Big Spaceship, Big Challenge: Can An Interactive Services Agency Re-Invent The Second Life User Experience?

What you're looking at are some portfolio samples of Big Spaceship, a Brooklyn-based digital interactive agency that will be developing a new Second Life user experience, Linden Lab just announced on their company blog.  Their impressive client roster is primarily media companies, and judging by their portfolio, their product is mostly Flash-heavy websites for movies, pop stars, and the occasional department store chain and beverage. On the face of it, Big Planet seems like a good choice to develop the web side of the registration and initial set-up process.  On the other side of the ledger, there's nothing immediately obvious in Big Spaceship's resume to suggest they're the ideal candidate to revamp the "first in-world experiences" for a fully 3D, avatar-driven, user-created virtual world, which is also on their to-do list.  Then again, I've previously suggested that making an the Second Life user experience more palatable to mainstream users will probably require designers without anything like that background.

At any rate, I hope to talk with the team soon, and get their sense on what seems to be the tech industry's hardest challenges.  Over 10 million people have tried Second Life, but quit within the first hour.  Can a studio used to creating websites for Spider-Man 3 and other high-profile media properties make the metaverse any more inviting?

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

The other issue seems to have drowned out much in the way pf positive feedback but I still feel reaching 1 million concurrency is possible and I also know this will mean SL will not be what SL was in 2003-2004. People wanting that experience have plenty of choice in other grids now.

Anyway some of us will try to inject some constructive ideas into the process and just hope the information makes it to the right people.

Discussion: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=290925

pjira meta entry for consolidation of suggestions (feature requests) and defects that have a direct impact on the first in world hour: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-10293

It is important to understand that the true first hour begins in advance of clicking connect and that portion is all marketing and website based.

[Bettina Tizzy]

Hamlet, I agree with much of what you say here and appreciate your open-mindedness. Perhaps what is needed is something foreign to the already initiated and immersed SL user.

One thing, though: "Over 10 million people have tried Second Life, but quit within the first hour."

How many of those people created an account with Second Life, only to discover that their graphics card (or whatever) was not up to snuff and were unable to log in? I suspect that's a very hefty number. Has SL ever coughed up those stats?

It happened to me. I created an account in July of 2006... but my system couldn't handle it. It wasn't until months later that I was able to log in, this time with a brand new system.

[Hamlet Au]

I believe the 15 million or so are accounts who've logged in at least once, but I don't have a reference handy. And I say "over 10 million people" to discount the alts which are like 30% of that number, IIRC.

[Pyewacket Bellman]

I have the same reaction, Hamlet. This screams "We gotta put some lipstick on this pig".

It also strongly reminds me of the time the Apple board thought the best thing for the shareholders was to get rid of Steve Jobs.

[Bryon Ruxton]

I am skeptic as well as to whether Big Spaceship is right for the job.
I hope they have people who have been in SL for a while to rely on, or immerse themselves in-world enough for them to get it right and not over-hype the registration process or mislead people in the wrong direction as to what to expect post-registration.

However, this will certainly lead to improvements for the less computer savvy individuals, hoping that Frank Ambrose catches up with infrastructure changes in sync with such increase in retention. Otherwise it would be shooting yourself in the foot.

Making it friendly to mainstream users will require much more, both on the client interface friendliness, and third party innovation within.

I think people really underestimate the time it will take for virtual worlds to have a chance to go mainstream. All predictions I have seen for 2010 or 2012 (such as the Gartner forecast) are off by at least 5-10 years in my opinion.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

@ Bettina, you too? Had that same experience myself back in '06, then again when WL became an integrated part & required an update to the viewer that my system flat couldn't support. Had to upgrade my system (which was designed for home office stuff in support of my RL grown-up stuff rather than gaming) to stay in-world.

The upgrade was around US $300 or so. Not bad. There is, however, a stop-loss point, and for me, that hits when I'm looking at having to spend multiple thousands for a spiffy high-end gaming computer to sustain an escapist hobby.

I'm betting we're not alone in that experience. In my case, the first time around, it was time for a new home office system anyway and I had RL friends encouraging me to give it another shot after I got the new PC (which still wasn't a gaming monster), and by the second time, I was willing to spend $300 to keep my connection to both SL friends I've made and geographically distant RL friends. I do wonder, though, if Joe Noob who's just checking it out would find it worth the bother.