Second Life and the Elusive User: Research ideas and perhaps an ultimatum to Second Life CarrieLynn D. Reinhard Roskilde University, 9-10-08 What an interesting age to operate in as a media reception scholar. The increasing reliance on interactive media to distribute content means our concept of the audience is radically changing. Concepts from human-computer interaction and economics are needed to grasp the roles individuals enact when controlling their engaging with mediated information and entertainment. The user is appropriated to focus on a specific audience member who is engaging with the media product. At the same time, consumer refers to any user engaging with something created by someone else, from paying for the consumption to receiving the privilege for free. On the other side, producer refers to the creator or generator of the media product, content or technology, being consumed. Increasingly, due to the internet, these are not classical industry producers of traditional mass media; instead, a producer can be a single user working alone without large financial or other resources. Indeed, a media user could be alternatively a media consumer and a media producer – sometimes s/he will watch a movie, sometimes s/he will make a movie. The so-called Web 2.0 revolution was predicated on the notion of user-generation of media content and technology to rival the products of the media industry. However, the impact of the internet on the traditional consumer-producer dichotomy began earlier with the rise of P2P filesharing, and the very existence of the World Wide Web foreshadowed the challenges to the traditional relationship as the audience of traditional media had a more efficient means to talk amongst themselves. The media industry, after primarily being negative of the changes, has begun to show signs of co-opting this change for their own benefit, even becoming consumers to the production of the users. All of this background serves only to ground what are my current thoughts on the matter of Web 2.0 and how it relates to media reception studies. My thoughts informed how I responded to Dr. Robert Bloomfield’s discussion of users and Second Life, and led me to a hypothesis to test in the population of users currently engaging with Web 2.0 applications, from Second Life to YouTube and Facebook. Indeed, my reaction to Bloomfield’s visit has generated several lines of thinking that require empirical testing to verify if the observations are mere conjecture or something more substantial. In discussing how virtual worlds are user-generated, Bloomfield repeatedly made distinctions between Second Life and gaming oriented worlds with his “Disneyland” or “Disney World” metaphor. The implication is that gaming virtual worlds, or MMORPGs, are not user-generated because typically for-profit companies have constructed the platform of the game, leaving only basic character customization and gameplay choices to the users – thereby reducing the users’ potential for being producers. Second Life differs due to the
higher customization possible. However, both types of virtual worlds have had their platforms originally created by those who do not alternatively consume them – that is, the technology was originally designed by individuals who are more producer than consumer -and both are maintained on servers owned and operated by corporations. To differentiate this virtual world from others, Second Life’s world is far more dependent upon the constructions of the producer/consumer users. Users will create land, businesses, and goods, over which the corporation housing Second Life has little to no oversight. Instead of the corporation using the platform for their own profit, as is the case with MMORPGs, it is the users of Second Life who profit, socially, economically and artistically, from their engaging with the media product. For those users who have the desire to profit in these ways, then engaging with Second Life seems to be a gratifying experience. However, there is a learning curve to accomplishing any type of generation of content or structure in Second Life. Even the creation of a social network means learning how to communicate with people in Second Life, which requires newbies to be educated upon their arrival inworld. The creation of any virtual object inworld requires exacting manipulation of the prims that construct the world – even changing pre-constructed clothes requires a steady hand and a rudimentary understanding of three-dimensional geometry. It is this learning curve that may explain why Second Life has not become as popular as other Web 2.0 applications. I would argue Web 2.0 applications like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are more popular because they do not require such an intensive amount of investment by the user to generate something that could have potentially huge cultural -- and economic -- value. Instead of all users having to construct structures and content from the bottom-up, these applications have templates, or prefab structure(s), in place that the user can utilize to customize structure or content to his or her liking – i.e. to produce something for others to consume without slaving away on the details. Saying this does not negate those individuals who utilize such pre-fab structures and create very elaborate products for others to consume; instead, the less steep learning curve means that more people can take advantage of these applications for their own purposes without the intensive investment of time and energy. Consider the case of the highly successful, and culturally relevant, YouTube. As a producer, an individual user can put together a complicated video and construct a whole channel for others to consume. Or a different user can simply upload some grainy video from the integrated camera of a mobile phone. My measuring stick is that if I could do it, with basic editing tools, no programming knowledge and a short temper, than so can thousands of others. However, an application like Second Life does not have this template format as integral to how the application works. It is my understanding that more instruction
is needed to build something in Second Life, whereas YouTube’s construction of an online video can be as simple as clicking upload. While the MMORPGs may be virtual “Disney Worlds”, there is a reason the real Disney World is such a tourist haven: the majority of people believe their hard-earned leisure time should involve being entertained without too much additional energy investment on their part. Whether user-generation in Second Life is done for work or hobby, it requires more energy investment than the MMORPGs, to the extent that only the most adamant users will seek out such activity to fulfill their producing desires. While consumption is not a completely passive activity, the investment is far less. That is not to say that MMORPGs do not require investment, and is not intended to discredit the findings of the amount of capital and energy flowing from the real world into these virtual worlds. However, part of Bloomfield’s discussion of Second Life, as well as the conversation our group had surrounding it, was focused on the possibility of Second Life and similar virtual worlds being a viable alternative to the World Wide Web – a “3D Web”, in Bloomfield’s words. I propose that the success of the MMORPGs is built upon their cooptation of their consumers’ desires to be producers, but a desire that is tempered with not wanting to control all aspects of this production, from platform to content construction. I have seen the same happening in other forms of user-generated co-optation by Hollywood, as the user becomes “audience-as-pusher” to help market Hollywood products. If a Web 2.0 application like Second Life wants to expand and become more of a viable alternative to the Web, then it will have to address this notion of co-optation. As of now, Second Life is a freewheeling Wild West experiment in user-generation. Without some type of imposed or developed order, or structure, it will remain wildspace without possibility of expansion for social, cultural and economic profit. Even Bloomfield suggested the need for this co-optation in regards to the backchat aspect of his Metanomics show. He expressed his desire to make the “constructive cacophony” more constructive by further structuring the ways in which the communicating occurs. We discussed how having different threads and a perception analysis meter would structure the backchat to be more understandable and influential during each show, helping to shape the progress of the live show. As Metanomics already utilizes a backchat to connect with its audience members and provide feedback to affect the show, the show is already co-opting the actions of the audience for its own purposes. Further structuring the chatting as an interactive component of the show – or an exemplar of Web 2.0 logic – would be further co-optation, and serves to exemplify the need for producers and consumers to understand their dialogic relationship in order to produce a media experience that is beneficial to both.
Tying Bloomfield’s comments into the larger framework of the emerging consumer/producer dual identity for media users in the context of Web 2.0, these reactions and observations serve to highlight a potential means to classify media users as consumers/producers, and how such a classification scheme would relater to the success of Web 2.0 applications such as Second Life. When we think about media users along the dimension of consumption to production, and what potentially drives a person to be more of one than the other in some situation(s), I believe we can see a classification scheme based on what people want to do to/with the media product in question. I propose this would involve at least four main categories:
Theorized Percentages for Separting Interactive Media Users
Platform Producers Content Producers Network Producers Just Consumers
Figur 1. Preliminary figure, all percentages hypothetical to show interrelations
First, there are those who create the overall technological platform that is the foundation of the media product: platform producers. Next would be those who utilize the platform to create the content to fill-in the structure: the content producers who add papier-mâché to the wire frame already constructed by the platform producers. Then there would be those who build up the social networks to bring others into the platform and engage with the content already generated: the network producers who spread around the different papier-mâché creations. Finally there are those who simply want to consume all these different things that have been generated: the just consumers who appreciate the papier-mâché creations. Separating users into these four categories does not mean users are always-only one or another. Indeed, this is a research question: what are the conditions under which a person moves from being one type of user versus another? However, this question is secondary to the testing of the hypothetical classification: is this how users see themselves, do the percentages of each type breakdown as proposed for any particular media product, and does it reliably relate to their amount of enthusiasm for producing versus consuming in relation to some media product?
Should the classification scheme be reliable, follow-up questions could focus on what motivates a person to be a producer versus a consumer at a particular time-space engaging with a media product, and how these classification schemes relate to the success of various Web 2.0 applications. Of course, the success of various Web 2.0 applications would have to be objectively described, perhaps based on number of users, frequency of use, and reactions to usability. These factors could then be correlated with the classification scheme to see if my theory about Second Life holds: are there more just consumers using more successful Web 2.0 applications, versus more of all the producers being associated with Second Life?