Linden Lab Must Stop Underselling Second Life
Linden Lab has an extensive history of launching their marketing and advertising campaigns for Second Life to mixed reviews, and their most recent attempts have been no different.
Back in 2009, Linden Lab launched a new campaign on the Second Life website featuring the following ad:
At the time it was launched, I considered this ad to be a major upgrade from the stale, low quality past promotions and I was thrilled that it finally showcased a visually stunning Second Life experience, but others argued that the experience painted by this video was unrealistic and featured impossible instantaneous shopping experiences and interactions without gestures or animations. Regardless, I have since then comfortably sent individuals who were completely unfamiliar with Second Life to the SecondLife.com website and/or shared this ad with them in order to give them a general view of SL. That is until last week.
Last week, I noticed Linden Lab had started revamping the SecondLife.com website with new photos and ads. Apparently, according to Sl.com, Second Life is about vampires.
To be fair, the website also showcases the new Linden Realms game and another female avatar, but the first thing you see is this vampire ad.
I didn’t complain when Linden Lab came out with it’s vampire based Google AdSense campaign as I’m sure it’s a popular theme and I wouldn’t even mind them using it as a secondary display on the webiste, but featuring it alone as the dominant first thing you see on SecondLife.com is sending a distorted and incorrect message about Second Life.
In addition, the image (as well as the other main images you can scroll through) is of poor quality. Not only are the images not visually stunning, but they fall far short of what Second Life alone (without retouching) can achieve. The images also feature avatars in stiff, rigid, and unnatural poses with blank stares that are too lifeless and dead for the vampire to pull off. These images are not at all reflective of the potential of the Second Life platform (as-is) which is capable of producing brilliant, emotion evoking, photorealistic images with striking lighting, shadows, and depth of field, yet they are what potential users will first encounter.
Along with these new web images, Linden Lab has newly debuted the below machinima campaign.
This campaign is much closer to portraying a wider picture of SL, but it is still a far stretch from what Second Life is visually capable of producing. However, while the biggest complaints about the video are that it misrepresents Second Life, the complaints refer again to things like the animated interactions and not the visual quality.
With Second Life constantly being compared graphically to popular games I would think that Linden Lab would want to show Second Life in the best light, right?
So then, why is Linden Lab underselling Second Life and why does the community want it to?
As my guests and I mentioned on last week’s MetaReality Podcast, many of the advertisements put out by the leading game developers (for games that Second Life is often compared to) aren’t exactly unretouched screen captures.
Take for example this “The Sims 3” ad below:
Last time I played “The Sims 3” it didn’t look anything like that. The avatars weren’t nearly as realistic or cleanly modeled and I certainly don’t remember that street view. Maybe it’s just that one ad. Here’s another ad for “The Sims 3”:
Wow! In “The Sims 3,” I can “create EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED?” It even, in a way, sounds like it could be an ad for Second Life even though it is much more limited and predefined than Second Life.
Maybe “The Sims” is a bad example. At this point, everyone knows what “The Sims” is like, right? Check out this ad for one of the hottest games this year, “Skyrim.”
Whoa, I knew Skyrim had amazing graphics, but real human actors and live action! Why doesn’t my version of Skyrim look anything like this?
Advertising is an industry that has been built on selling a vision or dream rather than just a product. While my “Sims 3” and “Skyrim” game play experiences weren’t really anything like their ads, I enjoyed them for what they were and generally understood that before purchasing them. On the other hand, my Second Life experience may not be exactly like the ad because not everything is so easy or instantaneous, but I honestly find my Second Life experience to be better than its ad.
The ad can’t explain that when I’m in Second Life, I enjoy fashion and shopping even though it’s not instantaneous, and that even though I don’t really experience seamless animations I am so immersed in the moment that a *high-five* or *cheers* in chat feels the same. The ad doesn’t quite portray the endless possibilities.. in my case, it doesn’t begin to cover the businesses I’ve built, the organizations I’ve helped, the issues I’ve brought awareness to, the once in a lifetime experiences I’ve had, the friendships I’ve made, etc. The ad doesn’t tell you that you too can discover the explainable magic of Second Life.
So I ask again:
Why is Linden Lab underselling Second Life and why does the community want it to?
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Linden Lab is underselling Second Life because they don’t know what they have. They see a billion dollar IPO from Zynga and all of a sudden SL is about virtual pets. Twilight movie comes out and all of a sudden its a place to be a vampire. The problem with this is that these specific things they pick and choose label Second Life. If I see an ad for vampires and Second Life, and I am not into that kind of thing, any future mentions of SL would conjure up that it is used to role play as vampires. That doesn’t mean that SOMEONE shouldn’t market vampire roleplaying, just not Linden Lab.
Second Life is used differently by everyone for their own purposes, that’s the brilliant beauty of it all, and yet they are trying to herd the sheep through one door.
That is why Second Life needs to open up the sign up API and let the users do their own marketing, so that if someone lands on my Second Life entrance portal website, and are able to sign up easily, have them download the client and upon their first rez, appear at my place. This is even their chance to work around the Second Life brand stigma. If the SL viewer was called something else, people could find themselves in Second Life without knowing it is Second Life before they have the chance to turn away due to the stigma. These communities, will then invest more time in curating new users. I know people say the community gateways were around bla bla, – they were never implemented correctly.
As to why the community wants Linden Lab to undersell the product? I can’t answer that. I think there is a difference between making Second Life look amazing for a marketing campaign, and misrepresenting features or actual game play.
An amazing machinima ad with the UI off and animations and editing and this and that is more than fine with me, and commercials for most games do this as well, they show animated reels form the game and most don’t even show actual game play. But once you start faking features or UI, I think that’s closer to fraud and what most people have a problem with.
I hope that’s not true, but I sometimes fear it is. I’d like to think the reason Linden Lab has such a hard time marketing Second Life is because, as you also said, the Second Life experience is different for everyone and it’s hard to explain the magic of it.
Linden Lab needs to stop trying to highlight how Second Life can fit with the latest trend (vampires, virtual pets, etc) and see that virtual worlds are the future and deserve their own unique attention. The whole of Second Life is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
When the iPhone (and again later with the iPad) debuted, Apple didn’t try to fit it into the current little boxes of gaming, social media, music, etc. Steve Jobs went outside of the box. Jobs changed the way we used technology and revolutionized the way we work, the way we live, the way we play.
Linden Lab needs to start looking at the big picture. Instead of chasing the success of others, they need to design the future and lead us there.
I totally agree, and I can think of plenty of ads that would sell me, at least, on Second Life. (I’m not a big vampire fan.)
For example: a couple having a romantic date in a museum, wandering past sculptures, talking, interacting normally, and the camera pans over to the artist himself giving a talk about his work, then pans out and the whole thing is say, in a fairy tale castle on an island floating in the sky.
Or listening to live music in a club, and the camera pulls back and its like that bar scene from Star Wars — there are furries, aliens, vampires, etc…
Or a teacher is giving a lecture on cell mitosis and stops and says, “and we happen to have a cell dividing right outside this door” and the students walk out of the classroom and there’s a giant cell there dividing and the teacher walks around it and points out all the stuff that’s happening.
Or a team of engineers is walking around examining tangled messes of connecting pipes and then one says, “Got it, there’s the missed coupling right there!” (Or some other appropriate jargon.) and the camera pulls back and they’re actually on the surface of a giant computer chip.
Or a team of folks — fire and safety inspectors, senior company execs, design consultants — are walking around a new hotel. The safety inspector looks for fire escapes and extinguishers and checks off things on a clipboard. Occasionally he’ll say something like “move that closer” or “make that wider” and the hotel changes. The designer looks at the curtains and the shades and the bed spreads from various angles, occasionally saying something like “make that bluer” and the color changes.
Finally, they say, “okay, this works.” And the executive turns to his construction guys and says, okay, build it. And the camera pulls back, and they were in a virtual hotel on a large computer screen, and the construction guy is sitting at his desk and gets up to go build.
Its a fair comment. I am glad you liked the Sims 3 ads
Just fyi the latter ones are made then tweaked using the Sims 3 engine. But your overall point I think is right. We do make SL look more unattractive than it is and what imagination it sparks in us. I think many of the older videos in particular we need to change (and are). While I get the vampire criticism I think the ads look clean and professional (which is good) and it is not unusual at least with game advertising to focus on one element or theme to appeal to a group. Obviously you need to rotate them or have multiple ones so it doesnt look like the whole of SL is vampires. We did similar things with the Sims around builders , story tellers and roleplayers for example.
Overall though, yeah, fair comment. Will address.
Rod
Hi Rod. Thanks for commenting. I totally get where you are coming from about advertising to different groups and with the popularity of vampires I understand why they would be a great target audience for you, but I just think they shouldn’t be the stand still main thing featured on the front page of the website. As far as the look of the ads, I respect your stance and I’m sure the designers who made them are very talented, but something about these particular images don’t do SL justice to me.
What I see is that the methods to advertise both Sims 3 and Skyrim rely heavily upon false advertising. But then the ads used on the SL website are also false advertising, albeit to its detriment. Why, oh why do you do this? It frustrates me enormously to see SL so undervalued, when you know that the possibilities are never ending. I do not come from the gaming community, been there done that 20 or more years ago, so I do not have the sense of needing instant gratification. Maybe this is why I have a different perspective. I truly hope SL will lose the gamification aspect there seems to have been happening, and go back to promoting it as the tool everyone needs. I took some photos using the new Library vampire avatars, using SL tools like windlight, top quality in world builds etc, and I feel I did a better job. It’s easy, if you have the passion! Here it is http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualevangelical/sets/72157628531825457/
Vanessa – Your idea intrigued me so much I spent a little bit of time trying it out too. Here’s the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicworksgroup/sets/72157628545230805/
I also like the video ideas that Draxtor and others have suggested.
Talking of good SL commercials, look what I found , this to me is someone showing me how they experience SL, in a way that I’d never think about or imagine.
And it shows a side to SL that totally contradicts the imagine it generally has to outsiders.
Love it;
And another one… imagine this video cut with RL footage of 3 old friends all living across the world who can’t visit or see each other anymore but have fun like this;
Wow – I’m bamboozled by Rod’s reply regarding vampires. I have nothing against vampire RP at all, but my first reaction to the photos was why is this so terrible? there are some amazing places in SL which should have been used as a backdrop for the Pulse vampire skins, and some slight work done on tweaking the shape in the photo and it would have been 1000% better. Shame on you Rod, this is an appalling photo and you back it up!
The amazing thing is, you don’t need to make fake videos like the sims and skyrim have – secondlife has the in world high quality that can stand by itself quite legitimately. And there are more updated builds that the circa 2006 slideshow on the destination guide – these will only turn people away because they will say, oh nothing has changed in 5 years, when we know full well it has. And where, where is mesh in all this??? You should be blasting it out from your front page, not regurgitating antiquated building techniques.
The thing with SL is that you have to reach everybody, as SL has something for everybody but few people actually realise this.
Every advertisement or documentary I’ve seen about SL does not make me want to try it, I don’t care about vampires, shopping, chatting, hanky panky, and no matter what we try, that is the reputation SL still has.
There is a video called “World builder” where a man creates an entire city for his girlfriend.
Very nice.
But what it shows is the ability to create, and I think that that is the magic of SL; it is what you want it to be.
You can find whatever you find interesting, but if you can’t, you can build it yourself.
Show someone joining SL, getting some land, stretching their first prim and then we fast forward time and see a city being build or a museum and then other people visiting it.
Show how SL creates communities, how you can hang out with people all over the world but do things together you can’t in normal chat, like dance, listen to live music.
I guess the problem is that there is just too much to show
The problem with showing some amazing SL video made with super computers showing the very best of mesh and sculpt made sims seen with no lag… is that when the average Joe joins, he WILL be disappointed if his computer is not extremely capable.
So you don’t want to promise people too much.
Don’t show what SL can offer people, show what people can offer SL.
How THEY can create, organise stuff, explore, learn, etc.
I know I’m rambling now
But what I’m trying to say is that SL offers people experiences, not just nice graphics and fun games.
For instance when I shut down my computer at night I’ve been to 1920s Berlin, watched a movie with my friends, danced the charleston, discussed history, created a 78″ record that plays 1920s music, chased some griefer, etc, etc.
I traveled back in time!
And these are all things that I experienced, things I made happen, just like when someone plays a game they spend a few hours shooting terrorists or combating knights… but they have little influence on how the game actually works and the kind of experience is a lot less free.
I sometimes describe SL as visiting other peoples dreams, walk into their brains.
It would be awesome to see someone visit a few sims and while they are exploring someone else’s creation, their dream, we see the person who build that sim.
Sorry, brainstorming and rambling again.
I used to work in film & tv and come from an advertising family, hard to control ideas jumping out of my head
What are the main qualities of SL?
Sorry to say, not (yet) graphics, easy gameplay or smooth lag less experiences.
But FREEDOM!
We can do something you can’t do in any other game, build whatever we want!
Even the sims is telling fibs if they claim we can in their game.
Try and show that in a trailer, someone cool in RL entering SL and doing cool stuff there as well.
So you are a “boring” 30 something bookseller (I love booksellers) who spends all his time sorting books… but hey then he goes upstairs… his little apartment…. turns on his computer… and he runs a MASSIVE library, organises readings by famous authors, big Book themed dances, etc… not (yet) knowing that the lady he was dancing with is actually the customer smiling at him the next day…
Maybe a bit cheesy, but to me that is what SL is about, the creating of worlds, the experiencing of worlds, visiting each others dreams.
Not shopping, looking pretty, dancing and wiggling my virtual butt.
To many outsiders that is all SL is and that is what we need to fight, because SL IS that… but oh so much more!
Just like Herr Rodvik said about that other side of SL, except he missed time travel
But as an educator we teach people German and German history simply by letting them experience it.
Try that in RL
Great post Gianna. And the boss already put in his two cents, very nice!!! Couple of things: I agree with Metacam’s point about community gateways – bring them back so folks go directly to their community of interest. Plus maybe custom-branded viewers [white-label viewer something that could be done?] to highlight & signal that you are part of that community. Also no problem with capitalizing on trends like vampires but still photos can “still” be a lot better even without much post production. Video: Sims made for TV is pricey because TV ads need lots of post to run nicely on big screens but SL video ads for the web do not have to be and perhaps could be sold to Hulu or other online streaming platforms. Chuck Norris for Wow – why not Drew Carey for SL? Well, more on that in tomorrow’s podcast I suppose!!!!
I also am not into the vampire thing and wasn’t even going to comment because I agreed with everyone else’s comments and concerns. I definitely know if I manage to convince people I talk with to check out SL, and they go there and see that ad, they will leave the site and never return. Then they’ll think I am even more crazy than they probably already thought. But Vanessa’s comment made me wonder if an ad with a vampire might work – she helped me envision an ad with vampires that could definitely showcase the beauty, creativity, and awesomeness of SL. And if done as I think Vanessa is proposing, it could be so very cool. And I think it could end up grabbing the visitors curiosity and wonder enough to at least log in long enough to realize it isn’t all about vampires. Well, unless you want it to be.
The only way I’ve so far been able to lure friends into SL and make them stay is by taking them by the hand, showing them sims they find interesting, show them what I’ve made, what I do in SL and try and teach them that anything is possible.
They all at first don’t want to come look because they think of the hanky panky, shopping & chatting.
As for using some famous faces, the one name that springs to mind is the probably too expensive Stephen Fry.
He is a gadget freak but he is also into language, animal welfare and those things you could use SL for but are generally not the things that you think of when you consider the SL image.
Maybe just try and lure him in…
Remember, if he tweets something nice about SL over 3.5 million followers may decide SL is worth another try…
Around it all just makes me feel that Second Life is being directed by people who have not experienced and not used it enough to know what they’re talking about. I can understand the marketing strategies, but a good advertisement depends on knowing the product well.
True Example: The last time I needed help with the customization of my house (Premiun account), because the panel color wall did not work, I used the live chat and the attendant login in Second Life, take inspect in the house and said that I could not change the colors wall because the house was by the Governor Linden, and than to change the colors of my house I needed to buy land and build my own home.
This is the support for someone that dont know about Liden Homes. I finished off our conversation by inviting the person to a class on Second Life to teach about how the homes Linden.
People who work in LL know less than users. Sure, this is my opnion, i still like of Second Life too much for the old things that still exist as social network experience. I like of news ideas, tools and things, but dont need change the best of Second Life.
Personally i would centre the campaign around second life as an extension to Real Life.
Parents take kids off to school disco, Comes home DJ much more Contemporary Music at SL club. Reader tells some one that they are going to talk to the author at their book club this Month, cut to SL Event, Musican tells friend he has sold out of his last two album and is cutting new one, Friend says but you never seem to play a gig, he says oh Ido alright and cut to…
Wife looks at neighbours new home extension and sighs husband looks up and says look if you want it build it. And she does straight away in in SL.
Someone tries on dress in shop but it is to tight to zip goes home and…
Manager take employee aside for derssing to casually employee goes home goes home and dresses for Caledon, while manager transforms into blingtard.
Yes I think that is the idea I also had in mind.
Show how people actually have amazing adventures in SL besides their RL’s.
Not some sad geek boy with zits all alone on his room every evening playing games pretending to be he is some strong hero (as many people imagine most game players), but average people of all ages.
Another strongpoint of SL, it is not just the teenage boys or the 30 something manchildren who play, but it is everyone.
Women, elderly, low educated, high educated, etc.
I love your idea of showing parents dropping their hip cool groovy teenagers of at some horrendously boring party and then going into SL where they play some super duper modern tunes.
I’d love to see a virtual party where we get to see these people dancing and having fun and then showing what they are like in RL.
Of course we’ll make it a bit more exciting then it usually is…
Imagine the scene…
A boring looking average housewife looks at some cd made by a famous modern band, she looks like she is not the type to enjoy that kind of tune.
She turns on the computer, we see her nightclub, we see her avatar and we see a neon light of the club going on.
The beat starts and people come running.
Soon in that computer people are dancing to this great song.
We now realise that the boring housewife is playing that record in that virtual club.
We then see an avatar dancing and cheering… we cut to the room of this avatar’s owner, across the world, far exotic country, a hip young asian boy and his friends are dancing around the computer.
We see another avatar dancing, we cut to their RL and look, it is a lonely office clerk having to do some extra work who isn’t involved in SL but we see it on another screen and the music is extra loud in the empty office while he works.
Etc, we show all these RL worlds behind the avatar, very different people enjoying SL in a very different way but all enjoying the music this housewife is playing at her club.
Another scene, avatars are sitting quietly by the beach, an idyllic image, we hear soft classical piano music, everyone looks very relaxed.
Then we see the people behind the avatars, again extremely different people all over the world… and they are having a fierce argument!
In slow motion we see these people in RL behind their computers waving their arms, spilling coffee, shouting!
But of course at the end they all agree, nod their heads and laugh.
In short, I love the idea of showing the people behind the avatars (not being the sad lonely geeks that many of us of course are, but the more cool and interesting people we want SL to be associated with) and how they all experience and use SL for something else.
[...] Marketing Push and Linden Lab Underselling [...]
I must admit that – despite the misrepresentative qualities that I mentioned – perhaps the worst thing for me is that it looks *bland* compared to my Second Life experience. Look at that video… compared to my Second Life experience, it seems so *dull*.
@Jo Yardley: Why not Mike Stackpole? He’s got a degree of fame (albeit mostly in geekier circles), but he’s an awesome fellow and a regular SL user. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Stackpole
I must confess that I have never heard of him and I also think that he hasn’t got an image that will bring in a whole new crowd.
Without wanting to offend anyone, I think that he is more of a nerd/geek, Stephen Fry is a lot more famous and although he is also a gadget geek, he is also an intellectual, comedian, maker of movies and documentaries, etc.
But maybe he too is a bit too ‘nerdie’.
We should get someone that appeals to the masses
Well, he certainly brought a whole lot of people to SL when he started holding office hours in SL. Man’s got a huge fanbase.
you guys should stop trying to get celebs – get this woman instead as the official spokesperson – http://youtu.be/IJO9cRe4zjw
Yes! Someone like Leonard Nimoy, Bill Shatner, anyone from Twilight movies if vampires is the flavour of the month, David Suzuki, any of the Attenboroughs – as you say, anyone with really broad appeal. I think Mike Stackpole is a nice fellow, but does not have broad appeal where people will instantly recognise the name.
After reading my comment I hardly understood what I meant with the TV ad idea – damn can I be confusing or WHAT? What I am trying to say is: 1. no need to go all TV and spend $$$ like WoW until SL is more stable and the known issues are more resolved BUT 2. why not do better ads and a celeb spokesperson and buy some ads on Hulu??? Thank you!