Is Second Life Empty?

The following is taken from the official Second Life Educators mailing list.

Stan Trevena (Director, Information and Technology Services, Modesto City Schools) wrote:

"Outside of events, Second Life is pretty empty almost all of the time everywhere. I've been on since the BETA, and it's always been that way, and I suspect it always will be. Imagine an area twice the size of San Francisco (Philip Rosedale's comparison, not mine), complete with businesses, neighborhoods, attractions and fully landscaped areas of countryside. Now take 20,000 - 30,000 people and sprinkle them about randomly (40k seems to be the current ceiling of concurrent users, and a current infrastructure limitation). The annual San Francisco marathon has over 15,000 runners, and they are just a big clump of runners trying to get down a single route through the City (from the air looking like a snake that just ate a rabbit). Running with the metaphor, doubling the size of the race puts you roughly at the concurrent user population of Second Life. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are not enough concurrent users to make Second Life look populated. At any given time you can scan the map and look for stacked green dots. Teleport in and check some of these locations and you will find avatars sitting in chairs, or doing other mindless things to earn L$. Other places where large groups gather are either gambling casinos (now shut down, so fewer avatars and a lot less L$ changing hands) or nightclubs of various leanings and fetishes. Events are the only thing in Second Life that pull significant numbers of people together into a single location (like the SF Marathon in RL).

People often say that virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online far exceed the population of Second Life (WOW now boasts over 9 million paid subscriptions). And if you start playing a new MMO just after release, or right after a new expansion is released, you might say that they are even over populated. Many times you find yourself in competition with many other players to get quest items in certain areas, you are literally tripping over each other to kill that 10th vorpal rabbit for your quest. But that is where these other virtual worlds are deceiving to the average player. Like I said, populations in virtual worlds are event driven, or in the case of mainstream MMO's quest driven. A stark example of this is what happened to the original lands of Azeroth in World of Warcraft after the Burning Crusades expansion was released just after Christmas. Only a few weeks after it came out the old lands of Azeroth were more or less abandoned as everyone rushed into the new lands beyond the Dark Portal. And to this day the original lands are more or less deserted, even the once bustling Ironforge is only sparsely populated with alts power leveling to get into Burning Crusades.

Events are the key to success in Second Life. Events/Quests drive populations to various areas of MMO's giving the illusion of large populations, but break away from the center of the player level bell curve and you will find ghost towns and empty landscapes where once you fought over a place to stand. It's taken a long time for businesses to realize that people are not standing around in Second Life waiting to get into their virtual store fronts. They media hype over virtual businesses this past year is partly to blame. Some businesses are leaving Second Life bitter that they were misled into opening up a virtual storefronts after finding no customers banging down their door or ordering their real or virtual goods. The really smart businesses, like IBM, will look beyond a virtual brick and mortar location, they will target their efforts at customer driven events that are location independent. They will also find non-traditional activities that cannot be done in the real world to raise the involvement and information transfer between them and their customers (both current and potential).

For examples, look at the two clips from IBM from a series of videos I posted to our PacRimX blog last night:

http://pacificrimx.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/unique-second-life-videos

Look for "The Sentinel 2.0 Project" and the "IBM Brownfield Visualization" in the list of videos.

This is one reason why education works so well in Second Life. Classes and projects are event driven. You don't build a classroom, put up a sign, and wait for students to fill the room. You would be lucky if a new student were to stumble onto your lot, much less be interested in being in your classroom and attending your class (and the in-world search would do little to get them to your door). Now if you fill the classroom with interactive displays, streaming video, schedule times when students can meet with instructors, and every so often have a guest speaker that is an expert in their field, and you promoted your services like a university trying to attract paying students, you would likely fill that classroom (and then some, streaming video and chat logs on blogs, etc.). But even if you were successful with this venture, your classroom might only be filled several days a week for a few hours at a time. So what is success in Second Life?

I've stated it in the past, and I'll state it again here today. If Linden Lab does not figure this out, and quickly (the definition of success), they will take a serious hit to their persistent residents, and someone else will come along and take away their users. There are several on the horizon already who might pose a challenge in the not too distant future. Linden Lab has always been focused on businesses, shopping, and services (and the exchange of L$ and sales of new land). Far too many virtual architectural showpieces are paraded around the Internet and media to "wow" people with the cool "3D" factor. But as we are seeing with ventures like Starwood Hotels, all of that design work and flash can't bring people in if there's nothing there to come for (outside of the initial open house and dance party).

At the most basic level, if you are a business, would you get more exposure and positive customer involvement from an empty virtual storefront that only drew a real crowd at the grand opening, or from a sponsorship of a live concert, in-world conference/seminar, or even a Second Life marathon? Would you get more traction from a virtual 3D billboard in a vacant in-world neighborhood, or from a sponsorship and banners at a U2 or Police reunion concert in Second Life? And if the event were successful, streaming video would be broadcast out to the Internet (and live on for years and millions of hits on YouTube), and all the media and blogosphere stories would mention your company by name (and likely your URL/SLURL).

If anything, educators are way out in front of businesses in Second Life. We get how it works. The only problem is that Linden Lab can't build much of a business model on educators. We don't generate revenue streams, at least not beyond our discounted land and meager demand for L$. And this brings it all the way back to my other recommendation I dust off from time to time. Distribute the grids, license the servers, charge monthly fees for linking to the Linden L$ and object databases, and let a company like IBM (Google, or a yet to be named start-up) be
the glue and the search engine for jumping around the virtual universe (including non-SL grids). Give away free mini-grids to challenge MySpace and Facebook to hook in individuals who will eventually want (and pay for) more virtual space.

Coasting for any length of time in virtual worlds is as sure a way to die as a shark who stops swimming."


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Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. (Associate Professor, Multimedia Program and Department of Communication, Co-Director, New Media Center, Bradley University) replied:


"Stan,
I agree with an awful lot of what you've written. I would offer a friendly amendment . . . about which I am NOT at all sure. Speculation/thinking....

I think that SL is also driven by three other forces: Creativity/ creation, human interaction, and activities.

First, creativity/creation: Many of the builds have been done by residents rather than big firms. Some residents do just build and build (perhaps trying to sell some; perhaps just trying to satisfy themselves). I don't think that this one scales at all... but it IS a draw for those to whom it appeals.

I think what might scale is the second piece: human interaction. And it might even scale for business. My thinking here is that it is just a HUGE mistake for any vendor (at any size or in any potential market) to plop down virtual stuff and automate the storefront. SL is a SOCIAL environment. Sure, we do not NEED a salesperson to help us. And sure, posting someone in a shop 24-7 to meet global needs of, perhaps, not much foot traffic, seems wasteful. BUT... given that
there are very few ways for non-creative types to make Ls . . seems like there is a potentially willing salesforce that could be organized at a relatively low cost. AND ... I would think that market forces would eventually advantage those business owners who provide interaction with their commerce. Even the Lindens have learned that SL works better if all the Lindens own and inhabit and place and are available now and then. Seems to me that the commerce side of things (be it news exchange, sales of SL stuff, promotion of SL or RL stuff) would be facilitated by human interaction/presence.

as for the third, activities, there's very damned little to do in SL. As you note.... edu. has a leg up cause we are generally in SL for events.... like classes. But for SL to prosper, there must be a more broad array of activities for residents. That's what keeps a quest-based game going... one always has something to do (get some goodies, move up a level, kill something, etc.). Not too many people want to sit around in a virtual world and JUST talk... though some do.... but better is actually doing SOMETHING and talking at the same time ... heck, we even "count" having our avatars dance as "doing something" that justifies time inworld.

I don't think that my comments disagree with yours. I hope you see these as a friendly amendment. You made excellent points that I learned from."

Source: Second Life Educators mailing list