Earlier this year Mitch Wagner had an article published in Information Week about High Fidelity : Second Life Founder Pursues Second Chance. The article talked of how Second Life had not reached mainstream appeal and pondered whether High Fidelity can. Mitch wasn’t convinced because of the time investment, but he did acknowledge that Second Life got a lot right. However for the real reason Second Life hasn’t reached mass appeal we need to go to the comments on the article and consider the issue of Orcs :
Second Life would have fared better if it had appealed to MMORPG fans, the primary proven market for such activities. Philip Rosedale, you need orcs.
This comment misses the point of Second Life somewhat and yet in doing so, highlights one of the issues for Second Life and any other virtual world. People see Second Life as a singular place, it’s not, but the architecture of the platform can make it appear so, which brings us to another comment on Orcs :
I think the Orcs comment is spot on. It’s one thing to fix the technological elements, but Second Life never appealed to me because it was so open and amorphous. Part of the fun of an immersive experience is having an objective and a set of limitations to work within (or against). An open world where you can do anything sounds great, but then you run up against the limits of your own imagination.
This comment hits the nail firmly on the head. Second Life needs to deliver experiences as well as offering open creativity, people want something to do. This also goes back to the points Mitch made about time investment, people want to pop into a virtual world, experience something and logout. They don’t want to build, they want to be guided. The problem here isn’t Second Life itself, it’s the way people view Second Life as .. well, Second Life. I’ve said something along these lines before, but for Second Life to reach mainstream appeal it requires people to stop talking about Second Life. This may sound somewhat odd but my point is that Second Life should be viewed as the technology. The experiences the places people visit, the places people learn at, the places people role-play, they should be at the forefront of the major discussion, Second Life should be consigned to the geeky conversation about technology.
Now of course virtual worlds offer a sandbox experience and the concept is absolutely brilliant. Virtual worlds such as Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz, OpenSim etc. offer authors, creators, designers the opportunity to build their very own stage and bring their own visions to life. This really is a fantastic opportunity for people who want to get creative, to do so. However there are many many people who want to be guided through an experience, they want to teleport right in to the end product. Virtual worlds do indeed offer great potential but to some, a blank canvas is very difficult to grapple with.
Getting back to the comments about Orcs in Mitch’s article, those comments would not be so important if places in Second Life were at the forefront of discussions about Second Life, because people would realise that Orcs can live on the backbone of Second Life technology. The conversation might be about a lack or Orcs on Second Life technology, or too many Orcs on Second Life technology, but if the discussion was about independent Orcs homes, rather than a one size fits all Second Life, then that would open people’s eyes to what exists under the Second Life umbrella.
Orcs are of course getting a boost due to Blizzard’s announcement that the World Of Warcraft expansion, Warlords Of Draenor, will be released on November 13th. Blizzard certainly understand the importance of Orcs. However Orcs are of course, not the be all and end all, despite claims by some of them!
If the virtual world experience had turned out as some hoped, we would have Orcs galore in our virtual worlds because the 3D internet would be here. Blizzard would not have a website, they’d have virtual world builds of some of their cities for people to visit. However that 3D internet is still a long way off, immersive hardware may bring it closer, but it’s still a long way off. However to get there, people behind virtual worlds need to move away from the concept of one open virtual world and agree to protocols and standards where the underlying technology is the means for people to produce truly immersive environments, that’s when virtual worlds will go mainstream.
However before we get to that stage, it may be wise of those who are behind 3D spaces to pay heed to the rise of the Orcs. Maybe they could give a vampire or two a gentle shove out of their advertising materials and highlight the fact that there are indeed Orcs in virtual worlds, the age of the Orcs is coming, well first of all it’s going back 35 years, but you get my drift!
It isn’t orcs that the mainstream wants.
The mainstream wants an on-the-rails Disney World ride in which they don’t have to think, make decisions and have ready made friends are shoved in their faces. SL is akin to RL in which you have to take initiative and make it something you want. People want to get away from that. Which is why I don’t think anything like SL will ever be made again.