How to Make Second Life Truly Mass Market, Part 2: Point-and-Click Avatar Movement!

World of Warcraft, the largest 3D online world with 12 million subscribers, has it.

Sims 2, which is often compared to SL, and is the biggest single-player 3D game for the PC, selling 13 million copies, also has it.

But Second Life, the largest 3D virtual world with only 750K active users, and a growth plateau, does not have it:

Point-and-click avatar movement.

With a point-and-click interface, the user clicks the mouse somewhere within the display, avatar goes there. Display camera automatically follows the avatar. The basic interaction is common to anyone who's ever used a modern computer.

With Second Life, by contrast, the default movement interface is still based on first-person shooter keybindings -- A strafes left, D strafes rights, and so on. The reason for this is simple:

Cory Ondrejka and most of the original Linden developers are hardcore gamers. (Ah, I remember the lunch break CounterStrike matches fondly.) Cory originally hoped Second Life would primarily function as a 3D game development platform, which you can see in this early LindenWorld demo:

Which is a great idea, and I hope it happens eventually, but the thing is, PC first-person shooters are not as mass market, certainly not for women. Probably not just due to subject matter, but also medium: In academic studies, men consistently outperform women on 3D spatial tasks. What's more, females generally seem to be much less interested in games with 3D graphics. However, adding a point-and-click interface to a 3D game seems to help improve its appeal, perhaps because it "anchors" the graphics so they're not overwhelming. (Sims 2 owes its popularity to women and girls.)

Without a point-and-click movement interface, therefore, I doubt Second Life will gain mass market escape velocity.

Don't believe me? Find a friend without any 3D game experience, sit them in front of SL, and tell them how to move through the world with the keyboard. It will quickly feel like teaching them how to drive a standard shift car.

Here's what concerns me: While "Viewer 2.0" is indeed exciting and much more user-friendly seeming, I've read no Linden announcements even hinting at point-and-click movement. (Maybe I missed it.) In any case, that's the announcement I'll be waiting for, because until then, I doubt Second Life will grow from its hundreds of thousands who were able to learn to live in a keyboard-powered virtual world, to the millions who only know how to point and click.

Image from Sims 2

Comments

[Crap Mariner]

*shrug*

AWSD and point-and-click are SOOOOOOO yesterday.

I move around with my Spacenavigator...

(woot)

-ls/cm

[Honour McMillan]

I tried point and click movement in Blue Mars - and yes it was my first experience with it. Hated it!

[Skate Foss]

Agree with Crap Mariner, I live in SL thru my Space Navigator. But that's an investment in SL alot of users may not want to make. Giving up control of our avatars to point and go...is like speeding past scenery, hardcore users aren't giving up control so fast

[Tinsel Silvera]

I agree with Honour. Don't like the point and click movements either. Prefer using the arrows or AWSD. I guess it's all in what you are used to.

[Osprey]

There is Double Click Autopilot.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

Such a feature already exisis in the SL client.

Advanced|UI|Double-Click Auto-Pilot

Nobody uses it. WASD/arrows is preferred everywhere.

Hamlet are you an avid player of any particular MMORPG or MMOFPS spending hours and hours immersed? Just wondering.

Your gut feeling is in the right direction though. The SL client needs to be made more for MMORPG style use with user definable hot bars, etc. And be skinnable so we can make MMORPG skins to go with MMORPG games inside Second Life. Given the leaked "sl 2 communications feedback" I fear Klingdon is in no way shape or form anything remotely close to a MMORPG player and despite his connected dots art he appears to be uncreative when it comes to user interface design and instead seems to be taking it in directions that ensures third party viewer utilization will skyrocket.

Maybe a third party client team will develop a skinnable interface spec.

[coco]

Most likely Corey didnt want/have a quick solution to pathfinding.

[Domchi Underwood]

Hamlet, shame on you. SL has had point-and-click avatar movement for as long as I can remember.

Click anywhere on the ground and select "Go" from the pie menu. Your avatar will move to the place you clicked.

Alas, this doesn't work if you click on rezzed floors, but there's a better way: just turn on Advanced / UI / Double-Click Auto-Pilot. (If you don't see Advanced menu, press CTRL-ALT-D.)

After that, doubleclick anywhere you want and your avatar will go there.

I've used this mode of movement for a while thinking it would complement standard movement controls, but to be honest, default movement works much better. Even though it complements existing controls (doubleclick is rarely used in scripts) I don't think it should be enabled by default.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

A skinnable/configurable interface with easy presets seems to be the way to go. I like The Sims, but the click-and-go movement is one of the peeves I have with the game. On the other hand, I'm all for making existing customizations easier to access and adding more options for customizing.

[Hamlet Au]

"Click anywhere on the ground and select 'Go' from the pie menu. Your avatar will move to the place you clicked."

That's not point-and-click, though, that's point-right click-select from the pie menu-click. Or actually, as you say, CTRL-ALT-D, Advanced / UI / Double-Click Auto-Pilot, double-click.

[Doreen Garrigus]

Mmmmm. The differences in average spatial ability between men and women is slight and is dwarfed by the differences in ability between individuals of the same sex. It is also a great deal smaller than the average gender difference in verbal ability, but I don't see anyone suggesting that we need canned text responses in a drop-down menu to get more men involved in Second Life.

I have to say, having run across that click-to-go method of movement long after the first-person-shooter style movement, I hate click-to-go. It is disassociating.

It's alright for a game like The Sims, where you aren't supposed to identify as any one of your characters but are, instead, supposed to grow all of them, or for something like YoVille, which is played in a little box in a browser and isn't actually 3D or even truly interactive.

But for Second Life? You need to *be* your avatar while you are in world. You shouldn't be moving your little pixel Polly Pocket around on the screen. You should be experiencing the rich, user-created immersive environment, preferably from first-person perspective---in mouselook.

[Lizzie Lexington]

I am a simple woman with simple needs. I just want to be able to walk and type at the same time, Ha!

[Exosius Woolley]

Easier still would be to press and drag your avatar in the direction you want to go, and click on thing to automatically look at them. ...I think all of you have missed the real problem, which is that most of the people in the world are simply far too stupid to use Second Life. I don't agree that we should make things simple enough for them, and don't feel any particular need to turn the interface into a grade school level big-head monstrosity like YoVille.

[Kaseido Quandry]

World of Warcraft *doesn't* have point-and-click movement. Some other MMOs, like Guild Wars, have point-and-click as an option alongside the standard WASD.

As the poster above noted, point-and-click is hugely immesion-breaking. It's also awkward as hell for negotiating any terrain that isn't flat and smooth: you end up running repetitively into any object big enough to trip over.

However, if the goal is not to provide a smooth, immersive experience using standard keyboard tools that millions of people use daily, but to maximize the number of eyeballs looking at the screen - seemingly the theme of a series of your posts lately - there are any number of options for making SL "easier to use."

Several social virtual worlds have orders of magnitude more users than SL, and one of their UI tools is to have a menu of pre-programmed chat responses to choose from.

This ensures that typing - a complex skill which may require years to master - is not a barrier to entry, and also helps prevent offensive speech, which may exclude the more delicate from participation.

Of course, these worlds cater to children, but if a mass, unskilled membership is the goal, and the potential user base is viewed as hopelessly unskilled anyway, why not treat potential customers as children all the way?

[Caliburn Susanto]

What Exosius said!! Although I would add "...and lazy" to that.

Case in point, all the raving about third party viewers "doing" new things when all they are doing is providing buttons for features which have been there all along but people never bothered to discover for themselves.

Lowest common denominator sucks. Don't dumb down things for the riff raff.

[Myf McMahon]

"World of Warcraft *doesn't* have point-and-click movement"

Uhmm, it does actually, I used to use it all the time.

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks, Myf, I was wondering if I was smoking
crack when I pointed and clicked the hell all over WoW (well, up to level 10 before getting bored.) One of SL's main investors told me he thinks the point-and-click interface is what made so WoW big in China -- since so many Chinese still smoke, and want to keep their smoking hand free while they play!

[Hamlet Au]

"Don't dumb down things for the riff raff."

And that's the kind of belief that would doom Second Life to being a niche platform with little or no relevance outside its small user base. However, "simple" is not the same as "dumbed down" -- witness the iPhone.

[AnnOtooleInSL]

"One of SL's main investors told me he thinks the point-and-click interface is what made so WoW big in China -- since so many Chinese still smoke, and want to keep their smoking hand free while they play!"

Well what are they waiting for!?! I bet the tobacco companies would be happy to sponsor SL and allow free use of their trademarks in Second Life!

BTW I hear some people are experts at one-handed "play" in Second Life already. :P

[Hamlet Au]

!!!

As with the idea of adding Facebook integration, I'm definitely not suggesting point-and-click *replace* the existing movement regime, just that it's added/tweaked and promoted as the default UI for new users. Hardcore SL users can stick with AWSD like they do with WoW, or opt into same.

[Metacam Oh]

I honestly think mode of walking around is not the reason SL isn't more mainstream.

[Lish Lach]

There's a mouse-driven alternative to point-and-click movement that can work compatibly along side WASD navigation keys. It's been used most recently in TellTale Game's "Tales of Monkey Island", which displays your avatar in a 3D world with automatic camera positioning.

To use it, you click and hold down the left mouse button near your avatar. A hula hoop with a rotating arrow is displayed around your avatar's waist, showing which direction he's pointing. If you then drag the mouse your avatar will follow, and the screen will scroll in 3D to keep him centered. It works quite well for surface-based movement, not so much for flying, though WASD keys can't handle that either.

[Lum Lumley]

> One of SL's main investors told me he thinks
> the point-and-click interface is what made so
> WoW big in China -- since so many Chinese still
> smoke, and want to keep their smoking hand free
> while they play!

This isn't a joke.

Point-and-click movement is a requirement in both Chinese and Korean games because players smoke like chimneys.

In Korea especially it is a very cultural thing; the pc-baangs were (slightly skeevy) neighborhood bars where people would get away from the house, play a game with their friends (all of whom were in the same room so chat/social features weren't as strong an issue) and those games had to be playable with one hand so the players could smoke.

PC baangs aren't as popular now that every home in Korea has broadband internet, but the preference of Korean players for point-and-click movement remains.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

In those games that use point and click for movement, how does one manipulate objects? Are they smart enough to find a safe path rather than taking a straight line (which might take one over open space, through the moat stocked with piranhas, out of the Neutral Zone, etc.)? I'd guess the answer to the latter question is "No, you have to click on each of the points at which you must turn", in which case I wonder how many such points there have to be before it's more bothersome than SL's arrow keys.

[Jack Abraham]

I think SL would benefit from embracing the UI conventions of MMOs, not the Sims. They're much closer to what SL already is, and incoming users are familiar with them. Also, in all the MMOs I've played (not a lot, granted) you can left-and-right click and walk, one handed, with considerable precision. Much better than WASD.