GOING GREEN

The view from Greenies' ironing board

Amid so much controversy over the myriad failures of real world advertising in Second Life last week, two regions sponsored by real companies were busy attracting steady waves of visitors.  As featured last week, there's the astoundingly beautiful Kowloon city, from a Japanese design studio which recreated the setting of a cult Playstation game, so fans could rent space to "live" within it, while also integrating real world brands with the companies' official approval as a potential revenue stream. 

Then there's "Greenies" [direct teleport at this link], from a small British development company called Rezzable, which plans to use it for retail and events.  But where SL sites for large corporations like Dell, Sun, and Reebok attract but a few hundred visitors, Greenies is, with little official promotion, already bringing in several thousand visits per week. 

The difference? Like Kowloon, Greenies leverages Second Life at its best and most essential, creating a fully-realized place that is open-ended enough for freeform exploration and improvisational creativity, a locale where Residents can respond to the vivid and wonderful strangeness with their own imagination. As the video above suggests, it's not enough to have a 50's-era living room expanded to mountainous size, nor that it's infested with mischievous aliens.  To make it a true Second Life experience, you need to bring your own sense of manic fun: explore the place with two Transformers, say, then a dancing fly and a silent crow on a WWII fighter plane, then maybe later on a flying hotdog, with reggae music streaming around you all the while.

But make no mistake, Greenies is still part of a company project-- just a rare one where the company's marketing demands don't choke out any possibility of genuine delight.  This is the insight gleaned by Greenies' lead developer, Pavig Lok, who's traded notes with fellow 3D builders who've created marketing sites for other real world clients.

"The feedback I've been getting from many of the folks that do commercial builds is that in the process of realizing the clients' requirements, they usually end up watering the build down 'till it's of limited interest," she tells me. "So it's not that there isn't a whole population of SL artists champing at the bit to produce cool fun builds, it's that the people who could let it happen don't.

"You can see with Miss Tat's [headcount] figures," says Pavig. "It's the in-world joints with the creative freedom that get the most traffic, rather than the commercial ones-- mainly due to their focus on giving people what they want." 

By contrast, she goes on, Rezzable hired Pavig and her team, and gave them the freedom to realize the Greenies space.  "Light Waves does the Greenie sculptures that got famous from sandboxes maybe six months ago."  Pavig worked with him and LittleToe Bartlett to realize a place that seems like an immersive Pixar movie.

The irony is, Greenies does include several real world corporate brands that have had less successful runs at their own SL locales.  I nod to the giant soda bottle behind us. "It occurred to me Coke would be scoring huge impressions now if they were actually paying you to have that bottle here."

"Coke did a clever thing," she says. "They freed up their trademark for use in-world-- they recognize they get more out of their branding here if they let people actually use it. So for them it's free advertising and for us it's an artistic borrowing that's instantly recognizable.  I hate to say win-win, but that's how it works for them.  And embellish it to a positive effect, without breaking the world’s underlying structure."

As for Rezzables specific for-profit plans, it's probably a mark of Greenies' strength that Pavig isn't quite sure.  "They haven't even launched yet so it's hard to say," she tells me, "but what it appears to be is creating SL businesses that are sustainable by relying on high quality builds and good Second Life artists."   

Video features Bobby Troughton as the lead transformer and fly, and LittleToe Bartlett as the crow. Among Greenies developers are Pavig Lok, Light Waves, and L. Bartlett.  LOLcat embellishment by Hamlet.

Comments

[Eppie Hock]

I just visited "Greenies" with a friend, and it really is amazing! It's a creative idea and a lot of fun to explore! I absolutely liked it!

grtz Eppie Hock
http://eppie.my-secondlife.nl

[sean percival]

lets face it...

greenies = fun and amazing, walking through art

corporate sims = boring, disengaged, rarely updated

where would you rather be?

[Otenth Paderborn]

Their traffic is even more impressive when you consider how low their agent limit has been.

[Vint Falken]

Nice article! I especially love the lulz picture. *grins*

[RightAsRain Rimbaud]

Thanks for support. Please note we pushed the Grand Opening to 02 Aug at 1700 SLT.

We have many new places to explore and things to do going live. We will also unviel the most amazing sculptie prim sculpture ever rezzed.

The new piece by Light Waves is spectacular.

[Bobby Troughton]

Greenies is great, I really enjoyed finally exploring something original. It was like playing those Army Men/Toy Story type games. Cars and planes become little toys. Seeing people's reaction as they first saw the sim was fun too. There was also lot's of great detail, like under the refrigerator you can see it's motor with a realistic rat hiding underneath it.

That fly avatar of mine was one of Tooter Claxton's great unique creations. I was looking for some different non-furry animal av. :) Around that day I bought the fly I ironically found the Greenies sim and it fit well with it.

I kept on crashing the Hellcat plane of mine, like into the laptop at the videoclip. It was also tricky flying between the chair legs. :) The flying giant (or not depending on your perspective) hotdog at the end of the clip is a freebie vehicle.

[Pavig Lok]

Indeed Bobby, Tooter makes a damn good fun av. He even contributed to the build in a small way - he gave me a fly which can be found, poor thing, with it's legs in the air on the windowsill. Thanks for reminding me.. finally finished that durn curtain rail :P

[muhammod]

what is this
some kinda drug site?