One of the hardest things about Second Life is finding people to share it with, and it’s a problem Residents run into over and over again.
Sometimes it starts with your very first login. You’re a stranger in an even stranger world, and you have absolutely no idea what you’re supposed to do first.
Sometimes it happens years later when the club you spent every weekend at closes. Your favorite roleplaying region disappears. You and your boyfriend break up and suddenly realize most of your friends were our friends. Maybe you’ve spent the last six months building things on a platform in the sky and would really like to remember what other avatars look like.
Sooner or later, a lot of us end up asking the same question:
Okay. What now?
For many residents, the answer is other people. We log into Second Life for exploration and play, but we stay for the connections. Sometimes that means an entire community and sometimes it means one really good friend, but those connections are often what turn Second Life from a collection of beautiful places into somewhere we actually want to come back to.
The problem is that finding those connections can be surprisingly difficult.
There’s no body language telling you whether the avatar standing nearby feels like talking. People have different ideas about when it’s okay to IM someone. Conversations sometimes die two sentences in and even when you go looking for somewhere social, finding a place doesn’t necessarily mean finding people.
Meanwhile, Second Life creators are dealing with the other side of exactly the same problem; they build clubs, communities, games, museums, events, hangouts, roleplaying environments, educational spaces and countless other places for people to visit. Then they have to figure out how to get people there.
Making friends in Second Life is hard. Getting people to come to your place is hard.
Everlife ‘Friendly’ Locations are designed to help those two problems meet in the middle.
WHAT IS A FRIENDLY LOCATION?
A Friendly Location is a participating Second Life destination that welcomes Everlife players and, more importantly, is interested in creating and engaging with a community.
When an Everlife player connects to a Friendly Location for the first time, it saves a ‘Memory’ in the players Traveler’s Cabinet. This has your locations featured image displayed with information and an SURL to visit again.
It’s true; every time a player connects with the ‘Friendly Device’ their normal Everlife stat decay is paused while they’re there……but something else happens, too.
The location can appear as active to other Everlife players using the Friendly Friend Finder; a tool located inside the Everlife store that helps connects players.
That means someone elsewhere in Second Life who is thinking, “I feel like going somewhere people actually want to meet people,” has a way to find you.
They aren’t simply being told, “Here is a place.”
They’re being told, “There are Everlife players who are open to hanging out here right now.”
WHAT DOES A HOST DO?
Friendly Locations need Hosts: communities and destination owners willing to provide the places where those connections can happen. We’re especially interested in locations with regular events, active public groups, recurring activities, or communities intentionally designed around bringing people together.
You don’t need to rebuild your location around Everlife and you don’t need to run Everlife yourself. You don’t need to install some giant complicated gaming system on your land.
Setup involves placing a small Everlife object, using an object of your choice,at your location. Everlife players interact with it while they’re visiting, usually during an event or activity. The system is intentionally lightweight so your visitors can continue playing Everlife without adding a pile of scripted objects or unnecessary lag to your location.
WHY HOST?
Because Second Life has thousands of incredible places, all findable via the Destination Guide of the Second Life ‘Search’ tool. What it needs now is a better way to connect the people looking for somewhere to belong with the communities hoping they’ll walk through the door.
Friendly Locations aren't meant to tell people where they should go, but instead they're meant to help answer a much simpler question: “Where are people like me hanging out right now?”
If your community is the kind of place where the answer could sometimes be “here,” we’d love to partner with you.
