Roxy Couturier

I agree.

The Fantasy Faire had 8 gorgeous sims that really show cased what's possible. For me at least they were relatively low-lag despite the crowds and store ads.

Imagine the wow factor of rezzing into a richly detailed sim designed with whatever theme/community they were interested in.

Like Pancake said in the other thread, it would help to encourage new users to become vested in staying. First impressions and all that.

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Abdul

Position: Core Engineer
Name: Crazy Linden

What I would do?

Fix lagg issues comming from the way the servers in SL have been built and release fixes to the lagg issues...to only find out 2 days later that it is now useless because the amount of badly scripted stuff keeps on coming to the grid....
oh and....i'd run for the hills!

Abdul

Won't they crash because the viewer couldn't recognise their graphics card?
Funny...when i installed the SL viewer for the first time, it said that my computer didn't meet the requirements of SL. When in reality it beat them by a mile.

Andromeda Rage

Yeah, me too. My introduction to the SL world as a whole was pretty gradual, so I'm thankful for that. Like I mentioned earlier, after going through orientation and help islands, I was plopped down in the relatively quiet Luna sim, and after I hung around there for awhile, I gradually made my way north to Nova Albion where I met a small number of newbies who were roughly the same age as me, and we kind of all discovered SL together. One of us had been around a little longer than the rest of us, and she took us on our first trips to the Shelter and such.

But yeah, if I had been plopped down in Ahern surrounded by a billion douchebags, I would most likely have quit.

Desmond Shang

Oh my... advisement to Linden... this usually ends in tears for most people



I won't give any advisement, but rather, pose a question for anyone who cares to consider it.

* * * * *

Before 2004, SL sort of languished as that 'place with the icky avatars worse than there.com' ~ if anyone ever said SL would have a million signups someday in 2004, most anyone hearing that would have laughed.

Why? And why was that different in 2006?

* * * * *

It wasn't the media, or stuff that the Lindens did at the office, or the brilliant technical performance in 2006.

Yes this is a bit of a tease, and it's intended to be, to provoke thought. I won't be providing an answer, anyone who thinks it through rigorously and checks facts, verifies their reasoning will have the answer.

Right or wrong, it's been at the core of how I've managed things, which even in my tiny corner of SL will be rapidly crossing the 1/4 million dollar mark this year.

I was planning on far, far more than that, but decisions from 2008 forward led me to believe that having a lot of income exposure to SL wasn't a good idea. I'd hate to have, say, a million a year riding on SL right now. Most people would understand that concern.

Could things be fired up again? Yes, I think so, if done right! One way it won't be done, though, is by giving a lot of free advice (see years 2008~12 as evidence). So best they work it out for themselves, but really think about it this time. The evidence is all there.

Best of luck!

Jack Abraham

Desmond, you tease, some of us weren't around in 2006...

Nika Talaj

I also chose to just frame a question for LL to think about in this thread, so I am in agreement about the value of too specific pieces of free advice - most of us don't know what LL knows. But .... let me observe that few at LL nowadays were at LL, or even prolly in SL, for 2004-2006. Indeed, none of their current executive staff were. Tho rodvik may have been closely watching ... but perhaps not closely enough to have recollection of what happened when. Or knowledge of what "worked".

So it seems unlikely that LL decision-makers will come upon what you think they need to know. I'm sure you know that.

So your post, I suppose, might be a ploy to get rodvik to contact you directly. But he may not return to this thread at all. So, I have free advice for *you*, Des!

Don't be coy, call him. Teachable moments are rare among executives.

rodvik

Ok, thanks all. Some very good stuff in here. I have forwarded this stuff to the team. Lots of good food for thought. Thank you very much indeed for taking the time to write down your suggestions and thoughts. I cant promise you will see this stuff happen overnight but much of it was very useful in either confirming some of our thinking or giving new fresh ideas.

Thanks again.

Rod

Inhandra

And thank you for even bothering to come poll us.

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Anya Ristow

Even though we beat up anyone else who posts surveys.

Void

some of us were though, and if I understand Des' line of thought, parts of it have been touched on in the thread more than once

I won't pretend to speak for him though, so I'll only add that shiny new features aren't really the focus.


back to the topic:
Over the years there's been a lot of changes in SL, some big, some little, some neccesary, and some "OMG why wasn't this thought through!?"... I've loved some of it, and hated some of it... it's always been a mixed bag. on the technical side, I like more of what's been happening since Rod got the hotseat than I have since '06ish, in other areas like marketng, more than a bit lukewarm

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- These eyes can do more than see

Ciaran Laval

Eve-Online send emails, regarding new skills, what to do next, information on the game, obviously Second Life isn't Eve-Online but emails about where you can go (Destination Guide perhaps), where you can shop (Marketplace through gritted teeth) and links to sections of the wiki (or forums) on scripting, building, Mesh and Merchants would give people a bigger grasp of what can be done.

Alternatively send them to the Diablo 3 auction house to buy my stuff!

Inhandra

Asking about what can be done to make SL better is different than asking why we do what we do or if we're all fucked in the head for using SL for someone's dissertation.

Anya Ristow

It was a joke.

Darien Caldwell

What could LL do to retain residents? I'd say that's something every service asks, it's not special to SL.

Having nice looking sims is fine. Everyone likes a nice sim. But ultimately that's not going to retain users. It's not engaging. If people wanted to be passive observers, they can go look at a photograph. It's a lot easier to do.

IMHO, people want to feel involved, and feel that they both matter and have a place in the scheme of things. Not really too much different than Real Life.

Meeting people, engaging them, forming friendships, relationships, these are all key to retaining users. I think this is why SL often attracts a certain kind of person, the kind that isn't afraid to remake the world they find to their own liking, and to find others who share their vision. They have an impact on the world of SL, and SL impacts them.

The question then seems to become, how do you open up that aspect to a greater range of people? Having easy to learn tools was LL's greatest asset in the start. I think continuing in that vein is the key to greater success. Beyond that, I don't know. It's a very tough question.

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[H]arsh Styles

Khamon

Do I assume that rod and staff cannot give us a quick run down of their new user demographics so that we can answer his questions intelligently? It's a sad thought. Is there some deep corporate brain working behind not sharing that information?

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A Journey Through the World of Lever Harping

Monica Weir

A careful read of this article (and the comments) may help:
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2006) | Massively
I also think he was pretty much as sticking to the unnamed agreement to not name the unnameable .

Desmond Shang

I'm not looking to engage Linden Research directly these days. They have to work it out on their own, and I hope they do. I'm directly invested in their success. On top of that, I'm about to disappear again ~ another biz startup.

There are lots of smarter, nicer, people than me who would be worth talking to anyhow. Top of that list, I think, would be Adam Zaius ~ if he'd even touch it. Besides, there would be a lot of monocles plopping into teacups if I stated rates ~ turning Linden Research around would be a serious effort, and it would be a fight just to get a lot of people out of their comfort zones, let alone do what had to be done. I get the feeling though, that there would be a pretty serious showdown with the board, to actually make it happen even if everyone had the same vision. Which is about on par with going to the dentist for a root canal, repeatedly. I wish them luck.

Darien Caldwell

So you're saying the answer is to get rid of Anshe? I guess crushing monopolies might help...

Penny Patton

I find it odd that people like to say "it's not this, it's THIS!"

I sincerely believe there's not a single answer. I'm a graphics person, so I tend to harp on that a lot, and I do think it's critical, but I realize it's not the only thing. However, because of SL's reliance on user created content, the way the content creation tools were developed affects more than just visual appearances. It really does affect things like the number of people you can have in a sim before your computer begs for mercy, the value of land (I can get more content into 1/8th a sim than most people can fit in a whole sim, if the tools were improved then everyone could do that, making land far more valuable to users).

I agree that getting people involved with other people is key to retaining them, but who is going to stick around long enough to meet people if they can't even figure out how to leave an unfriendly welcome area or find a sim with people who share similar interests?

There's really a combination of factors LL needs to address, covering different areas of expertise. Given how little LL has done in vital areas in the 10 or so years before Rodvik showed up, there's a LOT LL needs to do. They can't just fix one thing and call it a day.

And I'd even say there are things a lot of current SL users would consider "new shiney" that LL really does need to work on because the lack of such features has had a distinct and extremely negative affect on SL's both visually and performance-wise because the work-arounds we use in the lack of these features are much more performance intensive.

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The Digital Pasture - SL from a cow's point of view. When the cow is also a designer.

Couldbe Yue

yay, we haven't played the game of "Blame the Resident" in years!

for those of you who haven't experienced it it goes like this: take something a customer says, misconstrue it, implement something completely different and then blame us when things go wrong.

we're livin' the dream.

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Void

seems a bit shallow to accuse the present generations of sins of the past without actual evidence of those sins....

Aribeth Zelin

I wasn't around in 06, but in 04-05 I remember a lot more LL involvement. The world was smaller, and maybe that's why, but there was much more a feel of 'we're in this together' than say in 09 when I got back into things and M was running the helm.

And there is a difference between prettier graphics and making the creative tools better, and with Cloud Party out there now, with different types of materials making it easier, something might be worth looking at to do the same.

Forcing socialization is NOT the answer. They tried to do that with the Sims Online and I left before the end of beta - I don't want to be forced to make friends - I want to make things and then share them - with or without social interactions, and I'm not the only one.

I agree with engaging people, and I think the answer is in giving many options to doing that, but its not just by forcing on aspect of what makes SL what it is - you need to make multiple things available; shopping, making friends, better and easier building [and scripting].

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Faerycat Designs In World -Marketplace 1- Marketplace 2

Penny Patton

Yeah, the trick is to create an environment that naturally encourages people to engage other people. Making it easier to for people to find others with their interests. No, not by e-mailing them a list of strangers to "connect" with, that's just obnoxious.

Most of my SL friends I met by bumping into them in sims were both enjoyed, or through communities like SLU and some in-world groups.

I think it would help a lot to build up the social tools. Right now, as just one example, the "friend list" feature is more outdated than the same feature in the AOL instant messenger.....was ten years ago. I hate adding people to my "friend list". There's no way to organize it besides a trimming now and then, permissions can only be granted on an individual basis rather than by groupings, I can't log in invisible just to work on something or check something quick, SL desperately needs an update in this area.

Perrie Juran

My guess as to the biggest overall reason that people don't stay is that the huge majority want instant gratification and simply put that is a difficult thing to fulfill in SL. People also want structure because they find security or safety in it, and again, that is a difficult thing to fulfill in SL. People want either consciously or sub consciously be directed what to do. Because of this there are going to be a huge number of people who no matter what you do, they are not going to stay.

You've asked us "What can we do to improve retention?" Perhaps a better question would be to ask us "Why did you stay?" and build on that. Your question almost smacks of seeking the same instant gratification that the people who did not stay were looking for.

When I first started SL in 2007 I already perceived my computer and the internet as a social tool. So that was already in my mind set when I started.

My computer at that time had a 500mhz processor with 512MB ram, integrated graphics, and I had a 1mb Internet connection. Talk about lag! For the life of me I still don't know how I made it through orientation. But I made it through and wound up at the info hubs.

Perhaps I was fortunate. I was already used to instant messaging ala MSN and Yahoo. So I started chatting with people. I started asking them to take me to their favorite place in SL. Not just give me a LM, but take me there and show it to me.

And again, perhaps I was fortunate. I made friends with some users who were not much older than me but were marveling like I was at the World we had found. We went clubbing together, explored together, shopped IN WORLD together, had pixel sex, really did In World the same things we did in RL.

If you think that 'game-ifying' SL is going to help retain more users I think you are wrong. While Linden Realms may help new users learn to navigate it still ignores the major thing SL is, a social platform.

So moving forward I see several things, some of them all ready touched upon here but I will still repeat them, that need to be done.

FIRST AND FOREMOST, make chat obvious in the viewer! Not obnoxious but obvious. After using TPV's for several years I recently installed the official viewer. And damn if I didn't have to go look up how chat worked. I'm over five years in SL and I had to go look it up? WTF?

When you log into Facebook for the first time it is immediately obvious where you post your comments. There is no guess work to it. I couldn't ask any one In World how chat worked because I couldn't find it to use it!

Second, invest the man hours necessary to cleaning up and keeping clean the info hubs and allocate extra resources to them server side so that server side lag is minimized.

Thirdly, Mainland. You have SIM's being held hostage by people who have no interest in SL beyond financial with exorbitantly priced micro parcels. Just like LL can step in and 'freeze' the Lindex if things get wonky, The Lab needs to step in and do something about this problem also. Because it really is an abuse of resources and it detours people from investing in Mainland and making better use of it.

Fourth, bring back the discounts for Non Profits. You are missing out on a big return on investment there. Also, work closer with those who are successful here. I'm still shocked that Elven Worlds was allowed to just walk away from SL, their complaints apparently completely ignored by LL. If you want to retain people you also have to work with them.

Fifth, quit trying to pretend that adult activities don't occur here. While maybe you don't want to emphasize them, quit trying to hide them.

In closing, SL retains a certain type of person. I believe among our common attributes, we are stubborn, sometimes rambunctious, tend to be rebellious and go against the status quo. We are imaginative and inventive. People who do not have these qualities are not as likely to stick around. If all they want is a pre-thought world to play in occasionally, they are not going to stick around because that is not what SL is about.