Second Life Finally Adds New Mesh-Based Avatars & Fun Web-Based Setup Experience for First-Time Users — But Lack of Non-Human Options is a Serious Mistake

This has been hinted at for months and even accidentally popped up on the test grid recently, but Linden Lab finally launched new starting mesh-based avatars and a "customize your new avatar" mini-game-type experience (similar to what you get at the start of The Sims franchise) for new users right on the homepage:

We're excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.

Go here to join.secondlife.com to try it yourself. You'll probably want to use a different browser than what you normally employ for logging into Second Life's website. These are very rudimentary avatars, so longtimers may understandably squawk, but the great thing is this gently leads new SL users into the virtual world in a way that's, you know, fun.

Some other thoughts:

• It's optimized for mobile! That alone is a huge leap forward for the first-time user experience.
• Since these avatars come with a dev kit, expect a new burst of avatar fashion items in what's been a pretty static economy dominated by 2-3 mesh body giants.
• There's a serious lack of non-human, non-standard avatars. This really conveys a false impression of the varieties of expression that Second Life makes possible — and will further distort the virtual world's culture around a "Malibu lifestyle" aesthetic. (See below.)

See my Starting Avatar avatar below:

Sorta Hamlet but then again not at all. Once again, the lack of non-human, non-standard avatars is not just a temporary oversight, but have really bad knock-on consequences. As I wrote in the book:

“It quickly became Malibu,” as academic and game industry analyst Nick Yee observes. “A very consumer, materialistic-oriented world.”

None of this was consciously planned or encouraged by Linden Lab. (Recall again that Second Life itself was inspired by Burning Man, a proudly non-commercial communal arts festival.)  

How did it happen anyway?

The core reason is an early decision the company made that is so standard, most virtual world developers don’t even think to do otherwise: 

Second Life’s only default avatar options were realistic humans. They were highly customizable, to the point where someone could, say, turn their avatar into an orc-like monstrosity, but the medium setting for each adjustable feature started with a conventionally attractive male or female human.

With that in place, Malibu quickly followed.

“Once users are presented with a believably human template,” as Yee explains, "You want chairs and furniture and cars where your bodies can sit in and drive around, and you need large virtual closets to put all your virtual clothing and people are building these beautiful cantilevered houses by the beach side because that's what people do in the real world.”

While Linden Lab may have hoped Second Life users would define reality according to their wildest imagination, the realistic human avatars shaped how much of the world would evolve:

And with them came all the social problems typically associated with wealthy beach enclaves in the real world. 

“[That's] where the racism and the sexism comes from," as Yee puts it. “Because when the avatars are sufficiently human to make human assessments upon, our inherent human biases come clawing into the digital world… It's almost unavoidable, because once you have bodies that are anywhere near realistic, people feel the need to dress up their bodies, and to look cooler than the next person. And suddenly you have this whole economy based around selling bodies and hair and body parts.” 

Anyway, please share your own attempts in Comments!

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