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CSI:NY in Second Life

by Rachel on November 6th, 2007

You may have noticed that a few weeks ago an episode of CSI:NY had strong connections to Second Life, with Mac, the main protagonist of the show, having to get a crash course in the world as he chases a suspect. As part of the tie-in, the world of the show has been created in Second Life and will be running games and experiences for the next 6 months. Sam Ford has a great interview (parts 1, 2, 3, 4) with Electric Sheep, the company employed by CBS to build the world, where you can get a glimpse of the motives behind building the world.

Unlike many companies that jumped into the world on the back of the hype over the last year or so, where building a habitat was seen as enough, this experience actually gives you something to do, in fact 3 things. First up is ‘Murder by Zuiker’, crime scenes in world where you are encouraged to investigate and write up your theories. The best ones for the monthly game get prizes. Secondly, there’s mystery games, where users can see a scene, collect evidence, process in a lab and then choose a suspect. There’ll be a new one every 3 weeks or so. The final experience is tied into the show directly, a longer term game looking for the whereabouts of the main murder suspect from the October episode - and all will be revealed in a second episode next February. Even better, they are employing people to guide you, so you can find your way around even if you have never been there before,

Factual information about the success of the cross-over has been hard to come by. Information Week reports that the world had 40000 signups the day of the show, way over the average 8000/day. This does not include sign-ups via the new portal OnRez built by ES to make the whole experience easier. But Second Life Herald is reporting the whole thing as a failure, as the number of sims is cut from 400 to 32 and guides are being cut. But reading down the comments on that article, it does not seem to be as clear cut as that:

Tateru’s graphs on http://dwellonit.blogspot.com/ are sadly very tiny and hard to read, but still, you can notice there that the number of total signups had a slight rise in the past few days, the number of daily signups spiked wildly to three times the average (and kept at 50% above the average rate for the last few days), and the number of active accounts has found a new plateaux, instead of dropping like usual. So, sure, it’s not *dramatic*. But the difference will be felt on the long run, since signups *accumulate*, even assuming that the retention rate (just 10% of all users remain “active users”) remains the same over time. Is that “a failure”? Thanks to the CSI:NY episode (and possibly “The Office” episode before it), SL might hit 12 million users this year (a prediction made in January 2007 based on a an optimistic growth) instead of “just” 11 million, which would be the more accurate prediction before CSI:NY was aired. (from Gwyneth Llewwlyn

So what’s the real result? I don’t think we will know for a while - the number of people who watch CSI and have the desire to play murder mystery games in a virtual world is bound to be low. An interesting point is about the active vs passive modes - for many SL is an active place, to build and interact and TV is more passive. The CSI section is not active in that you don’t build things there, you play a game, something that many existing residents may not want to do. But I’m guessing there’s enough interest to keep it going. If Guinness and Covet perfume can engage users in treasure hunts and puzzles, a crime solving TV show should be able to join them, if not beat them.

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POSTED IN: Engaging the Customer, Entertainment Marketing, TV, Virtual Worlds