Francois

It was interesting to show Second Life to the class. People generally didn't seem very impressed. So I am trying to justify my enthusiasm.

As I said in my previous post Second Lifes strength and weakness is the freedom that it gives it's citizens to create their own world.

One of my main criticisms of World of Warcraft is that it is rather static, whereas Second Life is dynamic. This is because like Youtube or Counterstrike mods the game content is designed by "players" instead of by Linden Labs' design teams.

When I fly and walk around Second Life the environment seems rich to me because I know that all of it was created by different people, there is a presence there rather than the mythic dramatic facade given by World of Warcraft.

Another massive multiplayer online game with more of a dynamic world is Shadowbane, where players have the chance to form guilds, build cities, fight each other for control of mines and cities in an MMORPG model.

But back to Second Life.

The problem with this democratic creation by users is that in Second Life the creation is wide, but pretty shallow and disconnected/purposeless in comparison to a centrally designed world.

Second Life is a dystopia of sorts. The problem with letting users make their own world is that they may make a very boring place. It seems that much of the world is filled with sex (cybersex), fashion and gambling, and soon corporations from the physical world will jump on the bandwagon. I visited some amazing spots, a beach with waves that rolled in. (But is it better than a real beach. Maybe it is easier to reach, but ultimately less beautiful.)

The Artist run spaces that I went to show promise... nothing brilliant, but interesting for sure. There was an interesting video of a conversation at "The port" about communities and autonomy. I watched the video of the autonomy discussion in Second Life, but instead of reading the text Second life I went to the website they gave.

Why is Second Life better than the web as it stands now? Or why is talking politics in a virtual bar better than talking politics in a physical bar?

It seems that much of Second Life is devoted to public forums, sort of like virtual chatrooms. Is having a visual avatar better than just having a pure text chatroom? Maybe for cybersex it is. Chatrooms don't have fashion, but chatters always have their instant message icons, and their profiles. Music and pictures and profile are "fashion" of sorts on Myspace and other social networking sites.

I think being able to try on clothes in virtual would be a very powerful tool, only I would need to make my physical body correspond accurately with that of the avatar. There may be other things that can be done in this virtual space that only become apparent after Second Life has been around for a while.

Some types of teaching would be better within a visual virtual world (as opposed to a textual virtual world.) One can show videos and pictures, and maybe also create virtual objects to illustrate concepts. Second Life could have possibilities as a virtual campus. (But again, photos and video are availabe on the web.)

It'll be hard to beat hypertext.

When I approach Second Life I try to measure it against Physical Space, MMORPGs and to internet chatrooms. This shows one thing about Second Life. Second Life takes on aspects of each of these "spaces." It is a wide platform. As such it doesn't have much depth in any of these areas, but:

1. Second Life has the potential (albeit limited by the tools Linden Labs gives them) for users to create more depth in any of these areas.

2. Second life also has the potential to link some of these areas together. Though to a certain extent MMORPGs share things with internet chatrooms.

But it could all be under a single program/world. If I was tired of games I can go chat, if I am tired of chatting, flashmob the reebok store.

but Second Life isn't there yet. (And all the academics/journalists in the world won't make it that way.)