UPDATE: Since this post is attracting an inordinate number of spam comments (all of which are being caught by my spam filter, but it’s still a pain to keep emptying it) I’m disabling comments on it.

Hi peeps!

Normally a post like this would go onto my Ponderings blog, but since it’s related to the newbie experience I’m putting it here.

Every now and then I create a new alt, to see what the ‘Welcome to Second Life’ experience is like. There was a time when it was pretty stable and didn’t change. You first rezzed at an Orientation Island with a tutorial HUD on your screen that directed you to do things, told you how to walk, to drive vehicles, to chat to other people, to buy things, to change your looks; basically how to do the important stuff you’d want to do in a virtual world.

The welcome experience has gone through several iterations since then, but they always included tutorials on the important stuff. Until now.

This is where Mar’s new alt rezzed:

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a complete newbie (remember how confused you were when you first rezzed?) and hop behind the cut…

So, where the hell are we? We appear, from the aerial view I cammed back for, to be in the middle of some kind of temple on a huge forested island. There’s nothing on the island but the temple and a lot of trees. Oh, and it’s all mesh, so if you’re using a slow computer, or a computer with a graphics card that can’t handle mesh then you’re already in trouble: either seeing weird jagged shapes or you might have crashed altogether!

Looking around, you can see portals or doors. Obviously those are the way out of this place, but first you have to figure out how to get there. Well, you’re pretty smart, and you’ve probably gamed before, so you’re fairly certain the arrow keys on your keyboard will move you. And they do – yay!

But there’s some guy in front of you, standing with his hands on his hips, looking around, clearly bewildered and lost. You feel sorry for him and want to tell him to press the arrow keys, so how do you talk to him?

OK, there seems to be a tiny white bar at the bottom of your Second Life viewer, so you try clicking in that and typing, then hitting the enter key. That works! He looks directly at you (woah, that’s a bit creepy, too!) and, since you’re a female avatar, you suddenly realise all the other half dozen avatars here are male. Two of them are walking over to you. Um… okay, so you were only trying to help Mr Bewildered here, and they’re coming over like rabid zombies!

Mr Bewildered’s arms lift and he starts tapping on an invisible keyboard…

Mr Bewildered: We have sex now?

At this point you wonder where the ‘run like hell’ command is (or maybe the ‘knee him in the nuts’ command, but hey let’s be nice) and you decide you’re here for Second Life, not Mr Bewildered-but-Amorous, so you walk away (trail of zombie newbs following) to examine the doors.

Because you don’t know how to focus on each door, you have to walk over to each one. They are:

Social, music, editor’s picks, art, roleplayer, popular, and Linden Realm (not pictured).

Of course, you’ll only see these portals as portals if your computer or graphics card is capable of viewing them. Sooooo… what to choose, and if you go through one will your horde of zombie newb followers come after you? Eep!

You pick ‘art’ and – after fruitless clicking on the door – you try walking through it. And WHAM – you land somewhere else entirely. You’re in… well, it’s a bit odd. Not as bright and cartoony. You’ve actually been sent to a random art sim. You’re finally in-world and out of that Disneyesque forest.

So… now what? Oh, right, that’s it: you haven’t got a clue! You know how to walk and chat, but there’s nobody around to ask what to do next. You don’t know where to go (okay, there’s some Destination Guide thingy on your screen, so you could try something from there, but will it have newb zombies?)

In short, Linden Lab, I am heartily sorry to see the tutorials go. I know people aren’t stupid, I know many of us have tried at least some gaming and can figure out the basics, but what of the stuff that is SL-specific (such as ALT-click to focus on things). This is clearly why I had to make that post about how to use the camera controls. At the start of it I mentioned how I was increasingly seeing newbies flying up to view high-placed ads in stores because they didn’t know how to focus on them with their camera:

That’s because they come in green as can be!

I’m trying to think of any other game – even the most simplistic – that doesn’t have some kind of tutorial or ‘how to play’ guide, or walkthrough mode. There are a few, but in the main games have some way of learning How To Do Stuff. It’s up to users, then, if they bother with it, but they can’t say, “I didn’t know, because it wasn’t there”.

Add to that the fact that we older residents know: that already the Linden Realm has been cast aside in favour of the new Wilderness Experience, so why it’s one of the portals instead of the Wilderness I don’t know. It’s still there, but there are reports of some things no longer working properly.

An open letter:

Dear Rod and Linden Lab,

I’ve played games like Linden Realms. They neither required me to have a hot-off-the-press computer nor a top-line graphics card. Walking into Linden Realms was like walking around a level of Sonic the Hedgehog while on acid. The new welcome island is the same. What’s with all the cartoony stuff? If you simply must use mesh for everything, why make it look like something aimed at five-year-olds? Have you looked at what SL’s content creators are doing with mesh right now? Why are we suddenly in Teletubby Land?!

As for the welcome island, well that’s about as UNwelcome as it can be. First impressions: “Pretty, but toony. Is all of Second Life this kiddie-like? Blech, don’t think it’s for me.”

Experienced gamers can figure out the stuff like walking, talking, clicking on stuff. We’re not afraid to go poking around to see what things do, digging into menus and preferences. But what of inexperienced users? Those without a relatively recent computer and graphics card?

Bring back the tutorials, even if it’s only a HUD that’s attached the first time a new resident arrives into Second Life. Use the new tools that you’re developing. Have you seen what can be done with HUD-based books?

Here’s my suggestion for a new orientation:

Why not have every resident arrive in their own personal, beautifully-decorated skybox or home (you could pack tens of these skyboxes/homes into each welcome region – maybe have different types, from modern to gothic to medieval and let the user pick which one they rez in as part of the signup process) with a floating book in front of them that says ‘click me!’.

Once clicked, have that book attach to their screen (not filling the whole view; just visible in one corner) with clearly-turnable pages. In the book, explain the basics – using objects in the skybox/home – of how to sit and stand and focus, etc. Just like it used to be on the old Welcome Island. At the end of the book, show some snapshots of SL taken by the residents, give a folder of landmarks to destinations (and explain how to use landmarks!), explain about Linden Homes and maybe some of the large resident-created newbie-helping places such as NCI, and let the newbie then take their first steps in-world.

For skyboxes, have a portal appear to the land-based area (maybe put a nice pub or meeting place down there, for newbies to socialise?) only once the orientation is complete. For land-based homes, use the parcel privacy option so that newbies aren’t disturbed while completing orientation, and then let the door unlock to let them out where other newbies may be wandering around (for that social aspect of things) once orientation is complete (remember to tell them at the end of the book they can now click the door or walk through the portal!) – or, of course, they could use their new folder of landmarks or the destination guide to go places.

We’re not toddlers, so stop dumbing down visually. SL is a fabulous, wonderful place, but right now I can see potential residents turning away in droves because of the awful welcome area and lack of any guiding hand.

Kind regards,

Mar