Comments on: Reuters' 'Second Life' reporter talks shop

Adam Pasick, in-world correspondent, opens up about how to cover the virtual world and why the news agency is there.

[thedreaming]

Second Life

What I still don't understand about Second Life is that there aren't that many users in it. I figure they have at least a million, but WOW has over 6 million. If you were shooting for a mass audience, wouldn't it make sense to have a presence there?

Granted, I'm talking apples and oranges here. One is a standard MMORPG and the other is more a simulator where all the content is created by the users. It's more of a virtual store, selling virtual goods, but making real money (after the exchange from lindollars to US currency.)

[hybris06]

Second Life? How about a first life

I have no interest in using these fake realities. But from what I understand, users spend countless hours playing these games when they could be enriching their mind, developing real relationships, or working in the real world.

I sincerely hope that Second Life isn't a glimpse into the future of how we all will spend our free time. I enjoy going out with my friends, dating, and doing other non "bowling alone" scenarios.

The fact that these games have such a large community is somewhat scary. Are we destined to "tune in and tune out" and have our only contact with the outside be online?

[Len Bullard]

SecondLife IS About LindenDollars and $$$

SecondLife IS about the exchange rate for Linden dollars. There are plenty of online worlds out there and even some that work over dial-up and don't force content creators into the Linden Labs intellectual property trap. They don't matter because no one is making real world dollars in those.

Now at some point, the legal entanglements of exchange rates among virtual worlds will come up. These are the halcyon days when the corporations race each other to co-opt the next new thing. Just as with the web itself a decade ago, that fever dies in the face of unresolved and sometimes insoluable problems of technology and cultural issues that put ceilings on the real money that can be made inside the Lindenverse. But by that time, real-time 3D as a browser interface and as a new art form is well-established and the corporations will opt to host their own worlds with their own cultures and policies using standardized technologies that interoperate seamlessly.

For example, look at ABNet from Kimball Software (no I don't work for them). It enables basic chat for any X3D world from the users own hosting service. It will be service suppliers using technologies such as that who will build the 3D web. SecondLife will be to the 3D web what Netscape was to the text web.

As seen before, any technology on the web that gets its legs gets its competition fast and furious. That is the nature of the ecology and be glad for it. Otherwise, you'd be reading this on a gray screen with monotype text.