Second Life's Big Budget Ad is Good, But Won't Grow the User Base Without Major Updates to Second Life's Actual Software (Comment of the Week)

Linden Lab finally posted its big budget commercial we discussed last week on its YouTube channel, so it's a good time to post this long analysis by longtime virtual world user Pulsar on the challenges it faces:

Look at SL presence on social media: it tends to be negligible. Not just on Facebook or Twitter, but you can see that on YouTube too: Novata's videos rarely have more than 10k views and she is among the best SL YouTubers today. Usually SL YouTubers can be happy if they reach few hundred views. Only "outsiders" that cover other games, but sometimes also SL, as Carmen King, get more views. On Reddit too: The r/secondlife sub is much less active than r/VRchat, let alone Roblox. But even r/KerbalSpaceProgram, a creative single player simulation game from 2011 is way, way, more active than SL today...

Related to Pulsar's point, the ad has only been viewed about 5,000 since being posted on June 23 -- suggesting it's getting little or no social virality.

"So, yes, a marketing campaign is certainly a good idea," he goes on, but then goes deeper into the commercial itself -- and what needs to happen so it doesn't seem like bait-and-switch:

[T]he difference between the ad and the actual product may feel like those clickbait thumbnails on YouTube.

While it is common to see ads that depict games as better than they actually are, it may be a little too much here.

Honestly SL is not as it's shown in the video. I have seen art in SL, I have seen SL18B, [with a] pretty sky... for Second Life standards at least: It seems nice within SL, but when you log off and you look at the screenshot again... you can see it's not Unreal Engine, no matter how much you push it to its limits, making people "lag" and crash, or with a poor framerate anyway, even with modern hardware. And still you don't even have working mirrors in SL.

The experience, too, isn't like [the ad]: not as "realistic", not as dynamic...forget wind on your gummy hair (or on the ancient "flexy" ones that enter inside your body), forget flapping mesh clothes (Sinespace has those), forget the movie-like dynamic cyberpunk scenery or the cool avatar-changing transitions.

There have been ads/video showing SL as it is (more or less) before, but I don't think it was very successful. A good marketing campaign begins with something that captures your attention, then there may be follow ups.

However, why didn't it work in first place? Look at newcomers in r/secondlife too, there are often [asking] the same questions: "Wherever I go, there is nobody or bots, in the popular places I only see avatars just standing and doing nothing, how do you make friends?" or "I have seen tutorials on YouTube, but I still don't know how to setup an avatar". Let alone the load of bugs and issues and the poor user-friendliness, that SLers are used to, but that doesn't help with newcomers.

While I still like SL, I'm aware that the engine is outdated, the UI isn't polished (look, the marketplace is a web browser slammed inside the client, compare it with Roblox or anything modern), the user-experience has serious issues, and so on.

Therefore a marketing campaign may help, but don't expect astounding results without improving also the product and if the new user experience and retention remains the same. Marketing works if you have at least a good-enough product or an underdog that is actually a valid product that only needs more attention.

If with (possibly before) the campaign also comes an engine and client ("viewer") rewrite and maybe a mobile client, then it would be something. But that would be a lot of work, time and money (already wasted you know where).

So I suspect the the "improvement" is already here: the AWS servers, the Environmental Enhancement Project and the new continent with new linden homes. If that's the case, I'm not overly optimistic, I expect a few newcomers, most of them giving up out of frustration as usual.

But whatever Linden Lab does, I hope it works and the SL economy stays afloat. However it goes, to not ruin the expectations entirely, I hope the Lab will offer at least new default avatars for newcomers, somewhat reminiscent of those in the advertisement.

Agreed! I definitely don't see the video driving much user growth without some kind of major software updates, to back up its aspirational images.

Comments

[denden]

Your World your Imagination - was a good slogan back then. I am a builder in SL and it is basically still the whole reason why i am in SL. To build together with friends, sometimes derp around - play with physics or other stuff.

I would love to create big landscapes to "play" in. But for that i would have to be rich. Paying hundreds of US Dollars for a relatively small and weak Server to handle a tiny sim. While in other games such small servers would costs you a few bucks and can run big maps.

For me personally SL is becoming a thing that more and more frustrates me and saddens me.

[Cyberserenity]

I would really like to be in the world in the ad but it is not SL. SL is seriuosly outdated.

[Jean Ascher]

We the elders, the ancients of SL should be utialized as promoters for new residents. LL should produce small YT 3-6 minute with the work of thoses ancient citizens who has something positively to expose as attractive and inspirational for newcomers.
We are the proof of and for the NEXT Generation. We are the first,the best and the last unless I don't incorporate us into the advertising future.

Sister Yman..Initiator and creator of The ChangHigh Sisters Circus show of Light, Life, Love and Fire. With more than 300 live shows in 14 years, I know of what I speak.

[Jean Ascher]

If Creativity is the main focus inworld, LL should work hard to minimize all time lag and rezz lag and expand the graphic to 2 or even 3 screens. Likewise..You cannot completely control the external world ( users GC and speed) — environment. It is the creativity of the inner world that is most subject to your direction because there your personality is so largely liberated from the fetters of the laws of antecedent causation. There is associated with personality a limited sovereignty of will.
This is the problem: If freewill man is endowed with the powers of creativity in the inner man, then must we recognize that freewill creativity embraces the potential of freewill unlimit. Inner creativity contributes to ennoblement of character through personality integration and selfhood unification. It is forever true: The past is unchangeable; only the future can be changed by the ministry of the present creativity of the inner self. LL must expand their concept of cosmic consciousness and provide the residents of SL options to expand various levels of beauty, goodness and truths.

[Lyndka Cochrane]

There's still an "image" problem around what Second Life is & how to play it or live it...

Apparently this sort of video is causing concern at the Labs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6-3uLaCLQ4

It would seem that the new user experience is still not hitting the mark, the "portals" at the starter area seem to confuse folks nor does there seem to be much in explaining about L$... Watch the video - it's tragically funny in that some 17 years later - Second Life still can't communicate to new players what they "do"

[Kristi]

People need to go the club noir and other places you do need compter with good graphics but still see many things even on low graphics. Go to fantasy fair and fantasy sims people must not get out much I seen the the beauty.