Second Life: A 3-D Space for Virtual Meetups and Instruction?
March 9th, 2007 | Posted in blog 6 Comments »
Second Life provides a virtual world you can explore as a video game character walking around and interacting with other game characters. You use your keyboard’s arrow keys to move, and you can even fly. You feel as if you’re in a video game, because you select an avatar (3-d character), and everyone else is represented by avatars as well, mostly provocatively dressed. Thousands of others are also participating, and it’s an experience like no other.
Bryan Person and Jay Moonah at Podcamp Toronto presented enthusiastically about Second Life (see “It Isn’t Just a Video Game: Second Life for Event“), and they included a graphical slideshow with scenes of Second Life. Person and Moonan say they used Second Life for a virtual podcasting meetup, and it went well. Many other groups have meetups in Second Life, and regular events are held, some with live audio. Businesses even have space to present their products.
After my virtual chat experience with the Suncoast chapter, I started wondering if Second Life might provide a better venue for virtual meetups, even for virtual seminars and webinars. Second Life is certainly cooler looking, and more exciting than a regular chat room. But …
Second Life is also lame. The objective is ambiguous, and it’s littered with gambling and adult content. Lots of people stand around doing nothing, and others make their avatars dance endlessly. If you dance in some areas, you can receive pay in Linden dollars, which have actual buying power. The whole project is created by Linden Labs in Seattle.
Darren Barefoot has written about Second Life a bit. In one post he says,
Like all MMPORGs (though several people have asserted to me that Second Life isn’t a game), I found its lack of clear objectives frustrating and got bored pretty quickly. Also, and this will be an unpopular opinion, it was ugly, cluttered and incredibly laggy.
MMPORGs stands for “massive multiplayer online role-playing game.” Some educators think if they can spin their classes as games, making them as appealing as World of Warcraft, students will actually do their homework.
If your e-learning courses are virtual worlds that users can explore as games, users might be more engaged with the instruction. Still, my thoughts toward Second Life are mixed. It consists of a lot of standing around, wondering where to go, what to do.
Darren Barefoot created a satire of Second Life called “Get a First Life,” which appeared on Digg. Barefoot calls attention to how pathetic it can be to spend hours and hours each day in a virtual world, ignoring the real world around you.
Barefoot also references some Gartner research that indicates the Second Life hype has reached its peak:
AR: What happens when Second Life begins to fall from the peak of expectations described in the Hype Cycle?
SP: We will see a level of disillusionment, caused partially by difficult of scaling the infrastructure to cope with new people, partially by a sense of dissatisfaction as the perceived level of reality falls behind that which is becoming the norm in the home entertainment environment.
My first experience exploring Second Life was one of confusion. I wandered around asking people what I was supposed to be doing. Others seemed not to do anything at all. After a two-minute superficial chat with another character, he explained that it was the most conversation he had in 4 and a half hours. What! What are people doing if they’re not chatting? I learned they’re editing their appearance, building things, exploring virtual spaces — I guess. I did not enter the gambling rooms, nude beaches, or other “adult” areas.
One problem with Second Life is that you really don’t need an avatar to chat with others. You don’t need to represent yourself visually and walk around. If you’re attending an event, you don’t need to walk up to other participants and ask them questions. It’s neat, but unnecessary and sometimes technically challenging. Still, I wouldn’t dismiss Second Life. It has potential. If you know of cool events going on in Second Life, or worthwhile meetups, let me know. I might visit it again. Look for “TomJ Dyrussen” (my avatar’s ridiculous name).
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Shortly before Second Life was invented I was involved in beta-testing a similar MMOG called There. (http://www.there.com).
There is a very similar concept to Second Life – an objectiveless virtual world in which you meticulously create an avatar for purely social purposes. However, There is far less robust and confusing than SL. This fundamental difference made for something of a religious battle between the two games, akin to video game console vs. computer games debates that inconclusively rage on. Oddly, for once, I’m on the easily accessible side of the argument this time, rather than the complex and robust side.
There is economy-based, like SL, but you can sign up and play all you want for free without submitting any payment information. Perhaps it is thanks to its simplicity that people seem much chattier on There, and it is a far more inclusive, rather than elitist, environment. You don’t need to fiddle around for days before you can participate in casual or organized events in There.
I made some friends that I did some amazing things with on There. One guy was a keyboardist with whom I rented a high bandwidth Shoutcast streaming audio server. We did live performances, him on the keys and me on the DJ decks (not simultaneously) with an entire audience of virtual denizens jumping and dancing all around us. That was a heck of a rush. I kept in touch with another guy who I ended up meeting in person years later. It was indescribably odd seeing eachother in the flesh, yet we got along swimmingly and sans any first-meet jitters I’d had meeting people from IRC or other “faceless” media.
There’s engine has since been licensed by the US army and is used for collaborative team training. I don’t know the details but I’ve seen screenshots of desert locales featuring army, enemy, and civilian avatars.
Brian, thanks for letting me know about there.com. I didn’t even know it existed, and if it simplifies the Second Life experience, how much the better. I think it’s cool how you were able to play music for a live audience, all virtually represented, and then meet someone from the experience later on in real life (and not have the person turn out to be totally weird).
Interesting thoughts. I haven’t tried Second Life yet, and I am really not interested right now. Other activities have higher priorities. That might mean I am not one of the interesting people that Howard Rheingold referred to in some interview with his – done in Second Life – that I cannot find. I believe that point in the discussion concerned how many people actually used SL. Millions signed up, but they never used their accounts. Rheingold said something about the 5-digit figure that *are* using SL. He said something about them being movers and shakers and having one foot in the future. So I don’t move and shake!
I see it more as “the thought that counts”. I mean, the idea that this thing exists. Maybe SL is so uncool in a few years, but maybe 10 years down the road some concept is born because SL existed. It opened up a door in someone’s creative mind. I remember Computer Associates (former employer) made some software around 1990 that never really was sold. The point was – they showed us the future. It was a mainframe program that also used a laser disk reader and a pc. The help was on that system. If you had a problem on the traditional green screen monitor, you accessed this new system and you got a video about that particular area of the product (context-sensitive). You could also make bookmarks in the green screen area, something that really wasn’t possible then. They also demonstrated how the video could be localized. They demo’ed that with a woman speaking Valley-speak (you know, Valley Girls, California). I was in hysterics. The exciting thing was that this was science fiction come true. SL isn’t a Trekkie holodeck, or is it an alternative. That is the exciting bit and yes, we need a lot of people looking into that. I will just sit this one out however.
I do love Darren Barrenfoot’s Getalife that you link to. I first saw that over on Full Circle Online, one of my fav feeds: http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog.htm. This is a great blog about online communities and online interaction. Highly recommended. A respected journalist friend of mine here in Denmark who is also into all this cutting-edge, Web 2.0 related stuff knows that blogger from some years back – another recommendation!
Karen,
I agree with your comment about failing technologies opening up doors for new technologies and ideas. You said, “Maybe SL is so uncool in a few years, but many 10 years down the road some concept is born because SL existed.”
The idea of the virtual world is probably ingrained in a lot of gamers’ minds, and it doesn’t really appeal too much to either, but in some circumstances it might. Who knows what becomes of it. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I have played SL for a very long time. Fortunately I was able to quit, this game is very addicive =) My friend plays it at least 6 hours a day…
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