Firestorm? No, thank you!

Linden Lab recently added the Firestorm third-party viewer to the official downloads page on the Second Life website. I can’t say that I’m surprised, as Firestorm has quite the cult-like following within Second Life. It is, after all, the most popular and most feature-rich third-party viewer for Second Life, and the main viewer of choice for the vast majority of Second Life residents.

I guess it does make sense for Linden Lab to give it a special featured spot on the official downloads page as an acknowledgement of the great contributions that have been made by Firestorm’s team of developers, and perhaps a way to show newcomers that it’s okay and safe to use—officially endorsed by Linden Lab and even used (and preferred) by some Linden Lab employees themselves. I guess one could say that, due to its popularity and feature set, it deserves a featured spot and an official endorsement from Linden Lab.

That said, I cannot for the life of me understand how, from a UI and UX perspective, they would even consider featuring Firestorm at all, as it’s objectively the messiest and ugliest viewer of all. I can only assume that UI and UX played no part whatsoever in the decision, as it clearly plays no part whatsoever for anyone who chooses to use it as their main viewer. It’s all about the features!

Features? Yes, please!

The Firestorm developer team and code contributors have done a wonderful job packing the viewer full of amazing features that greatly enhance the Second Life experience. Many users have become so reliant on Firestorm’s feature set that they simply cannot even imagine Second Life without it.

I’ve heard quite a number of long-term (old) residents say that if they couldn’t use Firestorm, they would no longer be on Second Life.

Firestorm is generally considered to be the “Pro” Viewer for Second LIfe. It surfaces nearly every hidden debug feature present in the official viewer, and adds a whole bunch more that greatly enhances the abilities of builders, coders, event coordinators, business owners, club and land owners, and It even provides wonderful quality of life enhancements for the average user who just likes to play dress-up.

For this reason, nearly everyone uses Firestorm, nearly everyone recommends Firestorm, and nearly everyone absolutely loves Firestorm (or so they say—so they pretend). My honest opinion is that most people just tolerate Firestorm, or force themselves to pretend to love it because they simply cannot imagine Second LIfe without Firestorm’s feature set.

But what about the UI/UX?

The features are great, but the user interface to access those features is a mess.

It is abundantly clear that the Firestorm theme was hastily slapped together by someone with absolutely no experience, no knowledge of, and no care for User Interface or User Experience. It’s obvious that the main focus is feature set, not design: all function, no form.

Firestorm is like what happens when you ask a highly skilled back-end web developer with no experience in design to design a front-end web interface —it’s a primitive mess of badly chosen colors, uneven spacing, mismatched assets, and it creates a user experience that results in physical frustration, irritation and psychological discomfort and distress over time—all tolerated for the sake of access to great features.

You have to be lying to yourself if you honestly believe that the Firestorm viewer looks good or is a joy to use. Either that or you simply do not care about how things look, as long as they function.

From a psychological perspective, the Firestorm interface could (and mostly likely does, in most cases) result in mood changes ranging from irritability, to frustration, to downright burnout. Simply interacting with residents in-world, one can often determine who uses Firestorm and who doesn’t based on their general tone and demeanor. The rude, irritated, and bitchy users are almost always on Firestorm while the friendly, happy, and chill users are almost always on the official viewer, or another third party viewer with a theme that doesn’t cause psychological distress.

I don’t think Firestorm developers or users even realize how the UI/UX of this viewer can impact their overall mood and behavior—especially for those who spend a large part of their day interacting with Second LIfe. It causes discomfort on a subconscious psychological level that people don’t even realize. Wondering why you’re irritated or feeling a little “off”? It’s because you view your entire virtual life through Firestorm: an interface that causes physiological distress on a subconscious level.

Anyone who studied color theory, UI/UX, and the psychology behind it would most likely tell you the exact same thing. Firestorm is a mess. It’s bad. It’s really bad. But we all tolerate it because it has the most features—the best features, and we lie to ourselves and to others; saying that we love it, recommending it, praising it because of it’s epic feature set despite the fact that it’s objectively the ugliest, messiest looking piece of software in modern history. If Firestorm remains the recommended way to access Second Life, then Second Life would never grow but continue to lose new users because of objectively terrible design that can and should be fixed.

If you were to come to me and tell me that you love the Firestorm theme; the splash screen (login screen), the colors of the UI, the shape and size of feature buttons, the placement of UI assets, the margins of window borders, the inventory icons, colors, and fonts, etc. I would call you a liar. There is absolutely no way. You do not love it, you tolerate it, at best. Color theory and the psychology behind effective UI/UX design says you actually hate it. What you love is the Firestorm feature set, not the UI/UX of it. If you honestly believe that you do love it, please note that your personal opinion goes against psychology of color theory and UI/UX as a whole, or that you’re simply stuck in the past, or in a state of mind where you only value function, no form.

Form and Function?

With a little bit of effort from both Linden Lab and the Firestorm developer team, Firestorm can be great in both form and function. If I were the project lead of Linden Lab or the Firestorm viewer, my number one priority and focus would be to push for modernization and uniformity of the Firestorm viewer UI elements, resulting in a more pleasant UX, and one where users might actually stick around long term.

I would not feature, suggest, recommend, or even ship Firestorm until its UI had a complete overhaul. In its current state, it really does make Second Life look old, amateur, and uninviting. The Firestorm UI does not match the great feats of progress made within the Second Life world itself. It’s like trying to view an 8k cinema movie on an old tube TV or through a pair of dirty or broken glasses that don’t quite fit right. It’s like drinking your favorite beverage through a mushy paper straw. It’s like wearing a utility belt that’s a bit scuffed and torn over a pair of dirty cargo pants that are the wrong size to a formal fancy dress party.

It doesn’t have to be this way and I don’t understand why it’s like this in the first place. Who allowed this monstrosity to even see the light of day? It’s a fucking mess!

It’s not just a viewer, It’s a cult

If it’s not the bad Firestorm UI driving new users away from Second Life, it’s the unfriendly behavior of those building and using Firestorm that drives new users away, and people fail to realize that, from a psychological perspective, the Firestorm UI causes so much distress over time that it’s part of the reason that some Firestorm users are unfriendly and toxic in the first place. The Firestorm cult, due to their own making, consists of a toxic team of bullies and trolls.

My attempts at reaching out to the Firestorm team, pointing out UI issues, discrepancies, mismatched elements, etc. hoping to get things fixed, have all been met with disregard, bullying, trolling, and contempt. The Firestorm team is incapable of accepting any criticism of their viewer of any kind. It’s been a nightmare attempting to plead for both form and function.

In previous years I’ve asked about the possibility of a Firestorm viewer with the official Second Life Theme (which does not cause psychological distress)—simply adding on features to the official UI rather than changing, regressing, and breaking the theme for the sake of change. Every attempt at bringing light to problematic areas has been met with contempt.

At one time, I published an article on the Second Life Community Forums instructing others how to manually fix the ugly of Firestorm. One of my points explained how to change the viewer theme and how to get rid of the messy Firestorm splash screen, and replace it with the official Second Life splash screen.

Guess what the Firestorm team did then? They made an update to the Viewer where, if you change the splash screen, it pops up a little message upon launch with a button to reset the splash screen to their hideous splash screen and there appears to be to no way to disable that pop up. It happens every time upon launch. That wasn’t there until I provided a guide for users on how to change the splash screen. So not only can they not handle criticism of any kind, they go out of their way to annoy and troll those who dare criticize or change any part of the viewer.

They took my views on the UI/UX personally, as if I were attacking them personally, and in return, attacked me personally. They even made graphic memes mocking me in the process. I’ve literally had to stop posting on the official Second Life forums because the Firestorm cult would persistently troll every single post I made after that post where I provided a guide on how to fix the Firestorm UI. Literally everything I said after that was met with a mob of Firestorm cult trolls, even on topics unrelated to Firestorm, so I just stopped posting.

If that kind of behavior is their idea of bringing new users, or keeping existing users in Second Life, they’re failing, miserably.

To be honest, if I had to stare at that mess of a UI all day, I’d also become a bit of an asshole and a troll due to subconscious psychological distress. It’s basic psychology. These toxic trolls just don’t realize that their own creation is what’s causing their own toxicity.

If a member of the Firestorm team happens to read this, here’s my message to you: I respect your skill in feature development and applaud you for it. You have brought wonder to Second Life. But I need you to understand that when it comes to design, user interface and user experience, that shit’s a fucking mess. Please do something about it!

No, thank you!

I love Firestorm’s features, I really do! But I’m doing just fine without them and I now simply refuse to use Firestorm. The mess that is the Firestorm UI results in psychological distress and any attempt at requesting or suggesting improvement is met with contempt. So, no thank you, LInden Lab, even though you’ve put the Firestorm Viewer on the official downloads page, I still won’t use nor will I recommend it because, life is more than function; form is important too.

Please, for the sake of Second Life as a whole, and the longevity of this wonderful virtual world that we’ve all come to love; fix the Firestorm UI. It’s a fucking mess! Or at the very least, drop the delusion that Firestorm is the way to bring (and actually KEEP) new users in Second Life. Please hire someone with experience in color theory and the psychology behind effective UI and UX design to oversee a UI overhaul, or simply provide the official viewer theme as an option for Firestorm! Or better yet, port the Firestorm features to the official viewer so that users don’t have to be subjected to the ugly and psychologically distressing theme in the first place.

I commend LInden Lab for their official viewer in terms of UI/UX. Of course it’s missing many features but at least the colors aren’t an eyesore, the interface elements are uniform, well placed, and well spaced, and the new additions made to the web viewer are on par with what new users would expect. If only the Firestorm team didn’t try so hard to deliberately make the most feature rich third-party viewer the exact opposite of that. If only Firestorm could be beautiful in addition to just being feature rich. I don’t understand why the Firestorm team deliberately made a mess of it. All I know is that something must be done to fix that mess and until then, I for one, will not use FIrestorm nor recommend it to anyone, no matter how great the features may be.

I desire and require both form and function and a UI/UX that doesn’t result in subconscious psychological discomfort and distress over time. So yeah, Firestorm? No, thank you!—not until you’ve fixed the ugly!

#Firestorm #SecondLife