Slashdot Mirror
Are Marketers Abandoning Second Life?
Vary writes "The LA Times is running a story today saying that marketers are pulling out of Second Life, primarily because — surprise, surprise — the 'more than 8 million residents' figure on the game's Web site is grossly inflated. Also, as it turns out, the virtual world's regular visitors — at most 40,000 of them online at any time — are not only disinterested in in-world marketing, but actively hostile to it, staging attacks on corporate presences such as the Reebok and American Apparel stores. The companies aren't giving up on virtual worlds altogether, though, but moving on to games like There, Gaia Online and Entropia Universe. The article also contains some commentary from a marketing executive who conducted an informal survey of the game and discovered that 'One of the most frequently purchased items in Second Life is genitalia.' What company wouldn't want to be in on that action?"
I guess it has become a mystic revelation to certain marketers that there is more than gross audience numbers to the success of a marketing campaign.
And that maybe marketing sportsware or fashionware to geeks playing Second Life all day, instead of going outside and doing some sports or going to real life parties, may just not be the most cost-effective idea?
One of the prime reasons people are playing second life is because they are so damn fed up with First Life! And advertisers are a big thing that you can be fed up in the first place. Guess what, if you import to Second Life things that were what you hate in First Life already, people are going to be hostile to them?
Go back marketing soap to soccer moms, marketers. Do a favor to yourself and the rest of society.
First Life has absolutely amazing photorealistic graphics, but the game is as boring as hell- you have to spend roughly 5 out of 7 days doing gold-farming-style activities just to get enough money to buy the more interesting stuff; sometimes even just to get by.
And that's after spending years doing training in the random (usually boring) place you started the game in and being stuck with a load of boorish cretins. Supposedly this is to teach you how the game works, but after you complete it, you realise it's not that useful at all.
The one bit of good news is that you don't have to buy your own genitalia- the bad news is that it's hard, if not impossible, to upgrade...
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Convincing a group of annoyed stubborn beasts to go where you want them to go, even thought they know they are going to get fleeced or made into stew.
Sounds like politics to me.