Someone asked me about Second Life

By Shana | Published: August 16, 2009
"Avatar-Based Marketing: What's the Futur...
Image by Pathfinder Linden via Flickr

I was recently asked, in the comments section of this blog, whether there is potential in buying advertising space in Second Life.  I wanted to answer this question more generally- instead of dealing with just Second Life, is it worthwhile to develop a real life business through a virtual game of some sort?

The answer to this question is not a very simple one at all.  These games are very social, more social than even the typical users of social media are.  They involve flights of fantasy, the kinds that reach back into parts of our personalities that we normally may or may not let be seen.  When we engage in these games, we engage parts of ourselves, in groups, that we probably haven’t engaged in since we were children.  We let ourselves play pretend for a moment, and allow ourselves to be stronger, more powerful, smarter, prettier, and more amazing than our real life selves could ever be.  As a result, the lessons we learn in those worlds (if we learn them), much like the lessons we learn as children playing pretend, are applicable to the world in life.  Just because the game isn’t real, doesn’t mean the psychology in them is also not.  Oftentimes, it is more real.  Betraying teammates will cause players to fail and lose friends, just like in the real world.  Game theory still works there.  One can make money and start businesses.  Opportunities are abound in these games.

Advertising in these worlds is therefore a messy business.  Unlike the games we played as children, there are no bodily limitations, just the norms of the game, and the technical specifications of your computer and the far away servers that run the game.  They don’t need food, nor naps, in any traditional sense of the word.  One could take a powerful laptop and eat a three course meal while playing one of these games, totally forgetting that s/he has gourmet food in front of him/her.  How is someone, therefore, supposed to get the real life player of the game to remember the brand of gourmet food in real life, and buy it, and therefore eat it?

One suggestion I found in a book called Influence, writing about the works of Dr. Albert Bandura, is that one needs to model behavior in a supportive group setting.  Further, extrinsic rewards don’t often work; the rewards have to be intrinsic.  Modeling doesn’t even need to be done by a real person.  it could be seen on a TV, it turns out.

So why not a game?  The problem is, that it is a huge investment of time and energy to develop a community that will model the behavior one wants to advertise.  One not only has to build the objects/advertising engines to repeat the behavior on, one also has to go out, and convince people that this is the “right way” or “best practice” when it comes to behavior in a game.  From there, companies then have to then model that this behavior is then to be modeled in real life.  It is a huge effort, which is why the largest running businesses in all of these games seem to run on fantasy, whether adult (IE sex), or childish (IE running around beating up monsters).  For many people, the effort in a virtual world, considering the time put in versus cost, especially when one considers the social time to develop a community, for say, developing an expensive art commune that specializes in virtual contemporary and also interacts with the real world gallery scene for its value and verification, isn’t worth it.  It is cheaper with a bigger payoff to not bother.  It pays more to make objects that provide fights of fantasy in a shorter period of time.

Breaking through this wall though, will provide more access to larger amounts of people, who right now feel hampered by these games.  So it’s a huge choice.  Do you want to be a pioneer with a group of people, knowing that currently, the case in these games is that you are dealing with a very sensitive part of people’s life that has not been acted upon in any real way, or do you want to develop it into something a little closer to reality?

(Please note that I do not mean any of this as a value judgment when it comes to people’s choices about MMORPGS.  I think one should have spaces to be childish, fantastical, or adult.  The question is, how do you advertise in that space, when advertising may run contrary to those spaces where those value are ok.  Not every space needs to share the same value sets.)

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  • http://www.thehackensack.blogspot.com/ DaveinHackensack

    There was a great, twisted novel written by Michael Swanwick about fifteen years ago called the Iron Dragon's Daughter. It was set in world with post industrial world with elves, fey creatures, etc. Sort of a parallel world to ours. The protagonist at one point is studying industrial alchemy in a university and she just can't get her experiments to go right, even though she does everything by the book. Finally, one of her fellow students pulls her aside and lets her in on the secret, something essential that all the successful alchemists know but never gets written in a book and is rarely spoken about openly.

    Something like this is true as well of this whole social media tech stuff, I think. There's a kind of magic in how Fred Wilson and other VCs can make money from investing in businesses that don't make money. I get the sense that a bunch of hobbyists are giving off ethereal vapors as the rave about one program or another — and by themselves, these vapors are inert, insubstantial. But men like Fred can vacuum up enough of them and use their sorcerer's stone to transmute this vapor into cash.

    That's all a long way of saying that I guess advertising in Second Life is pointless for most entrepreneurs with businesses here in First Life

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    Well, you asked, and I gave an answer. I hope the answe wasn't cheeky. I was trying to think out the many possibilities knowing what (little ) i know of second life, of other MMORPGs, of why we play them, and also not knowing what you are trying to sell (that's fairly tough, believe it or not). I don't suggest sitting there and trying to think up what the other person is thinking. Hard work, which tends to not always get you somewhere. Though some say it is good for game theory type practices…others say it is just better to ask…

    I wouldn't say it is pointless per say- but that you have a lot of obstacles, and that you need to know what most humans are going to do in the game. And that you might want to get a core group of a variety of business walking around acting as if it were completely normal to change a whole slew of behaviors, in conjunction with the lindens (but you might not need them if you had enough people). Eventually it would just capitulate, but it would be a tough long road. It is how microfinancing works. I suggest you do read Influence as well as try and get your hands on some of Dr. Bandura's works ( I know I should) and draw conclusions from there. Remember always, we like to think we act alone- we don't, we act in an environment, and that environment includes people.

  • http://www.thehackensack.blogspot.com/ DaveinHackensack

    “Well, you asked, and I gave an answer. “

    You did, and thanks for that. To be perfectly honest though, I didn't make it all the way through your answer. I'm sure it contained some important insights that would make sense to me from inside the rabbit hole, but I'm on the outside of that rabbit hole now. What I was really looking to find out is whether it was worth going in the rabbit hole in the first place. I think you have given me that answer though, and for that I'm grateful.

    Re your mention of “microfinancing” in your comment, for disambiguation purposes, you may want to stick with micropayments instead. Microfinance makes me think of this guy holding the prize.

    Best,

    Dave

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    Dr. Mohammad Yunus? You would want to copy him if you want people to buy using micropayments. This is what you get for not fully reading the post.. ;)

    Fred Wilson et all do not have some secret magic to how to get no money turn into money. It's all about groups and influence. You are just going to have change behavior, whether virtual or real or both. And that, requires identifying critical outlier behavior and mad skills. It just seems that most of us tend to want to stay away from identifying what those are…

  • http://www.thehackensack.blogspot.com/ DaveinHackensack

    The freemium/free/micropayments/advertising-supported business model is mainly for the Fred Wilsons of the world. They can leverage their stature and connections to hype a portfolio company offering a free product, and then profit from a successful exit of their investment (e.g., an IPO or an acquisition). In that sense, it's still a little like 1999 for them. That's their alchemy.

    For most of the rest of us, building a successful business means offering a product or service for which customers are willing to make “macropayments”. It's easier to find a thousand people willing to pay $10 for a product or service than it is to find a hundred thousand people willing to spend a dime for it.

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    For the right kind of thing you get a lot more. Look at Westix.

    OTOH, the majority of things in $.99 still only cost $.99. Definition of Micropayment right there. And very small square capitalism.

  • http://thehackensack.blogspot.com/ DaveinHackensack

    I lucked into a pithier answer to my question on p. xxix of David Silver's new book, “The Social Network Business Plan”:

    This I know to be true: Placing ads on Facebook, MySpace, and Second Life are worthless tactics to find new customers.”

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    He's wrong. You know people notice the ads becuase of the backlash against certain types of ads, such as the ones that borrow your pictures. We're subconciously noticing them so we can filter. If I take the time to notice my semi-concious chatter about Facebook (since I live there a good deal) I can tell you although I rarely click through, I do notice the ads. Especially how they change.

    What actually would be best for those ads, as odd as it seems (though facebook has figured this out in its new search), would be for it to give me my last three searches, instead of my history. Or something location based plus my last three searches. or my calendar plus my last three searches. It's a social site, I want to do things with the people I am talking to…I'd like it to know that I have on again off again taken salsa lessons so I can figure out where I can take people salsa dancing that isn't 21+, and instead 18+…Niche things like that…we'd notice if it filled the right niche. The ads are really poorly placed. I never use facebook to talk about Venture and Startup and Internet and Mobile land except with one person- and He's at the FCC…and most of the time we don't talk that. It's fluff land that reflects after hours, so please give me the right sort of fluff?

  • http://thehackensack.blogspot.com/ DaveinHackensack

    He's wrong

    Your both equally decisive on this question, but given his background, I'm going to defer to him on this one.

  • http://steamcatapult.com/ Dave Pinsen

    I lucked into a pithier answer to my question on p. xxix of David Silver's new book, “The Social Network Business Plan”:

    This I know to be true: Placing ads on Facebook, MySpace, and Second Life are worthless tactics to find new customers.”

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    He's wrong. You know people notice the ads becuase of the backlash against certain types of ads, such as the ones that borrow your pictures. We're subconciously noticing them so we can filter. If I take the time to notice my semi-concious chatter about Facebook (since I live there a good deal) I can tell you although I rarely click through, I do notice the ads. Especially how they change.

    What actually would be best for those ads, as odd as it seems (though facebook has figured this out in its new search), would be for it to give me my last three searches, instead of my history. Or something location based plus my last three searches. or my calendar plus my last three searches. It's a social site, I want to do things with the people I am talking to…I'd like it to know that I have on again off again taken salsa lessons so I can figure out where I can take people salsa dancing that isn't 21+, and instead 18+…Niche things like that…we'd notice if it filled the right niche. The ads are really poorly placed. I never use facebook to talk about Venture and Startup and Internet and Mobile land except with one person- and He's at the FCC…and most of the time we don't talk that. It's fluff land that reflects after hours, so please give me the right sort of fluff?

  • http://steamcatapult.com/ Dave Pinsen

    He's wrong

    Your both equally decisive on this question, but given his background, I'm going to defer to him on this one.

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/09/28/massive-multiplayer-collaborative-design/ Massive Multiplayer Collaborative Design

    [...] Mark Essel | Published: September 28, 2009 Recent posts by Chris Brogan, Vladimir Vukicevic, and Shana Carp have discussed the evolving role of games and their relationship to modern web businesses. I have [...]

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