Those unfamiliar with virtual worlds might be labouring under a misapprehension. You'll have seen the media reports in the last couple of weeks of a couple getting divorced over a Second Life affair and subsequent acres of newsprint devoted to the details of making the virtual beast with two backs (first buy your penis). All this free advertising may have led you to believe that Second Life was in some way a thriving, bustling world thronging with hip people having a good time and earnest businessmen and women from the global firms holding exciting meetings.
If you've a really good memory, you might even recall from a while back stories about how people were making their fortunes in these virtual worlds. Or maybe you heard about bands and comedians holding gigs in Second Life. (How is that possibly a good idea? They could only get an audience of around 40 non-paying people. They'd do better down their local.)
Sadly, the only really positive thing about Second Life in reality is that they have a bloody brilliant marketing team.
A year or two back, when the virtual worlds frenzy was at its height, I was taken on a tour of Second Life by someone who owned an "island" and had even build a virtual city. We wandered through the deserted space and, after a while, he took me to a "popular" Irish bar. As virtual tumbleweed blew past us, I tried to be excited about the mediocre graphics and the wading-through-treacle feeling from the controls. I was told that the virtual real-estate (which cost thousands of pounds to create) was a wise investment that would soon be snapped up by eager punters.
Not one to be put off by a single bad experience (with the exception of that dogging incident, but the less said about that, the better) I plunged once more into Second Life, this time under my own steam. After a couple of hours wandering around aimlessly, failing to find anything or anyone of interest and having the occasional conversation of remarkably tedious inanity, I gave up and, sad to say, haven't quite built up the enthusiasm to return.
As far as I can tell, my experience is far from uncommon. Second Life boasts about the millions of people living there, but I'm one of those millions. I visited a couple of times and never visited again but as far as Linden Labs (the owners of Second Life) are concerned, I'm a shining example of their success.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't lots of people who do enjoy Second Life and get a lot from it. I'm sure there are. The virtual worlds have their place alongside all the other forms of entertainment, especially ones like World of Warcraft that are unashamed about being a game, giving player objectives, rules and all the rest of it. But suggestions that virtual worlds are the future where we'll all live and love are just crap, sold by cunning PR people to gullible journalists.
And it appears the mainstream media are just starting to notice. Reuters has pulled its reporter out of Second Life and the real question is just how much money Reuters burned by leaving him in there for this long with nothing much to report.
How many of these virtual worlds will survive when the venture capital runs out and they realise that having a business model involving making a profit at some point is quite a good idea?
As for me - well, my life is dull enough, thank you. If at some point I need even more tedium, I might venture back into Second Life, but chucking down a few valium's probably less hassle. For now I'll stick with first life. Who knows - I might get to have sex with a real person and, barring major injuries, I won't even need to buy a penis.
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Cameron turns both ways
16 minutes ago
5 comments:
I have to agree with some of that. I've never been on Second Life, so to that extent you have the advantage of me, but whenever I've seen footage of it / people playing, it's looked pretty crappy and laggy. Mostly made me wonder why you would want to spend that much time in such a manky, patchwork environment. It would give me a headache.
Also, the amount of press coverage of Second Life in recent years, against a backdrop of the real success of WoW (another thing I haven't played, but I know quite a few people who do), is remarkable. WoW accounts for an enormous growth in MMORPGs since its release, and yet to read most newspapers, you would guess Second Life was bigger.
As you say, anyone with much genuine contact with the world of these games knows as much. There are 15 million accounts registered to SL, and we have no way of knowing how many of those are active. 12 million people, on the other hand, are paying a monthly subscription to maintain their WoW accounts.
I'm not as charitable as you on why the newspapers give such disproportionate coverage of SL, though. I think it's less that SL has amazing PR people, and more to do with the way it tends to produce these freak-show stories, so everyone can get together and feel superior to these losers who are wasting their lives, doing something that's "not real", except that they can't see that and OMG now they're getting divorced over it! How tragic! We're all of us, no matter how much we might feel we're wasting our lives or not going anywhere, so much better than them.
Viewed in that light, you can see exactly why the papers love SL.
I've been playing SL for nearly three years now... have owned a successful furniture business selling designs I created... I own my own land and now am very involved in the SL art community creating art that has recently hit RL with a gargantuan bang, called Digital Impressionism... Truly, don't knock a virtual world in which you don't have the imagination to deal with or one you've never tried.
It is true of the millions of accts registered to SL it is diffcult to approximate how many are active... however I can tell you that between 50,000 and 75,000 people are logged into SL at the same time, at any given time of the day or night with peaks and that number is climbing every day. By the beginning of the year, 100,000 people could be logged into SL at once. That sounds pretty damn big to me.
The difference between SL and the usual gamut of games out there is that LL has put the power to create their world in the hands of the people who play it. That and the opportunity to live a fantasy whether it is one of prostitution as the author of this blog suggested (interesting the low-life type of fantasies he chose to use to illustrate his points), or one of a dream such as being able to walk because one can't in RL, having a family because one can't in RL, communicating because one is deaf in RL and this world makes everyone equal before the keyboard. I know many people who make their RL livings selling their designs in world. I was able to pay my RL land tier with my SL earnings when I was selling my furniture.
SL is about far more than prostitution, affairs, RL divorces and freak shows... You guys are making it sound more like RL than it actually is! There is the opportunity to create art, designs and code... There is education, universities and charities that make a huge difference in RL such as Relay for Life in which I participated in earning upwards to 200/300,000 USD in the last two years.
I believe the massive media coverage for SL is appropriate and based on the massive opportunities it offers in business, education, fantasy and the fact that in SL the RL world shrinks to nothing. Many of my closest friends are foreign... they are far far away, yet stand next to me.
I think you all need to seriously educate yourselves on SL because it's glaringly apparent neither of you know what you are talking about.
@Andy: I still can't believe, why people still comment SL, when at the same time they say, they have never been on it. A lot of SL-anti-buzz in the media is made of that. I just don't get the purpose of it.
I've been in SL for more than two years and am searching the web systematically for media coverage. It's obvious that stories like that divorce-case, that recently made headlines, are much more likely to be spread than the rather unspectacular every-day living in SL. I'm sure you're aware of that. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of users who regulary spend time in SL. They have all kinds of different reasons to do that. That's because SL is an entirely open platform with 100% user-created content. And that's the good thing about it. Haven't we all talked about how the internet would eventually free people from just being passive couch-potato recipients of pre-fabricated tele broadcasts? Well, here is one way out of it, made possible by an amazing program.
Nobody has ever said, that "virtual worlds are the future where we'll all live and love" instead of in real life. The creative people I've met in SL all see it as an entertaining and inspiring addition to their real lives. I'm sure like myself they take a lot out of it for their first lives. In my case these inspirations range from kicks for my artworks that I'm getting from SL, developing all kinds of techie skills, up to a better knowledge of myself on a psychological level, when playing variations of my avatar-identity in a social context. I can say whole-heartedly that I never learned so much during these two years in SL in my entire life.
It seems obvious that, when everyone can build and create, not all of it matches standards that professional game designers can accomplish. But why bother? You can do it better yourself, up to you own skills, and you can be in SL whereever you like. There are ten thousands of sims. If you can't stand the sight of a poor 3D-built, go somewhere else, create you own island, set your own standards. It's fascinating to watch how many talented residents actually do, constantly exceeding the limits with new surprising ideas. There are a lot of sims with incredible 3D content to enjoy. But of course you don't find them just by coincidence, when you sneak inworld for a few occasions without any information about what's there. I mean, why would you? If you would do that in real life, it would be just alike. Try taking a plane to an unknown destination, get a cab at the airport, tell the driver to drive you *somewhere* and then expect to arrive at the most sensational and beautiful place on earth.
As for the complaint about vasteness of SL, empty spaces and "no people" around, I have read that a hundred times. But why is it so terribly bad, if the places you visit, are not crowded with people? If you travel in real life to places of interest or to the beach, do you enjoy it only when there are as many people around as possible? I seriously doubt it. As for myself, I actually enjoy these strangely empty worlds. It seems like paradise to me in comparison to the over-populated planet we have to live on.
I would find it amusing that these people, the author and Andy, who know nothing at all about SL through first hand experience because they either don't have the imagination to further their education of SL or they have never tried it, tell ridiculous stories about Second Life, except that their words create an untruth that gets spread around to others. That is not amusing.
There really isn't a comparision against the real success of SL as opposed to such games as WoW, because the two games are nothing at all similar. They are so different that any kind of comparison would not be accurate.
I've played many games such as WoW, EverQuest, Asheron's Call etc etc etc... and NONE of them compare to the expanse and opportunities that SL offers... As soon as I realized how amazing SL really was, I dumped WoW, EverQuest, Asheron's Call etc etc and will prolly never go back to such limiting games.
For many SL is not a game, when money is involved, it's no longer a game, but an extention to RL... There are no MMORPGs that offer a way to make money through creations done in the world of a game, that will reach up and effect your RL.
As to monthly subscriptions, I pay a monthly subscription to SL of $10.00 USD to maintain my acct, plus a monthly land tier of $125 USD to maintain my land in world.
As to, what was it Andy said?, being in SL doing something that is "not real" makes us losers who are wasting our lives... Tell me, Andy, what is real inside the game of WoW? Tell me one thing you can do inside that game that is real? Then I will tell you all kinds of things one can do inside the world of SL that IS REAL and has great impact on the Real World.
When was the last time the players of WoW raised money for a RL charity, for example? When was the last time the players in WoW could design and create their own playing world and make RL money off of it? Hmmm?
Riiiiight. They didn't and haven't because they CAN'T.
I'm thinking maybe you all need to get a Second Life or at the very least, educate your First Life.
um... sorry, just to respond to the commenters who are accusing me of slagging off SL without having played it: I'm not saying anything about SL, just about the disproportionate media coverage it attracts. My opening paragraph was simply me explaining why it hadn't really appealed to me personally.
Also, in case I wasn't clear, the comments in the final paragraph of my first comment are not my actual attitude to people who play SL, they are what I perceive the subtext of much of the media coverage of SL to be. I didn't feel it necessary to spell that out, but maybe I should have.
If I might add one comment on the three of you who have trooped to SL's defence, though, it would be this: You all seem terribly brittle about it. If you're happy that it's a good way to spend your time, get on with it. Don't go looking for words to take the wrong way so you can feel persecuted about it.
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