Second Life Cynics Club

I vote for Clay Shirky as the president of the new Second Life Cynics Club because of his reactionary A Story Too Good To Check, just posted on Vallywag.  I agree there is a need for scrutiny, but Clay's article is just another paddle whacking at balls on the ping-pong table of hype.  Even so, his article is worth a read.  I agree totally that the hype about Second Life is ridiculous.  I also agree that the stories about Second Life visitors and "success stories" are greatly exaggerated.  But Clay's article shows how hype and confusion can affect clear vision of the negatives as well as the positives.

Unfortunately, I am not "good enough" to add comments to Valleywag myself (read their comment FAQ for proof that elitism is truly alive and well in the blogger world).  So, please check out Clay's article, and I'll add some of my comments here...

First, one thing Clay fails to clearly recognize is that virtual experiences are improving.  His justification for slamming Second Life involves a variety of comparisons to earlier incarnations of virtual environments.  In his reaction to Howard Rheingold's description of MUD's in 1996, he says:

This was a sentiment I believed and publicly echoed at the time. Per Howard, "MUDs are living laboratories for studying the first-level impacts of virtual communities." Except, of course, they weren't. If, in 1993, you'd studied mailing lists, or usenet, or irc, you'd have a better grasp of online community today than if you'd spent a lot of time in LambdaMOO or Cyberion City.

This reliance on hindsight ignores the possibility that people have indeed learned alot from failures of the past, and predicting the value of current virtual worlds based upon 12 year old outcomes is simply illogical.

His final paragraph highlights the main reason why I decided to comment:

There's nothing wrong with a service that appeals to tens of thousands of people, but in a billion-person internet, that population is also a rounding error. If most of the people who try Second Life bail (and they do), we should adopt a considerably more skeptical attitude about proclamations that the oft-delayed Virtual Worlds revolution has now arrived.

Clay's conclusion that "most of the people who try Second Life bail" may be true.  His posting comprises a lengthy set of explainations for why this might be.  But the biggest justification is mostly missed:  The motiviations of many new Second Life users are currently not based upon their desire to engage in a virtual world but rather they log-in because of their interest in the Second Life phenomenon itself.  And this interest is fueled by the hype of course.

The problem is observer bias.  Because of the hype, everyone expects to get a quick glimpse of this new incredible phenomenon.  They are disappointed, mainly because their expectations are based upon misinformation.  So, while the real Second Life enthusiasts continue to explore and discover a truly advanced virtual world experience, they are being deluged by "newbies" who have neither the time nor the incliation to engage in the activities needed to understand and appreciate Second Life.

This is having a tremendously negative impact on Second Life itself.  Consider:

1. Over 300,000 new users are signing up every 4-6 weeks.  Most of these are probably searching for the "secret" the press is talking about, and are cluttering up the environment.
2. Companies such as General Motors and McDonalds are taking their commercial brands into Second Life with ill-defined purpose.  Their investments are causing a supply-and-demand problem which is skewing the economics of island and private land purchases.   The result is that those creative individuals who have built the Second Life world are becoming disillusioned, and corporate "developers" are building pointless (but well funded) experiences because of a corporate investment mandate rather than true creative insight.
3. Strange side effects (such as the Second Life Liberation Army) are causing inworlders to change their behavior drastically because of hype-driven investment and traffic.  The SLLA, for example, hires "hitmen" to attack commercial brands who are "polluting" the purity of inworld life.

Human nature is so confounding.  Unless people calm down a bit, Second Life may well become yet another Internet traffic accident with curious bystanders loitering on the sidewalk as it slowly bleeds to death, or worse, goes public.  That would be tragic, because although there is clearly no "virtual worlds revolution", Second Life is one of the most remarkable steps heading in that direction.

Comments

[Adam]

Off-topic, but are you going to get round to finishing "Microsoft's new win-win strategy" parts 4 & 5? I really liked the first 3 parts, now I just want to know where it was all heading...

[Gary Wisniewski]

Off topic scoldings are OK Adam. Yes, I am going to finish them both. In fact, the next one has been almost ready for a while, just need to proof a couple things and re-check some of the sources (some of which have expired since I wrote the original). Very Soon Now. I'm glad you liked the first three parts.

Also, get a Second Life account! :-)

[Adam]

"get a Second Life account!"

Heh. When a client is available for Linux/PPC, I might. :)

[Yikes]

I second Adam's impatience. }:) For my part though, it's really not impatience with you so much as with Microsoft to embrace such a strategy based on Linux. Then again, I'm pretty content with Ubuntu... except I can't get a second life account. Still, quite looking forward to reading your take on it.

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