Second Life is a difficult sell. It’s not a game, it’s not an e-business platform, it’s not a machinima studio, it’s not a 3D chat room, it’s not a development environment, it’s not a social networking space, it’s not an interactive sex simulator, it’s not an architectural prototyping tool, it’s not a live music venue and despite the hype, it’s not the ‘Metaverse’ or Web whatever-point-nought. And yet at the same time, it contains elements of all of the above, reaching out in all of these directions and more, as the feature addition winds change, determinedly evolving toward the future of technology with a kind of cheerful indiscriminate abandon, and no obvious route planned. Very much a case of ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’
It’s novel, and a refreshing thing to see, having grown up with ‘The Vision’, in various guises, and always keeps me guessing at what tomorrow will bring, but clearly it also makes SL a difficult thing to categorise or pigeon-hole. With most MMOs, you know pretty much what to expect and differentiation becomes a matter of the details – death penalties, PvP rulesets, what exactly a ‘Ranger’ is, regarding DPS stats and combat specials, etc, and so recommending them to friends who also know MMOs is easy. [Game X] is a lot like [Game Y], but with more/less downtime, more/less grouping, and so on. Linden Lab doesn’t make it easy for me to explain what the hell Second Life is all about though.
I guess if I had to explain it in a simile, I’d have to say the Second Life is a lot like the greater Internet itself – many things to many people, and best appreciated by identifying a particular aspect of it you like, and narrowing the focus somewhat. But just rolling up to ‘The Internet’ as a whole, and wandering aimlessly for half an hour is unlikely to be a particularly satisfying or rewarding experience in and of itself. Of course, like The Internet, casual surfing in SL, without agenda, tends to end up with the surfer being gradually funnelled into the bits of it filled with adverts, and opportunities to give their money to someone else – willingly or otherwise. And of course much like any other technological innovation ever, a significant part of Second Life’s progress has been driven by the need for young men to see (and do things to) young women with no clothes on – it must be this Human Nature thing I read so much about.
This lack of focus to the experience and purpose of SL can be a bit of a millstone, creating a kind of new user experience which often does the thing no favours:
Broken Toys: True Transcripts From My Second Life Visit
You can’t argue with that, and I’m certainly not going to try being an apologist on that score…it seems like a quite accurate kind of first impression, and a problem for LL if they want anyone to seriously consider the thing as anything more than an online Smut-Hut. The other kind of first impression I’ve found when trying to show friends this technological oddity, is often ‘There’s nothing to do’. When faced first time with the abnormally slow and laggy framerates, steep learning curve to content creation, and frankly not-up-to-par graphics, most folks don’t see what the payoff for being patient with it actually is – not at first glance anyway; the ability to have a potentially infinite diversity in avatars, houses, animations and objects, and expression in general.
In something of an introspective visionary mood, and perhaps to balance Lum’s first impressions somewhat, above, I also found this podcast:
Second Cast: Episode 25 - "Send Pants"
Despite the frivolous title, it is quite informative and worth a listen if you’re remotely interested in SL, as it’s basically an interview with ‘Philip Linden’ a.k.a. Philip Rosedale, (a.k.a ‘King Philip’), founder and CEO of Linden Lab, and the man in charge. Frankly, I’ve no idea how quite such a hippie has managed to get so far in a blue-sky IT development environment, but his ideas and attitudes are fascinating to hear, and his utopian futurism is rather infectious, even to bitter old hacks like me. We at Van Hemlock do not condone dystopian nightmares!
However, turning the kind of conversation in the Broken Toys post, into the kind of passion in the podcast is no mean feat, I suspect, and it will probably take a degree more pragmatism to address the commonly perceived stereotype of SL – a place where people in fox-costumes can bump pixels, relatively free of persecution, and a place where casinos can operate without pesky gambling laws.
Personally, I’m there for the Magic Lego Bricks of it all, and this does seem to be the best way to get the most out of SL – just as with the larger Internet, go in there with another interest firmly in mind, and hit the Search button. Odds are there are people like you already in there, doing their thing, and would be happy to meet new enthusiasts.
I do quite enjoy the virtual tourism of it all though, and fortuitously enough, Wagner Au at New World notes has just started up a list of ‘Things To Do In Second Life When You’re Not A Gay Vampire Zebra Poledancing Gorean Mecha-Escort’, which can be found here:
New World Notes: THE NEW WORLD NOTES TRAVEL GUIDE
I’d also recently heard about a very extensive in-world MMO-like system called ‘Dark Life’ which I definitely need to visit, purely because the self-referential post-ironic absurdness of the idea is too good to miss. More detailed posts on these visits once I’ve been there, but I really do think it’s time I took my head out of the Sandbox and went for a bit of a wander again.
But as for the greater ‘purpose’ or ‘point’ of SL? Well, once someone answers that same question regarding The Internet, I expect you’ll have an answer for SL very quickly thereafter…
EDIT: Fixed NWN link...my bad!