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Second Life is full of interesting things. In the image below my avatar, in a NASA astronaut attire, watches the realistic movement of a Mars airbag descending a Martian hill. The Mars recreation is on Explorer Island, near NASA Colab. From the paper Astronomy in Second Life: A User’s Perspective: “The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at Caltech has a strong and growing presence in SL and based on Explorer Island with amazing model building of past, present, and future space technology. In one area it appears they are experimenting with stereoscopic images of the lunar and Martian surfaces. One corner of their sim is dedicated to recreating portions of Mars. Avatars should watch for dust devils, rovers, and bouncing Mars airbags”. I just spent 10 minutes there and went away with a good visual understanding of airbags and dust devils.

The image shows a desert not only because Mars looks like a desert but also because, unfortunately, the most interesting simulations in Second Life are often (actually, almost always) empty of avatarian life. While, as we all know, many Second Life sims with sexual content and camping chairs are always packed full. But you don’t even need sex and camping to attract visitors. The sim “Parioli” of my friend Bruno (CEO of Virtual Italian Parks) is always full of avatars chatting in the main square.

One possible conclusion is that Second Life users are a bunch of idiots. As a Second Life user, I am not too happy with this conclusion. Another possible conclusion is the operators of edutainment sims in Second Life are doing something wrong. I am happier with this conclusion, because it is more constructive and give us the opportunity to achieve some improvement by understanding better why users spend time in Second Life. In the NASA sims, the “edu” part of “edutainment” is evidently there. What about the “(enter)tainment” part?

I think the “(enter)tainment” part is also there, and their edutainment objective would be achieved IF ONLY there were more people around. My company has contributed to the development of many cultural sims in Second Life (for example this, this and a couple more coming), very good examples of mature content with evident cultural value, and always empty except for scheduled events every month or so. We have other clients who, without high profile cultural content, always have visitors on their sims. Someone is doing something wrong. What?

It is important to understand the differences between a Second Life sim and a website. The keywords are socializing with other users, and creating content. Second Life is different from the 2D web because it offers more and better possibilities to socialize with other users, and it is different from (most) other VR worlds because it offers more and better possibilities to express one’s creativity. These are the two features of Second Life that must be exploited for success. Many sims spontaneously and chaotically created by users are always full, and many sims carefully planned and expensively implemented by large companies and institutions are always empty. A lesson learned is that no company or institution can have the flexibility and resources to keep creating fresh interesting content to attract users - the only way is creating a community of users (fans of a football club, a faculty club, senior citizens, people passionately committed to some common interest...) and give them the means to make and keep the sim interesting for other users.

Second Life users visit a new place because it is new (typically, an opening event), but they go back to socialize with people with similar interests. The measure of success in Second Life is seeing avatars doing or discussing things together. Interesting exhibitions and lectures, even very interesting ones, is not enough. They are a way to get things started, but cannot replace a vibrant creative community of activists who organize things spontaneously.

If I had to manage the NASA sims, I would try to bootstrap a strong community of Second Life users interested in space by organizing very frequent events (twice a week or more) for a couple of months, then give management rights to 5-10 committed and dependable people and encourage them to organize their own events and spread the word. This should permit achieving a critical mass for self-ignition in a few months. Relinquishing control over a beautifully planned sim is a difficult decision, but in virtual reality crowdsourcing is the way to go. I think a good example is the Extropia Core community in Second Life.