Saturday, October 08, 2005 :::
Metaverse Second Life"'Second Life' is one of a very small number of so-called virtual worlds that eschew the traditional medieval fantasy-based role-playing game play common to such online blockbusters as 'World of Warcraft,' 'EverQuest' and 'Ultima Online.' As such, Linden Lab is loathe to call 'Second Life' a game, despite the accessibility of such a term.
'Second Life' has become something akin to a platform, an operating system and a browser all rolled into one.
In the beginning, 'we did this thing with 'Second Life' where we positioned it like a video game because it was very easy to' understand, said Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab's CEO. 'Today, there's almost a rebellion against that. The breadth of use you see (in 'Second Life') today speaks to the fact that people are trying to use it differently.'
But 'Second Life' and its conceptual cousin, 'There,' are patterned more on the infinitely open-ended notion of Neal Stephenson's groundbreaking novel 'Snow Crash' and his creation of the metaverse than on group-based slaying of monsters. So defining exactly what genre the two titles belong to can be a challenge.
With that in mind, Linden Lab convened some of the leading thinkers about virtual worlds for a round table discussion here Thursday and tried to tackle precisely that question: What is 'Second Life'?
To those gathered for the third annual State of Play conference--a mix of lawyers, academics, consultants, journalists and others--the question revolved around the dynamic that 'Second Life' has become something akin to a platform, an operating system and a browser all rolled into one."
::: posted by Eugene at 10:22 AM
|
