deus ex machina � I’m a Resident of Second Life WUT?
I’m a Resident of Second Life WUT?
I was recently directed to an article by Clay Shirky blasting Second Life for its inaccuracy in reporting number of users. Second Life throws around a number that is actually only the number of avatars created in the world, NOT the number of unique human users. Their latest numbers report 2.2 million “Residents” (avatars), 833,000 logged in the last 60 days, and roughly 14,000 people currently online at the time I write this post (peak concurrency has been reported as high as 18,000 users at once). That’s 0.64% of their so-called “Residents” online at a time! Why so low? Maybe because they are all the same people?
Compare this to WoW, where 7.5 million customers actively subscribe or play the game, with 660,000 concurrent users. 8.8% of the WoW player base is online together at a given time. Eve Online, which runs off of a single shard, has roughly 150,000 active subscribers and a peak user concurrency over 32,000.
Anyway, my purpose is not to bash Second Life on semantics and numbers. The reason I bring this up is to talk about a more fundamental matter - why I believe that users flock to Second Life with high hopes of being “in” on the coolest things of the future. These are the people who pay upwards of $80k to entrenched, in-world developers who can model exorbitantly detailed landscapes and buildings on private servers that cost US$1675.00 per region with monthly Maintenance fees of US$295.00. These misguided people are educators who want to teach in a style that they think younger generations would better understand. They are Fortune 500 companies that want to ride the wave of the future by placing a stake in a 3D world. They build cities and offices and elaborate amusement parks in hopes that magically, because work and play are now being done in a virtual world, users will somehow be better at what they do, learn faster, make more money, meet new people, or be happier.
LOL.
I suspect that the majority of these people didn’t grow up with the Internet.
Look, it’s simple. Open ended virtual worlds like Second Life are best suited for the types of people who love to create content. Second Life is excellent at providing 3D modeling tools, allowing import of graphics and images, giving users a virtual environment with physical constraints, and allowing talented artists and programmers to write their own code within the bounds of that world. And here’s a secret…a lot of that content isn’t really that good. Even if the content is good, it might take half an hour to load onto your screen. The point is, if you are not inherently a creative person, or if you don’t have the time and patience to learn about modeling and animation tools, then you are going to log into Second Life, take a look around, scratch your head, shrug your shoulders, and log out again.
I’m a Resident of Second Life WUT?
I was recently directed to an article by Clay Shirky blasting Second Life for its inaccuracy in reporting number of users. Second Life throws around a number that is actually only the number of avatars created in the world, NOT the number of unique human users. Their latest numbers report 2.2 million “Residents” (avatars), 833,000 logged in the last 60 days, and roughly 14,000 people currently online at the time I write this post (peak concurrency has been reported as high as 18,000 users at once). That’s 0.64% of their so-called “Residents” online at a time! Why so low? Maybe because they are all the same people?
Compare this to WoW, where 7.5 million customers actively subscribe or play the game, with 660,000 concurrent users. 8.8% of the WoW player base is online together at a given time. Eve Online, which runs off of a single shard, has roughly 150,000 active subscribers and a peak user concurrency over 32,000.
Anyway, my purpose is not to bash Second Life on semantics and numbers. The reason I bring this up is to talk about a more fundamental matter - why I believe that users flock to Second Life with high hopes of being “in” on the coolest things of the future. These are the people who pay upwards of $80k to entrenched, in-world developers who can model exorbitantly detailed landscapes and buildings on private servers that cost US$1675.00 per region with monthly Maintenance fees of US$295.00. These misguided people are educators who want to teach in a style that they think younger generations would better understand. They are Fortune 500 companies that want to ride the wave of the future by placing a stake in a 3D world. They build cities and offices and elaborate amusement parks in hopes that magically, because work and play are now being done in a virtual world, users will somehow be better at what they do, learn faster, make more money, meet new people, or be happier.
LOL.
I suspect that the majority of these people didn’t grow up with the Internet.
Look, it’s simple. Open ended virtual worlds like Second Life are best suited for the types of people who love to create content. Second Life is excellent at providing 3D modeling tools, allowing import of graphics and images, giving users a virtual environment with physical constraints, and allowing talented artists and programmers to write their own code within the bounds of that world. And here’s a secret…a lot of that content isn’t really that good. Even if the content is good, it might take half an hour to load onto your screen. The point is, if you are not inherently a creative person, or if you don’t have the time and patience to learn about modeling and animation tools, then you are going to log into Second Life, take a look around, scratch your head, shrug your shoulders, and log out again.
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