Since Second Life is So Difficult to Use, Linden Lab Should Pay New Users to Learn How to Use It (Comment of the Week)

Minecraft's simple building interface

Great long comment from Will Clip, who's developed popular games for both Second Life users and for other platforms, responding to the point that understanding Second Life's complexity has become a kind of game in itself:

In my opinion Linden Lab could do so much more helping to ease the 1st steps for new users to improve the user retention rate.

I am a content provider in SL myself. Whenever I find some time to create something new I try to come at it with understanding that for most of the people facing something new, something they are not used to is scary and frustrating.

Creators goal should be to make 1st steps for people when they are trying the new product as easy and fun as possible. Good user interface experience makes distinction between a good and bad product.

Often to the point that even if the product looks better looking, most users will prefer to use the product that is easier to use because using something that is easy to operate is already rewarding by itself.

In my opinion Linden Lab should maybe employ or temporary hire an user interface specialists that would look at SL as a whole and come out with some pointers about how to make SL more easy to use. LL should use the new knowledge to organize content developers, give materials (invest, market) and provide new and better tools for content creation in Second Life.

Will says he's seeing similar complexity in Sansar. But unlike most other virtual worlds and social VR platform, Linden Lab has a key advantage. Which leads Will to propose a novel idea: Pay Linden Dollars to new users to learn how to use Second Life. As he writes:

I am currently discouraged to use Sansar because I don't find it easy enough to develop anything inside it. Development in Sansar I feel is restricted to professionals only. The reason why Second Life was able to grow was because it was easy enough for everyone to create content and make some money. Think about Minecraft growth again. Platform that is to have a big community needs to be inclusive rather than exclusive on this creative ground. Content development needs to be in real of everyone. This is what Philip Rosedale got right with Second Life. I still remember his conference about introducing the prim (presented as a building atom) to the world. People started loving SL because it helped them be creative.

Out of all virtual worlds platforms that are coming to the market the most successful will be the one that is most easy to use (+ other factors, but personally I believe that ease of use is the most important one). Just look at the Minecraft. It is so much less [feature rich] than SL but it managed to grab much bigger market than SL. Because it's easy and fun to use.

While Second Life cannot be changed to be like Minecraft, SL has another big competitive advantage over it that [LL is] not fully using. This big advantage is L$. 

Personally Linden Dollars (L$) for me are the reason why I learned programing and kept improving my skill until I was able to earn with that skill more than RL salaries...

Sometimes in technology it's impossible to avoid complexity; in those cases creator/designer needs to find a way to implement incentives for use and learn. Reward the new user to acquire new skills. This can be done in many ways. In case of Second Life, there is nothing better than L$. Linden Lab should reward all new users with L$ for progressing through complexity. 1 L$ is 0,0039 USD. LL should gamify SL. Doing that makes it more fun and fun is what sells the most.

Linden Lab should recognize the importance of doing that, and if the company is not willing to invest into possible solutions for their own platform they should at least promote and better support the members in SL community that are getting it and are working towards that goal.

Long terms SL users and other creators are actually rewarding people who try to tackle the biggest problem of SL. Which is user retention. You can only keep "players" if you provide enough fun for them.

I make games in SL using L$ as incentive. The systems using L$ as a reward are very successful and a lot of people contact me and thank me for creating them.

Instead of LL, it is the Landowners who are supporting these systems with their own L$. In our community we are all aware that it is the community that make SL not the empty lands (even if they're built as attractions). To grow and maintain the community someone needs to invest into it. And that is what Linden Lab is missing. They are not investing in the community as much as they could. If Linden Lab wants to save SL or prolong its life the management of the company literary needs to dedicate at least 10% of overall company profits for investments in the Second Life community. It just that what it takes and all the remaining power users of LL would also start investing in Second Life.

Much more from Will here. Imagine a long, frequently updated list of user interface "quests" that pop up in the viewer -- chat with with someone, upload a screenshot, etc. etc. -- and any time a user accomplishes that task, the little "cha ching" sound rings, and they get small amount of Lindens in their account. I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement, but it would definitely help with retention. Agree, disagree?

Comments

[Fim]

Thx for promoting my concept: http://www.manupool.de/en/answers-about-the-geo

[Pulsar]

Sinespace has some introductory "quest" that rewards the user with silver coins, if I recall that correctly. Unlike gold, silver cannot be converted to real money and you can only buy some promotional item with those. Surely Adam can explain that better.
Second Life itself, in the starting Social Island, has tutorials and tasks that reward the new user with "L$". As far as I remember, these "tutorial L$" only exist in the tutorial interface (the auto-attached "HUD" as you land on the Social Island) and can be spent in the tutorial shop only. Perhaps a problem with giving out true L$ (convertible to real money) may be that someone could abuse the rewards with an army of bots. However, there are Linden games in SL where you can obtain a small amount of L$.
Anyway it sounds like a good idea to me, it depends on how it's implemented.
The incentives may help to not give up too soon, but still they won't make SL less confusing to the newcomers and unnecessarily complex. So that's something to work on too. I totally agree about user-friendly products and the KISS principle is something to keep in mind too.
Personally I never had big issues, but I was coding and modeling already before I joined SL, so here I like to adjust, to mod and to fix what I'm wearing, I always made my own shape and other stuff too; but I'm aware that I'm just a kind of person, not the paradigm. Moreover, as many SLers, I learned the new tricks as they were introduced year by year; but a new user has to face them all together. When you get used to something, you tend to take it for granted or normal, but it isn't really. So I can understand that SL can be confusing or too complex.

For example, ideally you shouldn't have to tinker with alpha slices when you dress up: an user would just like to wear their clothing and to go to enjoy the virtual world, instead of having to click several slices. Luckily some clever maker introduced an automatic hiding feature. And you shouldn't have to add and remove relays and applier huds - appliers that you cannot easily save in your outfits, but with some workaround - but Bakes on Mesh is on the good track on that regard (although it won't eliminate the appliers entirely).

So when I help someone inworld, I'm not feeling like one who leveled up or a level above other people (thinking about the previous article on this topic). I just see them struggling with something unnecessarily complex, when they would like to spend their time inworld in other ways instead. Keep also in mind that in SL the median age is about 50, there are people with disabilities, not everyone has a load of free time, nor the energy and concentration to learn a bunch of new stuff. Some new user would rather quit and go to find fun and/or socialization elsewhere. Other people remained in SL just because they were helped in the beginning.

[Willliam Burns]

I have to disagree that SL cannot be evolved closer to the Minecraft model. You already have object materials. You already have the damage indicator. There's just no compelling reason to use them. This is because they were never fully fleshed out and implemented as their own options.

That is where LL dropped the ball. Evolving those already existing attributes and giving them purpose baked into the very nature of SL experience itself and not an arbitrary or superficial addition.

By creating the need for it, it makes the experience compelling long term.

Effectively, you'll end up with a Game Mode sim option where items have durability, people have various stats like and RPG, materials can be harvested and used for items to determine durability and so on.

This wouldn't be a foreign concept either, because you'd just be building the mechanics of Life2 HUD and its various components into the grid itself native.

For those who want to set their sim to God Mode, then those game rules are suspended in such spaces and SL operates in those zones like it does now. Leave those zones and the mortality may resume.

Then you start new users out in the mortality mode in an area that can help cater to those needs. They will figure it out from there. Just like in Minecraft where nobody specifically tells you to punch trees. It's emergent behavior.

[Chic Aeon]

I don't agree with this article at all for lots of reasons, but beyond that I just wanted to comment on a brief statement within the lengthy article.

"I am currently discouraged to use Sansar because I don't find it easy enough to develop anything inside it. Development in Sansar I feel is restricted to professionals only. "

There are some smart and talented folks over in Sansar but to my knowledge none are what you would put in the pro category. Some are retired tech guys, others like me have been working in SL for many years. None of us (again from the folks that I know there) are "pros". In fact an actual I-make-my-living-making-game-assets-for-a-big-company fellow (definitely knowledgeable) commented on the SL Forums that the pros have no intention to work or play in Sansar.

The Lab certainly seemed to be aiming for pros but what they got was adventurous "hobby" creators -- certainly with some skills (and some not so much) but NOT professionals. Anyone who is creating for Second Life could conceivably create for Sansar. It is more of an ATTITUDE thing there at the moment. Plenty of things can't be done yet and so creators need to be able to find ways to work around the currently lacking features.

Not long after venturing over I said that I didn't think Sansar would be ready for Prime Time for a couple of years. Four months have passed and I am still feeling pretty solid about that. They have made some very positive accomplishments this month and I would be happy to be wrong on my time line. There are just so many things "missing" right now :D.

Still for those that like challenges and being on the "frontier", it is a fun and rewarding platform.

[Fim]

"Content creators need users, users do not need content creation tools."

Second Life became a large digital asset Shopping Mall - fulfilling the excitement of buying stuff (CBD like addicts) - for those who can not afford it elsewhere. The user experience is awful. The spirit of the few founders - is long gone.

The brand 'Second Life' was 'burned' - long ago. Linden Lab did a miserable job for the developers, content creators and everyone who trusted them, who invested time into their platform.

Second Life is still very profitable - but it became what it is because of the need to fulfill their investors demands.

I predict that High Fidelity will take the same route as Second Life, if they are able to survive until the next HMD VR hype - which will probably happen in 8 years?

I feel sorry for all the volunteers over there.

Fim

[Clara Seller]

Even the conversation about complexity is mind-numbing.

How much would you need to pay a new user to learn the steps to get to a place where seasoned users are throwing up their hands and saying "enough"?

"Incentives" was a conversation for years ago. The problem now is that the "goals" are collapsing.

[DARIN WEBSTER]

Half of the fun for me over the last 12 years has been studying and learning new and exciting concepts. Before my arrival in Second Life I had never heard of photoshop, Maya or and of the creature software. Now, after all this time, I have become proficient and find the learning curve exciting. I look forward to my 12th rezday in less than a week and I look forward to the future that Second Life brings.
Alrik Halberd

[Summer Haas]

I don't see how this could possibly work. You would have millions of bots lined up to collect free lindens by just going through automated steps.