New World Notes

SL Creators: Last Chance to Take This Short Anonymous Survey on the State of the Second Life Economy!

Click here to take it. I know people on mobile were having trouble with the embedded version of this survey, so hopefully this direct link is easier. I'll close the survey after this coming weekend (probably).

SL Creators: Please Take This Short Survey on the State of the Second Life Economy in 2025! (Use Laptop/PC for Best Results)

4/25: Bumped up for weekend!

As promised, here's my anonymous brand/merchant survey for my upcoming report on the state of the SL economy. Asking such questions as:

• How has the SL mobile app impacted your sales or activity around your brand?
• How much money in USD do you typically gross from your SL content sales and services per year?
• Do you use Generative AI programs in the promotion and/or creation of your SL content?
• Do shopping events increase your overall revenue from SL?
• What's your confidence in the future of Second Life as led by Brad Oberwager & Philip Rosedale?

And much more! Use a laptop/PC for best results (you need a mouse to scroll on the embedded window), or click here to take it directly on Google Sheets. 

I will definitely feature highlights and the full report on New World Notes here, though if you want to be among the very first to read it, please join my Patreon for free.

 

SL Marketplace Survey: Over 85% Want New Regulations of AI-Made Content; Majority Want Mandatory "Contains AI" Tag

Here's the results of last week's Gen AI survey, which I took in the run-up to Second Life's official "AI & the Future of Our Virtual Community" town hall happening this Friday.

The results are pretty unambiguous: A massive majority of over 85% surveyed want some kind of regulation against gen AI-made content in the SL Marketplace, with a majority (54%) choosing this option as the one they agree with most: REQUIRE merchants tag their content as having "No AI" or "Contains AI". (Presumably this would be self-enforcing by the user community)

I reached out to Linden Lab for their commentary on these regulatory options, and they told me they'll include these survey results in their upcoming AI town hall. I'm told the event will probably not include any new announcements, and is more of a user feedback session -- and, well, this survey is that. 

Given the heat and controversy over the topic, I'm actually somewhat surprised that was the most preferred option. By contrast, only 1 in 4 chose the most draconian option: BAN all Marketplace content that contains generative AI, enforced by Linden Lab staff (23.8% chose that). Maybe few chose this for technical reasons: my impression is it would be highly difficult if not an impractical lost cause to scan content for suspicious signs of gen AI, which is probably why few respondents chose this option.

It's also in keeping with the community's values around player choice. As an anonymous reader put it somewhat sardonically:

Second Life's Gen AI Controversy Leads to Drama Over Banning of AI-Altered Images on Primfeed -- And This Primfeed Survey

Primfeed recently became the most popular website focused on Second Life not owned by Linden Lab, and so inevitably, the "Flickr-for-SL" social platform is now a flashpoint for the key controversy among SLers: Whether AI programs like LLM-powered NPCs like those from Convai and Gen AI platforms like Midjourney should exist in the virtual world at all. The drama around the platform's current "no AI images" policy became so heated, owner Luke Rowley posted this survey, asking:  

Do you think Primfeed should allow AI edited Second Life images in the Public Gallery?

Launched earlier this week and running for 11 more days, it's already garnered nearly 2,000 votes -- about 10% of Primfeed's weekly active users. (Which is quite a lot for online surveys, which typically get less than 5% engagement.)

This survey comes after hundreds of angry posts, many on other social networks (of course), complaining to Luke about Primfeed's no-AI policy -- one of them from a top SL content creator. (Who perhaps not coincidentally, used Gen AI in a recent promotional video.) Luke even created new code to make a poll on Primfeed like this possible, he tells me:

 

SL Survey: What's the MOST You Would Pay to Regularly Stream Firestorm on a Browser, to Get High Quality Graphics on Even Low-End Laptops & Smartphones / Tablets?

Project Zero now has a Firestorm option, so you can stream Second Life on a browser using the virtual world's most popular viewer, with an introductory discount price of 5 hours for L$250: Go here quickly to get the special offer.

However, that's not likely to be the price when this option is officially launched -- hence the survey above. What's the MOST you would pay to regularly stream Firestorm on a browser?

Try it out now, and then take the pricing survey! And yes, I'll share the results with Linden Lab, which may or may not impact the final pricing.

Survey: Which New-ish Second Life Brand Interests You Most? Choose Aardvark, [ADD], The Discord Experts, Dope Pixels, Limited Addiction, Luova, Manikin!!, NeutralTones, RudeGirls Shapes, or Star Quake Shapes & Beauty

Take survey on desktop/laptop PC with mouse or tablet for best results

Thanks to readers who recommended their favorite new-ish Second Life brands over the last few months! Now please take this survey to choose the brand you'd like to see featured in a New World Notes post. Use a laptop/mouse for best results, and first check out all the brand links and descriptions below.

In alphabetical order, they are: Aardvark, [ADD], The Discord Experts, Dope Pixels, Limited Addiction, Luova, Manikin!!, NeutralTones, RudeGirls Shapes, and Star Quake Shapes & Beauty.

Again, info and links to all of them below. If the survey results are close, I may cover the top two-three, so please be sure to share this survey far and wide!

Survey Results: Nearly Half Experience Motion Sickness Visiting Second Life's New Homepage

Here's the results of my survey last week, asking if you experienced any motion sickness when visiting SecondLife.com's new-ish homepage. I posted that question after receiving some reports of people having that sensation, so was curious how widespread that reaction is. 

Turns out, a fair amount: 

Reaction was nearly evenly split, with 46% saying they felt motion sickness "a little" or "a lot" when visiting the Second Life homepage. (I'm personally in the "little" category.) If you haven't visited the homepage lately, you can check your own reaction by using a browser that doesn't have your credentials pre-cookied (as that might take you right to your account dashboard) and go here. 

The new homepage is a cool montage of fun, fullscreen video with quite a lot of panning and zooming:

Does SecondLife.com's New Homepage Cause You Motion Sickness?

Note: Survey may require mouse or trackpad

Here's an easy and (hopefully!) fun survey question to end the week:

• Go to the new-ish SecondLife.com homepage through a browser you don't usually use with your existing SL account.
• Does it make you feel motion sickness? Answer the survey question above!

Again, for the full effect, visit the homepage in a browser window that doesn't have your account info already cookied. 

Survey Results: Second Life Community Strongly Agrees with Anonymous Creator's Acerbic Rant About SL Economy

Here's the reader response to that widely-discussed rant from an anonymous SL creator on all the challenges plaguing the Second Life economy. With 247 responses -- quite a large sample, as these things go -- a strong majority of 57% said they agreed with the essay, Strongly or Mostly. (Contrasted with just 16% in the Mostly Disagree or Completely Disagree camp.)

Personally I had expected the reaction to be much more evenly mixed; though to be fair, questions like these probably have a natural bias toward the negative. (If everything's going fairly great, why spend any time complaining in an online survey?) 

If you missed it, read the whole essay here, where the unnamed creators inveighs against entitled customers, exploitative event owners, and lax bloggers; evidently, it all struck a chord among the SL community. While some of these complaints hold true in most other realms -- offline, we come across entitled customers quite often at our local department store! -- I think it fundamentally points to a need for more growth among the SL user base, so that there are other internal markets beyond high end mesh fashion, which comprises the majority of the Second Life economy.

As reader and creator Peter Strindberg puts it in comments, offering some advice as well:

 

SLer Survey: Firestorm's PBR Upgrade Generates Firestorm of Mixed Reactions

Here's the results of my survey on the PBR upgrade in Firestorm, which brought in 177 responses. (A pretty large sample size, as these things go.) Asked how it's changed their overall Second Life experience, a plurality -- nearly 1 in 3 respondents -- chose "Much worse than before". That's compared to 20% who said Firestorm PBR has made their SL experience "much better".

Overall, the reaction is about evenly split between the Somewhat/Much Worse camp (45%) and the About the Same or Somewhat/Much Better (42%).

My initial read of these results is there's a hiccup of adjustment as SLers get accustomed to the virtual world lit by PBR. More on those later, but meantime, here's some readers' decidedly mixed reaction to the PBR update: