Here's a good video from longtime gaming/SL YouTuber Luca, who is demonstrably more passionate about improving Second Life than most people at Linden Lab. In it, Luca basically argues that Second Life can and should modernize its presentation and first-time user experience so it appeals to current gamers, and add a great opening setpiece -- i.e. a dramatic, exciting experience that gets these starting users interested in finding out more about the world and how to use it.
"Setpieces matter," as Luca puts it to me now. "They set the tone and perception of how modern or ahead something is more than words can do." (I said something similar about the opening setpiece to Scavengers, which a Linden vet helped create.)
"Other platforms are increasingly filling the shoes of dedicated social virtual worlds," Luca goes on, "and many that are not inherently social are adding more social features. Second Life's uniqueness in term of individual features is diminishing rapidly but it is still very unique as a whole, we just need to up our game in how we communicate that uniqueness and unique selling proposition."
This is all true. As an example of what current games are doing, Luca includes some screengrabs from Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Citizen, the MMO with a passionate following. But that's not to suggest Luca's suggesting Second Life look like Star Citizen per se:
"I was including Star Citizen in my video partly as an example of how [developers at] CIG are able to perpetually hype up things with their presentation and narrative storytelling of pretty much every layer of SC, the kind of presentation which keeps people engaged, believe in the product and community, which they are able to turn into a meaningful force for progress."
As for what kind of first-time experience Luca would propose:
"Imagine an island like you've never seen before on SL, everything is well-proportioned and textured with a sense of scale, the mountains are tall, the roads go up and down the mountains and hills and alongside the roads the scenery and foliage are mixed beautifully with post-modernistic modern architectural landmarks that really captivate people, these places would be where they get to know what SL is about and what it wants to be, not by reading off a pamphlet or a writing on the wall but also just by being there, a sense of existentialist near-futurism that both soothes but also keeps you on the edge of your seat -- 'What's ahead?', 'Where are they going with this?', a sort of places that is imbued with meaning but also a slight sense of mystery and mystique while simultaneously look like they came out of an omniscient architect who just know how to communicate exactly what they want through every stroke and line of their architectures, and also at the same time show the best kind graphical and visual quality SL has to offer."
Again, this all true, and could be created on a relatively small budget. The current Second Life orientation is not too different in basic functionality from what it was in 2003, entirely focused on how to use the platform than why use it at all.
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