Comments on: Second Life, but First in Hype

By: Endie

Endie — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:05:37 +0000

In their defence, the SL refeerences are way down (and WoW refs way up)

By: TPRJones

TPRJones — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:46:42 +0000

A whole world of user defined content? No thanks.

Well, it's not for people looking to see other people's good content. It's for people that want to make their own crappy content. Just like the early days of the internet, when everything was vanity pages. No one really wanted to look at any of that stuff except for the people that made it.

By: IanB

IanB — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:54:11 +0000

Funny, although too bad it happened to Ben Folds. He doesn’t deserve the snark from the original link.

By: Russell

Russell — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:57:01 +0000

Linden’s hype machine seems to be the only thing getting MMOGs in the news lately besides the occasional half-assed “addiction” story.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:40:10 +0000

HA! HA!

Teh Terra Nova Crack is teh Funny!

By: Axecleaver

Axecleaver — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:32:56 +0000

The reality of user-defined content is that most of it is crappy. A whole world of user defined content? No thanks. The only way that could work with more than a marginal audience is with heuristic selection tools like Amazon or netflix uses, that watch me play, decide what I like, and bubbles that stuff to the top.

By: Tide

Tide — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:32:16 +0000

So why did MattM delete his original post? That's almost worth wondering about more (?).

SL is an interesting sandbox, but curiously it's not for people under 18 years of age (people who usually are connected with playing games). I don't spend any more time in itm because frankly its technology is not stellar. If you want to tinker with 3d virtual worlds there are better tools out there. But I realize there's an immediacy with publishing that SL offers crafters. Some of the creations there are unique, but like a lot of the Web, a lot of them are also mediocre and derivative. That's not a "slam" that's just my opinion but I think it's true. There is furthermore the fact there are parts of SL that are also just excessive and vulgar. And that is is turning people off more strongly and wondering about the marketing SL just can't stop. Personally I think it's because they're cash strapped and looking for more VC cash and to flip it.

In any event, what is not arguable is that they over estimate their scalability tremendously. You can argue like on TN till you are dead in the face about the proprietary or appeal of certain kind of content. Regardless, their platform needs improving. I refer you to Lum June 6 and the original CNET article.

By: J.

J. — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:21:37 +0000

Expecting Linden Labs to be able to do anything meaningful with their technology seems like a waste lately. This is only one month following their credit card database getting hacked.

Before long, the only groups that will be interested in playing it are 1) game designers (and wannabes) who want to use it for prototyping, 2) sexual deviants of all stripes, 3) random nonsexual but just as deviant Internet hooligans and 4) a rapidly diminishing segment of otherwise normal people who might like to avoid getting corrupted by any of the above three groups.

By: TPRJones

TPRJones — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 16:59:26 +0000

Not necessarily; I can think of a couple of ways to easily “polycast” the performers to multiple zones at once, essentially having dozens of seemingly “intimate” events happening at the same time to serve a large total crowd without killing a server to do it.

It’d be better if Linden Labs could rework their architecture into something more efficient, but large events aren’t precluded by it.

By: tazelbain

tazelbain — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 18:04:20 +0000

Second Life’s Tech is not strong enough for this. For this to work you’d need be able to handle thousands of people. To even begin to work you’d have force everyone into the same low-poly avatar which would go over like liver ice cream.