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Second Life Hype vs. Anti-Hype
The new GigaGamez site, part of the OM network, has a look today at the hype fight over Second Life. It's the new darling of media companies, but is increasingly attracting negative feedback by people who know a thing or two about the industry. James Wagner Au tries to sort out who is saying what, and provide a little context for the discussion. From the article: "Can they really build a fully streamed world comprised of tens of thousands of servers? That's way above my paygrade, but I'll guess that task fits under the rubric of Fricking Hard. Can they fix a profoundly unfriendly user interface and thoroughly disorienting first hour user experience, which are aggressively, almost intentionally unwelcoming to the vast majority of interested users? Both shortcomings are at the heart of Second Life's poor retention rates, but neither have significantly changed in the three years since its commercial release. You have to wonder, whatever their stated intentions, if Linden's tech-centric corporate culture simply puts their improvement at a low priority."
Clicking on the Article I get "Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here." Guess that means that one of the sides gave up eh?
(Watch, someone will tell me to RTA)
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Don't we wail about Newbies everywhere else? There could be a side benefit that only certain people "get it" and stay. Anyone who doesn't ... "doesn't deserve to be there".
External world communities are rampant with unspoken restrictions. Some call you a Greenhorn for five years after you move there.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Can they really build a fully streamed world comprised of tens of thousands of servers? That's way above my paygrade, but I'll guess that task fits under the rubric of Fricking Hard.
I don't want this to sound like a blanket indictment, because some studios get this right, but a lot of the unreliability, and failure to execute on difficult tasks in the gaming industry is due to the moronic staffing decisions of many game development companies. I haven't played Second Life, so for all I know (and from the sounds of it) maybe they got it right. A fully streamed world comprised of thens of thousands of servers? Sounds like some work, but it sounds completely feasible. When you're only willing to hire people who want to work in games so badly that they're drooling all over themselves at the opportunity and thus are willing to work at well below industry average pay level, what do you think you are going to get?
There are people out there who have built massive clusters and have decades of experience solving these problems... But they usually don't work in games, because they can make five times as much in other industries. When a company comes along and runs a game studio like a real software company, people who are stuck in the more traditional 'you should thank your lucky stars you are working in games' mindset shouldn't be too surprised when that company actually succeeds at problems that were considered too hard in the past.
Sorry to any big fans here but my experience sucked. The user interface is incredibly unfriendly and unresponsive, the graphics are appalling, the animation shocking and the sound lamentable.
After playing WoW for a few months and seeing how fluid, beautiful and easy to use a virtual world can be, Second Life was a shocking kick in the nether regions. It reminded me of very early 3D games with no collision detection and collosal clipping issues.
Yes I know it's streamed and if that's the primary cause of it's issues then it shouldn't be.
Additionally, for my first hour I wandered around trying to find something to do but was profoundly ignored by my fellow "2nd lifers", presumably because I looked like a newb.
If the developers could at least sort out the shocking camera and other control issues I may consider retrying it. I spend about 10 minutes of my first hour working out how to unzoom the camera which was permanently stuck 50 yards behind my guy.
...(3.5 years and counting), I've seen it explode from scarcely 50 people online at a time to now more than 20,000.
:)
Since it began it's always had a hard time keeping new users. I think the way it's setup (completely user-created content, so there's less of a "wow" factor to people who just want to consume) means that you either "get it" and stay there, or you don't and leave immediately. The 10% churn rate cited in the article soudns about right; I've introduced something like two dozen people to SL, only one (my gf) stayed on, and that's probably only because I'm such a big fan of it.
SL needs a more compelling new user experience (professionally done content, some sort of direction, quests, whatever) if they want to keep people there for more than five minutes. PRoblem is, no matter how much professional content you throw at the newbie, once the newbie experience is done, you're still thrown in the middle of the content quagmire of SL; cube houses, poorly textured sex clubs, and rigged casinos.
For someone who just wants to experience things, unless you're incredibly social, you won't last in SL. For the creative types there's more of a stick.
Generally speaking, though, if you have to ask "what's the point of this place", you dont' get it.
hookers and grits.
There hasn't updated it's technology significantly since early 2004 (with the exception of MTV's Laguna Beach). They've lost most of their developers since almost going under, and haven't really grown much.
Their main impetus to growth is the insistence of screening all custom content before approving it, and then taking a commission for each sale. It tends to limit growth as most people are interested in sex stuff (look at SL).
hookers and grits.
was that it is a magnet for every sick and twisted loser the trolls around on the Internet. This article, and the articles it links to, should be enough for anyone to understand exactly what kind of person likes second life.