Second Life Doomsayers Are Not Productive

Due to the recent flood of negative activity on the Second Life Forums, I've decided that I needed to talk about it.

If you check the first post of this blog, you'll see that the whole reason I am in the Second Life community, is because my previous online community, Star Wars Galaxies changed so much that most of the main core of the game that gamers left to find other things.

The reason I mention this, is because the actions of Linden Labs and the actions of Second Life players are starting to mimic the exact situation that occurred between Star Wars Galaxies owners Sony Online Entertainment and their player base. The players wound up complaining so much that it became impossible for SWG's programmers to do anything right. No matter what they did, it was wrong according to the more vocal of the community.

This I why I believe the powers that be over at Star Wars Galaxies appeared to be so unattentive to their players...they were going to be raked over the coals for anything they did. It led to them thinking that the game was broken as-is and needed a major overhaul to secure its future. In the end, it was this major overhaul that killed the game. Yes there are still people playing it, but the numbers are far reduced from what they were even just a year ago.

This whole article is a warning to my fellow players of Second Life. If you continue to rant and rave, you will force the repeat of history, only this time the death will be dealt to Second Life. Creators of online games are usually only attentive if they know they will be treated fairly. Do you notice the Lindens backing off in terms of communication? King Philip has been mostly absent lately. Do any of you wonder why?

I believe it's because no matter what they say or do recently, they are repeatedly attacked by the community. I don't know about you, but I don't hang with folks that don't treat me with respect. Do you think they don't know what the bugs are? Do you think they are sitting back sipping espresso? Did it ever dawn on you that they might just be overworked?

Imagine you owned a company. You ran it with just you and another person. Your whole job was to maintain a website, and answer the questions of your visitors. You offer freebies on your website, but you only make money if someone buys something. Depending on your traffic, you could probably handle it very easily.

Now imagine that News.com, Wired, and Newsweek all post articles about your website. Your traffic spikes intensely, and your workload as well. Since you offer freebies, that is what most of your millions of new visitors pick up on. You make no money from the freebies, but the questions about the freebies and the amount of work involved to maintain the website are all no longer in your ability to keep up with.

Since you run a forum where anyone can say anything, your visitors start to make little comments here and there about your slow response. Slowly but surely a gang mentality builds up, and before you know it everyone is slinging dirt about your lack of support, how you are running the website wrong, how you should be running it and while your workload has increased exponentially, your cashflow has increased only somewhat.

Would your enthusiasm for the website increase or suffer? Ultimately, no website will survive without the enthusiasm of the one running it. Star Wars Galaxies went through everything in the above example. The freebie was the first Starter Pack (SWG+JTL+ROTW). But then it died. I'm seeing Second Life following the same trend. Since I was there when it happened to SWG, I can instantly smell when the gamers are killing their own game.

Second Life Community...there may not be a second chance. Do you want to play ActiveWorlds, or Second Life...the choice is yours.

Let's treat the creators of our favorite online experience with some respect so that their enthusiam spawns the game of our dreams.