Second Life Sux (BIG TIME!)
The message is simple. In my view it’s the most overrated marketing bubble ever.
Don’t you see that they got more press guys than coders?
Anyhow, since I was monitoring second life for a record label I had to face it and go my way through it. Yeah, maybe I just should have rewritten one of the -WOW, what a revulutionary idea- postings most other bloggers alread put out, but I actually downloaded it and played around with it for quite some time.
Personally the only thing I liked about it, that it’s abusable as a kind of focus group interviewing tool. You just go up to people, ask them weird questions and they actually take them serious and give you an answer to it. But the sad thing is, that most seem to have the second life as a kind of replacement of their “first” life. Like one couple who owned one of these supa-dupa houses told me about that they actually are together in real life as well and live in some of the uhm … lets say states you only might move to grow up your kids. They sit on two seperated computers and play Second Life. Well actually it might be a kind of therapy if you’re husband is a total nerd so you can find a common ground together you might want to try it. But if you got a real life you might find Second Life as lame as I did.
Anyhow here are my big three resons why it Second Life sux:
#3 - It’s time consuming and there is no action taking place. You can do the same stuff like in real life but just without a real goal. You can’t say .. wow hey I’m a winner, yeah i did it! You’ll just have to play and play and play. Maybe thats the trick to get sucked into it.
#2 - It’s owned by a company who seems to have problems with keeping it technically up to day. To many bugs, to many errors, to much 1999.
#1 - It’s missing one of the most important thing in social networks. The reality relation. These characters running around could be even bots ( hey the first minutes I was just running around and blaming people beeing bots). You don’t have the feeling of a real person behind it. One of they key elements what made social networks so successful is the fact that they bring people more together. Real people! Let’s face reality, moste people don’t go up to others just for fun on the street and say. “Hey you seem to be an interesting person. Why don’t we get to know each other.” The other thing is staying on contact with people who didn’t become members of your core friends but could be a big help in some stage of your life.
Second Life does none of this. It paints a virtual reality just like any other multiplayer role game.
So have fun playing the game without a game!
Why this ranting? Well, you can find at the right side of the blog this feature checking the second life logged in users per day.
Let’s see how they develop. An just in case you feel pissed about me who doesn’t like Second Life:
Get A First Life!
UPDATE: You can find now a daily updated second life user count on our blog.
Stumble it!