Q: Have you even been in Second Life?

Following its incredible rise to fame as a successful mass market virtual world, Second Life has become a cliche and an object of misunderstood amusement among the marketing and communications community.

And that's starting to annoy me...

Because I'm realising more and more that the same people that drop into conversations 'and on Second Life' before dismissing it as a geeky world where men dress up as space travelling female horses [1] are the same ill-informed 'new media' [2] know it alls that have 'understood' but actually failed to comprehend in the slightest blogging, how real online communities work, and every other important shift before them..

Second Life is amazing. It's nearly mind blowing. It really is. I'm not a geek, and I don't use the virtual world to cross dress in...(well I would say that).

Why is it amazing?

It is an incredible execution of the virtual worlds forecast by Sci Fi writers and filmakers. It is very like those worlds we've all consumed through film and literature. But it actually works.

You meet incredible interesting people. This afternoon I thought I'd check out new marketing super-agency Crayon who have an office in 2L. And fortunately I stumbled in at the right time - there was a 'Crayon Coffee' thing going on so about 15 people were chatting away, from Text 100 (top tech PR firm), people from Crayon, other well informed and interested digital media types.

It's the start of something important and new. The cluetrain manifesto talked about the conversation. IRC, online forums and chatrooms, blogs, all facilitiate this conversation between real human beings. In Second Life these conversations take place in an equally distributed way, but in a much more textured, lifelike visceral way. Avatars are a huge component of the future of online interaction, and Second Life is allowing people to break their own ground here.

Next time you hear someone dismiss Second Life (or you are tempted to do the same) I'd ask: 'have you even been there?; have you explored it, played with it, talked to people?'. Because if they're just doing the whole 'I'm in marketing and I can name drop MySpace, Bebo and blogging' then screw 'em. Here's to virtual worlds.

footnotes:
[1] Yes, people do have avatars in bizarre forms - it's really quite scary and colourful. A bit like Brighton (where I live and work) really!
[2] It's not 'new media' you pillocks - it's the here and now, you frickard.

Comments

[Tom Nixon]

I still can't get past the 'orientation island' stage and into the game itself. I play with it for 10 minutes, get bored then give up. There's a bit where you're walking up a track around a hill and you stop at these little buddha-like statue things that seem to be testing you on some kind of riddle. What's that all about? It's hardly engaging (to me anyway.)

[C.C. Chapman]

Glad you swung by. It's always awesome to have new people swing in.

[Martina]

Ihmo, Second Life is really boring, just a temporary trend.

Every day someone “lands” in Second Life (political people, singers, companies and firms…) and it announces it everywhere, but then, when I have visited the island, I have found it empty and desolating.

Of course, in my humble opinion! :-)

[Clive]

It can certainly be odd, but it's just another medium for communication, isn't it? Like any other medium, it can be used for entertaining worthwhile stuff or for boring crap.

But it does seem hard to find the worthwhile stuff!

(And Tom - I think you're supposed to answer the second buddha's question with the words given to you by the first buddha. Or something like that...)

[Will McInnes]

Tom, Clive and Martina - I've been thinking about this more and spending more time in SecondLife, and I agree that there are some fairly substantial problems but ones that can be addressed.

Firstly, Tom - you're right: orientation island is CRAP. I remember fumbling around there feeling the enthusiasm draining out of me. In the end I just barrelled on thru. 2L need to find a way of - I think - integrating this learning experience into the full unfettered environment (if they haven't already). Most people like to learn in this way, and orientation island gives none of the benefits of 2L, only downsides.

To play on SecondLife's inherently social nature perhaps orientation should happen in small groups to facilitate socialising (a bit like the learner groups on my recent snowboarding holiday - you fumble thru together) and this should happen in-world.

Secondly, in reference to Martina and Clive's points: ABSOLUTELY - when you get into SecondLife where do you go? It *can* be a desolate numbing experience. The best spots I've been to have always been led by others but this relies overly on serendipitous useful connections forming (which they will, but not reliably). I recently googled for 'top secondlife locations' or similar, and found a top 20 list, and there are some OUTSTANDINGly cool places - cyberpunk inspired metropolis'; japanese anime cities. But many are empty, completely empty. When I did the googling there were surprisingly few useful results.

So what needs to happen?
SecondLife itself needs to better facilitate the finding of cool new places to go and socialise. Currently the search function returns either loads of casinos and crappy bingo game islands full of numptys playing virtual slot machines or 'mature' environments where there's lots of virtual bonking and men dressed as female horses from Mars.

SecondLife needs to be promoting these other locations, and ideally promoting less of these than more to facilitate the finding and meeting of other people.

Also, my suggestions assume that Linden Labs (the games' creators) 'control' the people and their activities. That's probably the wrong way round. These changes need to come from the community, from the grassroots. Inevitably base human interests (money, gambling, sex) have flowered first in SecondLife.

Finally, I have read on blogs about SecondLife (e.g. not written by Linden) that the cynical suggestion is real estate sales make the Linden Labs payroll. Therefore this expansionist phenomenan of ever growing regions and real estate boom. Perhaps this contributes to SecondLife's aforementioned downsides of wide open spaces with no one in them.

In summary, to thrive, the next phase of 2L - whether top-down or bottom-up-led - needs to be more interesting and relevant to the mainstream, easier to get into, and more densely populated. Do you agree, or this cobbled together theorising of mine a load of virtual rubbish?

[Tom Nixon]

I think 2L definitely has the potential to become something that I'd be interested in taking part in, but like you said will, it needs to become more interesting and relevant to the mainstream. It's still firmly in early adopter territory at the moment which is great for the geeks and the enthusiasts like you :P
but I mean come on, having to give a little statue a secret password to progress to the next level? it's like a lame 80's role playing game.

I'll be keeping an eye on 2L from the sidelines though and maybe give it another go some time.