There are some interesting comments on Mitch Wagner’s article about High Fidelity, which I blogged about yesterday. The comments demonstrate that some people don’t realise how vast Second Life is in terms of range of content and they also demonstrate that some people simply do not like the idea of an open ended platform.
The first comment I’ll highlight is this one:
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.
The thing is Second Life has Orcs! Second Life also has Elves, Wizards, Dragons, Halflings … whom you should be really careful around and all sorts of other weird and wonderful characters. Indeed my favourite Second Life event of the year is Fantasy Faire.
Kaylewuffel has a nice video from the Lumenaria Sim at Fantasy Faire 2013.
etheriaparrott has a video of The Atomic Kitties of Rynn Verwood and Lauren Thibaud on stage at the event:
Draxtor Despres covered the event in The Drax Files episode 4 and highlighted via his interview with Zander Greene how Second Life can be an excellent platform for charity fundraising.
I could go on and on … no really, I could, I love Fantasy Faire!
However the point is that Second Life has the weird and wonderful, the fantasy elements are there. The main thing holding back more fantasy communities is the cost of tier and the need for creative people who can bring fantasy environments to life. The latter is difficult and brings us on to the second comment that caught my eye on Mitch’s article:
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.
Now in many ways this may seem an odd comment. Second Life provides people with a pretty blank canvas. However this comment emphasises one of the problems with that blank canvas, someone needs to paint on it and not everyone has the expertise to do that.
Creating content for Second Life is not easy, you don’t just drag and drop and end up with builds like the ones highlighted in the Fantasy Faire videos, well not unless you buy the builds from someone. However the point really is that bringing your vision to life can be fraught with difficulties, costs, frustrations and time sinks.
Whereas the concept of user generated content is absolutely brilliant, it is also a concept with a large degree of baggage too. Many people just want to login to a world and lose themselves in escapism, not worry whether the latest build is too laggy, too many prims and too large.
Second Life can be that place, it really can and it seems some people don’t realise this, they don’t realise the orcs are already in Second Life. The fact that people don’t realise just how many diverse builds, experiences and sims exist within Second Life is in many ways one of Second Life’s greatest failings and it’s not one that will ever be easily remedied.
However, the bottom line is, if you want to play an Orc, you can do so in Second Life, but you may not find the experience as dynamic as you do in games with pre set goals and paths. However some people prepare to tread unknown paths.
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