It's another Second Life post, so if that kind of thing makes you cross, you'd best join me again tomorrow!

I've filled in a good few posts in the past, off the back of the Media Circus that surrounds SL, mostly from the lofty perch of general all-round MMO Pundit, and indeed, coming across this article, by New World Notes' Wagner James Au, would normally be my cue to have at it with pretentiously wordy abandon:

Gigagamez: Second Life Backlash: A Story Too Good To Check

In which he looks over a lot of the recent negative reviews of SL, and suggests that they don't really know what they're talking about, not having actually put any effort into researching SL properly, and are just after the cheap (and currently fashionable) headline. He's probably right in those cases, but today, I'm putting on my other SL 'hat', because as well as being a snarky nitpicking sniper of MMO press releases in general, I do actually play the games I rant about too.

It was all brought home to me on a personal level last night really. I was pottering about, working on a shop in a fairly new Sim. Well, 'fighting' would be a more accurate word really, doing my best to raise prims, stitch textures and code scripts, against the backdrop of a world where the lag is often so horrendous that time itself becomes unpredictable - you know the sort of thing - chat text lines not coming out in the order they were typed, people walking on the spot, frozen in time, helplessly making the little 'typing' animations, but nothing coming out, people missing entirely, only showing up as floating prim wigs and shoes, and construction work unravelling itself as soon as you let go of the blocks.

I was quite lucky in that I wasn't trying to go anywhere else, as the now-creaking Teleport system decided not to play ball for a large part of the night, stranding everyone in whatever Sim they happened to log in at, and even attempts to walk (a thing virtually unheard of in SL) into neighbouring Sims were being thwarted at the borders, presumably all due to vast network overload at Linden HQ.

I'd like to say it was a hiccup, an unexpected and one-off incident, but over the last month or two, it's gotten so that a good session is one in which you only see one apologetic blue system-message pop-up from one of the overworked Technical Lindens, and I really do worry about the ability of the system as a whole, to cope. zOMG2millionz!!1! is all very well, but remember, only around 5% of those are giving LL any money to buy a working dial-up modem with, and the most recent concurrency peak was about 27,000 players, a number they seem all too happy to increase at any cost, despite the system's seeming inability to cope. Perhaps now is the time to shut the gates, kick out some of the freebie todger-flinging joyriders and concentrate on shoring up what they already have? Quit while they're ahead, sort of thing?

Anyway, I digress.

While working away on the shop, I seem to get a surprising amount of brand-new newbies fly, drift or stumble past. I'm not sure what quirk of virtual geography causes this - the shop is in a fairly new, and out of the way, location. I've not scouted out the neighbourhood that much yet - perhaps there's free money being given out nearby. But these new folks wander by, and some of the less sociopathic stop and say 'hi'. Invariably the exchange will turn swiftly into a tutorial session of sorts, as I attempt to teach them how the basics work - inventory, teleporting, creating prims, and so on, and mostly this turns out to be a futile task. Last night was no different, with three wandering new-folk washing up at the site, lost and confused, barely able to work out how to put clothes on, let alone determine their place in the Bold Transhumanist Future of Web7.0. The very fact they can fly and communicate at all marks them out as gifted, I find.

I stood there helplessly as the last of them left, having learnt nothing, and basically having given up on trying to make it work for him, resigned now to just flying about and staring at the Pretty Things (when they eventually deign to load), shortly before giving up on SL completely I expect. It's possible I'm not a very good teacher, but then again, I never asked to be given the job in the first place. In the last chap's case, matters weren't helped by him knowing as little English as I know any other language; i.e. none.

But it all brought home to me just exactly how gargantuan the gulf is, between people like me, who have basically been marinading in online technical jargon, internet meme culture (YA RLY!), clanky user interfaces, PC hardware maintenance, software installation settings, naming conventions and indeed, web development skills for the last ten years or more, and people like the newbies, above, who can just about work Windows enough to play Solitaire, and saw irresponsible rabble-rousing about this wonderful world of dreams-made-real on the BBC News website once.

I take this rubbish for granted, but for most it's like sorcery. I'm sure all of you have a technically illiterate relative you have to do in-family (and free!) Tech Support for on a regular basis - I have several. Imagine that person trying to get to grips with a 3D environment with in-built construction tools, and a java-based scripting language, because it seems it's exactly this kind of person LL are trying to engage and enthuse with their Virtua-topia, and it really isn't working. I've no idea what the 'Newbie Island' tutorial thing is like these days, but it's either too boring to work through, or simply not teaching them very well, because a distressing number of new Residents seem to be leaving there without a clue. Never mind scripted grey-goo attacks, flying phallus invasions or hot SLingo Escort Cybering - most SL Residents seem to have trouble putting on a T-shirt, and are only prepared to put up with so much before leaving for good, usually with horror stories to tell their friends.

I shrugged helplessly as the poor chap stumbled out of the shop, walking in to a number of trees and walls on the way, still wearing the box of free clothes I'd given him on his hand - the box, that is, not the clothes - and a sudden and fortunate gap in the teleport 'weather' let him, mercifully, disappear, hopefully to a place where someone who spoke his language might do a better job than me, at trying to explain the nightmarish Inventory window to him.

Referring back to the above linked article a moment, I wonder if it really is that the Naysaying Hacks just couldn't be bothered to do their homework, as Au implies, or whether in fact they were unable to do so, hampered by a basic inability to find what each of them were looking for, (in a reasonably swift manner), by the recurring technical troubles, or unhelpful interface?

I turned back to the shop, and put up a few more support pillars, when the lag returned with violent force, took them down again for me, and then refused to process any further request for new pine blocks for some minutes. I see why so many people spend so much time in there just sitting about chatting now...the Instant Messaging system seems to be about the part of SL that can reliably cope with 27,000 users...

As a interested and involved Resident of SL, I too now think it's doomed, but not for the reasons commonly bandied about in the Blog-arium or Main Stream Media: PR Backlash, revelations of obscure and particularly distasteful forms of cybersex, and the like. I've been in there and seen first hand what the real two problems with it all are, namely that sheer weight of numbers is killing it, and yet at the same time, the often impenetrable nature of the thing drives many away in frustration. Irony! Still, both these problems are fixable, with enough time, money and effort - massively increased hardware and infrastructure investment and development in the former case, and a revamped and more intuitive user interface design and greatly enhanced Newbie Experience in the latter.

Whether the zOMG2Millionz!1!! number can be turned into enough money to do these things, remains to be seen...

Anyway, more about the shop itself, and my new Adventurers In Marketing, another time!