Sunday, December 24, 2006

My softened position:

Second Life is actually pretty cool, but that doesn't really change much.

I'm the green one. Click to enlarge


I thought this might happen, and I said as much in my very first post. I knew that I was going to have to get to know Second Life in order to write about it intelligently, and so after spending some more time in there, I have toi admit that I don't hate it any more. It's actually pretty cool.

HOWEVER, the second life hype still disturbs me. Every day, people are talking about a vision of the internet of the future that strikes me as wildly impractical, and therefore pretty unlikely, so maybe it's not rational for me to fear it. With a whole community free to apply their own creativity, there will be applications for Second Life that no one has ever thought of, but it's not a good interface for the virtual classroom, the virtual business meeting, all that sort of thing. It's bulky, bloated, crammed with unnecessary information, and, I swear to God, it's a lot harder to master than the Linux Command Line. I'm serious.

Is Second Life a game? People argue about that, but if you go to dictionary.com, you'll find fifteen definitions for game. Definition number one is "an amusement or pasttime". Competition isn't mentioned until definition number three.

Of course it's game... but games matter! They matter economically, and they matter technically. I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Rerry Gross featuring none other than The Mighty Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux Kernel, who speaks in the most extravagant terms of his admiration for those who program games.

4 comments:

Lister said...

Don't worry, I still hate it. And I believe in my heart, that you will hate it again, too. It's a phase, right?

G1i1ch said...

I can't stand Second Life, it's a piece of broken shit. I would have better control over myself after drinking 50 beers then these slow controls.
And editing appearance is like sticking pencils up your ears till they bleed.

Unknown said...

I hate too and of course its not a game !!! it absorbs people i ended a relationship because of that shit of second life......

Keryo Neox said...

There is almost a year, I create an account on second life, when creating my account I have not registered my real address because I had read in the press than 650 000 accounts had been hacked.
I do not want my real information fall into the wrong hands.

I started creating clothes and I start a business that works pretty well, besides that I was helping newcomers on a gateway region to learn the operation of second life, all for free, I even my creations often offered to newcomers.

After almost a year overnight and without warning my account became inaccessible, I send a ticket to ask what is going on and they replied that is an identity verification I am asked a copy of my ID card and my driving, I obey and shipments requested documents, I offer them even my most humble apologies for this oversight.
After months of waiting they just answer me that my account will not be re-activated and that all this constitutes a serious violation of their TOS.
They also tell me they did not reimburse me 98 000 linden dollars I had on my account without talking about my creations.

I denounce many things against Linden Lab, first they open their virtual world to everyone, simply leave a TOS in English which makes it incomprehensible to anglophobes, secondly, they can delete an account without any justification, and does not repay the sums involved, you'll tell me that everything stated in the TOS but the TOS is already incomprehensible to English speakers so imagine for anglophobes.

The policy of Linden Lab's "I shoot first and think later" it's funny but this mentality is true in many other areas ...