Helping Newcomers - and Listening

Last night, after posting the IIR piece, I joined my friend and fellow blogger ugotrade (Tara5 Oh in Second Life). She was just back from a conference in London, and was wanting to see what she'd missed in Second Life over the last week. I suggested she might want to form her own opinions on the CSI:NY islands, and found her the busiest orientation site I could - with around 12 peoeple on it. As is her way, she was soon deeply enmeshed, interviewing and assisting newcomers. It was around this point that I joined her - and found the next hour or 2 oddly illuminating.

In broad terms, here are my observations:

• The number of active CSI:NY sims has been slashed to around 100. The remainder are showing as offline, though I assume they can be brought back if demand indicates a need.
• Across the 100 sims, numbers of avatars fluctuated from 1 or 2, up to 10 or 12. If I was to take a wild stab in the dark and assume 5 to 7 on average per sim, this would yield the number using CSI:NY at any one time to be around 500-700.
• The flow through the orientation sim seemed fairly constant. Over the time I was there I would reckon we saw a new face once every couple of minutes. Call it 30 an hour. Assuming all 50 open orientations were running at this pace would suggest around 1500 new registrations per hour, or around 35-40,000 a day. Mercifully short of the 3000/minute that Linden Lab were looking at.
• When I arrived there was a helper present. However, at some point she had to go elsewhere, leaving newcomers with no official welcome personal help. I don't know how many sims have helpers, but maybe it's not enough.
• Newcomers were confused about the interface - and it took several goes to get them using "chat." I have visions of people sat in front of their computer screens, screaming: "Help! What am I supposed to do?"
• People seemed to be unaware that they were on an orientation island - and not in The Game proper. I spent a long time near the outbound teleport, explaining how to use it and why. This, despite there being a huge billboard telling you exactly what to do. I don't know why this was going wrong, but it was. My guess is the description may be too perfunctory.
• People were usually totally unaware that there was a whole virtual world out there. For example, one guy thought he had seen it all on a previous trip. When told there were thousands of places to visit, and he had seen just 3, it was like a revelation. Where in this whole build is the existence of the rest of Second Life acknowledged? Or rudimentary assistance provided in reaching it?
• People did tend to blunder about - perfecting walking in SL takes some practice - but more importantly were often confused. To repeat the question posed above, I heard this several times: "Help! What am I supposed to do?"
• For a while I was using the Classic viewer, but the lag got so awful I thought I would switch to OnRez. A good decision, since OnRez performed far better, without the 10 or 20 second timeouts I sometimes get with the LL viewer.

The upshot of this is: I think the orientation experience leaves a lot to be desired. There is not enough help and there is not enough information. So nothing new there, then. It was interesting hearing all this "raw input" - it certainly taught me a thing or two.

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UPDATE: The 3000/min figure comes from 2 sources. One, a friend who acts as an orientation mentor, and received this figure during a mentors' meeting with Glenn Linden. The other is from here, which purports to be the notecard issued by Linden Lab.

Some Random Thoughts on CSI:NY

As the hubbub starts to subside on the whole CSI:NY thing, I thought I would record some of the stuff that’s been rattling around in my head over the last few days.

My first reaction when I read all the hullabaloo coming out of the Virtual Worlds Conference was: “Meh.” However, folks with a far keener interest and knowledge of the entertainment and media industry were at pains to assure me that this was groundbreaking stuff, and that is was “game changing.” I thought I should wait and see. The impression given was that this represented a real leap forward in the pursuit of convergent media, and is the way of the Future. To quote Mr Zuiker, proud owner of the CSI franchise: “What’s the future of television? It is as follows: TV, online, mobile, and gaming.”

As for Linden Lab, CEO Phil Rosedale’s take, as quoted at Ugotrade was: “I think it is a great project. We don’t look for traffic for Second Life in general we more look for opportunities to present Second Life to people in a more obvious way to people who don’t understand it, or haven’t experienced it.”

So… a major leap in convergent media – and good exposure for Linden Lab. What could possibly go wrong?

The big risk we all knew about was grid overload, but so far (touch wood) this has not happened, in part because the invasion of newcomers simply has not happened on anything like the anticipated scale.

However, what I think has gone wrong is, frankly, the whole shebang. What I’ve noted, rather than a magical blending and blurring of the lines between reality and virtuality, is simply the co-opting of Second Life to act as a games platform. A role for which it is particularly inappropriate – and for which CSI has no need, since such platforms exist already. Now, I’m not trying to be precious about SL here. In the whole wide metaverse there is clearly a large need for entertainment and, indeed, for gaming. But to be blunt, Second Life cannot offer the level of gameplay that seasoned gamers have good reason to expect.

And this leads to my next point. TV is an illusion, where it is necessary to tweak reality (and in this case, virtuality) in the interests of entertainment. CSI was not out to make a documentary about Second Life, and was bound to present it in a way designed to extract the maximum entertainment value. And this has led to 2 basic lies. First, that the Second Life virtual world is smooth, fast and beautifully detailed. This would be fine if newcomers weren’t then invited to come and try it out. The gulf between the TV version and the horribly laggy, grey, slow-rezzing virtuality cannot, to my mind, be called “good exposure for Second Life”. The second lie is that Second Life is a sleazy game, populated by players. This lie was not necessary to the plot, and is the one with which I have the single biggest issue.

In common with many of the readers of this blog, I spend a great deal of time in Real Life extolling the features and benefits of Second Life and virtual worlds in general. Through this one piece of unnecessary scripting I feel like I’ve been thrown back a year in my own evangelising efforts; back to the days of: “Second Life? It’s just a game isn’t it? Full of sleazeballs and geeks.” Again, how this view of Second Life can be viewed as “good exposure” I am at a loss to explain. This might also explain the less-than-impressive uptake of new accounts.

On a lighter note – I was tempted to call this piece: CISCO:NY. As I have mentioned previously, the grossly over-the-top “Ciscofication” was – to me at least – a complete turn-off.

I think Linden Lab have done themselves no favours here. It is not true that “all publicity is good publicity.” I am dismayed at the short-termism shown by Linden in going along with this farrago. Also, in handing over the source of the viewer to Electric Sheep we have the interesting situation where the open source code has been re-skinned, a few neat, new features added, and the whole thing seemingly locked up again as a proprietary product.

Well that’s what I think. So what did I get wrong?

CSI:NY SL LOL

While trying out the new OnRez viewer - already on its first patch release, which tends to suggest some very tired code monkeys - I couldn't resist bringing you this little slice (not for the squeamish):


The viewer itself seems fine - definitely some nice refinements over the standard Linden Lab version. In particular, it does seem to be smoother and faster. The rest of the changes are largely cosmetic tweaks, apart from the viewer-based browser. However, I wouldn't get too excited by this. It is a nice add-on, but is not really a full-blown browser, with tabs, and multiple windows, and history, and favourites, and... and...

CSI:NY - A First Look

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the time is nearly upon us... The time of the CSI:NY Deluge. As I write this, the programme in question is still a good 12 hours from going on air, but already the metaphorical leaves are beginning to swirl and the windows rattle. The Electric Sheep Company and CBS, along with their chums at Cisco by the look of it, have obtained a mind-boggling 416 sims to support the inworld game - and these have just opened to the public.

Before we take a look, let's just consider what we know. Of the 416 sims, half are given over to orientation, and the other half to the game itself. I believe ESC are sizing based on around 40-50 avatars/sim. This would suggest a peak of around 10,000 people in orientation and a further 10,000 actually playing the game. I understand that Linden Lab however are planning for up to 3,000 registrations per minute! Quite how these numbers can be shoehorned into the available space is anyone's guess - but there is a feeling in the current SL community of "batten down the hatches, we're in for a rough ride."

Here's a few snaps of the build:

The Orientation Zone:


Some familiar landmarks:


Some game stuff:


There's not much to say about this really. In my view, it is an interesting experiment but the lack of maturity and stability of virtual worlds like Second Life means this is happening far too early. Perhaps in another 12-18 months. We will see.

As I don't follow the show, or have any interest in it, I am not best positioned to judge the merits or otherwise of the gameplay - which looks fairly straightforward to my eye. I have to say that the in-yer-face shameless promotion of Cisco I find particularly jarring. But then, I like to be seduced by advertising, not beaten about the head with it.

CBS have finally opened their tie-in web pages here.

New York and Virtual Entertainment - it's a Meme Thing

Every so often I pick up on a common theme running across Second Life. In the past it's included "German cities" and "virtual recruitment". These themes or memes (as I prefer to misuse the term), though no doubt long in the conceptualising, seem to burst forth in a spookily synchronous fashion at a number of locations. Perhaps the hottest meme of Autumn 2007 is also the most complex that I've seen to date: New York and Virtual Entertainment.

Within the space of only a few weeks, 2 of Second Life's major construction and consulting companies - Electric Sheep Company (ESC) and Millions of Us(MOU) - will have launched 3 different models of New York to vie for your attention. Furthermore, each of these is tied in with the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry.

So let's consider the options:

New York #1
First up, we have ESC's "I Am Legend" site, designed to tie in with a movie of the same name, that is due for release by Warner Bros in mid-December. The movie trailer suggests to me a remake of the old Charlton Heston sci-fi classic(?) "The Omega Man," though it seems both are derived from a 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson. In the new movie, Will Smith plays the last surviving human in New York following the release of a rather nasty man-made virus. His only companion is his faithful pooch. Unfortunately for him, the city is also populated by mutants, who are not that keen on him having the run of the town. It's a classic "man vs mutant" tale.

As part of the marketing for the movie, ESC and Warner Bros have launched the biggest (movie tie-in) game yet seen in Second Life. It has its own orientation zone for newcomers, together with a game orientation zone where you can opt to play human, dog, mutant or mutant mutt. You should then undergo a set of training exercises before you reach the bridge that takes you over into the game zone of New York itself. Being a self-confessed coward I made my excuses and left at this point. No SLURL for this - but if you use MAP SEARCH and look for "IAL" you won't go far wrong. Oh... nice textures by the way... if a bit laggy.



New York #2
Next, and also from ESC comes the interworld game / programme / entertainment behemoth of CSI:NY. This was blasted all over the recent Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference, and launches in Second Life on 24th October. Bookies are still taking bets on the exact moment that the grid will crash. In an Omega Man kind of way, I may be the only person left on the planet who has not seen, and is not particularly interested in, CSI:NY. However, this is ground-breaking stuff for virtual worlds, where the linear narrative of the Real Life TV show intermingles with the gameplay and narrative in Second Life to produce some kind of Ultimedia extravaganza.

If you want a more complete story about this, you are best off popping along to Ugotrade, which has reams of top notch info for you.

Not only will there be orientation zones and game sims, but to make life easier for newcomers to Second Life, the Sheep are also launching their own, browser-based viewer: OnRez. Personally, I might give CSI:NY a miss - but I'm looking forward to trying the new viewer. For many of us this might solve some of issues we have with the standard Second Life viewer. A number of my colleagues, for example, are unable to run SL on their work-supplied laptops owing to issues of memory and, more often, graphics driver compatibility. This might be the solution.

New York #3
The third version of New York comes courtesy of MOU. This is a virtual version of 7 square blocks of the Upper East Side, and has been built as a tie-in with "Gossip Girls" on behalf Warner Brothers and the CW Network. This is described as a teen drama, based on a novel series of the same name. An article in wikipedia describes it thus: "Gossip Girl revolves around the lives of socialite young adults growing up on New York's Upper East Side who attend elite academic institutions while dealing with sex, drugs, and other teenage issues." Yeah...well... whatever. I did visit the site a few weeks ago, but didn't take any pictures. So I am afraid you've had to put up with this rambling narrative instead have been back and snapped these:



The show first aired in the USA on 19th September, 2007 - followed a day later by its launch in Second Life. In a blog post dated 20th September, MOU boss, Reuben Steiger, said: "[soon] we will start a very interesting social game that will take place in the city." More recently MOU announced The Gossip mobile, a heads up display that lets you to see the style, coolness rating and status of the people around you. Here's a video tutorial if you find this to be this season's must-have accessory. Hmmm...

So there you go... 3 New Yorks for you to explore, play in and reach your own conclusions.