Is the Party Over in SL?
Second Life is falling off the mainstream radar, ironically Linden Labs is making a potentially hazardous move to try to become more mainstream. I have to ask: Is the party over in SL?
SL’s Declining coverage
I am noticing a major shift in the attention that Second Life has been getting lately. Mainly it is getting a lot less of it. I have an RSS aggregator dedicated to SL which pulls stories from the biggest and best SL outlets I can find.
I used to feature Reuters, they dropped covering SL. Same with Wired. Electric Sheep Company seems to be pulling out of SL and blogging less. I yanked them all.
Of the ones that are left, they are still covering SL, but at a reduced rate. Former Second Life Herald, now Alphaville Herald (thanks to trademark enforcement) is shifting to Metaplace and other VW coverage. Massively, a site dedicated to all online gaming that bought up SLNN for more SL coverage, still has the occasional SL story, but only when there is some interesting development. They no longer seek out the stories themselves. Of the other blogs I list, only New World Notes continues to blog regularly. To keep the aggregator busy I added Koinup popular places and the Second Life Bloggers group at ning.com.
Mainstream press in general no longer seems that much interested. Part of me suspects that when SL was being judged by the number of accounts, the tens of millions generated some interest. Now that the “active” account number seems to hover around 500,000 and hasn’t grown much in nearly two years, its considered old news.
A couple of years ago the announcement to section off a continent for “adult content” would have gotten a few mentions in the mainstream press. Today nary a blip. The last SL story to get mainstream press coverage was last November’s headline of a real world divorce over the husbands SL “cybering” with another player. It was a strange human interest story, but that kind of thing happens a lot more often than you think. That story reinforced SL’s reputation as a “cyber sex” haven. The recent “adult content” announcement was an attempt to lessen that reputation.
“Adult Content” Continent
As I have said before, the age verification is a game changer. There has been quite a confusing discussion about what exactly counts as “adult content” and many players are upset that Linden Labs is engaging in censorship.
What LL is proposing is a new mainland continent where adult content will be allowed reachable only by acconts that have been age verified or that have used a credit card for billing. The general consensus is this will be a “ghetto” continent, which could eventually be closed completely if LL decides it is necessary.
Personally I have a suspicion that this may backfire completely on every level. First of all, you are going to lose some of the 500,000 active players who no longer want to have anything to do with SL, best case is that they are replaced with new active players not looking for adult content.
But from my perspective, there are unforeseen benefits to this island. Adding verification for admittance means there will be no “kids” on this island, no “alts” or “alt griefing”, the vast majority of people allowed will be paying customers with lindens to spend, few “noobs”, few free accounts = no lag due to “camping”, and no one complaining about the content there, because everyone goes in knowing what to expect.
No doubt the immediate focus of this continent will be on the adult content, but these other ancillary benefits may actually drive more really active players there, possibly making the adult continent more popular than any other continent, possibly making the rest of SL the “ghetto”. A recent NWN post agrees with my assessment.
If Linden Labs sets the adult content bar real low (like no nudity) and strictly enforce it, this will almost certainly be the outcome. If this does occur SL’s reputation may continue to sour. New players will find new obstacles to the “good content”, ultimately driving a wedge into the community as a whole.
On the other hand, If they set the bar real high (like no XXX porn anything less is OK) and don’t enforce it much, it will change SL not at all and then LL can tell anyone interested that they are doing “something” about it without really doing anything. The new adult only continent really will become a “ghetto” no one wants to go to. Unfortunately, lax enforcement will lead to more player complaints ultimately driving a wedge into the community as a whole anyways.
Either way the community loses. Linden Labs has put themselves in a tough position that will affect every player one way or another.
Based on interviews at NWN and reports from the SL forums, there is lots of contradictory info coming out of LL’s offices. If they hope to have these policies in place by the end of summer, they got a lot of work ahead.
A divided community is an unhappy community, opening the door to the next cool thing taking away LL’s business. The party in SL will truly be over, moved to another venue.
How much of the dearth of coverage is due to real-life woes trumping SL? My thinking is that there are 1) lots less dollars to spend for people to write about it, b) there are less people to write about it, and thirdly, more people are spending more time worrying about scraping by in First Life to spend much time and energy on SL.
The party is still on in Linden Lab’s Second Life virtual world despite what a few high profile pundits may suggest. As a freelancer in Second Life – and I mean actually IN Second Life rather than standing outside and relying on what gets bandied around the internet – I have no shortage of assignments for available to me. And I use Google Alerts as my source for snagging information that makes it off-world, and that gets me about 100 or so hits daily. To say I throw out more than I use is a drastic understatement!
The “declining coverage” is only true if you look at the real world press, who, by nature of their size, are able to trumpet their failure. So what if Reuters has pulled out? There are other in-world papers that are doing very well, thank you. I write for “SLentrepreneur Magazine” and “The Alphaville Herald,” both of which are going strong. I have also contributed to “Prim Perfect,” “SL Enquirer,” “FreeLife Magazine,” “Castle Keep Magazine,” and new ones are appearing all the time.
The SL in-world media may not have the clout of the real world but it is active, chaotic, exciting, eclectic, and constantly in flux. Add to that the almost uncountable number of blogs (your included) and what you are seeing is a 21st century press that is very different from the 20th newspaper industry.
I like your thinking on the upside of the “adult continent;” the lower lag, less griefing, less complaining etc. Unlike some doomsayers, I doubt that this is indicative of the End of the World as We Know It – more a shift of emphasis. As I talk to people in-world, I don’t hear them preparing to desert but working out where shall we go next weekend, where shall we go shopping, or is X still seeing Y.
My recent posts on the state of Second Life (e.g. More On The Second Life Deathwatch; Second Life Stagnant: How So?) do NOT have the same reach as Reuters or CNN, but they are as true a reflection of what is going on as the “big boys” have written about. In fact, I suggest that the “big boys” have failed precisely because they lose out against the Citizen Journalism of the SL blogosphere. Having a RL reporter paid full time to work on SL news is very expensive; an army of bloggers is essentially free.
Oh, and I just discovered your blog thanks to Google Alerts – and clearly you’re still writing about Second Life
A couple of years ago I found and I appreciated Arianneb’s SL tips page:
http://arianeb.com/secondlife.htm
I recently added her blog to my aggregator. I’m tempted to remove it now.
How is the press coverage relevant to Second Life and virtual worlds development? For sure, the WWW technologies development and use didn’t evolve because of a good and honest press coverage.
I’m not going to base my expectations about virtual worlds technologies on what the newspapers do/write.
@Dan Jon
“How is the press coverage relevant to Second Life and virtual worlds development?”
To development? its not relevant. To future growth? its very relevant.
Another commentor pointed out that SL is on the downward slope of the hype cycle, in other words te reduced coverage is completely normal. The point of the whole essay is to show that the public image of Second Life is changing. To those of us that continue to play and enjoy Second Life, this matters very little to us. To Linden Labs, a for profit corporation, this matters a lot.