You can now see the recent Designing Worlds show discussing issues related to Second Life retention on the web.
In this show, we are joined by some of the people who’ve been involved in the ongoing web discussion of this issue – Carl Metropolitan Chancellor Emeritus at Caledon Oxbridge, Caledon Oxbridge Chancellor, 2009 to 2012; Executive Director of NCI/New Citizens Incorporated, 2005 to 2009, and Jo Yardley of 1920s Berlin and the Drax Radio Files, together with two people who are working on the production side of this at Linden Lab – Brooke Linden and DaveR Linden.
We discuss three aspects of the retention problem – how Second Life is marketed, how the initial experience is managed and how to embed new residents so that they remain and become integrated. We share ideas – and learning more about developments at the Lab – including the introduction of the new avatars.
Do Linden Labs employ psychologists? This session suggests not. There seems to be no understanding of what ‘community’ is (and it is much more than a group of houses), no sense of what ‘presence’ is about – immobile, frozen-faced avatars, however realistic looking, have no presence because they don’t feel human or as if they have agency, and no business model that includes any kind of social responsibility. Did they know the percentage of people with disabilities using SL as a key social outlet? And what about the carers – often trapped at home by their responsibilities? I heard very little from the LL representatives in the way of ideas, and no real sense of enthusiasm for the ones presented by the very able panel. For reasons that (should but do not) escape me, the word ‘amateur’ comes up every time I think about the reality versus the potential of Second Life, and that is tragic.
[…] – designing worlds discusses new user retention […]
You know, it really kind of bothers me that LL used outside creators. Well, maybe not that they used them, but they didn’t consult the community, or do some kind of beta, for us to explain what they did wrong and why. I didn’t say that to be funny, but in all seriousness. Did these outside creators understand that we do have eye bones on the SL avatar? They could have rigged the eyes, and at least the eyes would move. Didn’t LL understand that we have eye bones? I mean, come on now. What game character is created with no eye bones? They could have easily had moving jaws too. All the creator would have had to do is rig the jaw to the m_skull bone. Then, they could make an animation using the anim import formats, so that the m_skull bone would be animated. Then, they just create a speech gesture with the m_skull animation. This is not some hack, but just using the bones supplied in a unique way, and should never break, as it is not a hack and uses features in the default viewer.
My point is, that we SL creators fully understand how to utilizes the tools to maximize the characters. Seems these outside creators didn’t even understand basic stuff, or LL just handed them the rig and said use that, instead of a rig that had all the bones. I have no clue really, but not working eyes is just bad, all the way around bad. Heck, they could have easily made the eyes blink too, with a simple texture changing script inside a modeled mesh eyelid. LL, if you read this, please consult or employ some knowledgable creators the next time you do this. I can’t imagine what they actually paid for this avatar statues, but it definitely wasn’t worth the money. The modeling is good, but everything else fails, big time.