KT Kingsley

That, by the way, was a joking comment on other comments regarding the imminent influx of immature Steam gamers/griefers expected in SL.

Aribeth Zelin

We need sarcasm tags.

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Faerycat Designs In World -Marketplace 1- Marketplace 2

Lance Corrimal

in a very general way:
steam is for windows gaming what the app store is for your iphone.

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Adeon Writer

They are also on Mac, but their library is thinner - and have plans to invade Linux also.

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My mobile client puts the thread title at the top of my posts. I don't do it on purpose.

KT Kingsley

I shall enclose all my future posts within S and /S tags!

Cindy Claveau

One of the best gaming applications in SL that I've ever seen was "I Am Legend: Survival", hosted by MGM (I think?) as a promo for the movie's release back in 2007.

I got hooked on that sim and kept coming back over and over. And while I never saw the sim over-crowded it was always busy.

It's a shame they closed the sim after the movie was released, because that's exactly the kind of thing SL needs as diversion/entertainment to balance all the bling clubs and BDSM furry porn.

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"As long as there’s one person on earth who remembers you, it isn’t over." - Oscar Hammerstein

jacqueline trudeau

So they are going to be able to download the SL viewer from there? What does this bring to the "game" again?

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Liandra Hellershanks

To be fair to Beebo, she didn't say that older people don't play games; she said that older people tend to not be gamers and younger people do. While I don't want to speak for her, I suspect that the type of games she's thinking of are contemporary action-oriented games (shoot 'em ups, racing games, etc.), but I could be wrong.

If that's the case, then she's absolutely right. It's a pretty well known fact in the industry that the pool of gamers and potential gamers in a given cohort shrinks pretty dramatically after that cohort's members hit their mid-20s. They peel off over time as their adult obligations bite into the time that they might have spent playing and mastering those sorts of games.

I point this out because people are using the term "gamer" as though it means "someone who plays games of some sort", but it's not that simple. Your nearly 70-year old mother may play games, but I doubt that she's waiting with bated breath for the latest rock 'em sock 'em console or computer game. She's probably not posting game-related memes on 4chan, either. While she plays games, she probably doesn't consider herself a "gamer", and she probably isn't perceived as one by others. The same is probably true of the tabletop gamers that people met decades ago at college, at the bar, or wherever.

jacqueline trudeau

If you're a serious SLer, you have time for games???

Aemeth

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Liandra Hellershanks

Visibility. Specifically, visibility among people who already have an interest in recreational software of the sort that Second Life represents, computers fast enough to run it, and disposable income that they're willing to spend on it.

Khamon

When are we being steamed?

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Adeon Writer

Maybe 30 year olds weren't gamers in 2002, but the 20 year olds who did are now 30 and they still play. Actively.

jacqueline trudeau

And these types don't know how to search the internet for something like SL to begin with? Not trying to be sarcastic, it's not making much sense to me.

Sveid Heidenstam

How often do people search for things before they are even aware that it exists?

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Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc


Doomed Ship - SL's largest, most detailed and immersive sci-fi/horror build.

Andromeda Rage

Sure, why not?

Adeon Writer

Show of hands: Who first heard of Second Life via it popping up in a search engine result?

Not me. I saw it mentioned in a gamer mag.

jacqueline trudeau

Considering the SL hype and backlash over the last 5 years, anyone internet-savvy as "gamers" supposedly are, would have at least a passing acquaintance.

Maybe I'm misreading the mindset completely.

jacqueline trudeau

Word of mouth for me, from other VW refugees. This was before SL made it into the mainstream press.

Adeon Writer

I am of the core "gamer" demographic and nearly no one I know has even heard of SL. The few that have will have "heard it was lame" but the vast majority don't even know it exists when asked.

jacqueline trudeau

Interesting pockets of insularity out there in internet-land. In any case, I welcome our new vaporous gamer-lords! As long as they know how to purchase L$

Adeon Writer

The Uru Live exile to SL is what brought me in, but that was after I'd at least heard of it before.

Sveid Heidenstam

This is the other issue. Due to LL's missteps in 2008-2009, much of the word of mouth regarding SL was negative.

This is still the mental image most people think of Second Life's graphics capabilities.



The "lack of anything to do", the confusing interface, the poorly animated virtual sex, the flying penii attacks. This is the reputation SL has among those who have heard of it at all.

Also, 2008 was a long time ago now. SL has been out of the public eye. When I do see it brought up many of the comments are, "SecondLife still exists?"

Liandra Hellershanks

How do they know what to search for?

To put it another way, if somebody has to search for your product, by whatever means, then you're on the path to going out of business.

On Steam, potential users won't have to search. When people are looking for software, it will show up as a recommendation, or they will scroll by it, or Linden Lab will spend money to advertise it when people load up Steam. (Although I'm not certain, I'd be surprised if Steam didn't have an algorithm to target ads and recommendations based on other purchases. I use Steam, but I've made three purchases in the last few years.)

Also, Steam is a one-stop shopping solution. If LL makes some effort to integrate Steam-distributed copies of their software with the application, then it's no muss, no fuss--a potential user sees an ad, recommendation, or whatever, is intrigued at that moment, and five minutes later they're a cloud waiting for stuff to rez.

The important thing to keep in mind here, I think, is that on LL's end it's a numbers game. If they get 100 people to try SL, then, say, 15 will become light users who will stick around for three months, 10 will become moderate users who will stick around for a year, and 3 will become heavy users who will stick around for 2+ years. Those numbers are made up, of course, but the point is that there's a churn. The goal, from the Lab's perspective, is to get as many people through the front door once as possible and then let the chips fall where they may.

jacqueline trudeau

OK, not having familiarity with the steam platform, I assumed it was similar to Amazon or something as Josh mentioned. There you still have to search as well.