Fact Check: Yes, Second Life Stopped Growing Around 2006

My report on SL usage from 2007

Disappointing but not surprising: Some zealous Second Life enthusiasts (including some who currently have a paid marketing relationship with Linden Lab) are trying to dispute a passage from Wired UK reporter Rowland Manthorpe's great story on Sansar and High Fidelity, where he notes that Second Life hit a growth plateau pretty much a decade ago:

Then, in 2006, Second Life stopped growing. No matter how many people registered, the number of users remained stuck at around a million. In 2008, Rosedale stepped down. The following year he left the company altogether.

Rowland got this report from Philip Rosedale himself, and as I confirmed with him via e-mail, this is basically accurate. (If anything, Rowland is being over-generous to how large Second Life actually is*.) Back then, Linden Lab published lots of user stats, and by 2007, it was very obvious even outside the company that the stagnation had already started. Millions tried SL because of the excessive media coverage, but 99.5% would leave after/during the first try. As I wrote back then:

This despite explosive media attention in October, when the world was featured in two top rated television shows, The Office and CSI: New York.  But despite estimates that these tie-ins lead to 100,000 or more additional sign-ups, most of whom were using a significantly improved version of the software, nearly all of those who came, left. 

This ancient history wouldn't be worth re-hashing, except for one small problem: Sansar and High Fidelity seem dead-set on repeating the same mistakes which greatly helped contribute to that stagnation:

Specifically, both are developing a fully 3D interactive experience when very few people outside hardcore gamers are comfortable or familiar with using them. And then to make matters worse, both are developing an experience which for all intents and purposes looks and acts like a 3D game, but without all the game-like hooks, mechanics, and play features which made Minecraft a massive success. (On top of that, optimizing these experiences for premium VR hardware, making their potential market even smaller.) And so it seems we're heading for a similar fate in 2016 which should have been avoided in 2006. I'll write more on those topics soon, but meantime, I hope we don't keep trying to rewrite history -- especially when that makes us even more likely to repeat it.

@draxtor huh - you're the second person to say that. philip told me internal figures showed stagnating user numbers from 2006. I'll check

— Rowland Manthorpe (@rowlsmanthorpe) October 25, 2016

Rowland strugging mightily with the faithful

* Since 2015, total Second Life usage has dropped to about 900,000 unique users a month, but that stat is somewhat misleading because historically, only 600,000 or so of those active users are regular, returning users -- with the rest new users who mostly churn out.

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Comments

[Lemon Panda]

Yes, but its still making money to fund LL's other projects :D

[Wagner J Au]

LOL yes the roleplaying game the company insists is not a game is subsidizing a new roleplaying game the company insists is not a game.

[Amanda Dallin]

The Office and CSI:New York tie ins were in 2007 not 2006.

[Amanda Dallin]

Actually the NWN article linked in this one supports that SL didn't stagnate in 2006. It is from December 2007 and says SL had a bit over half a million users. At then end of the current article it says:

"* Since 2015, total Second Life usage has dropped to about 900,000 unique users a month, but that stat is somewhat misleading because historically, only 600,000 or so of those active users are regular, returning users -- with the rest new users who mostly churn out."

900,000 is larger than half a million and even the 600,000 figure is a bit larger. Mr. Manthorpe was off by 1 year at the least. It doesn't effect the point of his article, SL did plateau and start to slowly shrink but not as early as his story or the NWN headline say.

[metacam oh]

finally got around to reading the whole Wired article. One thing I saw that made me laugh was "building everything from jazz lounges to full-scale cities, it seemed he might be right."
sorry but there are no full-scale cities in SL.

After this article I definitely have no interest in Sansar, and it seems pretty much that Ebbe is doubling down on all of SL's mistakes but leaving out what made SL good. Comparing the billion sheep who log into Facebook to the people who would go into VR is going to be a huge swing and miss.

[Willow Dion]

Before I read the Wired article I was not very interested in Sansar. Since June 2014 it has been one disappointment after another. After reading the article I'm not interested at all. I would not say Ebbe is doubling down with Sansar but he seems at best to be producing a crippled version of Second Life with the good parts missing.

[JohnC]

Sometimes people simply do not understand the huge numbers involved in the gaming world. They see the numbers in SL and they look massive, but compared to many other online games they are tiny. And let's not over look the problem that has always existed with bot's and money chairs etc. The potential to fake numbers in SL is huge. Registered users should never be allowed as an indication of popularity. All I want to know is who is on line now.

[Cathartes Aura]

Jane/Joe Average Resident will not participate in an economic system that has been completely rigged to benefit the top 1% at their expense.

When Grandfathered Tier was rolled out in the Fall of 2006 it marked the turning point for SL. See Jane and or Joe Average may be slow but they aren't stupid. They can add 2 + 2 for themselves.

Jane/Joe saw the LL Board (Mitch Kapor) giving a 33.3% minimum business advantage to their competitors - Grandfathered Tier. The Smart Money bailed out early. The true believers stayed for a few years more hoping the LL board would see the light. The LL board is incapable of "seeing the light". That would mean they have to admit they were WRONG. Their arrogance and hubris prevent that from happening.

The LL board killed the golden goose. They pissed off our money on one failed project after another. And the latest - Sansar - is also going down in flames. What a record to be proud of! LMAO!!

And the Turkey Buzzard goes... Hiss ;)

[Clara Seller]

It would have been interesting to see how SL would have developed if it's original promise of "your world, your imagination" had always remained it's primary focus. It was just too scary for the business to have faith in an "ideal" and trust the money would follow.

Fast-forward to Sansar's faith message of "Our imagination, your money". Could this message be more dismal and out-of-sync with what the revolutionary masses are screaming for right now? The under current of the entire globe is revolting against this Sansar concept of putting on shackles and being pick-pocketed and removed from your own creative visions.
The brilliant corporate mentality of LL has bet the farm that the next big rage in gaming is "tyranny". We all knew that LL would have to bungle it in nuclear fashion. Heckuva job, Ebbie.

[Shockwave yareach]

Growth stopped as soon as LL stopped treating it like a virtual world with freedoms and property rights, and started trying to make it into anything but what it was? Things began falling apart when they wouldnt fix basic bugs and force marched people off their land?

Say it aint so Mumford!

[metacam oh]

yup Shockwave, the place went to shit the minute they started trying to control and own everything, so what is their solution, to make a virtual world that they have even more control and ownership over. It boggles the mind. And also who wants to install a server? uhhh me. Id rather install a server than fork over more money than it takes to lease a Lexus for an arbitrary small square of virtual land.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Active users is important for getting outside interest.

Average concurrency is important for keeping a platform stable.

Average concurrency hasn't changed much since I started in SL in 2009.

It used to be in the 50,000s. But by 2010 it was in the 40,000s. And in 2016 it is also in the 40,000s.
- This being for peak times in the Western Hemisphere.

Peak Time in the Eastern Hemisphere is and has always been about half this.

The lowest I've ever seen was just over 20,000. And these days at around my 2am PST... it tends to be in the mid 20,000s.

So SL is stable... but the outside world has moved on by - and they did that LONG BEFORE assorted Lindens and Community Members started blaming each other for various fiascos. Before those fiascos even began.

It is not about how hard it is to use, or that its too simplistic, or too complex, or that it has porn, or not enough porn, or that it is a game, or that it is not a game.

Its just that most people don't tend to want the 'escape into an alt-reality'.

The concept itself won't work for the masses over the long run. VR will have the same problem. AR "might" overcome this - the same way Social Media has much greater appeal to people than the general web or usenet formats did.

As to the concurrency of mid 40,000s... this is actually on-par with a lot of MMOs games.

An interesting stat to note is that while a game like World of Warcraft has had 12 million subscribers at its highest point - when another MMO topped 400,000 concurrency over its launch week, that was advertised as higher concurrency than even World of Warcraft had ever achieved.
- And those are peaks, not averages.

40,000 as an average is likely similar to many MMOs, even some of the bigger ones.

Except SL's 'micro-transactions' system is much better integrated than any other MMO out there... this place likely has the profit potential of an MMO 5-10 times its concurrency size...

[Orca Flotta]

Seeing LL still dead set on repeating the same old stupid mistakes over and over and over again, I'm so tired of all this shit I stopped caring quite a while ago. If LL thinks it's a good idea to steal money from SL and pump it into yet another stillborn child project, ok, let them do it. 2017 will be the last year of me as a premium member, maybe as a member at all. Just wanna make it to my 10th rezday, everything happening after that ... pffff ...

[Levio Serenity]

Indeed, it's frustrating to watch. Every CEO comes in, doesn't give a second thought to improving the company's existing cash cow, instead comes up with some new hair brained projects... After a couple years of wasted time, money, and effort, they bail on the new projects, and a new CEO comes in with the same idea. The cycle begins anew, and Sansar will very likely follow the same trajectory as all the rest. How about spending a year figuring out why new user retention is low and work on fixing that instead???

What's even more laughable, was the old excuse in the past was that the PC requirements were too high for SL to really go mainstream.. Guess what, you can't honestly make that argument about SL any more. But hey don't let that stop you from developing a new VR project that really will have this issue! Learn from your past mistakes guys. Oh wait... No one there is left from the past to remember this.

[ginsu]

SL grew consistently from mid-2005 through mid-2009. The growth rate may have slowed in 2008 and 2009, but was still positive.

[Pussycat Catnap]

As to why they don't work so much on SL, or why they don't make an SL 2.0 (Sansar is NOT an SL 2.0)...

A hint can be found in the announcement of the new Premium Sandboxes - and even Hamlets reaction to it.

Hamlet notes Sandboxes as the best thing about SL.

Now, if you look at what people are doing in SL - the huge crowds are not in the sandboxes.

Sansar is basically an Enterprise business solution VR Sandbox.

So is High Fidelity.

The techies and corps think a sandbox is the way to go. They look at Minecraft and think it made it big by being a sandbox.

MMOs are all trying to put out Sandboxes to kill World of Warcraft - most of which then fall flat, fail, or never come out due to complexity.

Users don't want a sandbox.

They want content rich experiences. Be that games, stories, homes, roleplay, etc.

Look at IMVU - its the sheer opposite of a sandbox. You sit in a single room and chat if how it has been described to me is correct.

Yet it thrives as well if not better than SL.

What do people do in SL?

They decorate homes, decorate porn homes, fashion, porn fashion, go dance, porn dancing, do porn, watch porn, roleplay, roleplay porn... and um... there might be porn in SL - not sure... but maybe...

Ok... sillyness aside... people use SL to essentially play and socialize.

Kind of like social media.

Which is NOT a Sandbox.

Web 1.0 was a Sandbox.

Web 2.0 is social.

SL still exists because it is social.

But the companies involved in this tech, even when they are social media companies, suddenly adopt a web 1.0 mindset when it comes to VR and metaverse worlds... they drop the social. Even if in their web business the social is making them money hand over fist...

Sandboxes? Toss em.

Just put out poseballs and a chat bar...

And maybe some fashion blogs.

[Amanda Dallin]

Pussycat is exactly right. A lot of software has the same issue. It's designed to appeal to the techie's designing it and not to the average user.

A sandbox can bring in the early adopters but if you want real success you have to offer more.

[Jumpman Lane]

Pussycatnip is right. I cant remeber the last time I was in a sandbox. The allure of Second Life is the social aspect, not nerds tooling around a sandbox hehehehe