Could Linden Lab Follow The Draxtor Despres Lead?

One thing that Draxtor Despres has exemplified so well in his opening episode of The Drax Files is how well video can be used to promote Second Life. The question therefore must be, where Draxtor Despres leads, can Linden Lab follow?

Let’s rewind a little first, Linden Lab, in association with The Linden Endownment For The Arts, used to run a an official month of machinima. The playlist can still be viewed on youTube. Whereas this playlist has many films, they are films first and Second Life related second, that’s no bad thing and is a good demonstration of machinima in Second Life, but it doesn’t do what Draxtor has achieved with his mixed real person virtual person production.

On their blog, Linden Lab give a lot of time and space to the Second Life Picture Of The Day. There are some stunning images on there and a picture can speak a thousand words, it’s good promotion but it doesn’t get behind the person or the place in the way that Inara Pey and Honour McMillan do….  they’ve both blogged about the University of Western Australia’s machinima contest, with one million Linden Dollars worth of prize money, including a top prize of 200,000 Linden Dollars. I have a pub to go to and beer to drink, I don’t have time to be sidetracked like this! Go read Inara or Honour for more details.

Where was I, oh yes, telling the story of the person behind the images. Linden Lab did try and get something like this going with some blog posts, Strawberry Singh was one of the guest bloggers, writing a post about twelve months ago, but the concept didn’t really gain traction. Highlighting the difficulties Linden Lab face regarding editorial content on these issues.

One challenge that Linden Lab face that, with all due respect, Draxtor, Honour and Inara don’t face, is that of editorial impartiality, if Linden Lab feature one resident, lots of other residents will complain.

Another challenge Linden Lab face is a charge that they are wasting time and resources instead of fixing bugs. We all want Linden Lab to fix bugs, make the world a better place and make the Jira sunny again …. maybe it’s just me with the Jira. However the people who would be making machinima would hardly likely to be the people fixing bugs, although I’m sure there are people at Linden Lab capable of doing both.

Draxtor has exemplified extremely well how this sort of promotion can be done in his opening episode. A Linden Lab version could ask someone what they do, without ending up being an infomercial for their business, although it would be an advert for Second Life itself, advertising Second Life is what many of us want to see Linden Lab doing.

Where there’s a will there’s a way, I’m not saying it would be easy to pull off but a monthly or fortnightly machinima along the lines Draxtor has unveiled has real potential. One of the greatest resources open to Linden Lab is that of their customers, many of whom will happily chat with a Linden I’m sure.

I’ll leave this post and prepare for a Friday night where the lights are low, looking out for a place to go …. which is likely to be a social club more wheeltappers and shunters than dancing. However I’ll leave with an example of machinma from the month of machinima, in the shape and form of a sad robot from Toxx TV:

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