Amazon Offer Hits The Buffers

Well the Amazon offer was a nice idea, I’ll give Linden Lab credit for that. Alas it has ran into a few, shall we say, teething problems. A few things have came to light over the weekend. One being that Second Life had apparently expanded to Amazon in December. Inara Pey has some thoughtful commentary on the issue, pointing out that there were issues with how this was being marketed on Amazon full stop. Inara comments on the lack of information about what Second Life is.

Tateru Nino is also critical of the way this was marketed, with Second Life being listed as a game. Now the question then arises, what category should Second Life be in if not game and as someone else on Tateru’s blog post points out, Linden Lab are using Amazon game connect, that’s where the linking of your Second Life account to your Amazon account comes into play. Amazon game conncect is aimed at free to play games who want to sell digital goods, so it’s the right fit. However whereas Tateru’s criticisms may initially look different to Inara’s, further reading shows they are not, Tateru is basically criticising the lack of information about what Second Life is too and points out that in terms of expectations, listing Second Life as a game is going to lead to people having different expectations as to what they will find when they enter Second Life.

There have of course been other issues, one of which has been that people were able to link more than one avatar to their Amazon account and therefore receive multiple bonus payments in Linden Dollar form. The way to deal with this going forward is for us to have a master account for Second Life, but I’ve blogged on the benefits of the master account before.

Another issue that came to light, and the one that disappointed me most, is that game downloads are only available in the US:

An Imagae Should Be Here
Amazon US only

I found this disappointing not because I couldn’t get my bonus payment, but because I really like the idea of Second Life expanding to Amazon and it would have been nice to see this working. However this is an Amazon restriction, not a Linden Lab one, really Linden Lab should have pointed this out in the blog post. I know people would still have been miffed about it and moaned but the restriction exists, so pointing it out really wouldn’t have been damaging. I’m not sure why Amazon have this restriction in place and really, it’s something Amazon need to sort out, there’s no such restriction on Steam.

I’m not overly critical of what Linden Lab are trying to do here, indeed I’m quite positive about it. I’ll blog about speculation and where this might be heading later, but it was a nice idea, that has unfortunately gone tits up but I’m not going to criticise Linden Lab for trying something new or in trying to extend Second Life’s reach.

I do agree with Tateru and Inara about expectation management and lack of information, but I also have to give Linden Lab credit for experimenting in other areas. Hopefully this can be polished up and become a useful avenue for the platform.



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