I’ve mentioned before how much I like the art of storytelling, I’ve also mentioned before how I’m surprised there’s not more storytelling in Second Life and how a virtual world is an environment that could allow for a feature rich interactive storytelling experience.<\/p>\n
I haven’t changed my mind on any of the above but this evening I read an interesting post regarding storytelling in different virtual worlds :\u00a0Why Kitely? What about Second Life?<\/a>\u00a0The post is from the Seanchai Library website<\/a>.<\/p>\n First things first, Seanchai Library have been bringing stories to Second Life for over six years now, they are very much supporters of Second Life and aim to continue in Second Life. The post isn’t a bash Second Life post, it makes an interesting comparison between what can be done in Second Life v what can be done in Kitely and points out the cold, hard, financial realities.<\/p>\n The post talks about the possibilities of immersive storytelling and why Kitely may be a more attractive proposition for that sort of storytelling :<\/p>\n As we continue to explore creating increasingly immersive story experiences \u2013 an opportunity in what we do that several of us are very interested in \u2013 we run into immediate limits in Second Life. Those restrictions are, to be blunt, money and prims. A build like last year\u2019s Dickens\u2019 Project takes nearly 3800 prims (incomplete, by the way) and the space to manage them, none of which comes cheap in SL. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is a reality that many a venture in Second Life has to face, be it storytelling, art, roleplaying, money and prims quickly become an issue. When you’re looking to tell an immersive story, it becomes more of a challenge. The room to expand and contract, to rebuild, to have space to manage the operation. Kitely offers a cheaper alternative. However that doesn’t always make Kitely the better option, it’s going to depend upon what you want to do.<\/p>\n The post compares the way different storytelling styles can work in both platforms :<\/p>\n Most of what we now produce in SL is fairly presentational: people sit in rows of seats inside of an environment and we stand (or sit) before them and present the literature. That is certainly one way of bringing stories to life, and one that we have been very successful with. But could there be another means of becoming transported into the story without shifting completely over to role play? Imagine you were wandering through the different environments visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past and Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol while listening to the original text, presented live. Imagine exploring an ancient Irish tower house while listening to Gaelic folk tales. Imagine poking around 221B Baker Street while listening to a Sherlock Holmes adventure. As long as the environment engages you within voice range of the speaker, you can wander, explore, sit and experience the literature just as you do in a more traditional audience-performer setting.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The potential to get more immersive leans towards Kitely due to its lower costs, but traditional sit around the storyteller style storytelling can happily thrive in Second Life. Both are decent ways of telling stories.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seanchai in Second Life is busy, very busy. They have many friends in Second Life and they have absolutely no intention of going away. However they do seem to be saying that their more immersive work is more likely to be found in Kitely, and for sensible reasons.<\/p>\n This is quite a happy compromise, they are using Second Life to tell stories in one format and they have potential for different formats in Kitely. This extends the reach of Seanchai by keeping doors open in more than one virtual world.<\/p>\n In the comments they do raise another further issue with Second Life, the dreaded TOS. They feel that it restricts their potential to work with real world organisations, indeed they feel that the door to working with real world organisations in Second Life is now firmly closed. I would imagine that real world organisations will be no happier about the concept of Linden Lab being able to exploit their work in any manner whatsoever than Second Life residents are.<\/p>\n Seanchai finish their post by pointing out that working in Second Life and Kitely can work well :<\/p>\n What we envision for the Seanchai Library in Kitely and in Second Life are two different things. They are experiences which, we feel, should compliment each other not duplicate. So unless the bottom falls out of Second Life (always possible, but not immediately likely) do not look for us to be leaving unless we find that our presence there no longer has validity or effectiveness. We invite you to consider joining us in Kitely to further explore and experiment with what is possible for the immersive presentation of live literature in a virtual setting. It is still all about the stories \u2013 how they inspire and inform our lives.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is very encouraging, in some ways it works better for both platforms to offer different means of telling stories. I hope Seanchai continue for many more years on both platforms and they may even be able to boldly go where no storyteller has gone before … one day!<\/p>\n