As crazy and "out there" as we all seem to think second life is, did anyone not see this coming? It's just the culmination of online gaming, social networking, with some economic force factored in. The real question is, I think, not why Second Life, but what comes next? I don't have an answer to this, but perhaps we can look at some of the drawbacks, specifically the disconnect between self and avatar, of Second Life and "invent" a new feature for the future.
Avatar Suite:
If your willing to pay $200 for a piece of land in Second Life, why not pay for a suite which takes your movements in the real world and transmit them to your Avatar? You know, like one of those motion capture suites they use for video games and digital animation. It seems to me that one of the drawbacks of Second Life is the inherent disconnect between real person and the avatar. One way to bridge this gap, could be a motion capture suite, if you could you afford it! But the software and suite technology are already commercially available, so it should be affordable at some point in the near future.
Now, with a motion capture suite, imagine the fun it would be to buy the "motion sequence" of, say, a real Miami Heat Cheerleader...that would be neat :) But anyone could sell their motions!
This seems like a "next step" in 3-D interactive social environments, "real" motion.
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I would say that it's not so much that Second Life is "out there" I didn't see it coming. I just find it to be poorly executed. If the whole point of Second Life is to give people an alternative to their actual realities, then why is it so boring? To me, what makes games (online and otherwise) successful is if they are fun immediately, even to "newbies." When I first tried Second Life, they wouldn't even let me out of the training world because I could not figure out how to work my avatar. Naturally, I got bored. As a result, I did not create an exciting alternative to my everyday life. Judging from many of the posts, I think at least a few people feel the same way. That being said, I really like your ideas for improvement. I think it would be an interesting endeavor to try to make Second Life truer to its purpose.
ReplyDeleteI think that most analysis of Second Life is biased. Researchers really want it to be a full approximation of life online, and to have participants actually using it as they would their real life. Unfortunately I do not see that as the case. It is a poor simulation, that continues to exist because a community of users has met on the website and continue to use it as their primary communications medium. I think that the real world has many experiences that Second Life cannot duplicate. We have not created the Matrix quite yet, as hard as Linden Lab may be trying.
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