A live conference to discuss the next generation of gaming and how to turn that to the advantage of the industry in Ireland took place today. Hosted by the University of Ulster in association with the North West regional college the conference brought together some key figures in the world of gaming development….apparently.
The problem seems to be, that in space, nobody (not our Nobody) hears you scream. I didn’t even know that the University of Ulster had a presence in Second Life, nor did I know that they were hosting a live conference. This is one of the problems of Second Life, the potential is there but the publicity is not. The vast open spaces mean that so much slips through the cracks and instead we see the Washington Post poking fun at people trying to protect their intellectual property rights rather than hearing about the vast array of uses for the platform.
The Washington Post you see, would rather point out that people with fake names, making non tangible products are filing a crazy lawsuit, rather than actually pointing out that these people have a case. Whether the products are tangible or not isn’t the issue.
The mainstream media still don’t know what to make of Second Life. The users thrive on the negativity for some reason. Check out the official forums (where I spend far too much time) and you’ll see that the sky is falling on a regular basis. You won’t see much about the Liverpool Philharmonic making a live performance however, despite the fact that this was a resounding success.
Part of the problem appears to be that people focus on their world, their imagination. When their world doesn’t match the stories they see, they suck blood like leeches from the threat they see to their imagination. Whereas the reality is that there’s room for many imaginations in Second Life, people are afraid that the world they perceive, will be taken away from them.
Controversy surrounds every move made. I haven’t engaged in any of the CSI activities but to some it’s a sell out, to others it’s fun and to others it’s the end of the world as we know it. The reality is, it hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference to me or my business interests so far.
One day maybe we’ll all play nicely and realise that the disparate parts make up the system as a whole, focus on our areas of interest and not blindly panic at the latest development. People have to allow the platform to grow in a multitude of ways, which it is quite clearly doing and the demons of the fiery pits of hell haven’t yet poked their forks into us yet.
Actually a fiery pits of hell sim with rampaging demons would be rather cool, not as cool as Pirates of course, but cool enough for me to want to pop over there for a look!