Here’s Why Linden Lab Needs to Market Second Life to Smartass, Garry's Mod-Style Gamers

Hey did you see the new Second Life advertising campaign? Uploaded just two days ago, it's already been seen over 1 million times:

Slight hitch (which you probably noticed if you watched this for over 10 seconds): It was not created by Linden Lab, but by Videogamedunkey, a YouTuber with over 2 million subscribers. Which makes him and this video vastly more popular and influential than the official Second Life channel on YouTube. Unfortunately, most of his video is a lot of juvenile jackassery, but I have to give him credit for cleverly juxtaposing official, overly optimistic Second Life ads with the actual, often disturbing reality many or most SL users have. 

So assuming 1% of Dunkey's followers decide they're going to follow in his footsteps (and that's a safe bet), SLers should expect about 20,000 new potential trolls hitting Second Life over the next few weeks. I say "potential", because not all of them are trolls, just like not all of Dunkey's activity is mean-spirited: More like a young gamer being a smartass in response to fairly random and crazy content.

I mean, what true gamer can possibly be against Kermit the Frog armed with samurai swords while smoking a blunt? There's a place in Second Life for gamers like this, but the problem is, they often get mixed up with the fashionistas and the social/nightclubbers in Second Life, not to mention the porn players, and chaos inevitably ensues. Those SLers get offended and ragequit, and most of the gamers eventually get bored and move on.

The problem? Linden Lab is doing a bad/non-existent job of marketing to this audience of gamers on YouTube, so they're not even sure there's a place for them. Or to put it in two words: Garry's Mod. I mean, watch:

Thousands of videos like this on YouTube have been seen hundreds of millions of times, because the sandbox mod of Half-Life 2 is incredibly popular. (Rod Humble knew that, but he's no longer CEO of Linden Lab.) And for some reason, Linden Lab keeps missing that fact: There's a huge market of gamers in search of a sandbox where utter, ridiculous anarchy rules. Create a marketing campaign for them, send them to a specific portal so they end of in sims custom-made for their brand of fucknuttery, and you'll see a burst of new Second Life users. A lot of what they do will be pretty offensive, sure, but at least most of that will be directed at themselves, not unsuspecting women in their 40s and 50s (SL's most active users). 

Failing that, we can expect Second Life to keep losing the branding war, and no amount of positive media coverage can change that. (The top YouTube gamers have combined audiences larger than almost every single TV show and news outlet.) 

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Comments

[Iggy]

"fairly random and crazy content":

You can't make this stuff up. Just visit a WA. I think his video captures that scene pretty well :)

[Pussycat Catnap]

There are plenty of places in SL perfectly set up for this kind of crowd. So I think it'd be great to market to them.

The only issue is figuring how to keep two very different SL cultures from clashing.
- That can be done by posting clear 'boundary rules' akin to:

"these are wild sims, you can do all that crazy stuff here, but those are not wild sims, you can't do it there. By extension, if crazy stuff hits you when you visit this wild sim, don't complain about, but if it hits you while on these other sims, please help us keep it out of them."

- Which they kind of already have set up in certain places. I think there was that one mainland sim Jessie (?) that was basically set up to be a griefing party.

BUT all that said... some basic rules need apply: the policies SL already has in place against hate speech for example, need to stay everywhere. And the policies against theft, account tampering, and such as well.

But having chaos in a sim - that's a very valid segment to market to.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I feel the need to get a pikachu avatar now...

[Pussycat Catnap]

Oh, and there actually is a certain motel in SL, that search says has been getting some crazy high traffic recently... O.o

[Gordon]

If I read through the comments of the Kermit video, I'm delighted that Linden Lab don't try to attract these double dumbass community. This would generate a storm wave of new trolls and griefers in SL.

[zz bottom]

I have to agree with Gordon, rather to be a niche but one that has moeny to spend then 1 billion looses like those in the videos, that will not spend a single dime in Sl.

[sirhc deSantis]

A little bit of creative chaos isn't such a bad thing you know:) The classic slug smoking a doobie (especially juxtaposed with the fauxnews bot burbling about 'representing me' - rather priceless). Def an improvement on the endless plastic Natashas, with apologies to Mr Gibson. At least they would be more entertaining than those parked at those bugout places you get shifted to on rollout days. Still don't see why the lab changed that as my old home is still ancient hanja, but thats another story :)

Not sure if its worth actually going after this segment though. Sure, set up a few chaos regions and let (mostly) anarchy rule but it will need actual oversight. Would be a fun place to go and let off some steam, but I ain't paying for it and I doubt these followers will either.

Oh and 'fucknuttery' eh? Pulls up profile to add..and searches for a certain motel and the 'cowboy level'.

[Clara Seller]

Buffoons can be entertaining in small doses, but it doesn't take long for reality to hit.

Then we're back to the fact that these buffoons can't grow without a ridiculously steep and complicated learning curve and they can't expand without deep pockets.

SL Management is kept floating by other people's sweat and blood and there's very little that's funny about that. At this point, whimsical money tossing and calling it Marketing for SL is nothing new, creative, or humorous. It's pointless.

[Shockwave Yareach]

They aren't marketing to gamers???

Question - just who ARE the LL folks marketing to? Nobody at all as far as I am able to detect.

[Strider]

Advertising SL as weird and humorous is actually a good way to attract new user imo. It could do without the cringe worthy interview though.

[Amanda Dallin]

I get banner ads for SL on all kinds of websites. I guess their marketing to current SL users which seems a bit pointless.

[zz bottom]

Not if they do wish the actual users to remain or attracting old ones that left.

[Shockwave Yareach]

Zz - bringing back people who feel robbed is a non-starter. Which is what I've warned the lab about for so many years. People who feel cheated quit / don't return / tell all their friends online. This is the labs own fault.

[Seymore Steamweaver]

I play Team Fortress 2 a lot and for the most part whenever I mention second life I get two reactions:

1.) What the f*ck is that?

and

2.) Secondlife is still around?

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

This is silly, LL should be marketing to demographics that SL is already known to appeal to. Instead of smartass incoherent garry's mod obsessed trolls with ADHD, they need to accept the market they have.

What is SL's largest user demographic? Who spends a LOT of money in SL as a group? Who has been consistently using SL for YEARS? What group consistently writes about SL?

http://slnamewatch.com/?action=list_records&status_filter=all&sort_order=DESC&order_by=usage_count

The #1 SL last name by the numbers is GossipGirl, a name you could get ONLY if you joined through the CBS GossipGirl website.

GossipGirl, of course, being a female-centric drama about upper class young adults based on a book series. Both have a strongly female fanbase.

What is the most common type of blog about Second Life:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/11/second-life-blogs.html

#1 with a bullet are fashion blogs.

They ought to be seriously marketing to 25-55 year old women.

[Iggy]

More "GossipGirls" than even "Residents," as of the time the site stopped getting updates in 2011.

CronoCloud, you make a convincing argument. And that site is fascinating. I never had run into it before. I'm only one of 754 in the "Onomatopoeia" clan.

Some academic will try to give us a demographic profile of SL users. Won't be me, but it would be interesting to know.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Iggy, I think some have tried to do demographic surveys in the past. I can't exactly remember who though. Some of us oldbies have some good guesses based on anecdotal information and personal experience. I suspect some of the Ebil Land Barons have a good idea.

I also suspect the Lindens KNOW, but the Linden culture is such that they're not very willing to market to certain demographics....especially not with Sansar in the pipeline.

[zz bottom]

Older then... I fear that LL really cant not understand how could make a lot more money if they truly assume that Sl is for Adults in their late years.