
Second Life gets a well-deserved drubbing in Time - transburgh
http://valleywag.com/tech/media-relations/second-life-gets-a-well+deserved-drubbing-in-time-288879.php
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portLAN
Second Life's user base has an average age of 32 IIRC.

 _Says Gartner research chief Steve Prentice: "Second Life is moving into a
phase of disillusionment."_

Gartner talking about MMOGs is like John McCain talking about Nine Inch Nails.

The article isn't a drubbing, it's merely pointing out issues that virtual
communities have to deal with as a result of real-world situations.

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zach
_Second Life's user base has an average age of 32 IIRC._

And yet the maturity level is higher on Facebook. Or does SL just get bad
press in this area?

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portLAN
It's not maturity, it's caution. People are more careful when their real names
are attached.

It's also not a good comparison because the set of options is completely
different; it's like arguing whether a trout makes fewer programming mistakes
than a human. There are no interactive 3D zoophile sex dungeons in Facebook to
use your "free will" to avoid. (Facebook app, anyone?)

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zach
I agree that John Gabriel's theory is in play. But I'm not suggesting that the
people themselves are less mature, just that the net result is that SL is
quite apparently more adolescent than FB.

And I think it's a great comparison. Both of these social/entertainment
systems were designed to be the way they are. What are the results?

Certainly many people who have tried both and opted to spend many more hours
on one than the other. What difference is there in the communities on each,
the interests represented on each, and the individuals who use each? Which is
better social therapy for the painfully shy? Why hasn't SL had the FB-like
mainstream breakthrough they've been expecting?

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Tichy
So the value of a service on the internet is solely to be derived from it's
suitability to deliver advertisements to it's users? I think not...

As for the casinos, it was obvious from the start that they would be shut down
eventually.

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bootload
The _'SL idea'_ is ok (virtual 3D worlds) but for it to really work you need
an _'open SL'_ where you can create your own land with your own hardware.

Where's the money to be made in that?

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henning
I wonder if you could wire up a MUD engine to a simulation environment like
breve (<http://www.spiderland.org/>) with 1000 lines of code in any popular
scripting language and have something interesting enough to demo to people.

See what I just did there? I described developing a massively multiplayer
interactive 3d environment as trivial! What chutzpah!

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blahblah
Stop with the spin in the headlines, please. There's no "drubbing" here at
all, and adding "well-deserved" is as bad as something you'd expect from the
Bush administration.

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henning
No discussion of Second Life is complete without an obligatory mention of
giant flying dongs out of nowhere.

