Comments on: Name that metaverse

Leading thinkers on online games tackle the challenge of tagging the infinitely extensible virtual world of "Second Life."

[Bob_Barker]

You call it CRAP (nt)

(nt)

[Bob_Barker]

You call it CRAP (nt)

(nt)

The answer is simple and elegant

Game or metaverse?

Simple.

Second Life is a Gametaverse. :)

The answer is simple and elegant

Game or metaverse?

Simple.

Second Life is a Gametaverse. :)

[Len Bullard]

Call It Worlds

The VRML worldbuilders have been doing this for almost a decade now and even have their own guilds of world builders. Cybertown has been around forever.

Why is Second Life different from that? It isn't. The face of people building online communities that have real life in them isn't news. The fact that they are still doing it after every pundit had declared it 'over' and 'uninteresting', 'who needs it' and so on, that isn't news either given how often the pundits are wrong, late, or just rebranding old wine in a brand new bottle.

But it is fun, and it is real life. So to the members, the pioneers say 'welcome, and relax and have fun. Ignore the reporters. They're locusts. The birds will eat them later.'

[Len Bullard]

Call It Worlds

The VRML worldbuilders have been doing this for almost a decade now and even have their own guilds of world builders. Cybertown has been around forever.

Why is Second Life different from that? It isn't. The face of people building online communities that have real life in them isn't news. The fact that they are still doing it after every pundit had declared it 'over' and 'uninteresting', 'who needs it' and so on, that isn't news either given how often the pundits are wrong, late, or just rebranding old wine in a brand new bottle.

But it is fun, and it is real life. So to the members, the pioneers say 'welcome, and relax and have fun. Ignore the reporters. They're locusts. The birds will eat them later.'

[TabliopaUnderwood]

Is a tendency for serious people to take themselves to umm! seriously sometimes I think. SecondLife can be a game as can most other things. It depends on your life experience.

For example. I was at a Helpy place in SecondLife. A new guy login. He wandered about for a while looking and clicking on stuff then he asked me how to get to the next level. I said to him that he had to find the green sign. He said kool and off he went to do that. I could have told him that SecondLife wasnt a game, as many oldbies at that place do. I didnt though because the way he asked the question showed he wasnt up to that level yet.

While the serious people, like those in your story, struggle to define, or label, or even agree on what SecondLife is, even if only to define it for themselves, that new guy not only knew, he was acting on his knowledge. A knowledge determined by his life experience upto that moment. More importantly I think, he was moving forward on this basis. He wasnt standing still. I didnt think it was appropriate to dissuade him of this, or impede his progress, or hang him up on what to him would very probably have been an irrelevancy, an irritant even, at that moment.