I Tell FastCompany Why the Metaverse Must Always Offer Playfulness

Getting even closer to Second Life's 20th anniversary! I just talked about the topic with FastCompany, who also chatted with Philip Rosedale. Sample:

Three years after Second Life’s launch, another virtual world emerged with a much more guided approach. Roblox also empowered its users to create their own worlds, but put a heavy emphasis on casual gaming. That recipe drew a much younger, but also vastly larger, crowd: At the end of March, Roblox was used by 66 million people every single day. “The reason that Roblox is so big is because it’s basically Second Life, but for little kids,” Rosedale says, somewhat dismissively.

Linden Lab, on the other hand, wanted Second Life to be a place for grown-ups, which is why it tried hard not to be confused with a video game. That was a massive mistake, argues Au, and one that other metaverse platform creators can learn from. Much as in the real world, games function as icebreakers between strangers. “You need some fun activities,” he says. “It should always be a playful, game-like experience.”

Emphasis on "playful and game-like" here; I do not at all necessarily mean MMORPG-style leveling mechanics. As I write in Making a Metaverse That Matters:

This cultural resistance to Second Life not being a game had real consequences which not only hurt user growth, but caused Linden Lab to ignore easy opportunities... The misconception persists today, even beyond Second Life; it is fashionable among many tech evangelists to argue that while the Metaverse may begin with game platforms, it will inevitably slough off its ludic carapace to become an immersive Internet with many multiple- use cases, completely separate from gaming. 

In my view, all this misses a fundamental realization: 

The very act of pretending that 3D graphics are a “world” inhabited by fantastic avatars is itself a game — as primal and basic a rule set as what we formulate on the fly while playing with each other on the playground as kids. 

The grass is lava. Dinosaurs are here and they want to eat us. The pixels on the display screen in front of us are actually a humanoid fox who’s also an officer in Starfleet Command. 

Fixated on turning Second Life into a “3D web,”, Linden Lab lost sight of how virtual worlds and the Metaverse itself are essentially whimsical and playful...

For the same reason that no company has intentionally created a metaverse platform that has reached mass adoption, none has succeeded without a game structure. That ludic framework may be as explicitly gamelike as Fortnite, or as meta as VRChat’s karmic trust system, where continued good behavior earns greater access...

As it happens, games are also the most proven way to satisfy Philip Rosedale’s ultimate goal for the Metaverse to be a platform as openly convivial as Burning Man. For the 80,000 or so souls who attend the Black Rock festival yearly, it may be easy to meet anyone there (most of whom, by a happy coincidence, happen to be various levels of stoned, attractive, and naked). For the rest of the world, it might be a good idea to first play a game together. It’s no coincidence that most Third Spaces, from pubs and bars to parks and beaches, also center games as a primary social lubricant.

Much more here!

Comments

[Nadeja]

> Fixated on turning Second Life into a “3D web,”
It looks like so and they didn't make it so good either.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, since the 3D game engines were successful, it was thought 3D was the next thing: 3D desktop, 3D web...
In 2010 I'm not sure how many people were still thinking of that, but since 2010, SL Viewer 2 and the following versions have been made like a web-browser.
It has a few pros, though, and it's not so bad to teleport to favorite locations, going back, or back to home, or copying and pasting a SL-URL into the address bar. Other virtual worlds do most of that with a different interface, though.

But it is a "web-browser" that crashes every few times you change "page" (when you teleport, let alone the embarrassing things in the earlier days), a web-browser that sometimes struggles at downloading "images" (textures remaining blurry or gray), with a cache barely functional, ... also "web masters/mistresses" who make "web-sites" (regions/places) in ways that don't help.

Other than creating (or marketing SL as) a Roblox for grown-ups, Linden Lab had other problems, with the way they developed their software: SL had and still has multiple issues, being a bug-ridden, not so user-friendly software, with a poor first time user experience.
And you also need a bit of luck: without the media buzz and hype in 2006-2007, that attracted people looking for money, gambling, virtual hookers, future business, that tempted even the big corporations, until it turned out it was not so much the case, ... would SL have been so much more successful than Active Worlds or There? Attachment (to your friends, investments, experiences, items, ...) made some people stay anyway, but that's true also for AW.
Neither LL nor Rosedale managed to make another "successful" virtual world, despite their previous experiences. They flopped entirely. I'm not even sure if they know why SL worked at least the way it worked or the users made it work despite LL's management.
And SL residents may be not the best sample to ask for this, as they are the sole survivors among so many who gave up (let alone who avoided SL entirely). By the way, you can socialize, make real friends and love stories in any MMORPG too.