Second Life Rationality
Posted on October 19, 2006
Filed Under Channels and Content |
I get the feeling there’s a Second Life hype going on - and am I naive. Pretty much anything with a logical endpoint can be hyped. I mean blogging’s logical endpoint is it replaces news, Second Life’s logical endpoint is it becomes a substitute reality for all of us. But like Skype’s logical endpoint is the replacement of traditional telephony, these things have a habit of growing old fast.
I confess to being a part of the Second Life hype having written about it a couple of weeks back in the Irish Times, in glowing terms. I do believe it glows. The experience though for me was too cumbersome and I haven’t been back since. Surprisingly I didn’t write that in my article. I was too taken with the avatar me. What am I saying? The avatar has nothing to do with me.
Though Second Life has a way to go as a content experience and a profitable investment, the lack of critical appraisal is disturbing, a disturbance that extends to much of what’s coming onto the web. One point I made in the article which I believe will hold true for a whole is that cumbersome environments like Second Life level the creative playing field.
Folks who have film making experience or high end graphics experience are no more capable than any old Joe who learns the Second Life ropes. In that sense it is a great creative equaliser and it is allowing a number of people to breakthrough and prove their creative worth, a path that would not be open to them in the real world. It’s also the case that to do that they need to be more conceptual than they would if they had a full creative graphics kit in front of them or a video camera. You can’t point and shoot. Your brain needs to transform a set of ideas into a more symbolic piece of art when it’s dealing with inadequate tools. It’s for those kinds of reasons that I remain bullish about Second life.
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6 Responses to “Second Life Rationality”
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The reason I’ve also been taken in by the Second Life hype is because of one simple realization - regardless of how crude the graphics and interface there is something awe inspiring about interacting with ‘lifelike’ representations of other people in a simulated reality. It’s something you can’t describe to people. They must see it for themselves. Winky yellow circular icons are cute but theres nothing like the shrug of a corporal shoulder to convey real emotion. I laughed out loud the first time an avatar did that to ‘me’.
I think the 3D controller from the upcoming Nintendo Wii will open people’s eyes though as regards control of 3D environments. Wait until the hackers crack a PC interface and then Second Life will take another leap forward.
I gave second life a spin earlier this week.
I picked the basic avatar - male, medium build, blue jeans white t-shirt and began wandering about.
The first thing I notice is all of these other stationary players with “Enhancing Image” captions on them. People do spend a lot of time embellishing their avatar’s don’t they ? This was perhaps the first clue that 2ndLife wasn’t for me.
Rather than “Enhance my Image” I figured I’d try and orientate myself and get a hang of the controls. Boy the controls are unwieldy - 2ndLife’s developers could learn something from Quake and other FPS games.
Eventually I teleported somewhere - couldn’t tell you where it was - it looked like a nightclub. Lot’s of “Nightclub Male” avatars wondering around. These particular avatars seem to be bigger than most other avatars, but they’re more alpha-beegee than alpha-male.
I couldn’t quite the hang of the controls to move about and my white-Tshirt/blue-jeans unembellished avatar was increasingly looking out of place. There were some very exotic looking avatars.
I wandered about a bit more, struggling with the controls. One of these “alpha-beegee” types made a snarky comment about a “crashed Sim” - presumably referring to my erratic movements and Vanilla attire. I alt-f4′d out of there (it was more dignified than trying to walk out) and will most likely never go back.
All I can say is SecondLife feels like the kind of place a former Euro MTV VJ might like.
Nice haircut Adam.
Its all down to expectation Walter…. but don’t let your disorientation limit your imagination!
I know how you feel Walter - I was happy to walk around not realising I looked stupid.
I don’t think though that we;’re part of a backlash against Second Life - maybe trying to keep a sense of proportion.
Second Life hypes imagination but shows very little true creativity. Copying the real word and applying it to a cartoon world is not imagination. There are some imaginitive enviroments in Second Life but they are few and far between. SL is primarly focused on sex, gambling and greed. You can imagine that you just had an intimate experience, imagine you won some real money, imagine that you just didn’t get ripped off shopping, or imagine that you’re actually working not playing. If you want to imagine that you’re committing rape you can do that in SL, rape animations only cost a couple of dollars.
The SL platform is barely functional as it is. Forget designing an imaginative environment in SL There servers can’t handle it. Its a shame that the most imagination in second life is shown the PR hype.
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