Two Ways to Play & Virtual Worlds

Location: Just Starting a New 1/72 Kit

Lately the blogs I follow have focused on ways to "save" Second Life. Tateru Nino riffed on Philip Rosedale's notion of "Fast, Easy, Fun" as the mantra for improving SL. I found a few lessons about retaining one's customer-base (albeit an aging one!) from my 40+ years building scale models.

So what does "fun" mean?

"Fun" comes in all forms. For online environments, the fun can be goal-oriented and rules-bound, as in games. It captures one of the two sorts of play academics talk about most often: the ludic. The latin word ludus fit both school and play, since schools were places where creative play prepared Roman youth for citizenship, war, and scholarly life.

On the other hand,the fun can be playful for its own sake, which often marks what happens in virtual worlds. Academics call that type of play, one that sparks improvisation and vision, paedeia.

There's a blurry line here, because a friend playing Lord of the Rings Online has greatly customized his avatar and often uses his in-world home for ad-hoc social gatherings unrelated to a current quest or battle. Likewise, areas of Second Life that emphasize roleplay can be very ordered and competitive.

A Lifelong Hobby

Virtual worlds with 3D content are young online environments. Their big challenge appears to be capturing and keeping customers. I got this reference, to a "two-year effect," care of Lalo Telling's blog. Do that many hobbies really hold a typical person's interest for only a year or so?

That's laughable to me, since many of the hobbyists I know have lifelong interests in restoring old cars, collecting farm equipment, or making organic gardens. In my case, it's a little of all of the above, plus building model kits and running face-to-face roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons.

Something about these activities holds the hobbyist a long time. Thus, virtual-world purveyors might think like Airfix, Tamiya, Revell, or Italieri, companies with a track record of immersing this customer and retaining his interest for so many years.

I've probably spent a good 1000 hours--more than 41 days of my life--making models since I first spilled glue all over a Jaguar E-Type, then sprayed enamel in my eyes on the night of the riots that followed Martin Luther King's murder. I recall that an actual doctor talked my mom over the phone, pro-bono, from the busy hospital as she rinsed my eyes out to the sound of glass breaking in the distance.

What a start to a hobby I never put away! I'll never win a contest, but my kits are good enough to "wow" non-modelers. In my undergraduate years the pastime became sporadic. In grad school I started building kits again, in part to forget the woes of living in a town I never loved, amid theory-spewing sycophants spouting Poststructuralist nonsense in the English department.

When I built a kit then, the banality of Bloomington, IN fell away. I was lost completely in a task, one requiring the type of focus that a Zen Master would recognize. Yet immersion in the task was only part of the fun for me.

Paideia & Ludus in 1/72 Scale

Modeling is rules-bound (fail to follow the instructions or mask before painting and you are usually doomed), so it predicates ludic play. Building models also involves the spontaneous and imaginative activities of paideia, when I scratch-build a part that the maker omitted, weather armor and ships so they look worn, and decide on modifications to capture a vehicle from my library of WW II books but not intended by the kit. This takes a type of artistic temperament to see analogues in real life and mix paints and apply materials that might include bits of actual mud or soot.

One key to keeping the kit-builder immersed in the hobby is the variety of subject. Experienced model-makers might have four P-51 Mustangs or Spitfires in the collection, but each of them is different. The range of subjects and challenges for a complex kit make the act of cementing polystyrene and painting it an ever-changing and often challenging task to one's mind and manual dexterity. I spent over two years, on and off, with a B-52D I figured I'd never see done. Now I'm ready for the next Mount Everest: a B-70 Valkyrie.

Beyond the craft of the kit itself lies the history of the subject. On my short-list of builds is the Airfix kit of the twin-engined Westland Whirlwind (one of the most graceful and least-known combat planes of the Second World War). Sadly, no Whirlwinds survived the scrap-metal drives of Postwar England, so when my kit of that subject gets done, I'll have created something that does not exist in nature.

Say, that should sound familiar to anyone who has spent enough time making, or marveling at, content in a virtual world.

Getting New Residents to Stay

Perhaps it's the lack of a ludic environment that leads newcomers to Second Life to say, so often, "so what do you DO here?" and then leave. If Linden Lab can focus on finding out what new users want in a virtual environment and then getting them immersed, they'll retain them for a while. Adding variety will retain them long-term.

The only problem of making the analogy to modeling or other "old-time" hobbies is that "old" bit. The irony is not lost on me that in many regards, model-making seems a dying hobby, unlikely to outlast Boomers and Xers again taking it up as they rediscover a few idle hours.

And so what? The companies can plan for another 30-40 years of sales and lay plans for whatever will attract a new generation, meanwhile. I probably spend $100 a year on models and supplies.

I'm guessing Linden Lab would just love that sort of assured revenue stream.

Update 8/3/10: I did some looking at Linden Lab's Destination Guide. See the next post for why I like it as a potential way to give SLers something to do in-world.

Thoughts about "Gaming Up" Second Life

Location: Making Stuff

What's the biggest difference between MMORPGs and virtual worlds? Making stuff. You can level up and buy things in a typical MMORPG, but you cannot make the world around you. That for me keeps me out of online gaming (though I'm considering buying an Xbox for driving and WW II air-combat games). My main games are face-to-face RPGs, often as the designer and GM for a campaign. I don't design too many game mechanics, but I do my own "sourcebooks." Essentially, that's been my calling in SL.

Of course, most of my fellow SLers are not builders or game masters. What will attract more of them? I want to riff off Scott Jennings' post on this topic (found via New World Notes). I fear that while I like most of his points (lower systems requirements, make the UI simpler) he misses the social aspect that keeps the demographic I know best--affluent 18-22 year olds--away from both virtual worlds and MMORPGs:

Serious games are for losers: that is the vibe on my campus and those of my colleagues. Gamer-kids make up at best 5% of my campus. I'm betting that outside of Computer Sci. and similar programs at larger schools, that's also the percentage. They've also been warned by adults for years some version of "game a lot and you'll never work a real job. You'll fail out of college, live in a basement, and clerk in a convenience store, if you are lucky."

I'm betting that, given the oft-reported plateau in World of Warcraft registrations, that they've reached geek-saturation. Mainstreamers on this campus will play console games, casual games, but not MMORPGs or, for that matter, play in virtual worlds. They lack time and the stigma of being "too into it" is too strong.

College kids already have avatars: themselves. The mainstream kids I know--this is an affluent campus--live avatarian lives already, thanks to parent-granted credit cards, nice cars, and weekend social scenes that rival Cancun's. The time required for serious gaming takes away from that and FaceBook, a time-hog if ever there were one, facilitates real-life contacts and rewards that bolster their social lives. No magical sword or cyber-hookup can compare. I'm betting that at larger and more economically diverse campuses, students have other distractions, such as jobs off campus, but also put real-life socializing, augmented by social networking, ahead of games or anything like them.

In addition to those two observations, Scott also skips a few key aspects that make SL hard to "game up":
Virtual women are not (all) fat guys. I'd argue that a key demographic for Second Life consists of women who do not want to shoot stuff. Linden Lab will have to depend on its users to make games, since they don't do that sort of in-world content; the Lab makes infrastructure. Games to emerge need to involve puzzles and adventure more than hack-and-slash, and I base that claim on statements by actual women, academic and otherwise, who use the world socially.

I love the meme of "fat naked man in basement" as much as the next geek, but it's a stereotype of SLers and, for that matter, for many gamers. We need to lose it when we speak seriously about attracting and retaining an audience.

Sex sells, but only for a while. Sex is already a big in-world game, even though college kids seem bored or frightened of that aspect of SL. So I'm betting that the wistful (or cloying: you choose) promo for SL with the starry-eyed couple on the Eiffel Tower was aimed squarely at "the bored housewife," another demographic often used as a meme about SL.


I bet that, in a year, that guy will forget to put the seat down at night, too.

While such residents exist, does the allure of cyber-romance have enough staying power to keep a hobbyist occupied for more than a year or two? The only SLers I know from this demographic have left it because of boredom, what Richard Bartle calls "drift" in his book Designing Virtual Worlds. So while sex sells, the world has to offer more than that. Bartle says it well; to be really popular such venues need "content so potent that people can be quite willing--indeed, positively enthusiastic--to repeat an experience over and over again."

Game it up the right way. Linden Lab has flailed around this issue, trying to promote SL by linking it to Avatar, then to the Twilight books and films. With a grid this big, if the Lab put some energy into themed gaming region where tier and lag were low, then invited the best content creators to build the initial infrastructure, they might have a hit on their hands. And get the physics to work, too: driving in Second Life is laughable. Why build those Linden roads if one cannot use them smoothly?

When Linden Lab has an intuitive UI, preferably Web-based, they need some splash. Perhaps some real cash prizes, in the $5-$25K range (chump change for a company like theirs), for a "SL Idol" contest? They could promote this in more mainstream venues; right now their ads only reach a niche audience.

The way it is, but better? Linden Lab has a product that cannot easily--as currently construed--become Left for Dead, World of Warcraft, or Eve Online. The Mainland continents could become a sort of "Lifestyles of the Virtually Glamorous," which has been enough to keep The Sims franchise going strong. Caveat there: my students look at The Sims as a game for teenage girls.

That is not the demographic that "Ancient1," who replied to Scott Jennings' original post, sees This SLer runs a business serving "tens of thousands" of SL residents:

My experience has been that I am predominantly meeting working class family people over 35 years old who pay for land and services in Second Life because its their part time hobby to be in a virtual world. You could say its an escape for folks who work hard, have life and family stress like we all do, and login to Second Life to just “drift off” for awhile in another world.

I agree. Most of my social interactions outside academia have been with folks who have good computers but not always the right educations to wield power and influence in the ever-more-stratified US meritocracy. They use social media often as much as my students, but they do not have the casual social lives that college kids experience, often into their late 20s. The older users who typify the SL base are smart and well spoken, but cannot own Harleys and go on exotic vacations. Maybe they want to play a warrior or a vampire for a while.

SL could then be their "game." How Linden Lab keeps that audience coming is beyond me. Perhaps the mass audience will never exist, as it does for Facebook. Erik Sass' post on the continuing existence of SL among a niche audience takes a contrary view :

In this arena a small, highly-engaged niche audience may be more valuable than a large, apparently indifferent one (Facebook, I'm looking in your direction).

Right now we cannot even keep the educators in SL, as we realize lower costs and more freedom to host and back up content exist on OpenSim grids.

Luring Luddites to Teach with Technology

Location: Clutching Rare Books to Chest

I was amused by a The Chronicle of Higher Education story that landed in my in box this morning (link to full article).

Jeffrey Young notes several problems I.T. consultants face when training faculty. Young got savaged a while back by our Virtual Worlds Roundtable group for what we perceived to be poor reporting in OpenSim and Second Life. This time around, in my opinion, he did a much better job of interviewing several experts, including Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard.

A US DOE plan based upon Dede's ideas about edu-tech laggards has just been released, and the findings of a survey of 4,600 faculty nationwide startle even neo-luddite me:

Only 13 percent of the professors surveyed said they used blogs in teaching; 12 percent had tried videoconferencing; and 13 percent gave interactive quizzes using "clickers," or TV-remotelike devices that let students respond and get feedback instantaneously. The one technology that most teachers use regularly—course-management systems—focuses mostly on housekeeping tasks like handing out assignments or keeping track of student grades.

Boring, boring. Blackboard to me has always been a gated community for dumping handouts, and, truth be told, a place to avoid DMCA violations (the only reasonable use I can find for it).

Two of the Young's recommendations, based on interviews with experts, might help what (to this observer) is a stagnation in the use of virtual worlds in higher ed:

• "Enlist longtime professors with no particular interest in technology and get them to try the latest online forums, videoconferencing, or clickers. . . .Then encourage the professors to give a lunch talk for their colleagues."
• Stress goals, not technology: "Typically, colleges give seminars with titles like '5 Ways to Use a Wiki in Your Class' or 'Getting Started With Blackboard.' " Instead, Dede recommends that tech liaisons "deal with issues that keep faculty up at night. The titles should be, How do you keep students coming to your class rather than just copying the notes off the Web? or, How to get students to respond really deeply rather than from CliffsNotes."

Enormous pressures will be coming to our state-funded schools and their faculty to use technology. Even private schools like my own will feel the pressure from parents and students who expect innovative teaching with and without technology.

Goodbye to yellow notes and, I hope, PowerPoint slide-shows.

Educators on Avatar Appearance & Learning

Location: Slapping Forehead and Laughing

I missed one of the best VWER meetings in a while. We have this impression of academics as frumpy eggheads who don't really care about their appearances. But what about their avatars?

Over 40 participants discussed the role that clothing and other aspects of avatar appearance play in getting respect from students, administrators, and the public beyond Second Life and other virtual worlds. More than a few of my colleagues came to the meeting in hilarious costume (AJ in a Mayan outfit is priceless). I'm pleased to report that everyone did wear clothing.

Some stand-out quotations follow, some hilarious, some sobering, all true:

• I once had a rather eye-opening talk with some students in which they dissected the dress sense of everyone male and female in the dept, this is in RL, they expected people to "make an effort" and they made assumptions that however you dressed you were thinking about THEM (students) when you made your decisions
• I don't think it matters MORE in SL, I think it is more that outside SL we are already conditioned to obey certain norms/expectations and so there tend to be fewer surprises.
• Thinking about our appearance requires the same kind of intentionality that other rhetorical decisions do.
• I can't show many presentations in SL to my bosses because there are just too many bosoms in them.
• For me we are doing [medical] simulation not a lot of furries on a ward ;-)
• That's an issue we haven't discussed. Psychological associations. What we perceive as "fun" might set off issues in fragile folks.
• I am old and I remember when a teacher was fired for wearing his hair on his forehead .. bangs.
• I once came to a chat with my students with a cigar, and one of my students had a real problem with it.
• Well i had changed my avatar skin and i was meant to look like Angelina Jolie. . . . i looked like a man.
  
• Yesterday I was wearing nothing. I think SL servers are perverted.

Need fashion advice? Try "What Not to Wear in Virtual Clothes" and look at the entire transcript from our meeting