Not surprisingly, the latest edition of The Drax Files Radio Hour is mostly about OnLive SL Go. The show opens with Draxtor trying to order coffee…. it’s $2.50 and then Drax orders breakfast, after getting Marissa in the cafe or coffee shop to introduce the show. Marissa has never heard of Second Life but she does know about virtual worlds.
Now you may be feeling jaded by all the SL Go talk but I highly recommend you listen to this because Draxtor interviews Nate Barsetti. Now I hadn’t been paying attention to whom Nate was and listening to him I thought “This guy has done his homework, he knows what he’s talking about regarding Second Life“. Then I was made aware of the fact that Nate was once also known as Scout Linden.
Actually I need to pause here because the problem of a podcast is that people pronounce words funny. For example route should sound like root, it shouldn’t sound like rout! Then there’s beta, which should sound like beeta, rather than bayta! Fortunately nobody mentioned anything about a buoy, which should sound like boy. Ok where was I? Oh yes, Nate! The Nate interview is really interesting, he talks from, as I said, a viewpoint of someone who knows Second Life.
The thing is that because Nate knows Second Life, he knows about latency, he therefore knows that the way SL Go works will get away with a little bit of latency. The feedback on latency for SL Go has been good, people have reported scenes rez faster than they do on their own machine, it did for me. So you know, in this sense, the product is on to something.
Nate is also a Second Life resident and involved in some sort of roleplaying according to the interview, the bottom line is he knows his onions. I really enjoyed this part of show.
Drax follows this with an interview with Dennis Harper, a senior product manager at Onlive. Dennis has a long history of the gaming industry and has previously worked at companies such as Turbine, however he explains that he wasn’t familiar with Second Life when the project landed. However Dennis read a book, the title of which I can’t quite catch in the podcast. Dennis explored Second Life, as a beautiful female avatar … and found that people would give him free stuff!
Dennis talks about much more, pricing in particular on which Dennis says that they haven’t yet tracked people’s usage, which is a fair point. A subscription may be available but, the Onlive servers aren’t ran on the cheap so you’re paying really for a premium mobile service here. I take that to mean, the price will always be at a point some people consider high but we’ll see. There’s a lot more in the interview too, which is again worth listening to.
There’s also a good discussion between Jo and Drax about advertising, with Jo pointing out the adverts could go beyond the bikini babes. Second Life does play on the beach look a lot, rather than the Orc look. This is why people don’t realise Second Life has Orcs! I mean someone came across the following Second Life advert whilst reading The Portland Press Herald:
This would be a much better advert if it had Orcs in it! However at least Linden Lab advertise Second Life these days and those adverts do pop up in places that surprise people.
Another reason to at least visit the page is that they are running a competition to win a Leap Motion … I’m assuming they mean a Leap Motion controller, go read the site for further details.
Overall another excellent show from Draxtor and Jo. I do like Draxtor’s chats to people about Second Life, especially when they know little about it. I find their perspective to be extremely interesting and so should Linden Lab.