Nalates Urriah has a really good "state of Second Life" post compiled from various data sources, such as concurrency rates over time, and the number of SL regions over the last four years (above) from Metaverse Business. Based all those numbers, his baseline analysis is this: "The best I can say is Second Life is coasting along... The stats are certainly not rosey. But, neither are they all that gloomy." That's kinda true, but misses a more important point: Yes, Second Life is coasting in the sense that usage has slowed, but not drastically, and that it's losing regions (see above), but not rapidly. From one point of view, that's pretty impressive. Most online worlds lose much more paying users much nire faster, and the fact SL has stayed relatively stable for so long is quite remarkable.
From another point of view (and the only one that matters, frankly), this coasting status is quite serious, and here's why:
Second Life can't afford to coast. The land-based revenue model depends on continued user growth and monetization. More active users mean more people buying virtual goods, which means more ways that private land owners can cover tier and sometimes even make a profit. As the users go away, so does the land -- which is what's happening now. The trouble is, every sim owner who goes away translates into a loss of several thousand dollars in yearly revenue -- often much more. In 2011, about 5,500 people were responsible for most of Second Life's revenue. Roughly a year later, only 4850 remained. That's 650 gone in a year. If this decline continues at roughly that rate, well, no need paint the dark conclusion in any more detail. In the last few years, World of Warcraft lost about 3 million paying users. But it still has some 9 million left. World of Warcraft is coasting in a comfortable way. Second Life, without some drastic changes and new revenue models, not so much.
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Any wonders why Sl is going down?
Rod, time to seip aside or grab the bull!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 11:44 AM
For the umpteenth time can you stop claiming that land barons are a revenue source? They are middlemen created and subsidised by SL. Some of them make seriously great estates, some not so much. If LL ever thought about the world it has made, instead of operating a business model that has not been reviewed or revised in years, it might notice that people do not come to SL for cookie cutter estates and malls. They come for the Caledons and the Caras Galadhons.
If they'd open up the land ownership model so that residents could own a Homestead without owning a full region they might get somewhere. If they noticed that no other computer service except LL is charging the exact same prices for its services now that it did a decade ago.
The exact analogy to your argument is claiming that the US economy consists exclusively of the IRS.
Posted by: Alberik | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 12:29 PM
Alberik, LL may well think that "they" (whoever they are) do come for "cookie cutter estates and malls."
Look at the recent adverts in your browser: not all that different from IMVU's.
Posted by: Iggy | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 12:55 PM
That graph looks a lot like the hype cycle...
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Wait, are you sure that graph is right? In January 2008, there were 16000 regions, 8 months later, 32000? WHAT HAPPENED in 2008?!
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 01:04 PM
But you're talking about people lost not regions, which is what the graph is. What is SL losing, 2000 regions/yr and they have 28,000? And they still have 3/4 of the ones they added in the boom year of 2008 despite a horrible RL recession? Sounds like they can coast awhile on this business model.
Posted by: val kendal | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 01:56 PM
SL is down 12% in regions from it's peak. WOW is down 25% in paid users from it's peak. How is WOW comfortable and SL needs drastic change?
Posted by: Amanda Dallin | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 02:50 PM
@Adeon in 2008 the Open Space fiasco happened, the grid grew by 44% in terms of land mass in Q2 2008.
@Amanda WoW still has 9 million customers and they get a boost every now and then when they release an expansion pack, I think that's the different Hamlet is getting at.
Private regions are likely to dip below the 20,000 mark in the next two or three months, the trajectory is definitely down but still healthy enough for LL not to have to panic.
Posted by: Ciaran Laval | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 03:59 PM
The obvious and most sensible solution in a depressed economy is for Linden Lab to lower tier across the board so that everyone, including the land barons, is enticed to come back. But Linden Lab has decided not to do this, so the downward spiral will continue.
Posted by: Archangel Mortenwold | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 05:13 PM
How is lowering tier going to entice people to come back?
LL needs to market to new people, not old players who have left and moved on.
Posted by: 2013 | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 06:37 PM
This article was based on an interesting article Nalates but she certainly skirted over the Opensim part in what I would describe as a biased attempt to dismiss any competition it might pose to Second Life. She spoke of rezzing into molasses as if that would be true of all Opensim based grids and regions where in fact, had she been more objective, she would have explained that Opensim can be run by anyone and that means some will run them on home PC's with ordinary broadband while others, the majority in fact, run on well resourced hosted services. I have had bad experiences rezzing in both Second Life and some Opensim grids and it comes down to numbers of prim's, textures and scripts in use as well as resources available on the service in general. Lag remains a huge problem in Second Life but far less to worry about when you own or hire the server you can control.
The next point is she talked about Inworldz and OSgrid like they are the only grids out there. In fact there are hundreds now and more added every month which is were the growth is and where a lot of the lost regions of SL have gone. Each new grid or standalone world includes a small bunch of people setting up their own regions. Some setup's are actually much larger like the lost education regions from SL or the none-profits that have found Kitely cloud based services. There are some very active Google Plus communities supporting the free Metaverse now too if you want to see if they have any community. Try https://plus.google.com/communities/116284417302234467612
The thing is she simply ignored all this and even failed to note that Inworldz is not really Opensim at all but a one-time fork of Opensim and now with a totally new script engine and physics it is not even an Opensim platform at all now.
Opensim development may not be backed by substantial finance like SL is but it does have a dedicated and enthusiastic team of developers including patch contributions from grid owners like Avination and Kitely. It also has a Intel employee working on Bullet physics due to replace ODE and easily a match for SL Havock. Not just that but the US Army, MOSES project, which pulled out of Second Life is working on improved security code and contributing it back to core. All of this is ignored in Nalates' report and she could have said Opensim development is simply taking a different path with different priorities because where Linden Lab is concentrating effort on gamification or turning SL into an approximation of a video gaming platform Opensim is working on improved content security with export permissions and a more secure hypergrid which ultimately will make it a more social/economic platform and better suited to avatar experience, education, the arts and role playing.
Cloud Party is also posing a threat to Second Life but work on webGL portals to stream Opensim worlds to web pages the same as Cloud Party will add another layer of functionality that will make it easier to use than Second Life and offer a quicker way to gain the all important first look with minimum learning curve.
Nalates can go on paying Linden lab their inflated tier if she wants, and she certainly made a case justifying it, but people have more choice now and at lower cost with Opensim, and greater freedom. I noticed in her report she down plays Opensim but the one thing I am sure of is that the free Metaverse is based on free open source code and developments like Opensim have a big future.
Posted by: Gaga | Thursday, March 07, 2013 at 07:11 PM
Gaga, Opensim grids are simply not relevant.
Opensim grids had a number of years to gain meaningful user traction; it didn't happen. And all those wishful thinking comments in blogs by (the same few) enthusiasts will not change this.
Good for you that you can play around with opensource code, hire your own server, or set up a one on your own computer that you can control. Doesn't resonate with me at all. I simply don't care about this, and except a few 100 nerds, nobody else does.
Posted by: Max T | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 05:33 AM
Any model based on continuous growth is unsustainable. You're going to hit a market cap and transition to a steady state or dynamic cycle, or you're going to boom and bust and dry up and blow away with the tumbleweeds.
If Second Life wishes to achieve sustainability (and that's not a given; many profiteers are perfectly happy with the boom/bust model), then it's going to have to adapt in a more agile fashion to keep up with the market. That means a much more aggressive development cycle with tight focus on ease-of-use and user experience, and somewhat less concern with maintaining backwards compatibility with content that's ten years old.
I'm a creator. I want more and better tools to create with, and I advocate for them constantly. But if you can't recruit and retain sufficient residents to replace those lost through attrition, then nobody will be left to appreciate the millions of hours of work poured into this world by the creators.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 06:07 AM
Open Sim are not a threat!
They are the future and beware LL, cause more and more are feeling it!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 07:07 AM
And btw, if any wants a prof how easy and how much more stable is any open sim private hosted home computer region then any ll 1, see mine in OSG!
They are easy to find, log in and type zztt and jump!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 07:10 AM
I've known dozens of people who tried Cloud Party, including myself. Most said the same thing:
1. They logged into once or twice and never logged in again
2. They found it like stepping into SL of 2004
Not a threat
Posted by: 2013 | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 08:00 AM
Open Sim is not relevant because the developers (not trying to bash them) have not created an easy to use dashboard to install and manage your grid. You have to run several exe's through DOS and type in commands and go through all this trouble shooting just to have an operational grid, and that's just not gonna cut it, especially when all I have to do is open a port and install a program to have the Minecraft equivalent. Its great that Open Sim is there and being worked on but no one is working on its usability.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 08:56 AM
@ Gaga:
You apparently come from a parallel world. What you write about OpenSim, is light-years away from what I've experienced in various OpenSim grids. Poor performance, slow rezzing, few users, and the look & feel from the year 2007.
And what you name "free Metaverse", is a fragmented mix of walled gardens, no-world grids (Kitely) and antagonizing operators (OSGrid vs. Metropolis). What exactly is "free" in the general view?
In your advertising comment, you forgot to mention that many OpenSim grids also have been abandoned again.
Posted by: Gordon Twine | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 09:04 AM
You can't market to new people if they can't afford what you're selling. It's basic common business sense, which Linden Lab seems to have left behind a long time ago.
Posted by: Archangel Mortenwold | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 09:57 AM
What do you think is more price appropriate, leasing a brand new car for 300 US a month, or renting 1/8 of a server from Linden Lab?
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 10:14 AM
Gordon, did you tried SL lately?
I did tried to sail from my home at the black sea to NYC rerion, wwaht used to be a lovely experience become a hard 1, with lots of hangups when crossing regions that where seemless 2 weeks ago!
Also do you know the Regent biker sims?
Try to ride there, a lot of private sims connected by lovely roads where a bike feels at home!
Well Yesterday, it took me and my love, more then 45 sec,l spinning in the air, before finding that clicking my bike, making it derrender as i did so, stand up and sit ddown via using the short cuts on the keyboard (l shift+alt+s) was the only way to show back, then get on the bike and cross one more, 2 more and then same as before!
Worse on Corsica Continent and Sansara, and even riding a train at the Athol continent on Sl railroad was a pain!
This behavor was due to a problem caused by some, 2 weeks ago, LL was informed, still deny the problem till there was to many and to much evidence that some went bad!
So now, SL is at the exact same level as any open grid and worse then aurora grid, where you can create roads of thousands of sims, length, to connect regions apart!
And dont get fooled, SL for newbies with the LL viewer for sure is harder to figure then running Diva Distro or Sim on a stick and even Open Sim exc!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 10:42 AM
And when i see a few atacking Open Sim, then i know that its already a threat to SL and that could All be avoided if LL Hq where nothing else then a bunch of incompetents!
When L had the chance to gather and be the center of a myriad of grids, whre L would reign, they did the exact same thign that they still do, ignore, dont listen, dont think!
Well, its not 2 late to amend the mistakes, just fire all the board, get back some of the oens that loved Sl and worked there and still belive in its dream, gather with open sim communities and Sl ones and dont be a greedy company but one that will create and care with some unique!
Posted by: ZZ Bottom | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 10:48 AM
My head is exploding due to some of the..I don't know what to call it, I'm seeing here.
1. Growth can't be infinite, there's a limit to number of people with interest in virtual worlds. I know the Silicon Valley technorati think anything that doesn't have 500 percent growth in usage every quarter is a failure but they're wrong.
2. It's a good thing SL is shrinking in regions...one of hte complaints of the masses is that SL feels empty. Regions that are not economically viable closing ups the population density so it feels less empty.
3. There was a land bubble and glut as it was. There was simply too much land. And contrary to what the "Sandbox crowd" thinks, most people don't want or need their own regions and LL doesn't want everyone to have their own region...the support costs and time would increase!
3. Opensim and the Little grids are not even playing in the same ballpark as SL and Linden Lab, they're the little league. The usual suspects here keep going on how opensim is great and it's cheap... cheap is all it has going for it and that isn't getting new users to rush over and join opensim is it? Sure the "Sandbox Furry" crowd loves it, but they all want the SL of 2004 back anyway and that's what opensim is, the SL of 2004 without the people, without the shoes, without those fashionistas and without the socializers. It's just a bunch of nerds building and scripting vehicles to drive around in what are essentially personal sandboxes. Whoop-de-do. You know what the masses do in SL? they TELEPORT. You wanna fly a plane or drive a car, play a racing game or X-Plane...theyr'e designed specifically for it and are better at those specific things than any SL based grid. Sure you can do that in SL and opensim, but they're jack of all trades, masters of none. Well, SL is the master of shopping but the opensim nerds don't care about that.
@ZZ Bottom
People aren't "Attacking" opensim...they're saying it's just SL without people for the Sandbox nerds and that it isn't worth you're time unless you're one of those "Sandbox Furries" or cheap-ass Edu types looking for a cheap region to bring students in for web 3.0 classes. I for one am happy that LL stopped subsidizing what were essentially for-profit universities using SL for web 3.0 classes students paid for and not really giving back to the SL userbase.
LL never wanted to allow hypergrid because what makes SL special are two things... People and STUFF.... the things opensim doesn't have. Why should LL care about a bunch of whiny nerds living in the past of SL. Let them have opensim.
And I don't know what world you live in for SOAS to be easier to use than the SL client. And what client are you logging into SL with? I don't have those region crossing issues.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Friday, March 08, 2013 at 12:24 PM
@ZZ Bottom
You were bang on the money when you wrote; "And when i see a few atacking Open Sim, then i know that its already a threat to SL and that could All be avoided if LL Hq where nothing else then a bunch of incompetents!"
Max T, Metacam Oh, Gordon Twine and CronoCloud Creeggan all spitting out their BS about Opensim only serves to show they know the threat to their golden goose is solid and growing. I can sense the panic in their bitter remarks.
Fact is Second Life is an old platform held together with years of patches and Linden Lab is trying to build the future on an over priced sinking ship. The loss of sims is relentless and there will come a point when the old rust bucket goes into free fall. Maybe a year or two at the most. LL had their chance to do better but chose in stead to milk the old cow to death.
I spent far too much money there and when I close my remaining two sims there I wont be looking back. Opensim and the free Metaverse are just too inviting now. Sorry guys but you are just losers holding onto auntie's apron strings.
Posted by: Gaga | Saturday, March 09, 2013 at 10:58 AM
the next big thing for SL has to be Avatar 2.0
as it becomes harder and harder for non-creative people to make clothes accessories, or find the time to learn, then they left with dressing up and styling their avatars, with what other people make
some things that could be in Avatar 2.0
clear distinction between human and non-human base shape. like human is human and fit within general body shape type params
non-human is total freedom. add joints, bones. anything you like. make any rigged shape you like. even another kind of different styled humanoid
so 2 separate base types
+
with human then
a) can pick a base shape. apple pear rail venus
b) can be tall or short within a range: say 4ft and 6ft. (or whichever)
c) can widen thicken narrow shape. but it maintain ratio depending on a)
d) can swap your head out. so can fit onto any body shape
if go with these then it make mesh clothing deformer easier possible for basic human. bc of the outer bounds
bc is a base shape alternative for other kinds of avatars then auto-deformation for them is not absolute necessary as the creators of them probably not want them to deform anyways
Posted by: elizabeth (16) | Saturday, March 09, 2013 at 12:34 PM