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Whatever Happened To Second Life?
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."
Its users got a first life. Translation: They moved over to Warcraft.
Bark less. Wag more.
I think they're all well into their third or fourth life.
Second Life had little point beyond being a sex simulator and roleplaying simulator. You can't really play a real game in there. There isn't any real combat Physics built into Second Life. You walk around, you chat, if you can buy stuff and sell stuff that looks cool. You can own housing that serves no purpose. Turning actual money into Lindens was a waste of money.
At least in WoW you could fight enemies and make money, it could be pointless because the mobs respawn, but you could do it.
When they made it to where no one under 18 who was verified (and their verification process was extremely intrusive and I know many people who just decided to stop using second life entirely over it. It involves basicaly forking over Credit Card information, in some cases a Birth Certificate, and yuor home address.) they killed SL. Second Life was the one MMO, however crude that you could have sex in.
Second life was always just a silly fad. The money situation with it was just silly - it was just a bubble.
Second Life was based on PR and hype. No one needs to hear old news or the same tired Second Life stories again.
This article is pretty ignorant.
To be fair, two things are true. One, Second Life has a woefully steep learning curve. Two, it's hard to find the things you'd really want to find in Second Life. Two is connected to One.... There are lots of people doing lots of creative and interesting things in Second Life, but it takes a fair bit of experience, or somebody leading you around, to know how to find them.
The writer of this sloppy piece did a quick dash and look, almost willfully avoiding putting in the most minimal effort it would take to really find out what's there. It would be like somebody "trying to figure out what this web thing is all about" by starting at http://www.com/ without knowing about sites like Google. Again, yes, the web is more mature and as such it's far easier to find what you're looking for... but that is how distorted the picture this article paints is.
Yes, the sorts of things you're interested in will often not be easily or readily found. But once you start figuring out how to find them, there's all kinds of great stuff going on.
Two things I'm involved with-- which, thus, are the sorts of things I'm interested in-- are science and theater. My theater group is at http://www.avreptheater.com/ , and my science group is at http://www.mica-vw.org./ If you want to see evidence of a whole bunch of people showing up at once at something that at least I consider interesting (although I'm extremely biased), check this out: http://www.pookymediafilms.com/2009/05/dr-knop-talks-astronomy.html
Article Summary:
Linden labs shut down gambling, segregated all porn to its own island, and now 2nd life's "wholesome areas" are now ghost towns because everyone's hanging out in porn island and spending their money there for virtual kinkiness. Also, writer speculates that most of 2nd life's revenue is now from porn island.
http://www.object404.com
Second Life was immensely popular with people from all walks of life. They could visit and become who and what they wanted. It was a jointly held fantasy. Want to be a bipedal tiger or cat? No problem. Want to have sex with anyone and anything? No problem. Want to go to a club with strippers and play the slots? No problem.
People went to Second Life to have a second life, to be free of all the rules and social restrictions that made their first life so mundane.
In forcing their laws onto the onto the Lindens, real-life governments effectively sent everyone back home to Kansas. After all, if you must follow the same rules as in real life, why bother with a second version of the same dull thing?
For me, I can tell you what happened to Second Life. They screwed up my account and their customer service is useless.
Long version: I had an OLD account that received the 500 L$ weekly allowance that used to be given to every account. Then they changed it so that new accounts don't get that allowance. I went on, made a few custom objects and was happen with my character... Until they got hacked. When they get hacked, they force everyone to change their passwords using the password retrieval system. No problem, it's an email that gives you a link. Everything was fine... And then they got hacked again. This time, my password link doesn't work... It just says there was 'an error'. After trying like 5 times over a couple days, I call them. Their machine hangs up on me without ANY voice prompt. Over the next 6 months to a year, I called over and over, but each time it hung up on me, or answered then hung up, or answered and told me to leave a message then told me the mailbox was full... One time it DID let me leave a message and their message promised me they'd contact me... Nothing. So I eventually just gave up. It's not worth the hassle, and I'm NOT going to make a new account and lose my allowance and the customizations to my character.
I've been told that the customer service is better now, but I no longer care.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It would be interesting to study the distribution of active second-life users with time. I guess that some kind of well-known pattern will appear. Be ready to see the same fate to apply for twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc.
Second Life resembles the real world too much, there's a commercial real estate bubble to.
Basically, the 5 page story ends up concluding that Second Life is for porn. Gosh, who could have guessed?
The simple fact is that SL was a hype based on the ancient idea of virtual/3d environments being useful. They ain't.
The reason? It is to bloody hard to do anything. When I am in the real world, moving about, turning my head, manipulating objects and chewing gum is so easy I don't actually know how to do it, I just do it. In second life, even just walking about is a pain in the ass. FPS solve this by simplifying the world and giving you limited interaction. You can just jump up any wall rather then having to climb it or put a chair in place to use as a ladder etc etc. In Dragon Age Origins I just click on a cocoon a few meters above me, without having to climb the tree it is hanging from. But in a virtual world ala Second Life they remove this simplified game element because they want something more.
And in the end, they end up with something less. Maybe it is the uncanny valley, the more real a virtual meeting room becomes, the more obvious it becomes that it isn't real. This doesn't matter in a game, because a game isn't real. But a meeting with real people I work with in a virtual world will just feel off. Because nobody but the most dedicated attendee will bother to fully animate his avatar. Smiling, body posture, they will all be pre-scripted (and what kind of person who needs to attend a virtual meeting hasthe time to sculpt his own avatar?) and not like the real person. And for what? So you can talk more easily? You are still staring at a screen, why not use video conferincing? You can interact with a 3D object? Only if that 3D object is fully realized in SL. And I can also see that 3D object in any other display where I can spin the camera and not have to manipulate a camera around a character with collision detection. There are far better purpose build tools for showing a 3D object. And where you new 3D design is NOT on someone elses server.
Oh, there are some useful scenario's, but they are so limited that SL doesn't deserve the hype. It would be like creating a hype for the Excell sheet viewer that MS has for people without Excell.
And so, as the story shows, porn is the only activity that is worthwhile. Same as the net. Just how much information do you need in a day? But you can always use more porn.
I find it intresting to see that the author says the hype has shifted to facebook and twitter. Indeed. Any predictions for how these will fair in 3 years time? MySpace has dropped a lot of its hype. Countless commercial blogs show current post as being several years old...
Part of it all I think is the problem CNN has. They don't have enough news to fill 24 hours and I think the web as a whole might not actually have enough content to fill it all. Twitter is the most obvious example of this, so I will use facebook. Intresting to keep track of old friends... BUT how much can you track? Say that you follow all your friends holiday pictures. Unless you got hundreds of friends, that will hardly keep you that busy will it? There simply ain't enough things people can put online to keep social sites full. Except of course porn. How much of MySpace/Facebook is naughty pics?
The problem is nothing new, it takes pixar 2 years to create a movie that takes us 2 hours to watch. Bioware spends a month on each hour of gameplay. A free news rag like metro is a day job for a whole office of workers and a global news network, and I am done with it in 20 minutes.
I can spend ages setting up a beautifull display in Second Life, as some have done, and then a user goes, he sees it and that is it... done. That is why porn rules, because it is so very very cheap to make and people will pay for a very similar girl in a very similar pose over and over again. Porn is an amazing business. Only the food industry matches it in being able to get people to pay for exactly the same stuff again and again.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Tenth Life.
Probably the most practical (non-sex) application of 2nd Life is its capacity for distance learning/education. Holding online courses in a virtual world... beats the hell out of the buggy web applet i was using back in the glory days of nortel.
Get Virtual.
SL has some impressive tech, running a user-scriptable 3D world with user generated content. The idea was great, tried it for a while...
But the problem was that the server grid doesn't have enough power to allow a realistic amount of people anywhere. Whenever I was somewhere with over ten people things started lagging bad. So what you end up with are (often beautiful and extravagant) ghost towns. The concept of an open world seems like a great idea, but in practice a lot of areas are off limits due to security measures. And with little communal planning every server is more or less it's own little island.
I still love the concept, but like communism, a working implementation seems to elude us still.
.: Max Romantschuk
I'm still convinced virtual worlds have a fascinating future in our lives -- Second Life may be a bit ahead of its time and needs more technology however.
There are also useful things going on there. For example, Cape Town Housing Project.
Here some students from Delaware, USA designed and built virtual homes for the townships around Cape Town. The designs were critiqued by an organization that handles this stuff in Cape Town in real-life. The students got some valuable experience. For example, designing a house with multiple bathrooms. Ah, no. Or using materials not readily available in South Africa.
I can see with time and technological advances that students won't have to truck into their local university, they'll be able to learn within virtual classrooms.
Linden Lab got greedy. That's what happened. They do all kinds of things to drive their revenue higher and higher, on th expense of the users, and i don't mean just their wallets, but enjoyability.
And yes, it's become quite desolent place, empty and eerie due to that. Nevermind, technically it's not very good work either ...
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
BBC asked the same question a few months ago. Their investigation was a bit more comprehensive: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8367957.stm
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Consider that what you may want to be in fantasy is not what you think your parents would be all too comfortable with you actually being when you turn up for Christmas dinner.
If you see 2L as an escape for the fearful, you're too narrow minded. I consider (the adult portion at least) to be an extension of the fantasy world, not a replacement of the real one.
I don't "play" 2L, I just disagree with your point.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
... those that "get" Second Life, and those that begrudge them for it.
I had a gander in there a month or so back, seems pretty much the same to me (but much bigger).
The article asks "why it’s raking in more cash than ever before" - erm, this must be some new meaning of the phrase "went wrong" that I wasn't previously aware of!
The issue perhaps is that it's highly commercial now and there's a LOT of competition, and also there has been insane expansion during the land boom. So whilst you're probably the only one browsing a shop, there are loads and loads and loads of them. But whilst you have to look on the map for the green dots to see where the actual people are, there are still tens of thousands of them! They're not exactly difficult to find!
The biggest problem it has, is that it's become *too* full and 99.9% of it is crap. So you try to find an interesting event and all you see are pages and pages of yard sales and "money chair" non-events, and so it's a lot more effort trying to find someone or something that isn't about selling you stuff. But 'quiet' or 'empty' are certainly not words I'd used to describe that place. It's just not a media fad any more, but the population itself is right where it's always been.
I dunno about you guys, but, generally (unless I'm at work), I'm a console geek... There are only naim & irc clients here... No "Second Life" for you! Bad Monkey! --Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
Ah yes, let's list transgender people alongside failing at life. Perhaps the point of Slashdot is for people like you who want to throw insults, when you'd be too scared to do so in the real world, right?
I don't know what the point of Second Life is either, but the obvious comparison is to things like IRC. People make the same tired cliched criticisms of IRC as you did of SL, but I'd hope that generally any geek on Slashdot didn't fall for that.
extension or replacement - if t here are people for which 2L is their 1L that is fine too - I still prefer documentaries in my cellar but I can understand there are people that enjoy virtual sex in 2Las well as enjoying rubbing their real selves against other equally real bodies and even exchanging body fluids or do whatever they prefer to do. The point is looking from aside any of these three alternatives may be perceived as disturbing and I am sure there are places where majority of such activities are illegal, bottom line is however: there are people ready to invest money into such activities and they do not hurt anybody in a process so the service is maybe not up to everybody's liking but it certainly satisfies certain needs and generates profits in a process. I do not mind and I see not why should anybody be disturbed by this. Then again there are people putting other people in the prison only for smoking a joint - how sick is that compared to 2L? I think GP should take it easy and get some perspective - getting out of cellar and getting aforementioned date with real people may help but is not really necessary.
Perhaps Second Life has simply been killed off by the far superior offering that is Sony's "Home".
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... hahahahaha! :D
Had you going there, didn't I? Yeah, it's still awful.
Incidentally, though, it would seem that Sony's Home is also plagued by sex fiends. Maybe it is shaping up to become a worthy successor?
It can also be an escape from RL for the disabled. I know several disabled individuals that play SL on a regular basis. For them it makes real life a little easier to cope with knowing they have someplace they can go to where they aren't limited by their disabilities.
I have never in my entire life (and I am a serious online geek, married to a Tucows geek) actually met ANYONE who was part of this MUSH. I still think it was press hype and PR rather than actual data.
The article asks "why it's raking in more cash than ever before" - erm, this must be some new meaning of the phrase "went wrong" that I wasn't previously aware of!
+1 Funny.
What's wrong with wanting to be something else than what you are for a while?
When I go to Second Life, I can be whatever I want to be, unlimited by physical restrictions (although SL imposes its own restrictions, of course). But that's not because I'm unhappy with what I actually am; it's simply because sometimes, it's fun to enter a fantasy.
Seriously, how is it different from playing other computer games, or watching movies, or reading books, especially science-fiction and fantasy?
The answer, of course, is that it isn't, and that doing the things you like, because you like them, without being constantly afraid of how others will view you and your actions is a good thing. People who do that and who always think about how others might perceive them with everything they do... well, I pity people like that.
Of course SL can be overdone, just like anything else, and those people who spend 14 hours per day there (if they actually exist) are overdoing it. But then, so are those surfing the Internet (perhaps reading Slashdot?) 14 hours a day, for instance; the problem isn't with the hobby but rather with overdoing it.
One MIGHT argue that Linden Labs actually has a vested interest in sucking people in and making them spend as much as possible of their life on SL, but I'm not sure if that's the case, and in any case, it's up to the user anyway.
Caveat gamer. YOU are in charge of your own life, as an adult, noone else, so if you overdo it, you have noone but yourself to blame. However, this also means that if you don't overdo things, there's nothing wrong with them. It's two sides of the same coin really.
First, this twit of a journalist logs in at 1200 GMT, which equates to 0400 SLT(PST). The first country that I can find that falls into 'prime time' for that period is Nepal.
Second, SL has installed your typical Ivy League bean-counter as their new CEO. That is invariably the beginning of the end.
Regards;
Second Life had magnificient promise in academia. I used to love exploring the International Space Museum, NASA's virtual home there, and the garden of Physics demonstrations, and the NOAA's island of activities.
Then I tried to bring my class of high school aged kids into Second Life to go on a virtual field trip to these places... only to be thwarted by Linden Labs policy of not allowing more than five people to log into the world from the same location. I looked online, and people told me to call Linden Labs and request an exception be made, but by that time it was too late to attempt the field trip.
Why ban multiple users from the same location? Greed. That has always been Second Life's main detraction. Unlike the World Wide Web, where anyone with a server can plug in and host content, Linden Labs has total control over their world. A virtual world will not work unless it is completely open so that anyone can plug into it and host content themselves. Second Life is just a fantastic ghost town now, filled with amazing creations by people who ultimately do not own what they have built... it's like the Roman ruins.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
My sister is a home care nurse and last week she had to visit a patient who just had some surgery. The patient's 40-50 year old son lived in the same house to take care of his mom. While my sister was trying to take care of the patient, the guy kept asking if she used computers much.. then he kept talking about how he is always playing Second Life. Then he told my sister that she should try it out and look him up in game...
I figure the guy was probably just an extreme introvert, though it really creeped out my sister (who is in her 20s). Now that I've read this article I think he was trying to lure her to the sex island. I'll have to forward this article on and tell her she got cyber hit on in real second life....
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
There are some real gems in SL, such as the NASA museum.
I would love to use it to prototype architectural stuff. However, the engine is pretty old and not really compatible with models you could build in Blender or other 3D editor software. You need to do a lot of stuff in the SL editor itself, which is pretty nice, but I don't really want my creations locked away in their proprietary format. I've been looking at using the UnReal engine or the Valve Source engine instead (though I'll probably just end up cheesing out and using Blender's built-in game engine), which should produce better visual results and ultimately give me more control of my creations.
I think people like me who want to create things are waiting for something a bit more open, and, well, modern :/ SL was a pretty good first attempt at creating a 3D web with interaction features, though, considering how many real companies made an effort to establish storefronts and virtual conference rooms, though. Hopefully that effort will be preserved and brought into future metaverses.
In any society, a few people are sociopaths. They want to inflict harm on others for their own personal gain, and it makes no difference whether they are violent criminals or violent criminals who claim to kill people for "security" or "freedom."
In a proper civil society, sociopaths are separated from the rest of the population. Otherwise the people who are able to resolve their differences under the law are hamstrung by the juvenile minds who can't let go of their primitive impulses.
I tried second life as well, and discovered the same thing. However I think the slowness was because it was still downloading all of its crap. I'm pretty sure that second life actually brings new meaning to the word 'bloat'
"His name was James Damore."
You know. . .People will do what they please for fun. For some it's wandering around a virtual world chatting with friends, and making homes, gadgets, vehicles and clothing for fun and/or profit.
For others it's reading articles on a news blog and arguing about it.
*shrug* Takes all kind's I guess.
If you're interested in something like Second Life, but where you have complete control, check out OpenSim. It's an open source (BSD license) virtual world engine.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Your facts have been checked, and found wanting. The real story is now there for all to see: conservative assholes moved into an area that didn't want them and started griefing the locals. The locals complained, and Linden did the right thing. Once again, when asshole conservatives aren't allowed to be bullies, they will whine about their 'freedom' being taken away.
Your sad attempt at propaganda fails.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's because it isn't a game - it's a simulation. The point, like in most non-directed play, is to make your own fun. I'm doing it by programming in LSL (SL's development language - reminds me of really early PERL), seeing other people's kewl stuff and making friends. I've even got a boyfriend. He knows perfectly well that I'm not "real", but as it stands he doesn't have a hope in hell of getting a real girlfriend (yes, I'm using female atavars - it's a Jungian thing) for socioeconomic and cultural reasons, so I'll do in the meantime.
There was an article a few weeks ago (on here?) about people coming to Second Life for "shopping", because they couldn't afford to do it in real life. I can see their point. I just bought a brace of cannon for my front porch for $CAN 0.50 ($L100), positioning them nicely so they fire into my next door neighbour's front windows. Pity I can't do that in RL.
what these player created realms have in common is that for the most part you are wallowing in a sea of shit looking for the odd gem. That's pretty much a description of the entire internet, isn't it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Ah, geez. Give us a break from your superior, "look at what a life I have, not like those SL losers!' crap. You know who says things like that? People with no life. Seriously, have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, different people like different things? Or, maybe people DO try out new social strategies in SL, build up their confidence, and then go back to the real world with the courage to be a slut.
I'm sorry that I have to give you such a hard time about this, but you, sir, are discouraging sluts, and this, I will not tolerate.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Five-wanged vixen/dragon/Na'vi hybrid of eternal lactation looking for a good time, yaff~
--- Do you believe in the day?
The big problem at the moment appears to be system-wide lag, especially at popular spots.
There is going to be a system-wide outage Wednesday 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. (probably PST) to address "database issues", which hopefully will improve the situation, which only got really bad about three weeks ago.
That content, that took you X hours to setup is interesting to how many people? If your entire class is interested, 20 or so? Lets say it results in a hundred visits, and then it done. They either think it was funny and will revisit for a while to see if there is something new or think it sucked and never visit again.
Same with Second Life. LOTS of people visited, even spend a few dollars, then they noticed you can only see so many 3d willies and never came back. Just not enough content to keep people hooked.
The BBC airs christmas specials during christmas (quite clever of them if you think of it) and it has to recycle old ones constantly. Not because nothing new is being created but 1-2 new ones each year that might or might not succeed doesn't fill up 3-4 days of tv even after 50+ years of TV.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For a few ideas of what might be in store from virtual worlds like Second Life in the future check out a trailer made for the "Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds." This group has over a thousand members from government, the private sector, and educational institutions.
http://www.vimeo.com/4623997
You can find more information about the group and their next conference at:
http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fcvw/fcvw10/index.html
...whatever happened to Half Life 2 Episode 3? ;)
(I know, I'm offtopic, sue me alread :P)
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
It's funny, but I can spend all day reading different news sites, covering different countries or disciplines (science/finance/funny_pictures_of_cats today) and yet CNN can't seem to produce more than about 43 minutes of bad summaries of (mostly 1st-) world events. There's NEWS aplenty, but they don't seem to care about sharing the majority of it.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Content in SL is dynamic, can change at anytime, so they have to stream it. In less than a minute I could have a cape cod type house rezzed and seconds later replace it with a victorian cottage. Same goes for avatar customization.
You have obviously entirely missed the point...
"In the end it's just for people that fail at RL because they are afraid to be happy and comfortable with themselves."
In other words... they do not fail as a part of societies expected standards, per se, they just fail for themselves.
I think you should re-read what I posted...
Here be signatures
Yes... there are almost always rare exceptions to nearly everything... But I do not believe that the majority of people who are incapable to move their bodies are playing SL..
Here be signatures
Ah, geez. Give us a break from your superior, "look at what a life I have, not like those SL losers!' crap.
I said it was also a breeding place for no-life-lusers, not only a breeding place for no-life-lusers, but face it; SL does give people the opportunity and there are, in fact, people that preffer computers > people.
And slutty behaviour is, well, an act of insecurity. Being a slut is not being a nympho. Being a slut is wanting to achieve attention, love and self-respect for being able to get anything that they want. It's not an overcome to become one. Hell it's apthetic... simpley pathetic. But whatever...
Here be signatures
No, a slut is someone who likes sex, and wants a lot of it. I know some very secure women who like a lot of sex. I know a lot of women with no self respect who hate sex.
You might want to read 'The Ethical Slut.' It's a good book about how to be a slut without hurting anyone.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Second Life had little point beyond being a sex simulator and roleplaying simulator. You can't really play a real game in there. There isn't any real combat Physics built into Second Life. You walk around, you chat, if you can buy stuff and sell stuff that looks cool.
Seriously!? Are we making comparisons between MMORPGs like WoW and EQ to Second Life?
It's patently and categorically misplaced. In other words, you're comparing apples to kumquats.
SL is about a virtual-world experience, but without any necessary objectives other than interaction with other “players.”
No “combat Physics” [sic] -correct! It doesn't need it... whatever that is. If you feel SL really needs it, why not develop it yourself? That is what makes SL unique; users not only help to populate the world, but also develop features within that world. Can you invent (not saying "build" here, but "invent") new-and-different weapons in WoW, GW or EQ? No! You can only use the items that devs have made for you. But you can always invent in SL. In fact, you could even invent a non-combat dingus. (many have, and quite literally)
It doesn't need combat; it's not supposed to be a game.
While SL has earned a “seedy” reputation—let's be honest, most people that spend enough time online are bound to Go There—it remains unique in the experience it provides. No gold, no mobs, no bosses to fight... at least not necessarily. Second Life is whatever its denizens want it to be. If Linden Labs wanted Second Life to be a game, it would have become a game-world by now. IFO am glad it hasn't.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Assuming all this wasn't an issue and I did find a decent location in SL, it's 3D nature makes it much more inconvenient to navigate around the "site". On the web I can navigate a site with up / down scrolling and clicking. In SL, I might have to walk up a set of stairs, turn a corner, click on something and then deal with whatever interface it chooses to implement, and then if I want to do something else, I might have to exit from there, walk down the hall, look up, and click again. 3D environments simply aren't a practical way to convey lots of information.