Electronic Gaming Monthly Explores the Rise & Fall (& Semi-Rise) of Second Life Through Its Ancient Wiley Guidebooks

Interesting long read on Electronic Gaming Monthly covers the perennial "Whatever happened to Second Life?" story through a fresh angle: The five official guidebooks to Second Life published by Wiley, and the mass of contributors for wrote it. The author Mark Hill compares and contrasts the glowing words wrote or said back then, with Second Life as it is now. That includes SL co-founders Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka, though Hill mixes up Philip's real name with his avatar handle:

[T]he final two chapters of The Official Guide, “A Cultural Timeline” and “The Future and Impact of Second Life,” further highlight Linden’s own divided focus between SL’s core users and its media darling status. The timeline is introduced with overwrought claims like “‘I’m not building a game,’ Philip Linden once said, ‘I’m building a new country.’ And in many ways, the history of Second Life thus far resembles the first centuries of America itself.”

... Linden’s own hype reaches its loftiest with comments like “Imagine being able to access from SL from literally anywhere [with wearable computing], holding conversations across worlds, or overlaying your friend’s SL avatar on them when you see them in your first life,” and “What excites me the most about the future of Second Life is its potential to fundamentally improve the human condition.” Second Life may not have improved the human condition, but it certainly highlighted certain aspects of it. Terdiman referenced an infamous 2006 interview that was invaded by a horde of trolls wielding flying penises. 

... In an interview for The Entrepreneur’s Guide, Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka went further in painting a picture of Second Life as a corporate utopia. “Even with video conferencing, you can’t really get up, move around, pace. … And Second Life helps with [that]. You have place, embodiment, and a method for having real-world style conversations a la a cocktail party (i.e., multiple, parallel conversations). I think the first new opportunity is going to be helping companies that have dispersed work forces save money on recruiting, on-boarding, training, and collaboration. This is a lot like what IBM has said they are working on. But they are just scratching the surface.”

The article misses the chance to mention that both both Philip and Cory, while no longer working on Second Life, are still actively involved in virtual worlds and virtual world technology, Philip with his new startup High Fidelity and Cory (up until a few years ago), driving Facebook's acquisition of Oculus (for good and ill). But then again, the story of all those who started at Linden Lab and Second Life back in the earliest days and continue to work on reviving the old magic -- even if that means developing other virtual world platforms -- could be a whole other article in itself.

As for what Second Life still is now, DJ Nexeus Fatale and myself reflect on that, also for good and ill:

Just what are Residents still doing? James Au provided some highlights. “The majority treat Second Life like a kind of Sims-type dollhouse for their avatar, tricking it out with the latest user-made fashion/skins/accessories/housewares. Second Life users who create and sell content make as much money from Second Life as [Linden] does. Probably the second biggest niche are roleplay communities, who’ve created roleplay regions inspired by Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Fallout, etc. Then third is likely a sub-niche of extreme adult roleplay, some of which has led to a huge lawsuit. There’s also a small but very active community which reflects Second Life’s glory years, when it was embraced as a platform for creating art and imparting 3D-based education, and for using it as a tool for real life therapy. For instance, there’s a community for using SL to address Parkinson symptoms.”

... Nexeus seems content with where the aging platform is at. “In many ways it feels like it kept the original goal of the platform. It still has a vibrant community, which I find surprising and interesting. There’s a lot to improve, but I don’t think there’s the pressure it had to do it now or else. Things can be thought through, communities can be developed and people [can] make the decisions about what they want to see and enjoy and have. Its technology still has the same limitations, [it’s] still a resource hog. It still relies on downloading a program to run it. I couldn’t give someone a link to hop on and join my events. But I think part of its legacy will be when you see truly immersive experiences that aren’t gimmicks, that provide value for users and marketing for companies.”

Those immersive experiences have jumped to other platforms like Fortnite, but Second Life remains both the pioneer and the cautionary tale of what not to do. The irony is the current Linden Lab management could still revive Second Life. But perhaps because none of them were around during the golden days when these books came out, they're not supremely motivated to take the big necessary risks to try.

Anyway read the rest here.

Comments

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

An article about Second Life that isn't full of doomsaying? From a magazine that's firmly about games? IT'S A MIRACLE.

[Clara Seller]

That was a good article. Pretty grounded. It makes me feel a little sad for Second Life, as I've been reading a book about Judy Garland, and I can't help making some connections between the two in my head. The theme seems to be about something truly unique getting destroyed by unrealistic expectations, parasites, and hostile disappointment that will never be satisfied until until they force it to buckle under all of that weight.

I'd prefer that Second Life's tombstone not read " You should have just taken care of it and loved it for what it is. It gave you more than you deserved".

[Arwyn Quandry]

I found SL through exactly these kinds of books. First Hamlet's book, when it was featured in the new reads section of my local library, and then through the ones mentioned in the article, all around 2008. Even at the time, the guides were dated. Yet there's something hilariously charming and earnest in books written about ever evolving digital worlds. It's like the Dummies guides to Facebook. They remind me of a well meaning grandparent, trying to bridge the gap between new and old, and landing somewhere in the middle, out of touch but so genuinely excited about the technology that you can forgive their mistakes.

[Iggy 1.0]

Amazing how fast a decade passes. And yet SL is still there, even if many of us are not. This article reminded me of the promise and the peril of SL.

After reading the piece, I realized, with a decade's hindsight, how silly it was for most of my fellow educators to even try to promote the space. After all, as the author so aptly puts it for business users, "why talk your clients into conducting business in an environment that also caters to Gorean slave girls in the first place?"

Business meeting: then run out to collar a Kajira. I cannot even imagine, on today's more "Woke" campuses, how trying to use SL would go, given some of its subcultures. Of course, other subcultures in SL would cater to precisely those changed realities on campus.

And still. Just try, my esteemed colleagues, to explain Gor to an IRB committee or Associate Dean overseeing budget. My mesh tophat's off to you if you try and don't lose your job. The more controversial communities in SL explain, in part, why some researchers decided to leave the virtual world. When I go very infrequently to the once-vital SL roundtable where I was an officer, you don't find anyone with a lot of status or doing real research any longer. Nice folks, but the action for researchers has moved to other spaces online and IRL.

But the Kool-Aid from Cory and Philip sure tasted good, 10+ years ago. Your world, your imagination.

[Joey1058]

I sometimes wonder what SL would be now if Philip Rosedale had not left when he did. His hands were often tied as to what direction he wanted to take. That is evidenced in the reflections of High Fidelity. I think many of us would agree that neither Sansar, nor HiFi would exist today.

[Luther Weymann]

I spend my time in SL fiddling with my store and exploring the mainland. The Public Works Group and the Mole group have built some tremendous virtual world projects that I admire. But the overwhelming thing I take away from SL is how "humble" it is, and I mean that in the nicest way. There are so many mainland parcels with humble houses that have been in the same place for over fifteen years. Those people keep their 512 and 1024’s, pay their yearly premium account and just keep going in SL. There are tiny stores that are rented in shopping areas where ladies to the best of their humble ability have made 5-10 pieces of classic women’s clothing many years ago, and they pay their rent year after year and as a long-time retailer in SL I know they sell maybe nothing each year. But it’s their pride, they made something, they have this business, they have a location and it means something to them that they accomplished that even if no one ever walks in their store door. There are so many places like that. I have spent many thousands of hours over the last sixteen years roaming the mainland grid and my only hope is that the management of Linden Research is well aware of how much being in SL has meant to some of us and has seen the humble side of SL themselves. SecondLife may be just a wireframe and a database but if you look much deeper there is so much love, sweat, tears, lost dreams, and billions of hours of labor from so many people that needed something to accomplish in their lives and SL gave them that opportunity. If I ever meet Phil Rosedale I will profusely thank him.