So … remind me. Who is this all about, again?

NB – this post comes without pictures because I can’t show the pictures I’m going to talk about.  But you’ve all seen them – the opening shots when you load the Second life browser.

In the past, before the internet was much more than staring transfixed at a computer screen for five minutes while a jpg downloaded line
by
line
and everyone though blink was a pretty neat effect, I was teaching communication studies to sixteen to nineteen year olds, for exams known as A levels in the UK.  And one of the first things we would discuss with them was identifying an audience.  Because, if any form of media is to be successful, you need to define your audience.

And that’s not rocket science.  It was simply one of the first things we taught our students.  And they would nod, and give the right answers to all the questions even though some of them – when it came to tackling their practical projects – would veer hopelessly off course. But, you know, this was the easy stuff.  The basics.  And you could track it this way … “This ad/tv programme/magazine is aimed at these people so we need it to do A, B, C.”  Or tack it back again … “Because it contains X,Y, Z, this ad/tv programme/magazine must be aimed at those people.”

So why, when I look at the opening screens that Linden Lab is putting on the opening screen for Second Life – the very first thing new users see, the thing regular users see day after day, do I find myself asking, again and again, “Who the hell is this trying to reach?”

The images are, I understand, meant to show off the new depth of field that can be obtained in Viewer 2 (and, I think, Kirsten’s Viewer.  But this effect isn’t the standard one; we don’t all (thank heavens) walk through a world that looks anything like this.  So the pictures are failing at a very, very basic level – they give a completely erroneous picture of Second Life that no new user is likely to experience or, indeed, anyone who isn’t interested in a particular photo effect.  So this is geek saying to fellow geek, “Hey, this is a really cool tool!” while the rest of us are left profoundly unmoved.

Is that really the target audience?  The small proportion of people who want to try out advanced photographic techniques in Second Life?  Is this who we are trying to reach now?

Because let’s look at the content of some of these images.

Let’s start with the one of a female sitting on what appears to be a bench in a classical garden.  The background is blurred, throwing her into sharp contrast.  The windlight settings are perhaps overdone, making everything red so that even reflected light is rather red-tinged.  But that’s not the problem.

I think we’d all agree that one of the things that attracts a sizeable demographic of Second Life is people who want to create and remake their own avatar, to pick the perfect skin, the perfect hair, the perfect clothes. Playing Barbie, as we say … and that’s fair enough.  Having a picture of someone doing precisely that might prove a draw to new users who could be similarly motivated.

But this one is clad in fishnet gloves and fishnet stocking – in fact it looks like a red fishnet body stocking overlaid with some unevenly applied black material.  She looks tarty, an image compounded by the eyelashes (visible on the one eye shown through her hair) that seem to be clotted with an overly heavy use of mascara.  Around one finger she is wearing a very ill-fitting ring that would, in reality, drop off her finger as soon as she turned her hand over.  If this is meant to be the female face of Second Life, then heaven help us.

Romance! That’s what Second Life is all about! Well, probably not for many of us.  But at least it could be an audience to target, to sell Second Life as the new place to meet your partner …

So let’s look at the opening photo that covers romance.

Two figures sit on a picnic table.  Not sure why it’s the table and not a rug on the ground but let it pass, let it pass.  They’re not sitting together though, certainly not snuggling.  They sit at opposite ends of the table, facing each other.  And their posture is terrible.  The girl’s skirt is falling through the table revealing her glitch pants (hard to avoid, I know, but it can be done) while the boy sits in a slightly stiff posture.  But the problem is … he looks like a doll.  He looks like Ken.  There’s a waxy quality to his hand and skin and above all to his jacket that makes him look doll-like, compounded by the fact that this technique robs his face of any expression whatsoever, even the expression of gentle interest that is the default Linden one.

What man, however eager for online romance, is going to come to an environment where he looks like Ken?

And this photo reveals another problem of the technique, the inability to render landscapes decently.  I am sure that the trees here are among the finest Second Life can sell.  But the trunk of the tree to the right of the frame is over-coloured, while the leaves at the top of the picture look flat and papery

At all events, I don’t see this picture as appealing much to the lovelorn. Or, for that matter, to anyone else.

The landscaping problems are compounded in the beanstalk picture. Here the colours look muddy, the shadows are ill positioned (where exactly IS the light source anyway?) and the objects are blurry.  This is presumably a photo to show the awesome and wonderful things that exist in Second Life, but the angle is so high that the central image of the bean stalk looks tiny. It’s also shiny, and the figures dancing (?) on the leaf look like those little representations of figures on a table football game.  Well, there may be people out there whose sole desire in online gaming is to look like a figure in a table football game, but I am willing to submit that there are very, very few of them,

But above all, in this picture, the trees look terrible.  When I was a child, my father had a wonderful model railway set where trains would drive through artfully manufactured miniature landscapes. The tree would be tiny stiff little things with upright trunks and tops that were a mixture of painted wire and cotton.  Looking, I’m afraid, exactly like the trees here.

So – we’re reaching out to the model railway fans and the table football market for new members? Enterprising, but slightly niche, I’d say.

And surely the model railway fans would be far more attracted by the awesome picture of the railway lines that Second Life used to have on its opening screen, rather than an image of the trees that could line the model railway line?

Seriously – this photography technique is at odds with the Second Life landscaping. It exposes the weaknesses. It puts them on the front page. It says, loud and clear, “Come and play this game because inworld it looks like crap.” Wich, of course, is simply not true.

We can see the same effect in one of the more interesting pictures – the giant modernist statue with the blue domed building in the background to the right.  But the distance again tends to belittle the image, the trees are again such as would delight the heart of the nostalgic model railway enthusiast and the lighting is so strong (as in the beanstalk picture) as to bleach all colour from the surrounding landscape.

A classic example of this belittling comes in the picture of the village.  Again, it’s a high overhead shot, making the village look tiny.  It’s hard to see if there are any people there – the distance and perspective would reduce any that are to stick figures.  So the houses – and heaven knows, houses and nesting are a vital part of Second Life –look tiny and uninviting – the whole thing not helped by the sickly green wash over everything, and the reduction of the landscape to blurs and model railway lookalikes.

So who is this picture attracting? Who is it meant to attract?

If it IS prospective home-owners, property renters or owners, then it is a failure. These houses are not particularly alluring – what looks like a rundown French village may have attractions to some, but not to many.  And these houses look more like something you would arrange on a game board than something you would move into, furnish, live in and love.

There are, of course, some inviting pictures.  The one that brings steampunk and modern urban environments into sharp contrast – that looks good.  That’s worth exploring.  That’s the reaction it gets from me, let alone a newcomer … and I live here.   And the urban environment one too, showing a road under a bridge … it might overdo the glow a bit but, in the grimy urban context, this works.  And the shot of Omega is … ok.  Well, it would take considerable effort to make Omega look other than ravishing but …

All this is bringing me back to my initial point.  Who are these screens aimed at? What message are they trying to convey?

The only message that I can see is “Hey, we have a cool new camera technique!” and that is hardly mass market.

But they seem to have applied this technique to a whole string of ideas that are poorly realised.  You can dress your Barbie – fail. You can find romance – fail. You can make a home here – fail. You can find awesome places – mostly fail. You can be in urban environments – success.

As a summation of the possibilities of Second Life, it strikes me as pretty limited.

So … who are the audience they are trying to reach with these opening shots?

I honestly don’t know.