It seems like there’s a collective sense of standing up, shaking off the dust and cobwebs, taking a pause and reorganizing our thoughts. Sure, there’s that meme thing and maybe this stuff is all being twittered away, but I don’t twitter, or tweet, or whatever it is and I don’t follow them, too much data I guess, but maybe there’s a hive mind (topic for another day) and suddenly there’s a few people have the same general idea and they all start start talking at once.

Or maybe it’s that in the absence of anything new from the Lab lately we’re all playing stand-in, a sort of collective lobbying effort.

Social Platform

Anyways, a few things have raised their heads, first the back-and-forth over social norms in Second Life, which loops us back to what the world is there for, immersion and augmentation, corporations and the point of the whole thing, and what’s it going to take to open the doors a little wider to let the newbies in.

The Future of 3D Worlds and Emotional Bandwidth

Meanwhile there’s a broader discussion going on about the future of 3D worlds. Christian Renaud places his markers on integration:

Ultimately, I think we’ll see 3D virtual worlds become a feature of existing platforms and environments, be it for collaboration, training, simulation, or just socializing. This will be a good thing in that we’ll all be able to reap the benefits of this pervasiveness, and I hope that this assimilation of what is currently a standalone industry into the mainstream will coincide with widespread common identities so we have a unified virtual persona for all of these different applications.

To which Prok had a beautiful response about serendipity and emotional bandwidth, lifting off of his classic post on the Memory Palace, and says that

There isn’t any automatic engagement with 3-D just because it’s there and you can fly into it. Some people hate avatarizing; they hate games or game-like spaces; it bothers them, perhaps challenging some sense of self or equilibrium. Rather than learning something, they might be banging their head on some Linden-inspired Headbangers’ Ball like Waterhead Welcome Area or getting stuck stepping into the red circle on Help Island over and over, and never getting the HUD to advance…

He argues that Second Life is a source of perception. “So the theory goes — for me,” Prok says “That in Second Life, all of these over-filled apparati are removed or cleansed, and the Doors of Perception are open.

Why We’re Here, Why We Come, and How to Keep Us

And maybe all of this arrives because we were on one track – the brands were coming, and woe to the world. But then the brands decamped and now Giff is talking about the killer app being on cell phones. And sure, he’s right – the sweet spot right now is we’re all carrying around the potential for virtual worlds in our pockets, and there’s more iPhones in the wings, and it kind of makes you wanna kick Apple in the butt and get THEM to design a virtual world for their phones, that would knock some fresh wind into the sails.

But when you get tired of texting on those little buttons, hopefully those phone worlds will bring you to something with a slightly larger interface. In my opinion, it’s not the device, it’s how you touch the interface that’s going to matter.

Prior to the brands it was a little Be Bop society, Mirrored Flourishing, all that. It was collaboration and a gentile society and does it seem like people demand more than a beach house now, or a Greenie’s sim? Are attention spans shorter now that there’s more for our attention? Maybe we should all rush off and play casual games.

This is a virtual world after all right?

I mean – just because there’s not really that much to do, and you can’t turn around, you have an avatar!

This is Ourworld, and FoxBusiness news bought their line that it’s a lot like Second Life. The site gives users access, through an avatar, to over 100 casual games including Mozak, Jewel Quest, and, soon, Bejeweled. Players move through different challenges and earn “Flow” which allows you to change your avatar appearance. Ourworld is free for the first 12.5 hours of play, after which it will cost $6 per month.

“By combining games, a way to earn (virtual) currency and meet people, we have a virtual community that didn’t exist,” said Derrick Morton, chief executive of Seattle-based FlowPlay, noting virtual worlds like Second Life are too technical for the casual-game audience. “Casual gamers must be able to play without reading directions. Anybody can plop down (into FlowPlay) and click three buttons to play games, shop and visit (places).”

Hmm. So, easy to get into. Some fun stuff to do. But is it a 3D world if you can’t turn around and the best you can really do is play dress up and decorate? I mean….there’s only 3 animations, hardly a hot dance move (although sure, you can earn more by playing more).

Emotional Bandwidth Through Our Avatar

I’m off on this long anthropological tangent these days because of Tom Bukowski (or that’s his avatar name, he’s really Tom Boellstroff, and his book Coming of Age in Second Life is brilliant) and the idea that the gap between the virtual and the actual is the source of growth, change and potential because it is a continuum of our humanity – a humanity defined in part by techne, with virtual worlds like Second Life being the first places where we can design our own places for human sociality, but even more deeply, they are perhaps the first examples of recursive techne – we have built a tool, and the tools for building are within it.

This brings to mind the Age of Spiritual Machines and the idea of the coming singularity, the time when machines will be smarter than us. And it also opens up the door to the idea that the gap between us and our avatars will increase as our avatars become partly programmed to take care of tasks for us. Today, it’s simple stuff – our avatars can act passively even in our absence, collecting IMs, collecting Lindens, and being spammed. Eventually, we’ll be able “bot-ize” our avatars as well – assign intelligent tasks to them, mundane stuff I’m sure..negotiate a schedule maybe, answer questions, whatever, and leave them running in our absence – bringing a whole new meaning to AFK when it doesn’t equate with “unable to respond” but simply “not humanly controlled”.

But regardless of whether that’s true or whether that’s 6 months away or 3 years, the reality is it’s our avatars (our “dividuals” as Tom calls them, giving credence to the idea of alts) that “become us”. They are our interfaces to a culture. We don’t just invest time in a world, we invest time in a world because we’ve invested in our avatar, our interface with that world. I wonder – if you could float around SL invisible and without a body, if you were just sort of a camera…you couldn’t click anything, you couldn’t talk to anyone, you were the Invisible Man…would we stay? That would be the REAL way to be a tourist to Second Life and other virtual worlds, an observer but never a participant.

Our avatars are what we invest in….and the game developers know it.

Our Tabula Rasa

I spent some time playing Tabula Rasa. Hmmm. Time is a night or two. Became nearly instantly bored. But what occurred to me is why I stayed – and part of the reason I stayed, frankly, is I had spent so much time BEFORE I EVEN ENTERED the game setting up my avatar.

Simple stuff. Choose your height, musculature, hair, eyes, and clothes. Choose a name. Decide whether you want the kick ass boots or something more sprightly looking. As best as I could tell once I got in the game none of my choices made the slightest difference. But I was INVESTED in my avatar.

It was the same thing with OurWorld. Now, something that intrigued me about OurWorld is you’re supposed to be 18 to make a purchase – and you need to make a purchase once you’ve used up a certain number of game hours, so, sure, it may be aimed at kids but still, kind of makes you wonder what THEIR age verification process is. In any case, you have a choice when it comes to your avatar, all kids, but you INVEST in your choice before you even “get in the game” (or games, in this case).

Same idea – choose your basic body shape, height, adjust your size, choose your nose and mouth and a few basic things like clothes, and you’re off and running.

You’re INVESTED in who you are. And sure, the games are fun, for a little while anyways, and while you’re playing a game you can see other players in a little lobby sort of thing and I guess you’re supposed to chat away “Wow! I scored 1000 points on the Electric Sheep’s cannon game!” although I didn’t see anyone chatting so much, everyone I guess was too busy playing.

(I kid you not, by the way, the Sheep did have a game in there). CORRECTION: There are sheep here, but they’re microsheep:

Let’s Kill the Sacred Cow (Or Orientation Island Anyways)

We’re all hoping that M Linden gets his act in gear being an interface usability guru and all from his Organic days. And let’s face it, the attrition rate is way too high. And while there are far wiser minds then me who have thought long and hard about the orientation experience to Second Life, the Sacred Cow, to me, is that we NEED one.

Prok has thought long and hard about this, pointing out that the orientation:

“Was the most God-awful experience I’ve had in a long time. Say, is there anybody who does interventions in San Francisco? Cult deprogrammers? Conflict resolution experts? How about a flash mob? Or what about a good old-fashioned picket? Something has to happen to shake loose the hippie techlibs from their In-A-Gadda-Da-Secunda-Vida groove and get them to realize that this just isn’t working. It’s hopeless.”

And he’s previously put forth some great ideas about revamping the mentor program (or was it killing it, I can’t remember).

And now Grace has chimed in with the idea of assigning a bot to every newbie – someone who can walk around with them and give them help and answer questions. She proposes:

These bots can be called upon at anytime to answer questions about how to do something in Second Life. They can be stationed at common areas and Help Island, and most importantly they shape the first hour of a resident’s existence.

So what does the new Orientation experience the eyes of Grace look like? It goes something like this:

1) Pick your name, your starting “look” AND a serene place of your choosing: such as tropical, forest, desert, city park.

2) You rez and are greeted by your personal artificially intelligent tour guide, the lovely Graceimator.

And the bot idea is great because ANY kind of ongoing help that’s better than the damned help button itself which launches an incomprehensible Web site. But why bots again?

Look – the Sacred Cow is that orientation island is there to guide users through the interface. To teach them how to walk and fly and drive a car (drive a car???? WHY????)

It isn’t. What a new user wants is to LOOK GOOD. And secondly, to DO SOMETHING.

Design it from the user not from the interface. Thus my argument about the interface and the fact that sure, it’s complicated, and sure a more elegant client would be wonderful, but it’s complicated and SO WHAT?

The only reason it’s an issue is that no one wants to look like an idiot. You’re thrown down in the streets of a strange town, a strange culture, your luggage was lost in flight, you don’t remember the name of the hotel you’re staying at, and all you want to do is not LOOK like a total freak loser, and you want to find a place to get some sleep.

Get Users to Invest in Their Avatars First

One of the very first things I was told when I entered SL was “you need new hair”. (Thanks Koff). I felt like an idiot. A penniless idiot to boot. And it might have been enough to make me leave, but someone lent me 300 Lindens, took me to a mall, and hair I had!

I fumbled around. It took me an hour to put that hair on and size it right. This in ADDITION to tweaking my shape on that hopeless orientation island – I remember being on it and thinking “get me OUT of here, it’s filled with weird people who look terrible, I don’t want to be seen hanging around with a bunch of crappy looking people.”

Sure, I was crappy looking myself. But I was worried because I didn’t realize I was protected from the onlookers in the main Grid – I had this idea that I was being watched by more experienced folks, was about to be hit up by some scammer, and I didn’t want anyone to spot me for what I was – an inexperienced klutz.

It’s not orientation island that’s the problem. It’s that number one, we arrive in the world looking bad. The tools for avatar design should be OUTSIDE the world. Even better, they should embed their own little mini apps and training modules so that in addition to being able to tweak and refine our avatar appearance, the tools for moving and chatting should be embedded in that process itself.

The number one objective should be to make sure that EVEN BEFORE THEY DOWNLOAD THE CLIENT a user can look good. And embed the training within the avatar creation process itself.

Create a little micro-site. Flash-based, no download. First thing that happens – you have a blank avatar space. In order to choose a basic shape, the system prompts you with a question:

- Would you like to begin to develop your character?

And in order to begin, you need to reply YES by clicking on the only button on the screen – a little chat button in the bottom left corner. Yay! You’ve learned to chat!

Then, choose male/female (why the dichotomy I have no idea but that’s another debate) and in order to adjust the shape of your character a prompt:

- To adjust your character’s body and shape, right click and choose “Appearance”.

Yay! You’ve learned how to right click!

Well, you get the idea. Try on some new jeans, some new hair, by clicking on a little button that says “Inventory”. Or maybe you need to walk your avatar over to a little changing area where they can try on some clothes. Yay! You’ve learned to walk! And at the same time, you’ve given them some decent duds, some decent hair, and some cool clothes. A newbie should NOT look like one when they first arrive – it’s not that the rest of us won’t know…they’ll still still bang into walls now and then, and they’ll still attach a new purchase and a box will be sticking out of their stomach, but THEY won’t know.

The point is to get potential users to invest in their avatars FIRST. And through it, teach them some basics. Actually, the avatar customization process is kind of fun. Maybe people don’t even get IN the world. Maybe they just toy around with body shapes all day – and it would be kind of fun if you could EXPORT your avatar to a little Facebook widget or mySpace mini-application.

I can see all kinds of mash-ups and cut-ups. Have a contest – create the best Paris Hilton look-alike, win a prize. People don’t even need to GO to the Grid to have fun with the avatar creation process.

Our Avatars Invest Us

Games know it. Try getting into Warcraft in under 5 minutes. Before you can even enter the game you need to choose a gender, race, profession, and then make a decision about a shard. More likely than not, you don’t want to take these decisions lightly, so you start surfing around, checking out some Web sites, trying to sort out the difference between a Paladin and a Warrior. But once you’ve invested, no matter how bad that first hour is, you’ll persevere.

Which brings us to Help Island and those first builds and arrows and handy signs. Lose them all. Sure, you can have a sort of community resource center – but look, the Ivory Tower of Primitives is there…make stuff like that. Not just for newbies but for all of us. Create a deep resource center that doesn’t make you launch out to a Wiki. If someone wants to dig deep into the interface and HOW to do stuff, make sure they can get there easily. But my suspicion is that once you’ve invested in your avatar, and once you’ve learned a few basic moves through that process, you’re more likely to just want to begin DOING stuff.

Now, how you get them to FIND anything is a whole other post, and whether you auction off landing points or rate them or create some kind of easy-to-understand “tour HUD” I’m not sure. The point is, most games make you spend time on your avatar and character traits and then they drop you into the action. And in SL, the action isn’t on some useless orientation build, it’s in a club, or with the Greenies, or at Princeton or wherever. And generally, there will be someone there (especially at these newbie drop off points if it’s a robust but limited list) who’s willing to help.

For all the talk of a loss of social norms, people are still helpful. And a newbie is more likely to be a little more polite now that they don’t feel like an idiot. After all, they had a chance to choose some proper hair.