201Virtual Goods and Design for Virtual Shopping Environments
Here are some suggestions. Maybe you could create a series of “treasure chests” that they can try to
unlock for a special limited edition product? Perhaps once they have become regular VIP customers, you can
give them a special key that allows access to a private showroom. Maybe there are areas in your shop that
shift in and out of our time dimensions, and to buy that special item, they have to be there just when it synchs
up to our timeline. The sky is the limit with shopping interactivity.
In general, when you want the customers to take your content “viral,” make sure it ts the qualications
in the list that follows. This interconnected system is diagramed in Figure10.5.
1. Make it easy to share.
2. Make it fun.
3. Make knowing about it a cool thing.
e Network of Viral Distribution
Make it easy to share
Allow for imitators
and "viralize"
them
Make sharing it a
status giving
thing
Make
knowing
about it
a cool thing
Make it Fun
FUN
NOT FUN
Content
FIGURE 10.5 Diagram showing the network of viral distribution and how you can make it work with your digital goods
and content in a virtual environment.
202 Virtual World Design
4. Make sharing it a status-giving thing.
5. Allow for imitators and “viralize” them.
10.6 PERFORMANCE SPACES ADDED TO RETAIL
Fashion shows, cabarets, parties, and art openings are all opportunities for you to promote your content. One
of the most successful examples of this symbiotic relationship is Phat Cat’s Ballroom and Jazz Club at the
Phat Land sim in Second Life. This sim has been a musical venue since 2007 and is surrounded by successful
shops. One of the reasons these shops do so well is that Phat Cat’s has a fancy dress/formal wear dress code
in the club, and that necessitates some shopping for many visitors.
10.7 PROJECT: DESIGNING AND BUILDING A “POP-UP” SHOP
This chapter’s project involves the design and creation of a “Pop-up shop” [4] for selling virtual goods. In the
spirit of a “roadside attraction” like the Big Duck in Flanders, New York, or the giant Uniroyal tire in Detroit,
Michigan, you will use super scale icons to make this store stand out on the virtual landscape. In Figure 10.6
is a screen grab of the completed shop, set up on the Alchemy Sims Grid. Creating this Pop-up shop will give
you an opportunity to rene your basic building skills as you assemble the shop walls and create the content
for it. However, before you download this chapter’s content from http://www.anncudworthprojects.com/
inthe Virtual World Design Book section and start to build, you will need to prepare the land for your shop,
and make sure that the listings for the land will attract customers to your shop.
FIGURE 10.6 The completed Pop-up shop that you will create in this project, shown on Alchemy Sims Grid.
203Virtual Goods and Design for Virtual Shopping Environments
10.7.1 laying The groundWorK
10.7.1.1 Preparing the Land for Your Shop
You are going to need at least a 20 m × 20 m square area to build this shop, allowing for some free space
around it. If you don’t own a parcel that large, you can practice this in a large sandbox area, or over it on a
skyplatform. Here are the steps for laying the groundwork on your land, also illustrated in Figure 10.7.
1. Turn on the Property Lines, under World/Show More/Property Lines, so you can make sure you are
not going over into neighboring areas.
2. Use the terrain tool to atten out the landscape on that parcel and to smooth the edges so there is a
smooth transition to the next area.
10.7.1.2 Setting in the Foundation and About Land Permissions
Now that you can see the property lines clearly, let’s set down a foundation prim, to make sure the shop
will be situated nicely on the terrain, organize how the shop will be visible to the search engine and decide
what kind of permissions will be available to the visitors. Figure 10.8 illustrates the visual progression of the
followingsteps:
1. Create a 20 m wide × 20 m deep × 2 m high prim in the center (as closely as you can tell by eye)
ofyour parcel. On a full region, the coordinates would be x = 128, y = 128.
2. When you have it centered, set the objects position to a set of whole number coordinates like
x=195, y = 65, and lower it in z so that it just pops up above the ground. Name this enlarged box
prim “Foundation” and apply a tile or stone texture from your basic library to all sides of the box by
dragging it into the Build/Edit window under the texture tab.
3. In the World/Parcel Details/About Land menu under the General tab/Name section, type in the
name your shop, “Pop-up Shop for Lamps.” Note, you can also access the About Land menu through
the World/Location Prole/Places/Parcel menu. The Places menu combines all three sorts of land
denitions: Parcel, Region, and Estate for your convenience.
4. In the World/Parcel Details/About Land menu under the General tab/Description section, type in
as many keywords as you can think of that relate to lighting, lamps and home decorating. Note, this
will serve to locate your shop in Second Life, but for OpenSim builds there is no metaversal search
engine yet.
5. In the World/Parcel Details/About Land menu under the General tab/ section, set the group to who-
ever is building this shop with you. If you have not made a group for that yet, you can do so under the
Comm/Groups/Conversations - Contacts menu on the top bar. Pick the Groups tab and use the Create
button to set the group up so you can invite your co-builders to join you. Remember, once you set the
land to the build group, they must wear their group tags to build on that parcel.
6. In the World/Parcel Details/About Land menu under the Options tab menu, make sure that Edit
terrain is NOT set to Everyone, Fly is set to Everyone, Build is set to Group, and Object entry and
Run Scripts are both set to everyone.
7. Further down in the same menu, You probably want to set the land to Safe (no damage can be done
to an avatar’s health) and turn on the No Pushing option so people cannot use push script containing
devices like guns for grieng your customers. Show Place in Search should also be checked in its
respective box. Check M for moderate content and choose “shopping” from the drop-down menu to
indicate the category of your build.
204 Virtual World Design
FIGURE 10.7 Screen grabs of virtual land and Land Tools menu showing the preparation of the terrain for installation
of the Pop_up shop.
205Virtual Goods and Design for Virtual Shopping Environments
FIGURE 10.8 Screen grabs showing the About Land menus for setting up search visibility, and avatar permissions
on the land.
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