When Suzanne Vega performed a live virtual concert in Second Life back in 2006, roughly 80 people attended as avatars. She performed via an audio stream from a sound booth with interviewer John Hockenberry, and perhaps most key, there was actual interaction by Vega and the audience -- at one point, for instance, her avatar's guitar had trouble displaying, and she thanked a fan for offering to give her a copy of his. (Watch above.)
While 10 million concurrent players reportedly watched Marshmello perform live in Epic Game's Fortnite last weekend, the only thing that seems to be "live" in terms of real time input by the artist named Marshmello, i.e. Christopher Comstock, is an audio stream (or pre-recorded audio?) going into many thousands of Fortnite servers while copies of the scripted show and his avatar played.
That's all probably hair-splitting, because as Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka puts it, Epic took a totally different approach to deploying a "live in-game concert":
"Coming from FPS roots, Epic has different instincts about events, scripting, and instancing than we did at Second Life. Being at a parallel copy of a singular event -- and using scripting to make sure it’s exactly what the creator wanted -- totally works because players are still experiencing it live. The point isn’t that 'Second Life was doing concerts and live experiences 15 years ago' but instead the excitement of seeing good early ideas remixed on a very different foundation. Huge props to Fortnite!"
Since this first Fortnite show was so successful, I suspect we'll see many more follow-up concerts building on this one, and build up a new generation's interest in live virtual concerts -- and more expectations for truly live interactions between the artist and the audience.
This seems to be comparable to a lot of people watching a recorded TV show at once than to a large "live" concert. It's a valid experience but not the same.
Posted by: Amanda | Monday, February 04, 2019 at 03:58 PM