Second Life's low population density
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 26th 2008 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
One of the things that comes up repeatedly in third-party discussions about Second Life is the low population density, often with concern that it represents some manner of deficiency or failure. Two general points are made: Firstly that the Second Life grid lacks the ability to support very high densities, and second that the Second Life grid is largely "a deserted wasteland", due to the low active population per square metre. Take a moment to imagine the digital tumbleweeds.
Actually, there's a good reason for the second, and it makes the first rather irrelevant. Sure, the population density is low -- because, apparently, that's the way the users prefer it. Many individuals might prefer higher population densities within Linden Lab's virtual environment, but as an aggregate population Second Life users tend to actively select against that in practice.
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The majority of Second Life users come from urban areas with moderate to high population densities. Given the option of a townhouse or a half-acre in the same physical location, at the same cost, most would opt for the larger space rather than the smaller -- absent any increase in actual property value.
Humans like space, and this is something of an urban-sprawl problem, because Second Life users can actually have it. When mainland (Linden-Estate) space is not being generated in proportion to growth of the active user-population, users buy islands to make up the space. We're not sure what the target density is that the user-population is striving for, but signs are that it is somewhat lower than it presently appears to be.
It has been suggested that introversion may represent a factor in further reducing the target density yet further. Figures place introverts at 25-30% of an average population, however the tendency towards introverted personality traits increases markedly among the gifted, and anecdotal evidence suggests that introversion also rises as a function of education. Among the highly gifted and educated, the percentage of introverted personalities dominates.
As to whether the user-population of Second Life contains a higher percentage of extroverts than is typical in an average society -- we have no hard data on that. Based on unscientific observation we would say that the population is only slightly above average, and not sufficiently so to excessively skew the data.
It is far more likely that Second Life's 'ownership unit' is trending towards the simulator. At sub-simulator levels, any other land-owner within the same simulator can intentionally or unintentionally degrade your online experience.
In the end, many of us live on far smaller properties in the physical world than we prefer. Most of us hear, see and smell plenty more of our RL neighbors than we'd prefer. Especially at 2AM.
It's hardly surprising that given the opportunity to have more space, we spread out, seeking locations where neighbors are logged in at other times than ourselves, giving us peace, space and freedom -- or at least a reasonable and workable facsimile.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kara Spengler said on 11:01AM 9-26-2008
I always find it amusing when someone wanders into an area with 3 or 4 people (not bots or campers) and decide the area is dead because so 'few' people are there.
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david said on 9:20AM 9-26-2008
The game is kinda outdated, they need to upgrade the graphics or something... :-\
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Tateru Nino said on 9:23AM 9-26-2008
Pretty much all the graphics are created by the users. More or less everything that you can see.
Other than that, the engine is quite a capable one, but with all content created by users and streamed, it won't ever look as good as a title that has been hand-tuned by professional artists and modelers that are working to maximize the strengths of the graphics engine, and have all their content preloaded on your hard-drive at runtime.
That's just how it is for collaborative environments.
Cincia Singh said on 9:52AM 9-26-2008
I have the same experience as Kara; people wander in to an area, find just a few people there, make a comment about how it's too lonely, too quiet, too dead or not exciting enough, then wander away. The same people then show up in a very busy area during an event and complain about lag. There is a disconnect.
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Silverrain said on 9:31AM 9-26-2008
It is also worth pointing out that it's hard to maintain population density of any sort when no simulator can hold more than 40 people.
And even as population approaches these levels, the simulator performance takes a dive.
In that case, population density needs to be kept at a low level.
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Joaquin said on 3:49PM 9-26-2008
If we assume SL is a place to interact with others empty sims are totally useless.
Everybody wants to go where there is some conversation. So sims with some people attract more people and soon reach the 40 avatars limit.
This a paradoxical: a user struggles hard to attract some people in her empty sim and as soon she somehow succeed the system starts to repel newcomers.
I wrote more about that in this post:
http://joaquinkeller.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-we-are-alone-in-internet-and.html
Tateru Nino said on 10:04AM 9-26-2008
An additional point is that with chat between users being audible out to 20 metres (approximately 65 feet), people tend to naturally move apart to avoid crosstalk and casual eavesdropping.
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Easychord said on 10:24AM 9-26-2008
The missing point in this discussion is modes of travel in Second Life. The ability to teleport anywhere on the grid instantly (hopefully) obviates the need for population density to accomplish things.
My shop does just fine, though when I stop in, I might find 1 or 2 people at most. But over the 24 hour period, I get a good amount of traffic in dribs and drabs.
With a good search engine (with has improved), a great community blogging about great locations, and tp ability, I don't need to live in a population center.
This whole argument is like saying that a website is dead because when I visit, there are only 2 other people viewing it.
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Cyn said on 10:28AM 9-26-2008
In real life, the amount of 'stuff' you can have in your house is not limited by the acreage you occupy. A functional townhouse block or condo skyscraper is completely impossible in SL, unless everyone agrees to have 10 prims for their stuff each, so it's hardly a wonder that there are a lot of low-density areas.
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TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 5:05PM 9-26-2008
"In real life, the amount of 'stuff' you can have in your house is not limited by the acreage you occupy"
oh really? why then I can't fit 40 elephants , or perhaps a couple of big-rigs in my appartment? Xp
Cyn said on 5:17PM 9-26-2008
Ok, there are some upper limits, but I hope you know what I mean. If someone wants a house in SL which approximates or exceeds their RL standard of living, it needs to be supported by a lot of acreage so that they have a lot of prims to throw around.
I suppose you can argue that RL does this, by having cities in one place and farms (and resevoirs) far away, which results in a low overall density, but I suspect the people fussing about SL density aren't going to look at the big picture like that.
rightasrain said on 10:48AM 9-26-2008
tat--i think you are making an anecdotal observation about the strange"growth" in SL (er...the virtual world platfrom know by some as SL = TVWPKBSASL). SL land mass is growing much faster than active users. So the grid is becoming increasingly more empty.
Why? we can only guess because LL doesn't report a land registry or tell us about what prim count is on the grid. My guess is that a lot of new islands are void swaps for full--so also there are fewer prims per m2 on the grid as well as fewer people per prim and fewer people per m2. LL can spin this anyway they want--but it is a land market bubble wanting to pop. Ask the large landowners who rent their land who business is. Anyone hear from Ansche (or she still dodging giant penii).
cu on the ever sparser grid ;)
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Melissa Yeuxdoux said on 8:10PM 9-26-2008
SL "land" isn't like RL land. RL land has varying or varying amounts of resources that influence its value, and has a location that makes access to other desirable places more or less convenient. RL land has a climate that is more or less desirable. All that means people aren't uniforrmly distributed. Also, as someone used to say, "they're not making any more" (guess he didn't know about the Dutch, but on the whole the saying's true).
SL "land" doesn't have resources, unless you count prims as such; if you can fly and teleport, location is irrelevant. SL "land" doesn't have a climate. And unlike RL land, SL "land" is being created all the time; as OpenSim improves, the rate at which it's created will increase.
All this means that there's not nearly the tendency for people to cluster in SL that there is in RL. It is weird that so often SL feels like a ghost town, but it's not unexpected.
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Azzura said on 12:34PM 9-26-2008
The reason it is so low is the fact it breaks down after it hits a certain level...before it hits that point though - some people get lagged and SL just gets too slow and frustrating to even make you want to stay logged in.
I remember when there were less than 200,000 people registered, and I NEVER waited for textures to load or saw grey people, or crossed a server boundary and coasted off underground for 30 seconds.
SL loses its charm when I cant do what I want when I want.
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Farona Freschi said on 11:50PM 9-29-2008
Interesting.
I think a lot of Second Life residents avoid high density for fear of poor grid performance. I know that I myself like to steer clear of larger clusters of green dots because I always have a miserable inworld experience if I do otherwise, eg. lag, crashes.
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Feldspar Epstein said on 10:29PM 9-27-2008
There is a problem here: RL population densities are determined by where people _live_.
SL populations congregate where people _do things_. It's a task-focused society.
When I want to be with people, or listen to music, or learn, I will often head to where there is already a heavy density of avatars - other people doing the same thing I want to do.
When I'm "at home" in SL, mostly I'm scripting or building or getting changed - for the most part, solitary activities.
This kind of thing skews the picture of population density.
Even if we were to compare a "task-oriented" density in the atomic world with the digital world, the numbers would still come out looking peculiar.
For example, when we shop in SL, we can "speed shop." There's no driving or parking or walking or standing in queues or laborious trying things on - the process, even if slowed by doing so in a group, is significantly quicker than in the atomic world.
Maybe the way to compare densities is to take a compressed "task-oriented" density from the atomic world and compare that to a 'task-oriented" density in the digital world, and that would make more sense?
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DigitalJack Blackhawk said on 12:26PM 9-29-2008
When I joined SL in August 2006 there were approximately 50,000 residents and average concurrent logins was around 4-5k and the grid was straining at the seams with 7-8k logged in.
At this time SL 'felt' more active & full but there was much less land then. With the population boom that started around October 06' and continued thru early 07' bringing the total number of residents up past 3 million there was a huge demand for and shortage of land. LL was filling orders for private islands as fast as they could and scaling the grids ability to support more concurrent users.
Fast-forward to today the SL login screen indicates an active population of about 1.2 million residents (not total accounts this is just the past 30 day data) and concurrent logins ranging from 40k on the low to 90k on the high 10x greater than when I joined but now SL 'feels' quite empty geographically speaking. The reason is simple SL is recovering from that population boom and land rush of two years prior but its far from dead or dying.
The population boom was brought on by the promise of real earnings in secondlife which is not untrue. Many of those that joined in that period had not the inclination or the patience to learn the skills required for true earnings I speak here of content creation. The articles that spoke of earnings that drew those to secondlife were around the land barons so they themselves wanted to own land, sadly they had no clue how to develop that land and ultimately it became a loss and not an earning mechanism. Then with the casino ban many long time residents closed up shop and it freed up even more land. With so much surplus land around now of course the grid feels empty.
LL should increase grid concurrent login capability again & then lower tier fees if they want another population boom perhaps this time the grid can handle it.
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