SOCIAL EXPERIMENT, CONTINUED

... are the nightclub venues popular with residents because they help fulfill a basic human need... or because they're the easiest and most accessible Second Life locations to visit?

That's the question I posed more than a month ago in "Social Experiment", in response to recently-implemented Linden Lab policies that ended financial support for sponsored events-- which many nightclubs had been depending on for their economic survival. From then on, the Lindens only paid out a Linden Dollar cash stipend to Events with educational value.

What's most essential to human nature? Being a social animal, or taking the path of least resistance? If the former, then the nightclubs will probably thrive even without Linden subsidization; if the latter, most of them are probably fated to decline.

The screenshot on the left was taken on February 9th; the one on the right, March 10th. Both of them show the Top 20 most popular sites in Second Life, based on foot traffic, as calculated with the Dwell metric. Which gives us a concrete way of quantifying how the culture has changed, since these policies have gone into effect-- if at all.

On February 9th, the breakdown read like this: Twelve top spots were nightclubs; five of these emphasized Mature-themed sexual content. Three locations were primarily billed as shopping malls; two others emphasized casinos and casual games. One of them was a social and sandbox hangout for the Furry subculture, another was a thematic recreation of New York City; still another, Dark Life, was a mini-MMORPG.

On March 10th, however, only eight of the top twenty sites are nightclubs (including CLUB PLATINUM & PLATINUM MALL, Club Elite on Elite Island, DWA Dancing with the Angels Nite Club, and The Edge), and four of which (Le Cadre - Pure Passion, G Spot, Lestats Dark Erotica, and Siren's Call) emphasize M-rated sexual content. Five are primarily casinos (ICE DRAGON, da Penthouse, Kojin Casino, Las Vegas, Tropics Casino), and four are primarily shopping malls (Paradise Island, SOUTH I ESTATES, Wixom Wild West, and V^Vampire Empire^V.) The mini-MMORPG Dark Life retains a top spot, as does The Forest, a Furry-haven. Lastly there's The Shelter, which is, interestingly enough, billed as a response to some trends in other popular sites ("You wont find Sleeze, Tringo or Drama at the Shelter! Newbies welcomed, Dancing, Freebies/Free Money!") Speaking of Tringo, that culture-changing game is hosted by four of those sites.

What conclusions can we make? Though correlation is not causation, it does seem likely that the change in policy caused the significant drop in the number of nightclubs from the top slots, and the subsequent rise of casinos in their place. Some Residents predicted that the end of Linden Lab sponsorship for social Events would inspire nightclub hosts to "go sexy", and offer more explicit adult content. Numerically, at least, that doesn't seem to be the case.

So where nightclubs once overwhelmingly dominated, now casinos and shopping malls are a close second, with room at the top for a few non-casino, non-nightclub places. I'll check back in another month, to see if any new patterns emerge.

But is this new state of things better, or just different, or neither? That, of course, is for the Residents to decide...