The problem with the media

Tags

bbc, media, press

To me the biggest problem SL has is PR related; it has a bad reputation.

Some of this is not SL’s or LL’s fault but something to do with lazy ‘journalists’.

And I am speaking with some experience as I get to deal with journalists in RL all the time.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Because SL has just turned 10 years old, it has received some extra media attention, I think that LL planned this very well and did a good job.

Any good reporter working on any kind of article would or should first visit a website related to the subject of the article.

In this case a good reporter would visit the Second Life website but also the Linden Lab website.

The SL website sadly has no Press section, this is maybe something LL should add there because they too know that journalists are sometimes too lazy or dim to visit the LL website as well.

With the media you should never assume that the person who picks you as their subject is one who is dedicated to their job and doesn’t mind doing a little extra work.

But once a good journalist does visit the LL website, they can easily find the press section and find the recent press releases.

And it was a very good idea to make that so called infographic and publish it there together with some snappy PR.

Journalists love this kind of stuff, it works.

And if they look a little further they can find a link to the LL flickr set with SL pictures they can use for their article.

These promotional images are not bad and also pretty recent, uploaded just a month ago.

Of course we can debate and disagree on the kind of images they have chosen and maybe we should because I can think of more interesting pictures, but at least the material is available!

This update on the Press section of LL (I don’t know if they offered images to be used by the press before last month) does seem to work.

Have a look at this article for instance; San Francisco interview with Rod Humble.
It uses one of the press package images and the journalists clearly read the press release and based his questions on it.

Some important websites also found (or were send) the press release and made good use of it.

Have a look at the Gamespot article for instance and this one on Massively.

They both pretty much copy the LL press release and use the infographic or other up to date decent screenshots.

In contrast, here is an article that came out just before LL uploaded some free to use screenshots.
It was written for PCgamesN, not a very big website, but in the world of PR, every bit of publicity counts.

You can visit the article here and you will see this horrendous illustration being used;

I’ve managed to track this picture down to 2007, but it could be even older.
Even though this article was made just a few days before LL put free to use pictures on the internet, it still shows some lazy ‘journalism’.
It may come as a shock but many reporters can’t be bothered to spend much more then a few seconds on google to do their ‘research’.

Anyway, regardless of your opinions about Second Life and Linden Lab, there is no excuse for sloppy work, so I felt I had to at least complain to that website via twitter about them using such an old screenshot.

Showing that with an article about Second Life in 2013 is unfair, wrong and it just not cricket.

But alas, it is not just a problem you can have with sloppy journalists from small websites.

The once holy BBC, broadcaster of all broadcasters, recently made this little video that does pretty much everything wrong it could do wrong and as such a big tv station, it causes lots of damage.

The title ‘Whatever happened to Second Life’, is already negative, it almost suggests that we should expect that it died years ago.

In the video we first see a backroom band that has a monthly gig in Second Life, not a bad start, but what does it have to do with the story and why does the footage of the band inworld seem to be rather old and simplistic?

40 seconds out of 2 minutes of precious airtime, we’re being told about this band, why they enjoy using it followed by more ancient footage.
Nice but what does that say about 10 years of SL?
One would almost think that the reporter used the 10th anniversary as an excuse to tell something about the band.

Then a bit of negative history about how SL had a hype that it didn’t live up to, true but not that important really because most big companies just didn’t get Second Life.

Yes this is an article in the business section so it is understandable that they look at the big companies that came and left.
But that is old news, they should have looked at LL as a company, had they bothered to visit the LL press section and found the press release they would have realised that that would be rather interesting a subject as well.
Even for people just interested in business, it is rather remarkable that LL has managed to keep SL going for over a decade, how much money it still makes, how it survived the leaving of all those big companies, how huge its virtual economy is, etc, etc.

So sometimes, it does not matter what you do as a company, there will always be reporters and journalists who are too inexperienced, lazy or dim to find their way to your press package.

They will use old screenshots and ignore your view of things.

There is very little you can do about it.

Luckily in todays world, we as users can step in now and then.

If you see a website that is writing about Second Life and being overly negative, unfair, unbalanced or even tells lies, share it with your friends and tell them to share their thoughts.

Go on, find the BBC on twitter or facebook, check out pcgamesn, trace down other websites, and tell them what they are doing wrong.

The media doesn’t have to love Second Life, they don’t have to blindly copy the story Linden Lab gives them, they can be critical or even hate it.
But they least they should do is pick up some up to date information and screenshots!

 

Another Rod Humble interview

The San Francisco Chronicle posted a rather interesting interview with Rod Humble on its site today.

You can read all of it by following this link, but I’m sharing a few extra interesting bits here;

We are continuing to invest in Second Life and also other future virtual worlds, which will be next generation. I do think virtual worlds are going to enjoy significant growth again in the future. You don’t have that level of consistent response over time unless there’s something there.

I don’t think, in principle, there’s any barrier to it becoming very, very large. Whether it will ever be as large as a social-networking site like Facebook, I don’t know, but I certainly think there’s a lot of room for growth.

 

With “The Sims,” we definitely discovered that people love watching people. When we were working on it, we used to call “The Sims” hamsters with jobs because they didn’t speak English. It’s very much a similar vibe. The No. 1 best-seller within Second Life is hair. The number one best-seller always in “The Sims” was hair.

 

The past couple of years, we’ve made it a lot easier to use. We’ve just released a significant improvement in performance. It used to be pretty laggy, and that’s gotten dramatically better, and there’s more improvements coming this year. It doesn’t sound sexy, but it’s really important.

 

Q:Is there going to be a Second Life 2?

A: It’s not going to be for a few years, but it’ll be something next gen. What we’ll call it, I don’t know. The fundamental aim is to make sure that everybody who wanted to love Second Life will love our future products.

There’s an awful lot of people who tried Second Life and for whatever reason, it didn’t resonate for them. That number is 36 million. That’s a lot of people who tried it and said “eh,” for whatever reason. My aim is to get those people (back).

 

Every indication is that Second Life will continue to thrive. I do think that virtual worlds and this ability for everybody to make their own place is going to grow significantly.

 

Please make sure you read the full article as well.

Original article by Benny Evangelista.

Different kinds of viewers

People come to SL for all sorts of reasons but we all use the same viewer.

If you are someone just curious to come take a look or if you are here to build a city and make complicated machinima with fancy light settings, we all have to first figure out the rather complicated viewer and struggle trough the very steep learning curve.

One of the reasons new visitors don’t stay is that they find SL too difficult to figure out.

The viewer has a lot of buttons and no matter what LL tries, the viewer will always remain too complicated for new people because they give us so many options.

The only option you have is to show the “advanced” tab or not.

I think it might be a good idea to make a really really basic viewer.

New people only want a few things; change their look, explore, interact and chat.

It is only after a while that they want to tweak some of the countless settings, try building and creating and make some stunning snapshots.

And countless don’t even need that, they are quite happy using SL just for chatting, shopping and exploring.

I’ve been in SL for over 3 years and still find the countless settings, different viewers and general usability of SL far from easy and smooth.

I think that it might be a good idea to create 3 different viewers or give the current viewer 3 different settings;

• Basic
• Advanced
• Expert

The Basic viewer is perfect for the first time visitor to SL, it allows you to modify your avatar, walk around, chat, shop, etc.

Nothing fancy, very few options, just the things you really need to get around in SL.

For most people this will be more then enough during their first explorations of SL and to many it will more then they’ll ever need anyway.

No building tools, no dozens of tabs, no millions of options.

All wrapped in a simple, game like package that is easy to figure out.

 

When you have been in SL for a while and decide that you are ready for more settings, play with windlight, add gestures, tweak your camera settings, of just explore the countless options, you ‘upgrade’ to the Advanced viewer.

Perhaps it is just a button in the basic viewer that simply adds some of the many buttons.

 

Finally, when you are ready to become creative and want to start building something, you move on to the Advanced viewer, this adds the building tools.

 

Because remember, all these things are now available to people who enter SL for the very first time, who have no idea where they are or what they are doing.

They need to find out how to just go from A to B but are confronted with lag analyzing tools, prim builders, rez permissions, etc.

One of the main problems SL has had since the early days is keeping new visitors.

Most people who try SL do not come back, I think the complicated viewer is one of the reasons.

Have a look at some of the games out there that also use virtual surroundings such as GTA, Mafia, Assasin’s Creed, etc.

They have a very simple ‘viewer’ that enables you to walk around, use a car, shoot someone, etc.

If SL’s first experience is more like that, people would be less intimidated.

Look at “the Sims”, lots of complicated options (including building and creating) but all compacted in a nice easy to understand navigation bar with big shiny buttons.

SL does not want to be a game, but to keep those new visitors staying a bit longer, it may be a good idea to make it feel more like a game.

If you want more, the viewer can be upgraded and you can join the rest, if just the basics will do, you don’t want to be showered with options you’ll never use.

What is Second Life and why do I use it

Second Life is a virtual online world build by its users.
You can build and do pretty much anything you want to do.
Imagine you are playing a computer game made by you for you.
Your imagination can run wild there.
Not just can you build whatever you want, you can also explore the worlds other people build and interact with their avatars.

It is like walking around inside other peoples imagination.

Many users will create a little paradise where they can chat with friends and escape reality for a few hours.
You will find that many build deserted paradise islands, huge villas and walk around looking like models.
Many will spend much of their time taking part in virtual…. well… ehm… hanky panky.

But to someone like me, obsessed with history, the ability to create virtual surroundings immediately made me think of recreating the past.

The idea of being able to walk down Unter den Linden in 1929 and see a Zeppelin fly over, to sail the ocean on The Normandie, to watch searchlights over London in 1940, to visit the town Vincent van Gogh lived, to explore a 13th century castle or go shopping in a 17th century market place is a very exciting one.
Not just for my personal pleasure but because I want to share my passion for the past with others.
I want to make people realise how interesting history can be, I want them to learn from it or just get infected with my enthusiasm.

History is great!

So when I joined ‘Second Life’ over 3 years ago I didn’t expect to like it and I didn’t.
I am not interested in the things most people care about, fashion, chatting, dancing to modern music, etc.
And that is what you will see most in this virtual world, because that is what most people care about in the real world as well.
Combine that with a rather high learning curve and you will understand why I almost gave up.

But once I got to chat with a few people there and realised that perhaps this silly modern internet thing could help me experience a little bit of time travel, I got excited.
Not much later did I start The 1920s Berlin Project.
And now we have a neighbourhood recreated there where you can walk around and get an idea of what 1920s berlin could have been like.
Visit cabaret at the Eldorado, dance the charleston in a Tanzlokal, listen to real 1920s German music, have Kaffee on Unter den Linden, watch Greta Garbo at the local cinema.
Of course it is nothing compared to the real thing, but as far as pixels go, it turned out to be a rather interesting experiment.
After all, it introduces up between 50 and 80 people to the story of Weimar Berlin every day, people from all over the world who may never be able to visit the real Berlin, who may never have heard of how exciting the city was.
People who learn something even if they didn’t plan on it 😉
What a great educational tool it turned out to be!

So come and give Second Life a try.
Yes I know, the beginning will not be easy, you will be confused, it demands a lot from your computer…. but if you try and if you make it…. give me a call and I’ll gladly take you to Berlin.

The Schnaps is ready!

 

Another blog

I joined the virtual online world of Second Life in 2007, didn’t like it much but tried it again in 2009.

This time I discovered the lovely 1930s inspired Flashmans sim and met Sonatta Morales with whom I talked about the amazing potential Second Life had for history lovers as us and I brought up the idea of starting something with a 1920s Berlin theme.

The folks at Flashmans were excited and before I knew it, I, as a total noob, had started building my own slice of virtual 1920s Berlin.

I needed all the help I could get and luckily Mila Edelman who was interested in opening a store there came to my assistance.

As our ideas were rather similar we decided to become partners.

Over the years The 1920s Berlin Project grew into something huge and a fantastic community grew around it.

Brilliant and amazing people have joined and played their part in making it the success it became today and also becoming my friends, people like Sein Loire, Zeno McAuley, Cuthbert Helendale and Sonatta of course who has stuck around since those early days and now runs the Eldorado bar, the cabaret heart of our city.

I also met Draxtor Despres when he made a video about Berlin.

We soon realised that we share a lot of opinions when it comes to virtual reality and Second Life and he asked me if I wanted to do a podcast with him.

This has let to lots of exciting new opportunities and connections.

I’ve interviewed Linden Lab CEO’s and had them hang around in my bar but I also get to hear exciting news now and then.

So here I am, a virtual time traveler, writing about what I think about all this, the future of virtual reality, Second Life and ready to start many other projects.

Berlin is just the start.