New World Notes

Linden Lab's Bold Pivot to Grow Second Life by Collaborating with the SL Community -- New on My Patreon

New on my Patreon:

Linden Lab’s Creator Partnership Program Part of Company's Daring New Pivot to Grow Second Life With SL's User Community -- Here’s How

A core goal (as I see it) of the Creator Partnership Program is to grow the Second Life user base through a collaboration of Linden Lab development and grassroots community creativity. You can see that in another company/creator collaboration which also addresses the first-time user experience. Longtime SL game developer MadPea created a HUD that will be seen by some select new users, giving them a set of daily adventure Great Heist quests and rewards...

Join free to read (and comment on) the rest!

Will Second Life Users Need to Take a Voight-Kampff Test? Philip Rosedale Promises Town Hall on Controversial Uses of A.I. in Second Life

I love when a classic science fiction concept becomes a practical reference point in current technology, and that happened during the most recent Town Hall in Second Life, when a user challenged Linden Lab CTO Philip Rosedale over his excitement around A.I., most recently seen with the company's partnership launch of AI-powered NPCs in SL.

Asking: "Look, I understand that Philip loves his A.I. and thinks it's the future, but I don't understand the insane push and force it in Second Life. Will AI rally around a creator when their pet is sick? Will AI support people when their parent dies? What do you have to say to that?"

Here's Philip's answer in full, replete with that perfect Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep reference:

BREAKING: Linden Lab Updates Second Life's Official Flickr Group to Leverage ONLY User-Made Images/Video for Future Marketing, Chair Confirms

Originally published on my Patreon

The description and rules to Linden Lab's official Flickr group for Second Life images were recently updated to emphasize that user-made images and video uploaded there may be used in future ad campaigns for Second Life:

By submitting your photos or videos (the “Submissions”) to the Second Life Official Flickr feed of Linden Research, Inc. (the “Company”), you acknowledge and agree to the following terms:

You agree to participate in the Company’s marketing campaigns program  (the “Program”). As a participant of the Program, you hereby grant to the Company a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, and cost-free right and license to use, distribute, or sublicense (through multiple levels), and otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your Submissions, for the purposes of marketing, promotion, and/or outreach for and about the Second Life virtual world.

After top SL creator Bars Simpson noticed this change, I confirmed with Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager that the purpose is indeed to leverage SL user-made images for future marketing.

"It is correct that we only want to use Second Life content for future ads," Oberwager just messaged me. "And anyone who wants to submit ads, we will review and test." (Emphasis mine, as it bear emphasizing!)

This Flickr rules update, by the way, was led by SL social media doyenne Strawberry Linden.

This comes after a recent dust-up due to Linden Lab using AI/stock images and videos to A/B various messaging, in preparation for an official campaign, and community members subsequently outraged by the artificial depiction of the virtual world -- especially when there's so much user-created content out there that's far superior.  

"After talking to you about how people feel," Brad explains to me, "I had all our terms reviewed to make sure we did not violate anything if we used Second Life 'stock footage'."

That final point is important:

Linden Lab Hiring Director of Strategic Insights to Help Grow Second Life, Identify Features / Products SLers Actually Use

Linden Lab is now hiring a senior level director in charge of strategic insights:

We are looking for an experienced and analytical professional with deep expertise in leveraging advanced analytics to drive strategic business initiatives and operational efficiency. As the Director, Strategic Insights, you will utilize detailed data analysis, experimentation, statistical modeling, forecasting, and the development of key reporting tools and metrics to guide business decisions.

This is the first senior level hire by Linden Lab since 2021, when the company went in search of a VP of Engineering. And Philip Rosedale returning as CTO, of course.

The actual job description is somewhat vague, so I asked Linden Lab Chair Brad Oberwager for an example of what "strategic insights" would actually entail in this role.

"A hypothetical example would be learning how to make the mobile app better," he tells me. "Analyzing use cases and seeing what residents are using the app to accomplish, and then putting it into strategic planning."

And this is a pretty serious budget outlay for Linden Lab, since the salary is around $250,000/year plus benefits.

"We are investing in creating products that the residents want," Oberwager explains. "The more they use those products, like mobile, the more we invest in them.

The reason they need someone to lead strategic insights is that the features/updates that are most loudly asked for by the existing user community are not necessarily what grows overall usage:

Linden Lab Chairman Pauses Marketing Second Life After Community Complaints Over A/B Ad Tests With AI/Stock Images -- Here's His Full Statement.

Originally published on Patreon here.

Days after I wrote about the controversial Second Life ads A/B testing various messaging using mock-up Gen AI and stock imagery -- a program Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager told me was paused last week -- some SLers reported still seeing these dummy ads on Facebook.

So today, I asked Oberwager about this.

He insisted to me that the test campaign had indeed been paused, and that if any dummy ads were still visible to people, they were just an artifact of Facebook clearing out the original inventory of the test.

Oberwager then sent along this statement, which I'll quote in full:

Brad Oberwager Explains Why Linden Lab Promoted Second Life With Stock / AI Images -- And Why They've Now Stopped.

Originally posted on my Patreon here

UPDATE, March 4: This story continues here.

If you've visited Facebook recently, you may have noticed new official ads for Second Life which incorporate video and images that are AI-generated. (And at least in one case, uses an Adobe Stock image.)

After seeing complaints about this from SL creators on social media on Wednesday night (see some samples below), I reached out to Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager, who spoke with me while standing in the rain outside his Boston hotel during a family trip.

As we spoke, it quickly became clear to me that this was probably an honest mistake -- and clear to Oberwager how upsetting this ad campaign might be to many in the SL community.

These are not official ads for Second Life, he explained, but only A/B tests using mock-up ads, created in preparation for the eventual, actual, official Second Life advertising campaign -- which will, he confirmed with me, only use SL-based content by Second Life creators.

"I'm preparing to spend millions of dollars [promoting Second Life]," as he put it to me. "Until I know what works, every dollar is wasted."

He was actually surprised community members had even seen these A/B tests, because Linden Lab has only spent a very modest amount (i.e. three figures a day) on them.

"We can't guess [on an ad campaign] and hope for the best," he explained. "We're going to run test ads and once we find out what works we'll talk with all the creators", on creating SL-based ads.

"Is it dragons? Is it relationships? We have no idea what works [with SL ads]." He really means it: The ad campaigns they've launched up to now have done nothing to grow the active user base.

But why not just use existing Second Life screenshots and video created by the community for these ads? There's even a promotional clause in Second Life's Terms of Service, granting the company the right to use any user-made content "to advertise, market, and promote [SL]."

On that point, my impression is Linden Lab didn't want to use SLer's content without their permission for an ad. But seeking permission takes quite a lot of time, especially since you technically need to get permission from every single content creator whose work is featured in an image/video, including any creator of the literal sky. (This very dilemma was raised by HarperCollins' lawyers with the cover of my first book!)

"I couldn't test fast enough creating these [ads] in SL", as Oberwager puts it. "I've got to get the best 8-10 messages, then you get the creative."

In other words, he adds: "100% of the actual ads will be Second Life-based. "

So ironically, while apparently trying to be highly respectful of creators' content, Linden Lab went with an approach that's inadvertently made many of them even angrier (see sample below).

In any case, now that the Second Life community has complained about these mock-ups, this A/B test has been halted:

Adding A.I. Powered NPCs to Second Life: Philip Rosedale & Brad Oberwager on the Promise & Perils

Originally published on my Patreon here

The most fascinating story about next gen AI in technology may not be about DeepSeek or whatever OpenAI is announcing, but reside in a 21 year old metaverse platform which has something no LLM can boast about: A simulated virtual world with terabytes of meta-tagged data constantly evolving.

That's my take, at least, talking with Linden Lab heads Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale recently. And while the company has added its own official AI-powered characters last year, the user community has been creating them for many years, even long before OpenAI existed. They recently got a demo from an SL community creator who connected LLMs to an upcoming RPG that blew their minds:

"The whole experience that he had built using AI was really very strong," Philip tells me. "And I think that's one of those cases where, if we can just get people to him, the ones that want to [play his role playing game] it was just awesome." (More on that game later.)

They also thought, he added: "Okay, let's modernize this and make it easily expand upon this stuff."

But doing that means taking incredible caution: "We're running a lot of tests on characters that are infused with AI personalities," Oberwager explains. "They're sort of next gen NPCs. We ran a test, we got feedback, we took the test down. It's not like it went sideways, but some people didn't like some things, but that's the point of the test."

Read on for more of the perils, and promises:

Dear Linden Lab: Advertise Second Life's Huge Geography Compared to Most (All?) Online Games -- Comment of the Week

The new test ad for Second Life attracted quite a bit of opinions from longtime SL users, including some on-brand snark -- and this smart suggest from longtime virtual world explorer Kaylee West:

As a regular user of both SL (17 years) and VRChat (6 years), one of the big things that keeps me in SL and frustrates me with VRC is how much easier it is the change up my avis look and wardrobe in SL than VRC.

I also feel, strangely, that the continents are a big selling point. Many AAA games boast about how big their maps are, how you can endlessly explore every corner of their maps. [Emphasis mine! -WJA]

VRC has some biggish worlds, but nothing like SL's continents and Blake Sea. Only in SL can you buy a luxury yacht and sail for hours on end, stopping at different port and explore the surrounds, or jump in a car of your choice and drive around an extensive road network.

From another perspective, there appears to be a growing number of people looking for AI companions. I have made one for myself so that I have "intelligent" company when I travel around SL (not all of us are good at the socialising thing). Maybe making the creation of AI companions (actual avatars not animesh which can't be rezzed) easier and highlighting this as a feature of SL (as against Replika or Kindred) might draw these users in? 

I believe something like those AI companions are coming soon, so set that aside. The map size point is a very good one, especially since SL is a single-shard virtual world with truly massive areas that are contiguous by land, air, or sea. (Yes, region crossings usually involve hiccups, but still.) It's a key differentiating feature of Second Life!

Consider: Currently Second Life's size is roughly that of Los Angeles (as Philip Rosedale recently noted in an interview), i.e. 1300 square kilometers.

Contrast that with some leading AAA online game worlds:

Should I Stay or Should I Go: The Insidious Problem of Purpose in Second Life -- And a Way to Help Solve It. (Guest Post)

Hari Sutherland is a longtime SLer and author of the new book, SECOND LIFE: The First, Best Metaverse in Words and Pictures

There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the problem of retention of new users in Second Life. While the focus has largely been on the daunting UI and learning curve, along with common 30-day prohibitions, I think there’s a more salient issue which makes the majority of new signups give up within minutes or hours, never to return.

I believe the fundamental reason Second Life has a historic retention problem is simple: people have no idea what to do once they’re here.

In the course of researching my book, it became clear to me that after an initial period of acclimation and discovery in SL, the majority of residents usually find something to do and keep them engaged — they find, or create, meaning and purpose in their second lives.

This shouldn’t surprise us: after all, isn’t RL like that? Children daydream about what they want to be when they grow up; we have goals, dreams, aspirations. Yet when someone first logs in to SL, they have absolutely no idea what they want to do. You could argue their first task is to learn how to get around, dress, and so on, but this is hardly stuff to grab our interest. And when you consider we’re trying to breathe new life into our world by recruiting Gen Z and younger Gen Yers whose brains are wired for ten- to thirty-second videos, expecting them to take time to read all the 1950s-style educational signage on Welcome Island is kinda unrealistic.

In the course of taking new photographs for my book, I’d enlisted some friends to pose for a pair of interior shots. Anyone who takes photos in SL knows that setting up a shot can be very time-consuming and, one would think, pretty boring for the draftees. Yet when I apologized to my models for what should have been a one-hour session turning into three, they all said they were enjoying it. How, I wondered, could anyone enjoy sitting around and occasionally being asked to trigger an expression or assume a new pose for three hours? I realized people like to do stuff, to be part of something. To belong.

One of the most engaged people I know in SL is my friend Rachel Blat. Here’s what she has to say:

"I have been in Second Life for almost 6 years. During this time I’ve learned many things, some of which keep me very busy. I am a professional surfer for the SLSA, the Second Life Surfing Association, which has two sessions per year. To participate in the competitions, a lot of training and knowledge of the different boards available in Second Life is necessary. I usually start my training with the board chosen by the SLSA on the beach where the competition will take place 15 days in advance, for 1 to 2 hours per day.

“When I’m not surfing, I am a photographic model and also co-owner of a modeling agency and producer of a story magazine. I divide my time photographing models and building scenarios where the stories take place. We have done Wild West, Cleopatra, Star Wars, and several other themes. There are 8 studios measuring 64x64 meters that are constantly being modified. When I have some free time, I usually brave the winds by sailing on the Blake Sea. I am also a mother in SL and my baby needs daily care. All these together make my SL happy and fulfilling.”

This dovetails with my own experience that some of the happiest people in SL are those whose SL is full and busy, whether it’s with DJing, participating in SL sports, fundraising, helping admin a sim, or running their own club, art gallery, cafe, etc. In the process, residents widen their connections and build meaningful relationships, in contrast to the sense of isolation and loneliness one can feel if one just hangs out alone in places where half the avatars are AFK. If you’re already lonely in RL (and so many are), the last thing you need is to reinforce that in SL!

So, imagine this as a new feature to the first-time SL user experience:

As Linden Lab Launches Its 1st Major Ad Campaign for Second Life in Years, Read My Interview With Philip Rosedale & Brad Oberwager on Marketing & Designing a Whole New User SL Experience

Linden Lab just started publishing new ads on YouTube for Second Life, one of which you watch here. ("It represents one variation of many that are being tested", the company tells me.) Screengrabs of it throughout this post.

It's part of a new and aggressive marketing campaign for Second Life -- basically the first one in nearly 4 years.

To get more context and strategy, read my latest interview with Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager and CTO Philip Rosedale below!

Inside Project Zero: Brad Oberwager & Philip Rosedale on Marketing & Designing a New User Second Life Experience

Part of a 3 part series on my Patreon; read Part 1 here; read Part 2 here

Project Zero is not simply a cloud streaming option for existing SL users. It's tightly integrated into an aggressive marketing plan with a growing budget, and a completely revised first-time experience that discards the "Welcome Island" model that's basically existed since 2003.

In my recent conversation with Linden Lab heads Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale, we explore their vision for growing the user base with Project Zero -- and why the company is re-starting external marketing of SL for "the first time in four years".

Yes, you read that right. In the nearly four years since Oberwager took over leadership of Linden Lab, the company hasn't much marketed Second Life:

BRAD OBERWAGER: [Y]ou know the adage, “I know half my marketing is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” When I came in, I asked [Linden staff], and they didn't know. Turns out it was 100% wasted. 

So since I couldn't figure it out, I turned off all the marketing and it didn't have an impact on revenue or any of the financials, other than we weren't spending the money on marketing.

But it stopped, obviously, it stopped bringing people in. It's just that the marketing wasn't bringing people in that were converting into dollars. So we kept it [off] until we had an ROI we could prove out. 

And it took us a lot longer. I figured it was going to be six months to turn marketing back on. It went a lot longer. 

Now, with Project Zero and with different partnerships we have now, the ROI makes sense for money in the marketing. So starting small, $1,000 a day, it's going to go up fast. 

So today [late December 2024] was the first day that we've spent a dollar on marketing in three years, nine months. And this is going to be great for all the creators, all the communities. We're going to start driving people back in only where we know where we're driving them, and we have different partnerships with different community bases, to start sending people not to just where we want them, but we're testing sending them to other places. We're going to test with Project Zero. 

So come midway through the first quarter [of 2025], we should be on a much higher run rate for marketing than we've ever had before. It makes good sense for everybody. We're going to drive more revenue to the creators. The way our whole model is set up, we do well when other people do well; we are not able to monetize if other people in our world are not doing well. We don't really sell anything directly to anybody other than land, and even that, you only buy land from us if you're getting the benefit of it…

Next: Redoing the old first-time user experience, and partnering with MadPea games.