Episode 8 of The Drax Files Radio hour is out and it doesn’t disappoint. Draxtor takes his avatar to the real world and meets Pamela. Pamela does not engage with Second Life, although she has heard of it. There’s a fascinating discussion between Drax Pamela as Drax emphasises the beauty of virtual worlds and Pamela extols the virtues of the physical world.
In reality this boils down to a richness verus reach argument with both parties making good points. Drax argues that virtual worlds enable people to link up and share advice with people all over the world, Pamela argues that the real world allows more tangible goodness and that people are less likely to be hiding behind a mask.
At the end I came to the conclusion that they were both right, but that the ideal scenario is for people to enjoy the benefits of both the real and virtual world. Of course some people aren’t in a position to do so and find one or the other more productive, but really, it’s a matter of balance if possible.
Then Drax introduces Nick Yee who recently published an article on Slate entitled Virtual Worlds Are Real. This is another fascinating interview with Nick pointing out how real identities and genders do play a role in how people act in virtual worlds.
There’s more, they touch upon the recent growth in Second Life sims and wonder if it’s the Ebbe effect. We’ll need a few more weeks of growth to see if that’s true, as it stands the growth is merely an outlier rather than an indication of a return to real growth. Time will tell which way the wind is blowing on this. However the slow down of sim losses is definitely real.
Another great episode. Drax and Jo Yardley are doing some excellent work with this show and don’t forget that you can contact them if you have something you want to talk about, don’t be shy about joining in the debate in their comments.