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.

Nikko am sl

I'd be among the first to admit that asset management is not exactly a huge turn-on, but despite this I thought I should introduce you to Nikko am, whose English-language webpage includes the rather jarring strapline "global expertise, Japanese execution." While out on my regular rambles tonight - all spruced up with my fancy, new OnRez viewer - I happened upon their month-old sim in Second Life. Before I go any further, though, I should point you at their Japanese website, which is rather more relevant in that it actually shares motifs with their Second Life presence.

A bit of digging turned up this press release, in which they talk about using new media - including Second Life - as a way of talking with customers about opportunities for investment. The build itself falls into 3 zones: the game; the office block and the stage. It is my assumption that the notion of "the nest egg" seems to transcend cultural boundaries, as the game zone seems to be a matter of collecting as many chicks (feathered, that is) as possible before your time runs out. I think, though I'm not entirely sure, that if you hit the target you get a prize. I certainly seemed to hit the target and did receive something - I've just not yet checked out what it might be! If you don't fancy that, then there is a range of freebie T-shirts to peruse.

The office zone is nicely rendered and, as is the norm for Japanese companies, is full of cutesy-pie anime. Inside, the office is sub-divided to give you information on specific aspects of the company's portfolio of offerings. Here you will find the only piece of English in the place, which to my British eyes clearly states that nothing available on the site is available in the UK. On the uppermost floor is a boardroom (see picture below). I noticed that each office area had what seemed to be a rather conspicuous rubbish receptacle outside it. I first assumed this was an ashtray, but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, whatever its purpose this receptacle (oddly enough) detracted from the experience for me, even though I think it was put there purely to add "texture."

The third zone is an outdoor stage, complete with grand piano, presumably for social events. Not much more to say about that, so on with the photos!

The Office Block


Specialist Areas Inside the Office:


The Stage:


Verdict? A nice build, with a good attempt at engagement through the game and the outdoor stage, but... somehow it does not seem to me that it is going to generate much traffic. Although sharing motifs with the website, the 2 channels seem to be separate entitites, and that (to me) breaks some kind of unstated, yet cardinal, rule. I don't get much sense of engagement here either - and that is a definite requirement in Second Life.

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...

Renderglow and OnRez

Just a quickie. Thanks to TerryAnn Antonelli for passing this little tip along. If you go into the Second Life viewer's Debug Menu (aka "God Mode") you can set some rather interesting effects.

Don't know how to get into God Mode? Press CTL-ALT-D, and you will see 2 new menus at the top of the screen: Client and Server.

Now, if you go into the Client menu and select Debug Settings, an options box will appear on your screen. Either type in "Renderglow" or use the pulldown list to find it. By default it is set to FALSE, so set it to TRUE.

While you're there... check out and play with the other Renderglow options:

• Renderglowresolution
• Renderglowsize
• Renderglowstrength

You might be pleasantly surprised with the results:

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While I am on the subject of Second Life viewers, why not try out the new Electric Sheep Company OnRez viewer? It's supposed to be neater, simpler to use and yet just as fully-featured as the Linden Lab viewer. I've had a short go on it - it was released today - and it seems pretty good. If you go to the page and don't get the download screen, try hitting refresh. It worked for me.