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Second Life cracks whip on adult content
mlauzon
Member UncommonPosts: 767
Virtual world Second Life has put in effect some new measures to keep adult content away from users who might not want to run into it. Or fly into it, as avatars might do.
Later this year, parent company Linden Lab will create a standalone "continent" for adult content, and members who don't purchase private "land" will be asked to migrate there if they wish to partake in adult-related activities. Second Life is an 18+ environment already, but stricter age verification policies will be put in place. You'll need a "verified" account, either through credit card information or through Linden Labs' filtering system, to get into the adult "continent."
Members will be asked to start flagging content as adults-only as part of a new content rating system, which will start to roll out in an update to the downloadable Second Life client that will be available next week.
"The people that are on our mainland and in our estate, if they are going to engage with adult content, are being asked to do that in the adult content area," said Cyn Skyberg, vice president of customer relations at Linden Lab. "Private land owners will be asked to tag their searches for adult-related listings so that it goes into the adult filter."
So what does this mean for Second Life, which was briefly a marketers' paradise before swifty falling from grace in the Silicon Valley pecking order? Well, it'll help make it a friendlier environment for some of the new "residents" whom Linden Lab hopes to woo. The company is profitable, due largely in part to the sheer volume of virtual goods and transactions made on the platform by loyal users, and Linden Lab sees corporate and academic institutions as an area for future growth. Keeping porn in its place could be good for P.R.
"A portion of this will be perceived as definitely being more corporate- and educator-friendly because you'll have more control over the things you're experiencing," Skyberg said.
Source: The Social (cnet news)
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Michael
Comments
A major problem is that I see is that not everyone has a creditcard. Yes, in the U.S. everyone uses them, but in Europe its mostly businessmen and people that travel a lot that have one. The rest simply uses their bank debitcard for payments. They would need to set up an easy and reliable way for non-creditcard users to verify their age or Second Life becomes a ghost town. Because lets be honest here, most if not all of the crowded places in second life are mature places, when you visit the virtual banks, corporations and PG hangouts you'd be very lucky to see more then 3 people at once.
I'm all for age verification, most of the mature content in second life is unfit for minors, but I'm against forcing users to subscribe to expensive creditcards. I'm wondering how Linden Labs is going to solve this issue, because if they don't, you're going to see the biggest exodus in human history since Mozes left egypt with his people.
Well it's about time they do something to controle the porn. Most of the world is full of kids well under the age of 18. In my time there I knew several kids 13-15 that were heavily involved with all the adult content. When I confronted Philip Linden about it, he simply shrugged me off.
But as the poster before me mentioned...the game may become a ghost town in many 'adult oriented' areas. Force those free accounts to provide some age verification...n many of them will be gone.
LOL... 98% of their users at any given time are going to be on the "Mature" continent. The rest of the game will be a ghost town after this update. I tried Second Life a while back but noticed that the only really busy places in the world were the places with mature content. There are much better and easier to get to places on the net to get porn if thats what your into. I left the game once I realized that it was mostly just a virtual porn shop.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
The irony is that 9 year old know more about porn than some of the adults, this age restriction is not going to do a thing, just a waste of resources on order to be "seen" politicaly corrrect. Nonsense.
Most of the game is a ghost town already. There's what 40-60 thousand people on and the entire grid itself is the size of some of the larger United States counties. Also a good number(15%-30% depending on who you ask) of the people should really be discounted because they're not real players playing them but bots of some kind or another.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.
If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.
There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.
If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.
If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.
There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.
No, I meant that there are plenty of 3D avatar virtual worlds that are just for that purpose. All porn based 3D environments are P2P eventually even Second Life. Granted SL does give you a lot more for free than most. As for it being the best that is a matter of opinion as the other virtual worlds are specifically designed for that purpose and SL isn't. The others are limited in scope only because they only have online cybering as their main reason for existing. They all do this very well and much better than SL as they have features designed around this very purpose... SL doesn't. There is NO free lunch in this world and no matter where you go you will end up paying in one way or another.
Bren
Edit: Of course if you want to get the ultimate thrill you could always try talking to a real life girl. I hear they can take the virtual experience to a whole new level!
(I just noticed from your profile that you are female so in your case a real life man
)
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.
If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.
There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.
No, I meant that there are plenty of 3D avatar virtual worlds that are just for that purpose. All porn based 3D environments are P2P eventually even Second Life. Granted SL does give you a lot more for free than most. As for it being the best that is a matter of opinion as the other virtual worlds are specifically designed for that purpose and SL isn't. The others are limited in scope only because they only have online cybering as their main reason for existing. They all do this very well and much better than SL as they have features designed around this very purpose... SL doesn't. There is NO free lunch in this world and no matter where you go you will end up paying in one way or another.
Bren
Edit: Of course if you want to get the ultimate thrill you could always try talking to a real life girl. I hear they can take the virtual experience to a whole new level!
(I just noticed from your profile that you are female so in your case a real life man
)
I'm physically disabled in a way that it is very much impossible for me to find a real life man. Unless you happen to know any man that are attracted to my kind. Before I lost my ability to walk amongst other things and my husband I had a very active sex life, so I am well aware of the difference between real life sex and virtual sex. I can tell you in many ways real life sex is more enjoyable, but in many ways virtual sex is, because its more intense, because it is love of the mind and because our imaginations, unlike our bodies are limitless. Anyway my sex life is not the point or the discussion.
Back to second life, the only reason to buy linden dollars in second life, is if you want to buy land and build on it. That is really the only thing you need money for. Everything else, you can get for free. There are tons of malls and shops that give out freebies, and a mere afternoon of hopping between them will get you skins + full outfit.
If by this you mean going to a regular porn website then I disagree. That is much like saying to a counterstrike addict that there are much better and easier places on the net to go to find a realistic violent environment then counter-strike, like going to the many news sites reporting on the war on terror. Someone who is looking for a book, is looking for a book, someone who is looking for a movie is looking for a movie and someone who is looking for a 3d avatar environment to have cybersex in, is obviously aware of other means of gratification but that is not what they are looking for.
If there is one thing that Second Life has proved, it is that there is a real and substansial demand out there for ERP and other forms of erotic roleplaying in an avatar environment. In this "perverse niche" second life is the only free to play product, and arguably the best one. It's competitors like Sociolotron and Red Light District are all pay to play and limited in scope.
There is no doubt that if Linden Labs does not create an easy way for people without creditcard (read non-americans) to verify their age it will quickly starve out. The people who are quick to celebrate this might regret their words later when they find out that many of the "cyber bunnies" return to their own MMO's to cybersex there until something new comes along.
No, I meant that there are plenty of 3D avatar virtual worlds that are just for that purpose. All porn based 3D environments are P2P eventually even Second Life. Granted SL does give you a lot more for free than most. As for it being the best that is a matter of opinion as the other virtual worlds are specifically designed for that purpose and SL isn't. The others are limited in scope only because they only have online cybering as their main reason for existing. They all do this very well and much better than SL as they have features designed around this very purpose... SL doesn't. There is NO free lunch in this world and no matter where you go you will end up paying in one way or another.
Bren
Edit: Of course if you want to get the ultimate thrill you could always try talking to a real life girl. I hear they can take the virtual experience to a whole new level!
(I just noticed from your profile that you are female so in your case a real life man
)
I'm physically disabled in a way that it is very much impossible for me to find a real life man. Unless you happen to know any man that are attracted to my kind. Before I lost my ability to walk amongst other things and my husband I had a very active sex life, so I am well aware of the difference between real life sex and virtual sex. I can tell you in many ways real life sex is more enjoyable, but in many ways virtual sex is, because its more intense, because it is love of the mind and because our imaginations, unlike our bodies are limitless. Anyway my sex life is not the point or the discussion.
Back to second life, the only reason to buy linden dollars in second life, is if you want to buy land and build on it. That is really the only thing you need money for. Everything else, you can get for free. There are tons of malls and shops that give out freebies, and a mere afternoon of hopping between them will get you skins + full outfit.
Whoa... Sorry as I had no way of knowing your condition. You have to understand that posts like yours are 99% of the time from guys who are afraid that if they talk to a real woman their head might explode or something. Again sorry for assuming you were something that you're not. As for Second Life... if that's what you personally like than more power to you. It's not up to me or anyone else for that matter to tell you what you prefer. All I was really getting at was that if your looking for that sort of thing there are programs out there that are specifically tailored to that sort of thing and better suited for it than SL is. If you personally like SL for whatever reason that is your call to make.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Even though I don't spend much time in Second Life, I am hoping it continues to evolve. Yeah, there is a lot of porn content, but that's not all there is to the place. If you listen to non-users online you would think the whole virtual world is Hustler-Online. I'm glad they are taking measures to clean it up a bit, although they shouldn't take content restriction too far or they may ruin what's cool about it.
The freedom and creativity in SL is what really rocks. I go in once every couple months and just see what people are building with the tools and scripting language. If it didn't cost money to own enough land to build cool stuff (and keep it in one persistant place), I would spend more time there expressing myself creatively.
My personal favorite sim, the name escapes me, is a fantastic shamanic/pagan sim with all kinds of neat ritual grounds and things like sweat lodges, meditation areas, native american themed areas, etc. That's the place I always end up spending time because the subject matter interists me and the owners did an amazing job building it.
"Burning Life" is a damn cool play on Burning Man too that people should check out.
http://burninglife.secondlife.com/
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I'm sure debit cards will work in place of credit cards. Maybe they would put this on IP of american/uk. The places usually company want to advertise anyway.
I don't even own a credit card and hope to never will. Anyway I don't even use second life. I just hate how company's don't want to be associated with anyone else.
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"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
Second Life is moribund. A friend of mine wanted to try it out, so she dragged me along to show her the ropes because I'd had a brief look at it several years ago. It was bland, deserted, and the graphics were still abysmal. As I'd warned her, she got bored with it after one evening. Why the media still thinks Second Life is cool and thriving is a mystery.
Okay, that was really weird, I just got the email a few minutes ago telling me there was a reply; and it's been 1 day since you posted your reply...!
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Michael
Yeah, something is wrong with the emails they are sending. I'm often getting emails about threads I didn't even know I was watching and like yours the emails seem to show up far to late to be of any real use anyway. I had to run around turning off all the threads this site had me "watching" just to make the useless emails stop.
Anyway, to get back on the subject of this thread, I have to agree with what another poster said about Second Life being a ghost town outside of the adult content areas.
Yes, there are quite a few people who have replied to this thread to tell us how wonderful Second Life is and ramble on about how creative it allows people to be. Every game has its fanboys who will refuse to see any flaws their game of choice may have (go see the posts from Ztyx in the Dark & Light forum if you don't believe me). And yes, even I have been impressed by some of the areas and content I've seen in Second Life.
But the fact remains that when you actually visit a lot of these "amazing" areas in the game you will find that you are the ONLY person there. You can walk around and look at the various things people have created, but when the majority of the world is a ghost town this can only hold your attention for so long.
And when you ask yourself where all the people in the world are, you need to only look at your map to find them. And whenever I checked my map back in the day when I "played" this "game" I always discovered that people were gathered in one of three places:
Option #1, The "PG" Welcome Area: The area where new players appear when they enter the game world. Even though you would expect it to be mostly interesting to new players, it became the hub of activity for a lot of veteran players as well (Like Atlas Park from City of Heroes). Despite being "PG" there was still a fair amount of "adult" content taking place here at any given time. People sewaring, people fighting and even people streaking nude every so often. Even the people who were following the rules were often wearing the most outrageous outfits you could imagine, most of them looked like half-naked gay disco balls. With fairy wings. Or demon wings. Or both.
Option #2, Casinos and other gambling areas: Someone on this forum said in another thread that gambling is now aginst the rules so there are no more casinos, but back when I "played" this "game" they were on every street corner and almost always so packed full of people that even looking in the direction of one would cause enough lag to lock up your computer for the next hour. Mostly they were occupied by bots though, because the Second Life version of "gambling" consisted of using some kind of script to keep your character from being marked as AFK while standing in a location where you have a very tiny chance that a small amount of money would be donated to you.
Option #3, Adult Areas: I'm sure I don't need to describe these areas but suffice to say that if a person wasn't in one of the above two types of areas then they were in this type of area. Sometimes it was a huge "dance" club with hundreds of people, sometimes just a private area with fewer than a dozen people and sometimes it was just one guy all by himself doing something creepy. But this is where atleast 90% of the population of the game was located at any given time.
With all of that said, will this new rule wipe out adult content from Second Life? I don't think so. Some of the "adult" users may be peeved that they have to limit their dirty business to a perticular part of the world but in theory that has always been the rule anyway. These people really have nowhere else to go to get the same experience, so I'm guessing the majority of them who have been doing it this long will find a way to keep doing it, whatever it takes.
But if Linden thinks this is going to help them get more corporate and education customers then they have another thing coming. Just like every other area of the game, the areas owned by guys like Nike were just as empty as the rest of the world. My guess is that the guy who made the Nike area got bored with being a virtual shoe salesman and went off to the "adult" areas to find himself some virtual "action" to partake of.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
I have to respectfully disagree. I’ve been in SL for a couple years now. I have friends there and we enjoy “playing” at being business owners. However, the real life corporations and education customers, in my opinion, are looking at SL with an eye to a more involved customer relationship as opposed to a simple web site. No, it will not be the right venue for everyone, but I believe there will be enough people who are interested in a virtual 3D interaction with a store or a virtual classroom that it will sustain the corporate involvement.
As I’ve said in another posting, the technology is not “there” yet. I do believe it is getting better and I do believe there will be a customer base to support it. Will it be the same SL we currently take part in? Probably not, but since SL is only guided by Linden Labs and the residents are the people who actually create the content, it is reasonable to surmise people will make SL what they want it to be.
As an example, I know two “real life” business people in the clothing industry who are looking at SL to help their business. One makes custom motorcycle leathers. He is creating a store where people can walk in and see high quality, real life pictures of his products. He will have alternate avatars (AV’s) that act only as models to give the customer an alternate perspective of the products he offers. Will this business idea work? I don’t know and neither does he, but the investment in minimal and the potential return is worth a little free time “in world” to find out.
If a single person can do this with a one person business, surely the corporate world can do much more. Additionally, this is just one small aspect of the platform’s potential so even if Adult Content is restricted, I still believe there is a good use for the SL platform.
Ok, maybe I am one of those “fanboys” you mentioned, but I feel we will never know who is right unless it is tried. Maybe we’re betting on another Enron. Maybe we’re betting on another Microsoft. Time will tell. I’m just glad we have a chance to find out.
The problem is, you are talking as if SL just came out last week and this is some untested platform with unlimited potental. The reality is that SL has been around for years and coporate parties have already tried to set up shop in the virtual world and largely failed. That isn't something which is going to change as SL gets older and the technology behind it becomes increasingly more obsolete.
I already gave you the example of Nike. They made the classic mistake with SL. They started in SL back during its major heyday and assumed because Newsweek and other old media sources couldn't shut up about how SL was the next big thing that they obviously had to get in on the action. So they quickly ran into SL, bought up several islands and paid someone to start designing all kinds of zany stuff on those islands in the vain hope that it would somehow attract a horde of people to them so they could show off their products.
But what happened? Ghost town. They built these huge buildings and all kinds of other fancy stuff (I remember they even had a giant flying blimp with some kind of stuff inside of it) and NOBODY CAME. At any given time of day there might be one or two people walking around in the whole thing, if even that. They would ghost around for a bit, look at what was going on and then it was off to some other area. Nike spent some ungodly sum of money to design an area that was meant to hold HUNDREDS of people at one time but what they got was an area that was lucky if it saw that many people in an entire month. They spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on this just to rent the land alone for a single month and barely anyone sees it or is even aware of its existance. They could have run a TV ad on a station in North Dakota and gotten more exposure, probably for less money.
Many other corporate businesses have done the same and seen similar results. I'm guessing you probably still have Second Life installed on your computer right now (I don't anymore) so go ahead and do some traveling to see for yourself. Search for every coprorate owned area in the game you can find and see how many people are in those areas right now. Most will be empty. A few might have one or two people. If you get very lucky you might stumble upon one that has some kind of planned event happening and may have a half dozen or more people there at the same time.
And it isn't just that people aren't interested in corporate areas in the world. Every area in Second Life is like this. The vast majority of the virtual world is a ghost town. I've seen amazing places in SL. Huge, well designed sims full of incredible things that someone obviously invested an amazing amount of time working on... And the place will still be a ghost town despite this. An empty, boring ghost town.
We keep hearing that there are SOOOO many people playing this game. But where the hell are they and what are they doing? Well a quick scan of the world map for the game can show you where everyone is loacted. And sure enough atleast a good 90% of the population will be crammed into a hand full of "adult" areas. "Dance" clubs, strip clubs, porn shops, stores selling genitalia and/or sex animations and of course people in "private" areas doing things that need not be mentioned. The other 10% will be sitting around in some public area chatting (treating the game like exactly what it is: A chat room with graphics) or simply wandering around the world, visiting one area at a time to briefly glance at whatever there is to see there before moving on a few minutes later. Its only this small 10% of the population given to doing actual exploring of the world who will ever see the coprorate areas and I can't honestly see them sticking around for very long much less spending any money.
Linden knows that the majority of their customers are in their world for the adult content. But they know sooner or later a better service is going to come along and render them obsolete. So they want to expand and get a better reputation for themselves by appealing to the same crowd that they already failed with: Corporate customers. This move to try to restrict the "adult" content to certain confined areas is an attempt to make the world more appealing to people usually turned away by that sort of thing, but it won't change what Second Life is. By restricting the adult content to a specific area you only restrict the PEOPLE to that area as well. The rest of the world will remain an empty ghost town.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
Good to see LL cracking the whip.
Sick of playing Entropia Universe? Want to quit, but don't want your hard earned money to vanish? Give your items to ME :-)
The new contentent seems to be Naked Noobie land with the Noobs all naked with their freenises.
The problem is, you are talking as if SL just came out last week and this is some untested platform with unlimited potental. The reality is that SL has been around for years and coporate parties have already tried to set up shop in the virtual world and largely failed. That isn't something which is going to change as SL gets older and the technology behind it becomes increasingly more obsolete.
I already gave you the example of Nike. They made the classic mistake with SL. They started in SL back during its major heyday and assumed because Newsweek and other old media sources couldn't shut up about how SL was the next big thing that they obviously had to get in on the action. So they quickly ran into SL, bought up several islands and paid someone to start designing all kinds of zany stuff on those islands in the vain hope that it would somehow attract a horde of people to them so they could show off their products.
But what happened? Ghost town. They built these huge buildings and all kinds of other fancy stuff (I remember they even had a giant flying blimp with some kind of stuff inside of it) and NOBODY CAME. At any given time of day there might be one or two people walking around in the whole thing, if even that. They would ghost around for a bit, look at what was going on and then it was off to some other area. Nike spent some ungodly sum of money to design an area that was meant to hold HUNDREDS of people at one time but what they got was an area that was lucky if it saw that many people in an entire month. They spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on this just to rent the land alone for a single month and barely anyone sees it or is even aware of its existance. They could have run a TV ad on a station in North Dakota and gotten more exposure, probably for less money.
Many other corporate businesses have done the same and seen similar results. I'm guessing you probably still have Second Life installed on your computer right now (I don't anymore) so go ahead and do some traveling to see for yourself. Search for every coprorate owned area in the game you can find and see how many people are in those areas right now. Most will be empty. A few might have one or two people. If you get very lucky you might stumble upon one that has some kind of planned event happening and may have a half dozen or more people there at the same time.
And it isn't just that people aren't interested in corporate areas in the world. Every area in Second Life is like this. The vast majority of the virtual world is a ghost town. I've seen amazing places in SL. Huge, well designed sims full of incredible things that someone obviously invested an amazing amount of time working on... And the place will still be a ghost town despite this. An empty, boring ghost town.
We keep hearing that there are SOOOO many people playing this game. But where the hell are they and what are they doing? Well a quick scan of the world map for the game can show you where everyone is loacted. And sure enough atleast a good 90% of the population will be crammed into a hand full of "adult" areas. "Dance" clubs, strip clubs, porn shops, stores selling genitalia and/or sex animations and of course people in "private" areas doing things that need not be mentioned. The other 10% will be sitting around in some public area chatting (treating the game like exactly what it is: A chat room with graphics) or simply wandering around the world, visiting one area at a time to briefly glance at whatever there is to see there before moving on a few minutes later. Its only this small 10% of the population given to doing actual exploring of the world who will ever see the coprorate areas and I can't honestly see them sticking around for very long much less spending any money.
Linden knows that the majority of their customers are in their world for the adult content. But they know sooner or later a better service is going to come along and render them obsolete. So they want to expand and get a better reputation for themselves by appealing to the same crowd that they already failed with: Corporate customers. This move to try to restrict the "adult" content to certain confined areas is an attempt to make the world more appealing to people usually turned away by that sort of thing, but it won't change what Second Life is. By restricting the adult content to a specific area you only restrict the PEOPLE to that area as well. The rest of the world will remain an empty ghost town.
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, but life happens.
I apologize if I make it sound like SL has only been around for a short time. I've been in world for two and a half years. Some consider me an "old timer," but there are many older than me who are still in world regularly.
I agree, corporations have failed several times with their ventures in SL. Strange enough, there are still many who keep trying. That's what makes a free market such a wonderful thing. That is also why SL *IS* changing. It is constantly evolving. I don't agree with all of it, but then again, I didn't put the money into the venture to create SL. Contrary to how it may seem, big companies did not put big money into creating areas that are failures. Nike for example put a few thousand dollars into SL as a potential marketing environment. The money they spent was probably only a fraction of what they have spent on any single TV marketing add. The risk was low. The potential was high. Did it pay off? Only Nike can answer that, but either way it did not cost them much to try.
You mention the huge Ghost Towns where "Nobody came." I have to admit, I don't like the big corporate sims. They don't so anything for me. I am quite sure most others feel the same way. That doesn't tell me anything other than the company who built it didn't build anything worth taking some of my time. It says nothing about SL. It only says the company who built the area made a mistake and has no reflection on other companies in SL or LL itself. Yes, I still have SL on my computer. I spend a little time there every week tending to my stores. You are correct, the big name corporate areas (what few are left) are virtually empty. That just tells me SL may not be a venue for them or they just haven't found a way to use this venue to their advantage.
As I write this, there are over 60,000 accounts logged on. Using your numbers, that means there are over 6,000 active people taking part is something other than Adult related activities. That's just the people who are not in bed sleeping in their part of the real world. After many of the current 6,000 log off, there will be others who log on to replace them. That would mean about 12,000 active people in world doing something besides Adult activities in any given 24 hour time span. Not a huge number, but still, nothing to sneeze at.
If some of those people want to use SL as a "chat room with graphics," more power to them. If others want to use it as a 3D development environment for brain storming, GREAT! That's kind of what I use it for. If still others want to use it as a place for cyber adult activities, while I don't agree with their choice, they now have their own little part of the SL word to BOINK their little cyber brains out.
However, I don't agree with your last paragraph. While I am sure LL knows a large majority of their current customer base is interested in Adult Content, they (LL) are evolving the world. They are making changes and improvements, but I don't think they really believe someone will come along and render them obsolete. SL started out as an experiment, a "what if" to explore. Basically, it started with very little restriction on a resident's actions. As any educated person will tell you, a world without rules is a world in chaos. It takes time, sometimes a very long time, to build not just a city, but a society. Such a society requires rules. Those rules have slowly, reluctantly been added to the SL world. If that means the sims have more and more unowned lots, I'm okay with that. It simply means balance is coming to SL. My customers (and I still have many customers every week to buy my products) simply don't have to deal with all the clutter.
I know I will never convince you SL is a good place. I'm not trying to do that. You don't like SL so you don't go there and that's fine. I don't like Chicago, IL or Kansas City, KS so I don't go to those places any more. I also don't care for the adult content area of SL so I don't have any reason to go there either.
I send you good thoughts, Raltar. May you find the virtual world that makes you happy or the physical world that makes all virtual worlds moot.
Okay... lets pretend that the 6000 people you quoted me as being outside the adult area of the game are real and that they are actually doing stuff.
WHAT are they doing?
When I log into SL I see people standing around and yelling at each other mostly. People have wacky costumes and can teleport or fly all over hells half acre while they do it. But at the end of the day, its still a chat room with graphics. The large majority are going to abuse it for cyber sex... and the rest are going to abuse it for the other things chat rooms get abused for: trolling, flmaing, whining, ect.
I just don't see the point in a chat room with graphics. You can give it graphics, you can allow people to edit the graphics but at the end of the day its still just a chat room and still only good for the same things a chat room is.
If a chat room where you just hang out with your buddies and sell them graphics for their avatars is what you want, then great. More power to you I guess. But just don't come up in this forum and start telling everyone what a wonderful GAME Second Life is, because its not a game, its just a chat room. (And I'm not saying that you have done that, but many other people have over the years and those are the guys I usually tell to knock it off.)
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields