Saying "Second Life is not a game" is an excuse for not demanding a better & more fun virtual world (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: A nightclub experience... in Grand Theft Auto V Online

While the "Is Second Life a game?" argument has basically gone since SL launched, reader "0xc0ffea" (who also co-hosts the largest SL community on Reddit) posts a fresh perspective: Whatever SL is on an ontological level, not treating it as a game has contributed to its lack of evolution:

 SL users and, more importantly, its developers need to play more games.

There is a shocking disconnect when switching between SL and modern games (even 7 year old games like GTA5). By comparison, SL barely runs, fundamentally fails to operate as a social platform the moment you get a few people in the same location (or try to converse in group IM), lags to hell and back, and it's users have been conditioned to blame each other for the overall poor experience.

A little gaming makes it very apparent that SL's technical woes are not caused by that one person who dared to wear those shoes with that hair, happened to have a scripted attachment, or had the audacity to load slowly.

"SL is not a game" has been a handy excuse to gloss over it being architecturally stuck in the days of single core processors.

Here's why, she goes on:

While it's very true that the dynamic nature of the beast makes many game optimizations impossible, it doesn't block everything accomplished in 15 years of technical progress (or negate the need for innovation).

If SL were seen as a game, at least by its creators, then perhaps we would have seen more time and money devoted to advancing and developing the platform. Perhaps skipping the whole Sansar debacle (it's not a game either!)

It's no accident that SL's early explosive growth was during the time Linden Lab were pushing the boundaries of the sandbox formula, and likewise no accident it's been in slow decline for a decade as the focus switched to reinforcing the boundaries.

At the start, the argument could be made that SL wasn't a game, it was the metaverse, a whole new internet. Today .. it's absolutely a game, whose users routinely slam into the sandbox's walls.

And all of this seems roughly right. I'm not technical enough to get into the guts of the architecture question, but from an end user perspective, it's madness that the SL user experience feels like an old sandbox MMO slapped onto a 3D editing platform slapped onto a web browser. But then again, if Second Life is not perceived as a game, then longtime users can come to accept that strange mismatch.

On a similar front, 0xc0ffea is right about SLers (both users and developers) needing to play more games. If they saw how smooth, intuitive, and immediately fun the best of them are, they would have a higher standard of expectation of what Second Life can and should be.

Comments

[Ris]

I think SL is the way it is and not being able to change is because of the amount of RL money involved. 1 change to land for example could completely ruin a lot of things. I think Linden Lab wants to improve it but they cant. Too much risk for the people that pay $5000 - $10000+ on sims they rent out. Land Barons own SL and prevent forward progress. LL could shoot themselves in the foot with changes that are too big and quick or disrupt its current state. Some Land Barons own over 600 regions. One I can think of AMEstate owns I think 615 sims. 615 sims * $229 a month = $140,835.00 A MONTH off 1 land baron, and there is way more than just 1. Imagine if Linden Lab made a move that disrupted that cash cow and caused many to pack up and leave? SL would be dead. Land Barons keep SL afloat and prevent any major changes. Linden Lab is STUCK which is why I think they decided to make Sansar as a way to not make the same mistakes and lose control over their own platform as far as progress and creativity. But we see how well that went, they thought SL people would run to it but there was more against it than for it.

[Dufus]

sl is a what 2006 game engine trying to run more triangles, polygons and huge kb textures, animations than all of the high end games, its LL that should have updated the game engine like wow, destiny 2 and other games, nothing is gonna change unless they fix it.

[Cody Rauh]

In 2006 SL was my career I had multiple avatars:

Perefim Cao, owner of [OMFG] (steampunk builds)
Failed Inventor, owner of F.E. Energy Sculpt kits
Creator (resident), owner of Life (sculpt kits) & #RETRO

I contracted with multiple universities and companies from that time till 2015. I witnessed the change from primitives, to sculpts to mesh, and the build kits to the flooding of the market, all of these things.

Back then Second Life was my income, now Second Life is merely pointless, littered with clubs, sex clubs, sex dungeons, and empty art sims.

I will be forever grateful for the opportunities it brought me, however, it also brought me a lot of heartaches. As a former SL content creator, and a current game developer I think the assessment I would make is that SL is primarily poorly aging history.

I miss all the people I use to know, most however seem to be scattered to the wind, I have seen many of them in 5-10 years. Occasionally I bump into another person that knew me and my work while playing a game, otherwise, SL is no more than a dream from a lifetime ago.

Best wishes to all

Cody, https://codyrauh.com/ former SL Content Creator

[Mint]

Reading through the SL forums, I was shocked to see so many people vehemently denying it was a game. "SL has no objective so it cannot be a game", "People who like to game aren't likely to like SL because it's a virtual world", and similar comments.

To me, SL is a sandbox game, much like the Sims (which also has no objectives for much of their iterations) - yet, the Sims is the most successful PC game franchise of all time and SL is falling behind. (Also, virtual worlds is just not a term that's popularly used by many gamers and/or younger people nowadays).

In my eyes, thinking of SL as a game is not meant to gamify it, to add achievements or goals. I agree with 0xc0ffea: thinking of SL as a game might actually help Linden Labs to improve the game and to see what they're competing against for people's time, energy, and money. A decrease in lag, an improvement in graphics, looking at how newbies are introduced to games... lots which they could learn from developers who have been there and are doing that.

[Mondy]

I have games from Rogue Squadrons to various Forza types installed on PC and Xbox One games such as RDR2, Halo franchise, platformers, puzzle games, retro games. BUT I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer.
I know plenty of people in Secondlife who own consoles and other PC games that regularly chat on Discord to arrange gaming sessions on Destiny, Ghost Recon Wildlands or even just Uno. There's plenty of 'Gamers' in Second Life!
As to whether or not they're playing Second Life as opposed to just logging ON to Second Life it's just a matter of perspective. If I'm chatting with friends I'm not playing. If I'm engaged in role play, I'm playing. If I'm in character and ask not to discuss any "Real life so it doesn't break the immersion"? Then it stands to reason that I'm playing at that moment in time.
For many people that just log on to chat and socialise, Second Life really isn't a gaming experience. But for those that role play, for those that engage in any fantasy elememnt , Progeny, Bloodlines, Star Trek and any others then yes, of course it is.

[Alicia]

"A decrease in lag, an improvement in graphics, looking at how newbies are introduced to games... lots which they could learn from developers who have been there and are doing that."

Everything you said here, @Mint, would require Linden Lab to literally create a brand new engine capable of making the overly unoptimized mesh and textures playable only on the highest end PCs. The reason they can't and won't are obvious... they want to continue to suck as much money from their users as possible without lowering prices. Now, if Linden Lab had put restrictions in place on how many verts and triangles a mesh item can have, and the file size limit and format on textures, as they've already put an image size limit max of 1024x1024, then roughly a third of the problem would be fixed. As it stands, you still have to deal with people running scripts, and all the users would need to do is simply remove the scripts they don't need up for their HUDs.

The time for Linden Lab to have updated SL to more modern gaming standards, or as close to it as MMOs such as Lord of the Rings Online, that updated the avatars via cosmetic look along with any older GTA games, has come and past. In fact, many can argue that it's simply too late for them to do so, and all they can do at this point is continue to place hacks into the game, such as EEP, Mesh/Animesh, Bento, etc.

[madeline blackbart]

The whole "SL is not a game" or getting mad at that comparison always bothered me. It's rooted in the outdated concept that video games are toys and not the legitimate form of art that it is.

I mean I know how the concept arose. Namely that after the video game market crash (in the US specifically I believe it wasn't as bad in europe?) Nintendo more or less revived it by marketing video games as a high end toy for kids. I think for many people (not just in SL) who are not gamers the association with games as toys still exists which is a genuine shame.

in my opinion video games are definitely on par with movies in artistic merit. Look at games like Gris and exploration of the stages of grief through color and gameplay, Or spec ops the line which explores PTSD in a way that puts you the player in the place of the sufferer, or cuphead that utilizes hand drawn animation (a dieing art sadly). These are things that require very talented artists and programmers to create who deserve far more credit then they get.

Denying SL is a videogame, to me, is like denying a oil painting is a painting. Virtual worlds/sandbox games are a subset of videogame. Videogame itself is just a medium or genre of art. Even if you could make a good argument for it not being a game that's still like getting mad at comparing SL to like the medium of painting.

TLDR: Videogames are a form of art. It's not bad to be a videogame.

[forbym]

> On a similar front, 0xc0ffea is right about SLers (both users and developers) needing to play more games. If they saw how smooth, intuitive, and immediately fun the best of them are, they would have a higher standard of expectation of what Second Life can and should be.

Well, or they would abandon SL leaving behind SLers who don't play enough other games.