Fact-Checking the "MMO Meets 3D Editor Meets Social Network Meets TV Remote" Complexity of Second Life's User Interface

One fun thing about writing about Second Life for The Atlantic was going through a rigorous fact-checking process. Take this passage:

The utopian paradox even extends into how Second Life was developed by employees at Linden Lab. Under the idealistic direction of Rosedale and his CTO Cory Ondrejka, the startup operated with a no-managers, "choose your own work" policy, cheekily dubbed the Tao of Linden. Their creativity thus unleashed, Linden developers wound up adding a farrago of persnickety features to the product with little unifying direction that might create a seamless, user-friendly experience. To this day, the Second Life application resembles an MMO game welded to a 3D graphics editor duct-taped to a social network crammed into an ancient television remote with infinite buttons.

But the program’s very complexity became a kind of initiation rite. Some 99 percent of new users would quit, overwhelmed and aggravated, usually within their first hour in the virtual world. Those who did stay long enough to learn how to use the software—usually guided by a patient “oldie” community member—found themselves welcomed into a rare, exclusive club.

The Atlantic's fact checker highlighted the passage in bold and asked me to demonstrate that the SL viewer really was that complicated. So I actually launched the program, and tallied up the default onscreen UI options:

"There's 17 onscreen buttons plus a browser bar, plus 7 pulldown menus, each with 11-19 options, many of which open up multiple sub-options and sub-sub-options," I reported back. "For instance, if you want to remove an article of clothing, you need to select the Avatar menu, pull it down to Take Off, then choose among four sub-options with a total of 30 sub-suboptions."

So the fact checker let the passage stand.

And that's not even getting into the fact that most oldbie Second Life users actually use a third party viewer, and tend to tell new users to stop using the official (and complex) software, and instead use an even more complex non-official program created on a non-profit basis by a community of volunteer devs. (But why make the fact checker's job even harder?) 

And yes, I dive deeper into this for the book. The "choose your own work" approach, as longtime Linden engineer Richard Nelson told me in it, "[L]ed us to adding all sorts of potentially interesting, yet incomplete features into the product, with not enough consideration for polishing the existing feature set or building what the users really needed first. I was certainly guilty of this.” (Richard, by the way, is now a senior engineer at Roblox.) 

All of this is why I'm hopeful the Second Life mobile viewer attempts to start things anew, and maintain as much simplicity as possible. It's fine for dedicated SLers to have the most complicated UI imaginable. The real challenge is to create an easy funnel for potential users (most coming through the mobile app in the future) to get a quick and easy taste of what's possible.

Comments

[JustM]

I use Firestorm. No problem. But I find the SL Viewer *extremely* complicated. Stress levels rocket up instantly. Just me?

[sirhc desantis]

Well when you put it like that... Thing is before coming to SL i had never 'played' any MMO (or whatever the kids call them now) so had no comparison. TBH, it was pretty straight forward - arrow move, type in this bit to chat, oh look somewhere called inventory where my stuff is,click on stuff, ok so can make stuff with this... took about an hour? OK, so for a month I did not know there was sound but then thats me all over.
Yes that was V1 ofc and yeah there is a bit more to it now but even so, as a Genesis user, I know theres all this stuff just a few clicks away but usually don't bother with them. Like tweaks etc. The basics are easily got to.
In truth I find the actual LL viewer a little pared down but quite pleasant to use - just lacks a few bits (copy paste in building window, derender, area search etc) and I still use it to stick stuff on MP or to take MP pics - hey its the default so makes sense to me.
But - will be interesting to see what the mobile thing looks like UI wise.
OK but - I still spend a lot of time swearing at Blender and thats the Labs fault. Do not ask me about Unity, Godot etc... :)

[Stray]

LL viewer:
(top menu) Avatar > Now Wearing > then click the - (or right click, then remove)
or....
(toolbar) Outfits > Wearing Tab > then click the - (or right click, then remove)

If you Like to go the long (legacy) way, OKAY!

[Claire M]

@Stray that actually kind of illustrates the complexity of the UI. So many items in the menus, features get bogged down among hundreds of doodads. And I'm saying this as a Resident that loves Second Life to death.

I myself do some programming and am familiar with complex IDEs (Visual Studio and PyCharm) so the UI for me isn't overwhelming. But I think I'm in the minority here...

[Luther Weymann]

No one from within Linden Research ever answers this software question about the application that drives Linden Research revenue:

In twenty years of SL, many different software companies worldwide have totally and repeatedly rewritten their product to produce a finer user interface and toolset. Many software-based companies across many industries have taken the time to satisfy their user base and increase sales by rewriting some of the world's most complex software applications and user interfaces. Not limited to PC or mobile apps but within all segments of large corporate industry, this has been done with some of the most complicated applications on Earth.

Why has Linden Research never rewritten the various backend applications and the consumer-facing Second Life viewer application to an upgrade that is a vastly superior product during these twenty years? Why does it not change any more than Phil's 2004 clothing and hair? Note: Don't name that other thing they sold. That does not count.