Second LIfe ramblings

This is a bit of a ramble based upon Edem Williams, Bassey Eyo, Stephen Akpan’’ s article “ “Linden Labs Second Life: Understanding the Business Model and Sources of Commercial and Social Success or Decline of Second Life,” published on line at this website.

I can only speculate the impetus behind the creation of Second Life, in part it was the book Snowcrash, as well as created to be an online virtual utopia providing the platform necessary to bring together people from across the globe. Part of this would require the collaboration of these diverse people to develop the content for this virtual world.

I have been in Second Life for almost two and half years now exploring, participating and developing some of my own content as well. During that time I have experienced various levels of satisfaction with the environment. In spite of that, after exploring other virtual worlds, open sims, and participated in other social networks...I have always returned to Second Life. It is the rich social network, the imersive environment and the connections with others that kind of suck you into Second Life. Even though the feeling of “Second Life Euphoria or Utopia” isn’t as strong for me as it once was.

I am not going to predict the demise of Second Life however after reading the above article I can only offer some speculation on what it does well and what it can do better. I think sometimes, as consumers we want the instant solution to problems, once that Second Life experience becomes routine we want to recapture that feeling of Second Life Euphoria that we first experienced in the environment.

If I am not experiencing that I can attribute the change in my feelings regarding Second Life to changes in my real life, a change in job, a few moves and new priorities in my life. All of these have distracted me from Second Life and those I have met in Second Life, even though those who are most important to me are now friends on Facebook.

The observation that Second Life’s demise in imminent is a personal and individual experience I believe. The ideas, thoughts and feedback to improve Second Life should be considered and taken into consideration or discarded if they don’t seem possible or useful. End user input should always be considered in providing directions for making improvements...however in the case of technology in general and Second Life specifically the in put can vary greatly due to the users level of experience and comfort level in the use of technology.

That being said I have some opinions of my own. It seems to me Second Life is at the point where its future could go in one direction or the other. I believe that if they cannot find the answer to the new user’s question upon arriving in Second Life, “What do I do now,” then they will fail to bring that user back to Second Life.

There have been a lot of issues with Second Life through the years. In many ways the users’ real life issues parallels the virtual. These are related to property rights, human social interaction, and frustration with a less than stable technology. It is the technology issues that sometimes provide the greatest frustration ..however this is, I believe, an issue with the infrastructure not keeping pace with the technology, aged equipment of the end user, and lack of experience by the end user and even support at Second Life.

The interaction by users in Second Life, at least initially, seems intensified. For myself and for many Second Life users this seems magnified by the environment and the social networking tools used for communication and perhaps even the sense of presence..sense of presence in a virtual world is what you aim to achieve, it is not a bad thing but it is startling to a new user. Over time this feeling does seem to level off as one adapts to the direct communication of text chat and instant messaging as well as the fact that if you don’t like someone you can mute them or teleport away from them. You also learn how to communicate, if someone says something you don’t like you can ask them to clarify or you can clarify and give further feedback.

In my opinion Second Life lost out when they discontinued the discount for education and education institutions. This could still be remedied if they provided incentives and assistance to individual educators who which to bring their educational programs into Second Life. I feel that their support and communication to new educators who entered Second Life was inconsistent and sloppy. They lost any potential of tapping into these students as growing their base users..if those educators were dissatisfied..who do you think they complained to! Second Life lost any potential market and any other marketing approach has been, at best scattered and without focus. In fact marketing of Second Life has been non existent relying instead on press coverage of individuals, campuses and corporate project in the virtual world. The problem with this is that Second Life does not control the marketing that does occur.

In a nutshell it is interesting to me that Second Life has yet to take advantage of the marketing pipeline that was and still is available to them by having large scale educational institutions in Second Life. I have learned from experience that if you do something right students can be your best channel for marketing … like alumni they speak for your product via word of mouth ..in fact look at the University of Phoenix!

Of course Facebook trounced Second Life as a social networking platform. I would not be surprised if in the future they also swallow up Second LIfe as a virtual world or 3Dimensional environment. And why not? They have the critical mass and the social networking tools in place to connect users. I feel this is a shame, really, as I like the social networking features in Second Life much better.

I read another interesting article on learning in immersive environments by William Ryan and Marin Siegel “Evaluating Interactive Entertainment using Breakdown: Understanding Embodied Learning in Video Games,” found here at this website.
I learned some new terms in my reading of this article one of which was the methodology they used in their research; breakdown analysis a technique for analyzing user interaction sequences which looks at times when users are focused on figuring out how to use the system (a “breakdown”) versus times when users are performing their intended tasks.

Another term they used was domain of experience: basically this is the knowledge, past experience that a user brings to, in this case the game or technology that contributes to user satisfaction.

The authors of the article identify these four domains as Perceiving Environment, Developing Strategy, Taking Action, and Meaning Making. Under each of these domains they identified breakdowns which may impact the users experience in using the technology. These are:


Perceiving environment: Cues and affordance, Cut Scene Transition, Depth, Camera and navigation.

Developing strategy: task order, task delivery, discerning importance, events triggering, and task frequency.

Taking action: spatial layouts, controller mapping and scaffolding

Meaning making: Map schema, object schema, avatar schema, character role, and schema familiarity

I took a look at some Second Life Blogs yesterday and here is a bit of what I found:

The Alphaville Herald: I liked the article on the top three sites in Second Life. You will have to check this out..in fact I will be writing more on one site they mentioned in the article The Forgotten City a Steampunk Sim in Second Life..looks like a good article for Steampunk Adventures.

Check out Botgirl’s Second Life Diary too. I did spend sometime thinking this blog posting may fall under her Micro Rants...oh well!

Stop blathering on about the future of Second Life. I'm much more correct in my under-informed pretentious speculation than you are. It's natural and beneficial to discuss our collective future through social networks, blogs and other public forums. But it's delusional to believe we absolutely know the one right way to proceed or can predict how the future will unfold.



Daniel Livinstone wrote a thought provoking article on Second Life which is posted on Educause...All I have to say is that it is ironic that Linden Labs which relied greatly upon their users to create content, attract new users, and developers has treated those very same contributors so poorly.

I also checked out Skoolaborate this week. If you are a K-12 educator and you are interested you should check them out as well. From their website they are:

Skoolaborate is a global initiative uses a blend of technologies including, blogs, online learning, wiki's and ‘virtual worlds’ to transform learning. We aim to use these tools to provide engaging collaborative learning experiences for students aged between 13 and 18 years of age.


Ultimately if Second Life is facing a “demise” it is due to their own early successes! They can no longer rest upon that but instead must earn new users..sometimes the hard way .. not the “if we build it they will come,” mantra.


Blog spot wiped out all my links..grrrrr:

http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/cis/article/view/9806

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.38300.pdf


http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/breakdown-analysis/

http://alphavilleherald.com/

http://steampunkadventuressl.wordpress.com/

http://botgirl.blogspot.com/


http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/SecondLifeIsDeadLongLiveSecond/226180

Improving the new user experience in Second Life

Much has been written, said, hashed over out and sliced and diced on how the Second Life viewer and how that contributes to the lack of retaining and attracting new residents to Second Life, I contend that has little or nothing to do with it. In fact I assert that there is a need in Second Life to come up with an innovative way to connect new residents with other residents in a meaningful way.

I am not a techie so I can only assert that this needs to occur in the registration process where not only do I pick a name, a gender, etc., I also complete profile that details my interests, connects me to a community, such as Caledon, role play interests, and perhaps even occupation interests before I even go in world.

This could be done before I even go in world. I complete my profile based upon a series of questions (all optional) such as:

1. Demographics information
2. I wish to connect with others who have an interest in:

Live music,
History by era
Role play by genre/era/history/etc
Education
Art
etc., etc.,
3. When I get in world options for joining groups, communities, etc., are all immediately made available to me.
4. I want to learn more about
Building in second life
Coding in Second Life
Other cultures in Second Life

Why do I think this is important? Because over the last two years seeing people come and go those who I have seen go have those who seemingly did not make connections with other in Second Life. Part of the fun of this environment is meeting with and engaging with others who you would never have had that opportunity to otherwise.

While the information on the website is fabulous and getting better everyday..it would simplify things greatly if new users would (voluntarily) complete a profile that would allow them to immediately identify others, in world, who share their interests, this would help with the initial first hours in Second Life. Do this would by no means lock a new resident into a scripted Second Life for the long term, but would help them connect with others who share similar interests.

What are your thoughts..putting the choice of viewer aside how can the new user experience in Second Life be improved?