Continuing on the subject of Second Life’s reputation amongst people who haven’t used it and in the media, I wanted to ask my readers a few questions.
I base my ideas on this topic on my own personal interaction with friends, family and strangers on the internet and on what I read in articles and stories written by journalists.
People seem to have several opinions on Second Life that are not true or that at least could be a bit more balanced.
First I’d like to collect a few of these opinions and then I want to hear from you what you have experienced.
Opinions people have about Second Life;
- Strange place where perverts hang out and do weird things.
- No longer exists.
- Shallow game where people dress up avatars and just chat.
- Virtual world but with 2007 quality graphics.
- Flying penises everywhere.
I am sure there are more, feel free to let me know.
As far as I am concerned these are misrepresentations, although partly true, they are not completely valid.
Some are easy to disprove, sure SL CAN look pretty bad and does look horrendous if you’re exploring a badly build sim with an old computer, but there are plenty of stunning pictures available that show SL can also look pretty stunning.
Most people probably don’t have an opinion about Second Life at all, it was something big a decade ago and has very rarely popped up in the media since.
There isn’t a lot of advertising for it and you don’t bump into it very much unless you look for it.
So it is quite understandable that some people will say respond with “What is Second Life?” when asked about it.
But when I started using Second Life and publically mentioning it amongst friends on facebook and in personal chats and even last night during a party, I generally get some of the comments above.
Everyone seems to at least remember it and with generally some negative connotations.
The media does not help of course, when SL turned ten so many articles brought up the negative stories without mentioning that some of them were really old, and as a cherry on top, many used 2009 screenshots without mentioning the date.
So, my question to you is, how do people respond when Second Life is mentioned?
Does SL still have a bad reputation, or after all these years, does it have no reputation at all?
Is this something LL should fix, something we should help fix or something that will eventually just sort itself out?
I see a big problem with SL’s reputation, but perhaps I’m the only one?
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
I don’t think you’re the only one who has noticed SL’s less than favorable reputation. We live in an age where online social interaction with people you don’t know in real life is still fairly tabooed. I’ve only read excerpts of Coming of Age in Second Life, but I feel that perhaps if more people took the time to read things like that (or even this blog), they would begin to humanize SL to a much greater extent and view it as a very valid form of identity and interaction instead of an extension of society’s sexual deviations.
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“Second Life is for people who have no real life”
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Yes that is a common one, mostly thanks to the name of our virtual world.
I wish they thought of something more exciting and futuristic like Virtuality or something like that.
That is why I want to share information on famous interesting people using Second Life, not (just) to show off, but to make people realise at least some of us have a real life as well.
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Most people ask: “Does SecondLife still exist?” And then I show them my machinimas and they nod and say: “Interesting…”
LOL
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Second Life is (quotes from Real Life):
1. a place for strange cyber sex
2. a platform for people that do not have the ability to socialize with normal people
3. a forum for the worst of people (griefing being only the tip of the iceberg)
4. a software chat system for folks who like virtual paper dolls
5. a waste of time
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When I talked to a friend recently about Second Life, he asked me if the graphics are still that bad.
I answered that it is all user created content. Just like in the physical world there are ugly places and very beautiful places.
I think many people are not aware that it is all user created content. When I tell them that people like you and me can build this stuff, they are amazed. Maybe this aspect of SL should be communicated better in the new user experience. I myself found SL very boring when I joined in 2007. Just looking at stuff and exploring seemed not very exciting to me. But the day that I got my first 512m² I got addicted. I built my own little castle. I still have a picture of it. It makes me smile just looking at it and I proudly think “Hey, I built this!”. It took only hours till I run out of prims and upgraded to 1000sqm, 2 weeks later 2000sqm and so on till I got my first sim about 3 month later and built a pretty impressive futuristic 2500 prim mall all by myself with 40 shops that were all rented, a club with daily live concerts and a roof top go cart track. I never created anything in my life and I hated art in school. So Second Life gave me for the first time the feeling that I can be creative.
So instead of pushing newbies in the consumer role, we should push them in the creator role. That is how to get them hooked. Once they have their own creations and property in SL, they will always come back. That is why I even think it would be wise to give away a limited amount of free land for a certain amount of time to newbies, just to get them hooked and to make them want more. Successful drug dealers make it exactly that way;)
So for example. A newbie can make an optional tutorial to learn building in SL. Once they successfully complete the tutorial, they will get 512sqm of land for one year for free. Maybe with the restriction that they have to log in at least once per month. I suppose still 50% of people will not come back and another 40% will only come back that one time per month. But the remaining 10% will start creating and will soon want a bigger parcel, which they then have to pay for. At the bottom line this will be a big win financially for LL.
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Here in Italy the media no longer pays attention to Second Life. Most people don’t know about it or think it no longer exist.
Your post reminded me something: the EU has web pages to debunk euromyths, mostly to deal with factoids published by tabloids in the UK ( http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/index_en.htm and several others). I think it would make sense to do the same for Second Life. There is lots of content that could be linked or published with permission on that page, i.e. Drax’s files.
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I’ve seen a lot of advertising for SL by Linden Lab. Various genre blogs, game blogs, but even news blogs like the Chicago Trib and Washington Post, so promotion is going on.
What I perceive of those who stick with SL are meta-game types, who use the sandbox tools to create their own games. People think of games as a dirty word or escape but there have been several articles recently that are very positive about gaming. If you make __fill in blank__ (clothes, animation overrides, vehicles, etc.) and sell them, you are participating in a business simulation. If you build an art sim, you aren’t playing a game but if people visiting start roleplaying there, you have facilitated that.
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Most SL advertising is directed to users though, it isn’t general advertising for everyone.
It shows up on your screen if you’ve googled related subjects.
It probably doesn’t show up if you never know anything about SL or google it.
LL needs to reach people who aren’t using SL.
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Google is pretty smart about targeting who sees ads. The advertiser has a choice to use or not use Google’s recommended keywords. With good keyword selection LL can target anyone interested in the Sims, Civilization, Minecraft, or generic computer games, 3D modeling, and on and on.
Anyone even coming close to revealing an interest in a computer game or virtual anything is likely to see an ad for SL.
The biggest problem group of people remembering SL is bloggers and entertainment reporters. I suspect the majority of people on the planet have no idea what SL is.
Good promotional ads with a positive spin can target the general population. But, corrective advertising needs to target the media types. It takes a much more striking point to reach the more jaded reporters that deal in hype everyday. The Drax files are excellent for both purposes. I suspect and marketing information and studies indicate media types will need an ongoing barrage of positive material to change their thinking.
A major problem is in explaining what SL is so that new people are arriving with unrealistic expectations. As yet we have no good, simple, easily understood explanation of what SL is. I see lots of people that have a suggestion and clear idea of what they think SL is. But, their idea only applies to them.
Without knowing the person we are targeting, we cannot tailor information for them. In marketing there are ways around that. All of the methods used have to do with identifying groups, their nature, interests, preferences, and selectively targeting them with things thought to appeal to that group.
The result is a multi-faceted marketing campaign. As people see it there are always groups that do not fit into the targeted group for which an ad was targeted. They believe, based on what they saw, it is a dumb campaign. Only when we can see the stats do we know if it is working.
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I completely agree that SL has a reputation problem, and quite possibly an image problem as well.
I once mentioned that I liked spending time in SL at an interview. Needless to say that it didn’t seem to go down to well and it partially contributed to me not getting the job…
I believe that the reputation problem mainly stems from the cybersex and werdo aspects previously mention. In short, there is – or has been – way too much cybersex in SL. Or perhaps the real issue here is that bad mainstream media publicity has perhaps focused too much on the negative aspects of SL, such as the sex, and not focused so much on the more positive, creative and social, aspects of SL. But then again I was under the impression that the mainstream media no longer has any interest in SL? Could this not be the problem too?… As you say Jo, LL need to reach out to people, and the only way to do that is by positive publicity.
One of the reasons why cybersex has flourished in SL, other than the fact that sex sells, is due to LL’s general policy of not interfering in, or shall we say a reluctance to get involved or Police, the day to day activities of SL’s users. Many years ago, before I joined SL, I understand that LL decided to ban gambling in SL, yet most clubs in SL still seem to have sploders in them? Are they not a form of gambling? Perhaps it’s time that LL started to clean up SL by more actively Policing user activity, though I get the impression that this may already be happening.
Of course SL has made other mistakes in the recent past that have put off and alienated some users, such as the Viewer 1 and 2 debarcle…
Having said that though, a lot of positive stuff happens in SL. As someone said to me recently at an SL Christmas party, “Where else could you meet all these different people from all these different countries?”
Focus on the positive I say, and effectively police the negative.
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I made it clear to most of my family and friends that I log into Second Life. When telling them, I usually get a mixed bag of replies which are not ALL negative, but it’s sometimes obvious that they took the information from negative sources. For example: “That’s the game where you can have sex, right?”, “Wasn’t there a show, documentary, article, etc. where a wife left her husband and kids to pursue a relationship with a man she knew through SL?” or just simply, “What can/do you do?”. I’m guessing I’m not bringing anything new to the table but those were the responses I received.
Aside from that, do I think Second Life’s reputation has a major affect on the amount of people who enter/stay in SL? No.
When describing anything, whether it be a movie, book, show, video game, etc., even though someone may describe it negatively, a rational person may think, “I’ll keep that opinion in mind but, I’ll see for myself on whether or not if I like it instead of that person or to see if what they’re saying is actually true.”
Now, do I think some of SL’s sexual themes have a part in keeping players from staying/joining? Yes!
I’m with Ebbe on letting teens in with SL. In my opinion, what makes something truly “good” is something that’s adaptable and that many people can enjoy. Though I’m not saying that there are only a a small amount of adult users when it comes to the majority of people who use/play online games/communities but, teens make up a HUGE amount people who are also involved with virtual worlds just like SL.
I think if there was a way to somehow censor the material, rather than just seperating it into A sims, and not totally banning it all together, we may find a solution. However, I have no clue on how I would go about that.
“Well you only see that stuff if you look for it.”
In most cases, you’re right.
Looking for pixel bumping in SL might as well be the same thing as looking for pornography through the internet but it’s not. Through the internet, YOU choose where to browse. In SL, it’s the exact same except…there’s other users. Someone can easily walk by in a G rated sim with their colossal rack/schlong bouncing free in the virtual wind and all you wanted to do was to build a nice chair, but no, you were definitely looking for smut, obviously.
Do you really want a friend, or worse, a family member to see THAT when introducing them to SL. If it’s that easy for someone to do that, I don’t think it would help your case on saying that a majority of people who log into SL aren’t perverts/weridos (even though the obvious answer, that being, you can’t judge a WHOLE group of people based on a handful but, oh well.) To make matters worse, you would always have to be on you guard while looking out for mature things such as that when showing them around.
Also, in no way am I’m shaming or belittling the mature themes that make up SL or the people who participate in them. It’s just something not everyone want’s to see.
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This is a very interesting point and discussion. I might actually do a posting off this myself to give it more thought.
Like others here I’ve had negative experiences with people and SL. And it’s much of what others have posted.
In RL among other things I work in communication handling negative news. And Indigo’s suggestion about debunking myths is generally a good one. Though I would focus less on answering the negative claims (and thus repeating them) and focus instead on highlighting the positives in something like a “Second Life: what you don’t know” campaign.
One thing that I think contributes to this problem is gamers trying to mitigate their negative stereotypes by throwing Second Life/Virtual Worlds under the bus. (“You might think I’m wasting my time playing games but the real problem is those people in Second Life”).
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Pingback: Second Life advertising hits new low | Jo Yardley's Second Life
OMG I agree with you 100% BAD BAD REPUTATION! I am not even allowed to play the game (Fiance hates it) due to its reputation! if you look up second life (like he did) all you see is game addiction forums, BDSM type stuff, and child Avi crap. Does not look good at all. Don’t get me wrong I love SL, but its reputation is really a bad 1. I think if there was less ummm “openly kinky sex” on SL then its reputation could maybe have a chance. After-all that’s not what SL is all about, I love to shop on SL and build that is why I play the game, oh yes and to explore. I mean it is simply amazing that virtual world, but ugh its not gonna win anyone’s good opinions that doesn’t play and love it already that’s for sure. I was just thinking about starting a “good” forum about SL because I couldn’t find any until now. Great minds think alike. Great job.
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Have they integrated Okulus with Second Life yet? We will probably see a resurgence of virtual worlds once everyone has VR helmets.
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Oculus works in SL and have been for a while now.
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Pingback: Should we worry that Second Life is associated with adult content? Google says: No | Canary Beck
The game has an very interesting concept, but the entire game looks horrible, terrible graphics and even poor performance, on top of it beyond complicated gameplay, you need to study this for a month to figure out how to play this game. We are in 2017, strange that no other company did not pick up on the idea of Second Life and create an modern, up-to-date social game.
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How SL looks depends a lot on the power of your computer, internet connection and where in SL you go as everything here is build by amateurs.
Some places look great, some awful, some look like they haven’t been updated in a decade… because they haven’t.
On top of that most users don’t figure out how to upgrade their settings for a long time.
This is what SL CAN look like;
It isn’t a game so there is nothing to figure out there, the learning curve to changing your avatar and building stuff is high but that is to be expected, after all, there is no virtual place anywhere that will allow you so much freedom and so many options.
You can’t have those and keep everything basic at the same time.
And the same company, Linden Lab, is, as we speak, creating a new VR world.
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