I read a recent /. post about IBM regulating their employees virtual world participation. Some of the comments to the article got me thinking about this. First off, it makes perfect sense for IBM to regulate what their employees do on the clock - IBM isn’t prohibiting participation, in fact they are encouraging it. They are just setting some rules so that employees will know that they are expected to follow certain rules and if they do that, they are permitted to explore these worlds..
Some posters were confused about Second Life and other virtual worlds, commenting that as games, these systems were not interesting. Second Life and many other virutalworlds aren’t really meant to be games. They are much more like toys, which, unlike games, aren’t goal or end-point oriented. Toys are generally context-embedded but are also open ended, in terms of what you can do with them (think Tonka Truck).
Another poster questioned the value of these systems for “real internet users” and suggested that SL gets a lot of press because reporters can write stories about it easily, not because it’s very useful as an innovation. I agree with part of this idea - SL and other v-worlds are “lowest common denominator” kind of systems. They appeal to many people who cannot make sense of the “real” internet. Many baby-boomers will think SL is “cool” (or “boss” in another idiom). Such a user might immediately understand it, yet can still be able to take advantage of certain internet-style communication systems that he probably could not engage with through the traditional internet (multi-person chat & on-line shopping are easy examples). It’s not because this hypothetical baby-boomer (if you’re under 40, think of your mother or father; if you’re over 40 think of your next door neighbor) is incompetent to log into Amazon and buy something there but going to a book store in SL is much more intuitive and appealing - and in the end he’d still buy a book over the internet..
I’m not saying all SL’ers are noobs - just that noobs “get it” in SL much more quickly than they do on the internet, and that makes v-world tech potentially very powerful.
Since many reporters are noobs, these reporters “get” SL and can write about it more easily than Usenet or IRC. Therefore reporters write about SL all the time. It’s great press for SL, that Usenet will never get. But we must ask ourselves why reporters get SL and can write copy about it that their readers understand..