Web Directions

Shock Second Life news — no one much seems to use it

• In: Blog
• By:John
• August 21, 2008
• Leave a response

Well, it’s prob­a­bly not much of a shock, but much touted research by QUT post­grad­u­ate stu­dent Kim Mackenzie, (reports in SMH, Australian, SmartCompany and else­where) sug­gests that

com­pa­nies that rushed to set up bases within the cult vir­tual world of Second Life appear to have wasted their time as many have shut down and oth­ers are “ghost towns”

However

Mackenzie remains opti­mistic that the vir­tual world has a long term future. “It will be a very pow­er­ful medium for com­pa­nies to utilise in the future, but there needs to be time and com­mit­ment given to it, and peo­ple need to be aware of it, and feel com­fort­able with it first,” she says.

I’m not so sure. Several huge chal­lenges fac­ing vir­tual worlds include

Most are if not all are not browser based — they require down­load­ing and installing a desk­top appli­ca­tion (even Googles in page VW Lively requires a plug in — cur­rently only for Windows and Firefox)

Users are required to invest sig­nif­i­cant time and effort cus­tomiz­ing their avatars, and learn­ing skills to fly, tele­port or oth­er­wise move through these spaces

As the real­ism of the places and avatars increases, VW’s will face the “uncanny val­ley” conun­drum.

My bet­ting VWs will go the way of “smell-​​o-​​vision” and quadro­phonic sound.

But what does the wis­dom of the crowd say?

3 responses to “Shock Second Life news — no one much seems to use it”:

1. • By:Mark pesce
   • August 21st, 2008
   

   No com­ment. And you can quote me on that.

2. • By:john
   • August 21st, 2008
   

   C’mon — go out on a limb!

   j

3. • By:Ben Boyle
   • August 22nd, 2008
   

   Well I haven’t tried sec­ond life. The effort to install some­thing that will prob­a­bly run poorly when faced with the vari­able, lossy, qual­ity of mobile broad­band… just doesn’t seem worth the invest­ment of my time. Let alone learn­ing how to use it.

   It also sounds like some­thing try­ing really hard to be as excit­ing as online mul­ti­player gam­ing, but with all the fun of gam­ing sucked right out. Like, a game where the goal is to do ordi­nary things. Give me an escape instead.

   Maybe I am entirely miss­ing the point. I guess like all these things, if enough peo­ple I knew moved to it then it would make sense to get involved too. Though maybe there are too many ways to stay con­nected already ~:)

   Given most com­pa­nies still phone back when I email them, I can’t imag­ine many switch­ing to vir­tual worlds …

   (am I out on a limb yet?)

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