"Join us this Friday for a Season 2 screening of The Shivering Truth inside @SecondLife," the Cartoon Network's insanely popular [adult swim] brand announced earlier today on Twitter. "Admission is extremely limited and extremely complicated."
Home to stylish and usually zany animated shows like Rick and Morty and Samurai Jack, there hasn't been a cool pop cult crossover like this into Second Life in many many years. (Off the top of my head, I'd say not since The Office featured Second Life.) I am amused that the official Adult Swim tweet openly acknowledges how complicated Second Life is for most to use, but I imagine the Fortnite-type crowd that loves their shows will figure it out.
Perhaps even more noteworthy is that this is probably the first of many such crossovers. From the official Second Life blog:
The event also marks the first media partnership utilizing the new limited-release Second Life Viewer, which enables content creators and entertainment companies to broadcast live video events to virtual world audiences. In the future, you may see several new forms of entertainment including movie and TV premieres, live concerts, and artist/fan meet-and-greets. We're very excited to partner with Adult Swim for the debut of this new feature, which we plan to integrate into the main Second Life Viewer release in the coming weeks.
Longtime SLers are thinking, "Wait, we've been able to stream video into Second Life since forever." But as Linden Lab's Brett Atwood explains to me:
This beta viewer, Brett adds, is needed to see the live video of these "Shivering Truth" episodes streamed at the SL event. My guess is this viewer gives the content creator more control (and maybe more monetization options) over their streaming content. In any case, with most of us still in quarantine and/or fairly leery of real world social events, it's perfect timing to offer more options for live events.
This is pretty huge news, I'd have to say it could be the biggest boost for SL, public image wise, in a long time. By now, the general public may have forgotten the bad publicity SL got about a decade ago, yet will have heard of it, and will be open enough to make an account & try it out. We could see a new influx of growth, if this is done right. I hope LL doesn't blow this opportunity, haha
Posted by: Nebulosus | Tuesday, May 05, 2020 at 05:39 PM