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Second Life on the cover of Business WeekApril 21st, 2006 |
I guess our hobby is mainstream now. My Virtual Life article, discussion at TerraNova. The article also features an assortment of extra goodies, such as a slideshow of the evolution of online worlds.
Image of the cover:
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Second Life is at this moment “The perfect alter-ego game”. SIM’s x 3 if you will. I have always maintained that an adult sandbox game will prosper if you let it grow. SL is a perfect example of that.
I believe you wrote about this type of game in your book Raph. You started SWG with this theory and for all intensive purposes it worked.
You can create anything in SL, the only limit is your imagination… or wallet.
Just to emphasize: It’s all fun and games until the mass media becomes interested in your line of work.
I started work at Microsoft in the late 1980’s and loved it when mass media started mentioning personal computers in the early 1990’s. (In the 1980’s, PCs (microcomputers) weren’t talked about by respectable journalists.) By 1996, my view changed completely. I was sick of hearing about internet-this, windows-that, etc. on the news every night.
LambdaMOO fiasco, anyone?
Except it doesn’t seem to be happening… I’m not hearing anything about hordes of journalists and academics destroying SL culture. In fact, the people who are doing reporting generally seem to be immersing themselves.
But yeah… in a few years, we’ll be sick of hearing about what the mass media has to say about it. But by then, you’ll be too old to care. ^_^ And I’ll have a job. Maybe.
I don’t think it CAN happen in SL personally. To gauge the culture enough to report on it, you need to do almost as much work as it takes to become part of that culture. How much would the average journalist be able to get by just “watching” activity in SL? It requires a purer form of investigative reporting than I think many of the nouveau-interested would want to bother with.
But one concern I have is that with the rise in awareness will come a rise in the easy reporting. If it’s controversial, it’ll be reported. Sex for sale in SL? Let’s report on that! Stolen money or assets? Human drama stuff. The actual breadth and depth of the genre? Nah, too messy.
Everquest was on the cover of TV Guide a long time ago. That publication is WAY more mainstream than Business Week.
–matt
Everquest being mainstreamed is like DikuMUDs being mainstreamed. Second Life, on the other hand, is a whole lot more like LambdaMOO. Not the same; it’s closer to TinyMUD, obviously. But I would have thought Second Life would have been vulnerable to that kind of barrage; it doesn’t seem to be. At least, not yet?
Bah… Who cares, everything that I’ve ever enjoyed and thought was under the radar of the main stream press gets found out eventually.
Lets face it guys and gals, Our little “private club” of gaming has hit the masses and they like it.
Next time a reporter shows up, ask them if they know the difference between a 24 sided dice roll or an 18 with a 6 back up.
And I’m glad we’re hitting the masses. I generally dislike the self-defined insularity of early adopters/discoverers.
http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=223
(someone turn off embedded hyperlinks? 
)
The Sims Online made the cover of Newsweek, too. We all know how well that went.
Hmm… I believe WOW and chat/datingsites are more mainstream than the MOOish Metaverse will ever be.
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