Can Second Life Ever Grow Again? A Veteran Game Designer Has Some Very Good Insights

Pictured: Alexia in High Fidelity (as a cloud)

Rather than write yet again about what went wrong with Second Life way back when, I recently asked veteran game designer Alexia Mandeville what could go still go right.

She's in a very good position to offer her perspective: An SL user herself back in the day, she's now a designer at Niantic (creator of Pokémon GO, the massive AR-based virtual world), and a designer on the early iteration of Horizon, Facebook's social VR world. Even more pertinent, she was also a UX designer at High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's follow-up virtual world to Second Life. She sees a shared corporate culture to that startup and SL developer Linden Lab, which has hampered consumer adoption of both their virtual worlds:

"[A]cquisition was never a strength at these places," as she puts it. "You need a strong aesthetic style (Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite) and the ability to communicate your use case articulately to attract mainstream people."

So what are her recommendations to Linden Lab, to grow the Second Life userbase when so many previous attempts by the company have failed?

Ms. Mandeville makes four key suggestions:

Brand revamp

"I was part of the World of Warcraft crowd during the height of SL, and my crew of friends didn't use SL because we perceived it as a place for people to have sex.

"Today you can't check out the Second Life website without logging in. As a new user, I would want to know what it's about before I commit to giving out my info.

"I think some of the messaging leaning into connections could be paired with some of the building and economy aspect of SL to move away from the perception that so many people still have about SL just being about sex.

"This perception was only validated when we would talk features at High Fidelity, and we'd be discussing pose balls and jiggle physics with some of the engineers who came from Linden Lab."

Make building more accessible

"Two years ago I was in SL looking to do some building and was completely overwhelmed with the tooling. A [veteran SLer] was showing me around the tools, too. So it's not like I didn't have help. There needs to be some scaffolding there, start with a few tools, onboard a creator as they become more advanced."

She acknowledges the bifurcation challenge, where SL's prim-based system has largely been abandoned for offline mesh rendering -- but thinks there's a better way of marrying them:

"Obviously you can't take that external import system away at this point in the product, but I believe it to be a big issue for aesthetic cohesiveness which brings it back full circle to acquisition of new users because your product LOOKS good.

"I guess a solution for improving it as it currently stands in SL would be to make sure all the materials have a similar visual aesthetic for both tools. Get all the creators on some sort of even playing field, or find another way to even out your aesthetic. That was one of my biggest issues as a creator in High Fidelity. Getting everything to look similar whenever I imported materials from Maya. I think that can go a long way to lift the style and make it more appealing."

Aesthetic

"SL is old, of course the rendering system could probably use a revamp. If you go take a look at it, it just feels blah, drab, sad. 

"Even the website has drab colors. I have no perception of who Linden is actually marketing to by looking at this site. There aren't any creator spotlights or event highlights, like you might see in Horizon or in Fortnite."

After telling me that, she did eventually find event listings by digging around the official forum -- which sort of proves her next point:

Highlight community events

"I follow IMVU and Fortnite and Roblox, and I've seen events for each of these things in my social media and in the news. Makes me wonder if SL is really taking advantage of social media, or the community is confined to the website and forums."

Some might point out that Second Life does in fact have a large official presence on Facebook, but to her point, it's very inwardly direct, seemingly speaking only to the existing userbase. It's similar to Second Life's official YouTube channel, which also suffers from insularity -- it's why a YouTuber can draw far more views from her own Second Life videos, which are directed to general interest gamers, instead of just the existing userbase.

"I really want to see one of these virtual worlds become really huge again," Alexia tells me. "I think the one that last resonated with me was Minecraft. I don't really want to have to put a headset on and I want things to just be simple to hang with my friends and meet new people."

Or to put it another way, make Second Life fast, easy, and fun -- which is something the company promised to do in 2010 after having to make a major round of layoffs. The fact that this never happened suggests they have not been listening to designers like Ms. Mandeville -- or as she suggests, that Linden Lab's corporate culture is simply not designed around that goal.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

I don't think you can really have your cake and eat it too.

Everyone think that SL is mostly about sex because SL *is* mostly about sex.

It's fine to admit you aren't into that, or that you wish it wasn't the case, but reality is reality. Yes, that's what most people are using Second Life for. If that's a problem, change it, if you think that's what you should do.

But trying to rebrand that it's not something it actually what it is? Well really that's just false advertisement, no?

People are going to see right though that no matter how much branding you try to do. Especially once you convince them to sign up and they explore around.

[0xc0ffea]

Only you can't put SL community events front and center.

WHAT HAPPENS IF MORE THAN 40 PEOPLE DECIDE TO SHOW UP

[irihapeti]

on this part: "Make building more accessible"

what I would like is a prim-to-mesh convertor. I would also like the convertor to produce a .dae text document as an inventory item. A dae asset that can be edited. When dropped into a single (root) prim and the .dae is compiled it builds the mesh object

this way I can have my prim model and my mesh model, and a way to make edits (including copypaste) to the mesh model after it has been built

[Strider]

I remember when it wasn't all about sex and gambling, when there were lots of interesting groups sharing info and a love of virtual worlds, but that was a long time ago. I haven't logged into Strider Sterling in a long time.

[Cynthia White]

It has more to offer than sex. Ive played 15 years. And more of us are there for gaming like greed or family. Only people with no imagination think its about sex. How boring.

[Libby]

There is so much more to SL then sex to say it is not there would be a lie. SL also offers a good platform for music producers and live performers. There game play such a golf and Madpea games. Learning seminars take place, but your right in saying things like this are the under belly and could be brought to the forefront to give SL a new kick back to life. There is surprisingly so much more that could happen and they missed a trick with the pandemic with struggling artist from all areas of the entertainment industry could have earn a living in world.

[Adeon Writer]

>
It has more to offer than sex. Ive played 15 years. And more of us are there for gaming like greed or family. Only people with no imagination think its about sex. How boring.

Of course. But you are living in denial if you think you aren’t the rare unicorn and that the majority use for SL is sex. If you don’t think so, you’re playing in a little bubble and haven’t explored out.

[seph]

Adeon...where are you in Second Life that you encounter sex so frequently? Usually its sex that's private, in a bubble, gated to A-rated sims, usually private parcels.

There's nothing unicorn about vast amounts of people on continents like Bellisseria engaging in non-adult content. Most of Second Life is Moderate or G-rated, and even on Adult sims, they're rated that way for the possibility and allowance of sex, not because of sex perpetually happening, like roleplay sims where sex isn't the point but certainly possible.

It's very easy to go months in Second Life without seeing genitalia or sex anims. No doubt, its very easy to find it in a split second too. All sorts of content is as rare or prevalent as you pursue it and have it around you. I don't see sex content in Second Life, but I also don't see vampire content. Both are huge, but I just happen to not have it around me. Many would say the same and there's no denial about it, it's fairly easy to not see sex in Second Life and there's many more things easily findable.

[Big_alligator]

Hi! Alexia here!

Thanks everyone for responding to the post! I agree with what some of you are saying that it's not just about sex. But it definitely has a perception of sex.

Even in Life2.0 on Netflix, a big part of it has to do with sex in Second Life. Which is why I mentioned marketing and adjusting perception.

Good point about the pandemic being a missed opportunity. Doing events could have been a big hit.

[Brian]

Visual 3D inventory. A region that contains all my inventory so I can walk around and see it. Get rid of that text list inventory!

[Yami]

Is a sex game absolutely. Right now there is a huge huge business that I called prostitution but they say is not. You can connect the Lovense (sexual toy) with the tip jar. Girls are boys are moaning through the microphone. The toy start vibrating when the user put money. I call this prostitution. This is out of control. They do between 30,000 lindens to 100,000. I cant believe this game does not hace regulation or are protecting their costumers. Im quit that nasty platform.

[Henri Beauchamp]

Virtual sex *is* part of Second Life, just like sex *is* part of your first, real life !

Denegating it is just lying to yourself (and others), and wanting to make SL into a PG (AKA no sex, no violence, Disney-like, bland and tasteless) world is vowed to a total failure (and people voting with their feet).

The GREAT thing about virtual sex (and role-play), when compared to real life sex, is that you can explore and experiment with the most disturbing or even darkest sides of your own personality, and experience those without ever risking to hurt anyone, while keeping a fully (OOC) consensual aspect to it: perhaps not the most "sane" stuff, but safe and consensual, definitely !
This can help you getting a better grasp on your own personality, understanding those urges everyone got and is ashamed to have, broadening your views and better understanding humanity as a whole.

For persons with a strong dominant side/position IRL, this also can help expressing their (refrained/hidden) submissive side, and better understand what it means to be on that side. And vice-versa for RL submissive people.

So yes, there *is* sex in SL, but SL is not *just* about sex either !

SL is an adult game/medium (and I'm strongly against the presence of teens in SL: LL should have kept the teen grid for them) for people of all countries, cultures, races, religions and political convictions to interact without any a priori about who are the persons behind the avatars they are interacting with; you could get some (very good) surprises, when you finally learn more things about people you had fun interacting with in SL, and that you would have never approached otherwise in RL !

Those people who pretend knowing how to "make SL better" just do not understand what SL is, and should rather keep their opinion for themselves until they experienced the full range of what SL is offering today.

[Carlos Loff]

Hy Guys, with these awful confinement limitations, Im finally trying to four-fill my old SL dream... Create an interesting Sim/Community and making a decent income from it... So now that everyone is discussing what should be changed, it would be great to have some real hard SLrs insight... What do you think is still missing on SL ? Place/Activity/Service you would all like to enjoy weekly or even daily and no one has still done it ??? Thanks in case you want to share and contribute, cheers... Im - Loff Auer - on SL...

[Siobhan Ginger]

I'm not going to say I don't enjoy sex in SL, I certainly do. But it's more about my wives, my friends. I rebooted myself about a year ago, but I've been around for well over a decade. It's about the people i've met for me.

I dance, I DJ, I sail, I watch movies with my girls. I get to do things I never could IRL.

One hopes that the new owners will improve things (when a high end gaming machine still has issues on some sims there's a problem) but it's not "all about sex" and never has been.

[ysa]

Seriously, even if you think it is the "GREAT thing about virtual sex", be careful before encouraging to "explore and experiment with the most disturbing or even darkest sides" with "dominant" and "submissive" people or you can in fact hurt someone, if you are feeding and reinforcing their codependent personality and self-harming tendencies. Text chat or virtual world, you are aroused in real life and sex is a tremendous drive. Don't take it lightly when you associate it to something disturbing or dark. Only few, instead of just doing it because they feel it exciting, care to find out by themselves what does it actual represents and means to their subconscious, or believes they can... psychologists exist for a reason.