Weird I should post about Second Life then next day on UKPodcasting forum see not one but 2 links posted to blog entries, first from Clay Shirkin and the response from Eric Rice.
Ever weirder is that they seem to echo some of the ideas I’ve been thinking about recently as I traverse real and Second life.
Compared to Clay’s assertion that virtual reality is not there yet (it’s come a long way from Jaron Lanier, Reality Engines – why do you think I use that domain? 😉 and those ugly VR helmets) and that World of Warcraft pwns Second Life because of adoption rates and the lack of reality/game, I think Eric is on the money here that it’s a social networking site, and the very ‘non-game’ nature makes it less attractive to gamers but more so to creatives, people who don’t necessarily want a structure.
The non-game nature of Second Life is what intrigues me – I’d guess the Linden Labs probably spotted the behaviour of people playing games like Grand Theft Auto, sometimes you just want to wander, explore. The hynotic quality of Second Life comes from this – not having a set goal; flying around a landscape, exploring it, seeing places like Embry’s Pipe garden or Fire Island that are just beautiful and appreciating the zen beauty of it all.
I doubt you’d get that in games like World of Warcraft since stop and admire some gothic piece of architecture you might get attacked by a troll or suchlike (I’ll admit here I’ve never wanted to play it, although VR came from Multi-User-Dungeons I never liked the chainmail hack and slash aspect, but I did like the adventure/explore aspect of what they were based on, the early text adventure games).
But the ‘make your own world’ aspect was and is there in textual MUDs – I did make objects and script them, in the same way you would in Second Life. The MUD I was on there was no overriding plot or game, so you could just chill out, talk, and mess around. Very similar to Second Life, and why I think lumping SL with WoW and other online games is unwise and intellectually lazy…SL shares more with Myspace than it does online gaming….the game in SL is what you make it, or is a game of life (work, money, building) but only if you want it to be. You can just be a virtual wanderer…so this non-game aspect although not totally new, is important.
And the problems of believability as mentioned by Clay? I think this is a false issue – people don’t believe they are in any game, they know they are controlling it, that level of immersion is probably quite dangerous and totally unneeded. I can see that virtual worlds taken away from the game imperative tend to come under more scrutiny; but these worlds first existed on terminals where you only had text and people still used them, I think people understand the limitations of technology but like with reading a book will decide their level of immersion. People can instinctively act to a cartoon or 25 frames projected on a wall, so to say 3D worlds won’t succeed because they don’t have smell or taste sounds scarily like Smell-O-Rama and the 3D cinema craze in the 50’s and 60’s…what they needed was good films, not gimmicks!
The biggest role I see for SL is one of prototyping. Not just prototyping houses or t-shirts but also self image, dreams, actions, gender roles, fantasies – Clay is right about the sexual side, but has missed the role of a sort of positive visualisation with Second Life – you can do and be who you want to be. That’s very liberating, and can support different modes of behaviour to what the person is used to. Whether that manifests in real life is to be seen, but I’d guess that people might ‘trial’ certain things in Second Life before actually doing them in real life.
Certainly I have with certain t-shirt designs, a leather kilt I’ve always wanted to have but never dared to get one or wear it, and poledancing, something I’d never do in real life.
Or would I? 😉
So this is why furries, GLBT people, sex fetish types and the goths have taken to SL by storm – these are the people who hang at the virtual fringes, and tend to come in a populate the less fashionable areas and ‘gentrify’ them. The final product may not be SL as you know it now, but it will come…
No I think the biggest problem with Second Life is the endless updates – having to download a 30Mb file regularly is more likely to kill it – obviously attempts to stop hacking and copybots, and maybe be discouraging people to come back more often. So I’m glad Second Life has gone open source – ‘lite’ clients for slower computers and more secure/less bloasty upgrades are desperately needed.
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