Karyne Levy, Senior West Coast Tech Editor fir Business Insider, has penned an article about Second Life : Second Life Has Devolved Into A Post-Apocalyptic Virtual World, And The Weirdest Thing Is How Many People Still Use It. The article starts badly with the headine and on first reading doesn’t get any better when you read the body.

Now the easy thing to do here would be to don full Second Life fanboi suit and rip the article to shreds, but upon reflection there are positives and fair criticism within the article. However some of the article remains bemusing, for example Karyne says :

When I open the events tab, I see listings ranging from night clubs to pornographic classified ads and little else. Yes, avatars can get naked in the game, with special nude skins available for purchase.

Now unless something has changed, new users need to opt in to be able to see and visit adult content, so I’m a tad bemused why someone would opt in to being able to access adult content and then comment on the fact that they are seeing adult content. Obviously if things have changed and by default those who vouch that they are over 18 are automatically able to see adult content then this would be a fair point to raise.

However this article is at its heart a love story. The person who shows Karyne around Second Life met and married her husband inside and later outside, Second Life. The article is as much about the story of Karyne’s guide as it is about Second Life itself, it’s a personal article in many ways. Karyne’s guide points out that many of her favourite Second Life locations are now closed, which is something many Second Life users can emphasise with, places do come and go.

The article also delves into the issue of the new user experience. Although Karyne isn’t technically a new user, having first tried Second Life many years ago for a couple of days, she does go through the new user experience with all its flaws.

The issues raised are what to do, how to do it, where to do it and how to meet people and get involved. Part of the problem I have with the article is that it tries to cram too much in to a short visit to Second Life. Karyne tries to build, visit clubs, dance, in a rather bizarre visit to Henmations, visit a pole dancing club and she also goes sky diving.

The issue of how to earn money in Second Life is raised. Karyne’s guide talks of dancing for tips, contests such as best in as well as show and tell contests as a means to an end. Obviously being a successful content creator is a better way of doing it, but there are other options.

Second Life is not an easy platform to get into, it’s not an easy platform to find things to do in. There have been many suggestions on ways to increase user retention, many of which have been tried before but the problems of the new user experience do remain. Second Life is also not an easy platform to find things to do in, certainly not when someone is new. I would suggest Linden Lab give more prominence to the destination guide as part of the new and existing user experience as well as helping people finding the information in the basics section of the website from their inworld experience.

People do not want to login to a virtual world and then have to Alt Tab to a web page to find out what to do, it needs to be more intuitive. There is of course only so much that can be done to guide new users, but I really feel this is an area where Linden Lab fall short. Make the new user experience fun, give them quests, give them prizes, gamify the experience.

Some of the criticism of Karyne’s article has revolved around the poor quality of her screenshots. As Jo Yardley points out, you can find Flickr groups of Second Life looking good, but to achieve these more impressive results you need a higher spec machine and many Second Life users are not running those machines. There is of course the option of SL Go from Onlive, which will make Second Life look better on older spec machines, but new users are not going to know about this, maybe it should be promoted better, maybe it should come bundled with some sort of premium plus option from Linden Lab, but a new visitor is not likely to embrace SL Go on a fleeting first visit.

I do have many issues with Karyne’s article, I feel it is a tad poorly researched. Second Life is still attractive to educators, for example, yet there’s no mention of that. There’s also no mention of Orcs, it should be mandatory for all reporters to mention that Second Life is a place where you can be an Orc, the lack of publicity for the Orc market is a crying shame. Then there’s the major own goal of the article. Karyne uses the term “Post-Apocalyptic” in her title, yet she didn’t seek out out arguably the most famous post-apocalyptic location in Second Life, The Wastelands.

The Wastelands

Tired of pristine beaches and shiny, prefab homes? Set your heart on a boggy lot of abandoned, ramshackle-looking land? Check out The Wastelands, one of SL’s oldest and largest post-apocalyptic themed residential estate parcels.

Visit in Second Life

There are lessons to be learnt from this article, there are positive aspects from it that should be grasped, there’s fair and unfair criticism of the platform too. I’m far from happy with the article but I don’t think it’s wise to be too critical of Karyne, she told the story from her own perspective and published what she saw. A better approach is to highlight what she didn’t see, don’t shoot the messenger.

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