Linden Lab has been hard at work redesigning the user experience for Second Life, and its recent launch of Second Life “Home”, a perk for premium account holders, is an exercise in simplicity and elegance that had me remembering the torture of my first plot of land, the frustration of buying my first virtual house, and the agony of understanding parcel borders and rez boxes.
I’ve been a premium account holder since I first logged in to Second Life. But I’ve never once, well, understood WHY. There was some kind of monthly stipend of Lindens, the right to buy Mainland and access to support or something, but then I buy my own Lindens on the exchange and own estates and don’t have trouble getting support and only ever rented on Mainland rather than buying parcels directly. Having my own little house doesn’t change that – I suppose I keep my premium account out of a sense of nostalgia or something, or waste, or maybe because I believe I SHOULD pay to be in Second Life, which is a kind of ridiculous notion, but there you have it. Maybe they need some kind of ’super-premium’ perk like, um, inventory cleaning services or something.
Introducing a product like Second Life Home has all kinds of implications for the in-world market: it competes with in-world land owners who rent parcels, it siphons users off of existing Mainland, and it cuts into “new home” sales.
But having said all that I applaud the move, primarily because it was executed so beautifully. And if new users can be made aware of the ease with which they can have their own little piece of real estate in Second Life, maybe they’ll stay a little longer, and for all the furniture makers out there the program my open up a nice little stream of new customers.
Participation in the program started with an e-mail announcing I was eligible to be part of the “Home” program (in beta). Clicking on ‘yes’ or whatever took me to a Web site where, with a few clicks on ONE page I had myself a new home. I simple had to browse four ’styles’ (modern, chalet, Shire or elf or fantasy or whatever you want to call it, and Japanese), name my home, and bingo, I was done. All within less than 30 seconds (or longer if I wanted to more thoroughly browse the photos of the standard houses).
My initial reaction was that the builds weren’t, well, top of the line. Simple stuff. Fairly common looking actually. But on reflection I thought that this wasn’t a bad thing. The home could become the backdrop for all the stuff I could put IN it, and the experience was enhanced with little pings to go shopping.
The icing on the cake was an instant e-mail with a SLURL and, something I thought was a very nice feature (whether you use it or not) the ability to share the SLURL with Facebook and Twitter – while not everyone will want to do this, the Lab is being very progressive in embedding social media as a way to create a more viral ’sharing’ of Second Life experiences. Finally, Governor Linden dropped me a landmark in-world.
While Linden Lab is clearly focused on changing the new user experience, this is also leading to a de facto re-engineering of the way that land and other goods are purchased and will change the culture of Second Life. With more consumer-focused branding and lots of “buy” buttons everywhere, the Grid is moving towards a more packaged and more purchase-oriented environment.
What users learn when they go through the pain of buying their first parcel of land and trying to rez their first house also created benefits: more deeply understanding how SL works, and more inter-connections between people, as they ask each other for help, create real estate businesses oriented to new users, generally creating a sense of collaboration and sharing. However, the attrition that ALSO results from this, from frustrated newcomers not knowing how to get ’situated’ in the world and a wide and varying number of practices for doing so may be mitigated by the Lab’s focus on the user experience (at the expense of the existing culture). Whether the possible increase in users and home owners outweighs these changes remains to be seen – Second Life is clearly becoming more of a ‘packaged good’ and is losing some of that frontier feel, the one where we all had to just kind of stumble along and figure it out.
But as a user experience, Second Life Home is a stellar success.
It was a super duper easy process and very easy to understand. I was through the wizard in an instant, had plurked, facebooked, twittered my link and logged into have a landmark to my new home passed to me by Governor Linden.
I think it is a great idea to have a place to put a few things, change clothes etc and chill with a few friends without stressing out because you are new.
I know when I was new, I just wanted a place to rez in privately and take off exploring from there.
I never really spent much time at all in my first home because I was racing around looking at all the other cool stuff.
When I had learned more about how it all worked I sold my First Land, put that money into a larger piece of land and before ya know it, I was buying and selling land like crazy.
It was not my goal in SL to follow that course. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I think that is why this program is a good idea. It gives new residents a base to explore from and learn at their own pace. They will get that larger parcel when they discover what they’d like to do,
Well, aside the problem with LL now competing even more with the land businesses in SL, I guess I had a misunderstanding after the first announcement. I thought this was about an additional premium benefit, on top of the tierfree 512sqm. Looks like I was wrong – now premium members who already use their 512sqm and want to have a “Home” will either have to sell their old holdings or pay more. Should have expected that, the only things LL introduces on top of something else are fees and limits.
Totally agree, the interface is very good, one of the best things they’ve ever done – but the houses are a complete anti-climax, I didn’t bother getting one. I doubt landlords have much to worry about, I think this will do what it’s supposed to do and boost land sales/rentals in the longer term.
Daniel – I won’t disagree about the Lab comment generally, but I don’t see in this instance why it’s a problem. The program is meant to encourage first time land/home ownership. If you already own a plot on Mainland, this probably won’t be of that much interest. Which doesn’t solve the riddle of the premium account, maybe, but might encourage the premium/new user to settle down a little.
Eris – the house wasn’t so bad actually, had nice texturing and a nice feel. The row housing approach to placement left me a little cold, but I don’t think it’s meant to be much of a ‘community’ and more of a place to TP in with friends or whatever before you head off for somewhere else. I keep looking at it through a new users eyes – will be interesting to hear any data about retention and uptake.
By a stroke of luck Dusan was chosen as a tester!Nice!
And if I’ve unserstood the region and the place cannot be chosen by the Premium holder!
LL as lotto!
Stroke of luck, my ass.
Your receipt of this invitation — when your 512 m is already taken by your own home on the mainland — indicates that the Lindens not only “randomly” sent out invitations to those with “spare 512″ as they claimed, but deliberately sent it to some top insider bloggers like yourself.
You’re definitely on the VIP Linden blogger list with a statement like this, “But having said all that I applaud the move, primarily because it was executed so beautifully.”
Beautiful execution is all that matters, Dusan?! Really.
And the social and economic consequences? They don’t? And…just an opportunity for more…sculpty furniture? Out of what survives the Social Darwinism of the Xstreet moves?
BTW, the reason Dirk Talamasca has an extra 512 available for his, uh, random invitation is because he pulled it out of the SL Public Land Preserve which he formerly supported for ages because I de-friended him. Why did I defriend this actual non-friend who I used to at least keep as a contact? Because the number of well-documented cases of sexual harassment by him of people, including friends, just piled up too high to continue.
@Prok…Amen to your old *ex friend* Dirk being less warm and fuzzy to some.
I watched him scoping out my pixel breasts at a Sutherland dam meeting a few weeks ago while he castigated me for alting at the HIs.
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Every idea by Linden these days is looking for more money in their pockets, why can’t they actually fix the broken things on their platform? I know this is a big company that can work on many things, but it seems like they are working on everything BUT stabilizing the grid. I don’t want a crappy 512 house. Work on keeping the existing customers or else there won’t be any left for your newbs to come in and hang out with.
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