This post
is an answer, or a complement to a few other posts. The excellent post of Botgirl
Questi ("Virtual worlds is dream over") which
summarizes things very well, the also excellent post of Tateru Nino ("That's just plain embarrassing") which launched in the last few days a
debate on the "game" aspect of Second Life, and how to classify it,
and my own post ("Shrinking of communities in Second Life"), which was intended to be polemical (or at least not fully "politically
correct" by being the "Devil's attorney" and mentioning that
users too may be somehow guilty of the shrinking of communities in Second Life).
As Botgirl
described it extremely well in her post, there is a serious loss of hope in
people who were dreaming of a "Metaverse". This came
due to two main phenomenon : 1) The
numerous issues with Second Life, and 2) the fact that none of the other
alternative Second Life-derived grids got enough power to attract a critical
mass of users which would be enough to launch a real global movement.
As I wrote
in the previous post, it is more than just an issue on platform, it is a way
deeper issue, which is: how do we want the Metaverse to be shaped?
What made
the success of Second Life was the fact that nobody needed to be a programmer
to enter the virtual world, and to become part of it. Sure, some communities of
builders emerged, and some individuals did truly amazing work as “builders”, “fashion
designers”, “SL photographers” ... but the vast majority of users did not. They
simply “lived” their Second Life, rather fully (which explains also the
extremely high number of “Adult” oriented SIMs). And what was amazing in Second
Life is that NUMEROUS independent communities were co-existing in relative harmony.
I believe there is nothing like a “SLebrity”, but there were a lot of “community
SLebrities”. Some people in Second Life got famous among some circles (sometimes
hundreds, or even thousands, of people) for “blogging” about SL and the
Metaverse, but were vastly ignored by a majority of users. Some people from
some very strong communities, let's say for instance, the Gorean community,
reached a similar status of “Legend”, and were known or heard of by any people
in SL Gor, but there name was never mentioned in other communities. In Star
Wars Role-Play, some people were known by all (for instance the former leader
of the Hutt Council, Darmutta the Hutt), and their words were extremely respected
... but if a Hutt comes into a non-Star Wars SIM, people would probably laugh at
him a lot.
This
superimposition of various communities was I think a key in Second Life's
success. Second Life reached a lot of people. It was revolutionary because it
succeeded to reach a lot of people.
The new
platforms are not succeeding that so far. One issue I think is that they are
mostly doing the same thing than Second Life. Less expensive, more open ... anything
goes ... but it is still very similar in a lot of aspects. And, some are less “user-friendly”
that Second Life used to be. Without any experience of virtual spaces, you
could navigate your way in Second Life almost intuitively. Without previous
experience of Second Life, it is in some platform rather complicated to build
something …
But the
Metaverse is not linked to a single platform. We already had such a discussion
few months ago on this blog ("Metaverse, Hyperverse, Cyberverse"). New tools, such as augmented reality,
human-machine interfaces ... the possibilities are endless.
An issue
still is the “democratic” aspects of virtual worlds. A problem I see in the
current avatars of the “Metaverse” is the existence of an “elite” of people
travelling from one platform to another (in “platform”, I include blogs and
twitter too), very active and very involved. But I fail to see a
democratisation of the Metaverse currently. A true Metaverse will emerge and exist
only when (much) more users will come and join. A lot of attempts to use the
Metaverse for something else than just being there often failed (I think
particularly about education ... a lot of places tried to have courses or lectures
in Second Life, to conclude that it was easier to do it in normal class or in
tele-conference). That does not mean that virtual worlds can not be used for
educational purposes. Just, we need to think to that differently (I say that,
but I am not claiming to be better than the others nor to have the magical
answer on that). Virtual worlds have potential for education, but we did not
sized it fully yet. Same goes for a lot of other applications.
So, if the
virtual world of Second Life may be not giving us too much hope, in no way
would I say that the Metaverse is over. Virtual worlds are the future, I am
rather sure of that !
