics taken by bloggers who have had a lot of time to develop their avs and inventories to this level. LL is simply not offering anything at this level or enabling new users to understand what it takes to look like this.

Penny Patton

Ok, so for over ten years LL does an abysmal job of showing the potential of Second Life. Then the moment they put up some good screenshots on the login screen any criticism ever written about how LL has handled their presentation of Second Life is null and void?

I'm sorry but you're reaching so far you're likely to strain a muscle.

Ann Otoole

OK for over 10 years LL has made millions. How much do you make Penny?

Elysium Hynes

Well what will be next? The lab giving out the bests skins to residents? So we can hear skin makers groaming on how the lab is competing with them? Iīm sorry Aki do you want your trees replacing linden ones? The reason people want better and merchants actually sell is because we have a base to start on, you canīt expect avatars like that at startup sorry.