Linden Lab have long been criticised since they opened Second Life up to potentially more customers in 2006 and allowed people free unsubscribed access, some of the criticism was justified as it did open the doors to some unsavoury types who only wanted to cause trouble, but it is also a model that gives people greater choice than a straight subscription model does.
Four years on and Lord of the Rings Online and Pirates of the Burning Sea have both moved away from the subscription model, to allow people free access to a point, while addons and premium options can be purchased. Champions Online will move to a similar model in Q1 2011, which must all in some ways please those at Linden Lab who took the decision to move to this model, the cold harsh reality being that payment and registration are barriers to entering a new world and limiting how much freedom one can potentially have, puts people off at the door.
The downside of that is that people who don’t really have much commitment to the cause, come and go in no time at all, without a payment model, people are less likely to feel an affiliation with a world, even if that affiliation is one that leads to complaint and frustration. However everyone can’t become World of Warcraft and it’s sensible for titles to try different models.
The truth however is that it’s not so much the models that decide the success or failure of a virtual world, it’s performance, interest and numbers, numbers are extremely key in multiplayer worlds, Second Life without social interaction becomes nothing more than pretty fluff and that won’t pay the bills and yet, despite the fact that Second Life has been quite successful, it still has a stigma attached to it that puts people off from joining and makes corporations wary of participation, the bottom line really being that the corps need to grow the hell up.
Facebook, which is another free to enter enterprise has managed to get Electronic Arts to sign a five year strategic partnership, as reported by Joystiq:
“Electronic Arts’ social gaming plans march ever onward as the publisher signs a five-year “strategic relationship” with Facebook. The agreement will find Facebook Credits becoming the exclusive payment method in EA games on the platform. EA, under its Playfish brand (obtained for $300 million), currently has two of the top 10 Facebook games in Pet Society and Restaurant City.”
Facebook has of course got a lot more users than Second Life, but there’s no reason really why Second Life shouldn’t be able to tempt the likes of Electronic Arts into a strategic partnership with games at their heart, they could even tender for work via Philip Rosedale’s Love Machine. People do play games in Second Life, indeed it’s a richer environment than Facebook, with more potential for social interaction via a game and yet, Second Life, despite leading in many areas and having the potential to be so much more, lags behind in the appeal stakes.
Some of this is of course due to Second Life being less than friendly to new people and the issues of what to do once a new resident arrives, still looming large. However the potential of Second Life remains massive and the corps shouldn’t forget that, there’s so much they could do in Second Life whilst engaging with residents, they could actively promote their wares, all too often the corps in Second Life have taken a stand offish approach and appear to be scared of being sullied by association, it’s a silly attitude to take when you consider the sort of content that can be found on the Internet at large.
The microtransaction model, that Linden Lab proved was viable, is one that many in the future will take advantage of, but with Second Life the model is already up and running and has thousands of people involved, getting someone to pay via Linden dollars for services and goods has been a success, so why are corps scared to take advantage of the model here?