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Second Life Hype vs. Anti-Hype
The new GigaGamez site, part of the OM network, has a look today at the hype fight over Second Life. It's the new darling of media companies, but is increasingly attracting negative feedback by people who know a thing or two about the industry. James Wagner Au tries to sort out who is saying what, and provide a little context for the discussion. From the article: "Can they really build a fully streamed world comprised of tens of thousands of servers? That's way above my paygrade, but I'll guess that task fits under the rubric of Fricking Hard. Can they fix a profoundly unfriendly user interface and thoroughly disorienting first hour user experience, which are aggressively, almost intentionally unwelcoming to the vast majority of interested users? Both shortcomings are at the heart of Second Life's poor retention rates, but neither have significantly changed in the three years since its commercial release. You have to wonder, whatever their stated intentions, if Linden's tech-centric corporate culture simply puts their improvement at a low priority."
Sorry to any big fans here but my experience sucked. The user interface is incredibly unfriendly and unresponsive, the graphics are appalling, the animation shocking and the sound lamentable.
After playing WoW for a few months and seeing how fluid, beautiful and easy to use a virtual world can be, Second Life was a shocking kick in the nether regions. It reminded me of very early 3D games with no collision detection and collosal clipping issues.
Yes I know it's streamed and if that's the primary cause of it's issues then it shouldn't be.
Additionally, for my first hour I wandered around trying to find something to do but was profoundly ignored by my fellow "2nd lifers", presumably because I looked like a newb.
If the developers could at least sort out the shocking camera and other control issues I may consider retrying it. I spend about 10 minutes of my first hour working out how to unzoom the camera which was permanently stuck 50 yards behind my guy.
There hasn't updated it's technology significantly since early 2004 (with the exception of MTV's Laguna Beach). They've lost most of their developers since almost going under, and haven't really grown much.
Their main impetus to growth is the insistence of screening all custom content before approving it, and then taking a commission for each sale. It tends to limit growth as most people are interested in sex stuff (look at SL).
hookers and grits.
was that it is a magnet for every sick and twisted loser the trolls around on the Internet. This article, and the articles it links to, should be enough for anyone to understand exactly what kind of person likes second life.