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BBC Program Broadcasts From Second Life

Posted by Zonk on from the live-from-nowhere dept.

Via GameSetWatch, the word that BBC program Newsnight recently broadcast live from the virtual world Second Life. The broadcast included a lead-in shot on a backdrop designed to emulate the real-life Newsnight set. From the article: "Because the virtual money inside Second Life is convertible to US dollars, and people who make things can keep the intellectual property, it is possible to run a real life business inside the game. I got in touch with Cory Edo - real name Sara Van Gorden - who runs a business in Second Life designing avatars - the idealised 3D personas that people use as their online identities."

3 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. not trying to troll, but... by aapold · · Score: 2, Informative

    how can a game with so few subscribers get this much coverage? It gets more articles than just about anything other than WOW, and even that is close.

    MMOGCHART.COM's most recent chart puts the subscriber base at 30,000. Second Life's own website claims 100,000, which at the time I write this (5:18 pm EST) claiming about 3700 online at this moment, which is about the number of players standing around in WOW's ironforge on a typical night on any given server. I tried second life during a trial period and the thing seemed more like still life than second life. I guess I'm asking a rhetorical question, it seems like someone would like to get more attention for it so it could do well, not necessarily anything sinister in that, but there just doesn't seem much interest here...

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    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ
    1. Re:not trying to troll, but... by Dave2+Wickham · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because SL is not really a game. There are no goals. It's not like MMORPGs like WoW or CoH - almost all of the content is user-created, and users just do what they want to. This concept is what interests people. They don't care that WoW has loads of players, and SL has a relatively small number, it's still just another MMORPG. SL is different.

      In terms of there being nobody active, that completely depends where you are. Sims (squares of the map, each ran by its own server) that are relatively new are likely to have nowhere near the population of more popular areas - after all, there is a huge amount of space for a relatively small number of "players".

      (Apologies for any difficulties in understanding this post, I am knackered.)

    2. Re:not trying to troll, but... by Gwala · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's grown 70,000 in the last 6 months. MMOCHART is out of date at the moment.

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      #!/bin/csh cat $0