What happened to Second Life? | Hacker News Reader

What happened to Second Life?

news.bbc.co.uk

27 pointsjonmc1225 comments

It got overrun by porn, which this story inexplicably fails to mention. I used to play SL occasionally as I like MMORPGs but it just turned into a bad 3d version of geocities with more naked flesh. I think LL eventually decided to hive off all the adult content to a different 'continent' to recreate the clean social space it originally had, but it was too late. Additionally, the graphics engine has got really long in the tooth now...last time I fired it up it looked...old.

> a bad 3d version of geocities with more naked flesh

and flying penis.

Also, lousy controls and movement that made you feel like a duck - you were either flying or waddling. Then there were the boxy internal environments that emphasized the early-FPS visuals.

Really, 90% of what I saw in Second Life was more easily and better done in City of Heroes, including character design - and you didn't have to pay extra real cash to get decent clothes.

More fundamentally, though, when people were being social in SL, they were standing around and chatting. It doesn't take all the rest to accomplish that.

Second Life was essentially hyped PR spin that was latched on to and parroted by reporters that knew nothing about the internet. Anyone who was actually involved with virtual worlds or social networking dismissed Second Life immediately.

Not everyone -- I had transhumanist friends saw promise in it as an early version of where they hoped would be a leap for the concepts behind VR.

Off topic but point your Transhumanist friends to Eclipse Phase if they haven't heard of it already.

Unfortunately, the wetware interfaces are not ready yet for someone to upload to a virtual world...

Let's just be nice and say SL was a couple decades ahead of its time.

Presumably the 1 million 'residents' who logged on in the last month disagree with you.

http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php?d=2009-12-...

Although I don't use it any more, the vitriol and scorn that SecondLife engenders amazes me. I've no idea where it comes from. At heart it's basically a huge 3D chat room, albeit a fairly sophisticated one.

It's the continual media love-fest for it, portraying it as a mainstream revolution in how our society functions... when in reality it's a moderately successful, extremely niche app that few people in the mainstream have even heard of, much less tried.

I think the vitriol directed at SL is somewhat justified - its creators have cast it as some kind of world-changing social experiment, but in reality it's a glorified 3D chat room. We in the tech community generally dislike this sort of unsubstantiated hype.

NPR programs still invite listeners to join them on Second Life, specially Science Friday.

when in reality it's a moderately successful, extremely niche app

What a testament to the exponential growth of things like Facebook and Twitter that an app that has garnered millions upon millions of users in just a few years can be described as "extremely niche" with a straight face.

And though I used to agree with you, I think SL will be remembered as a somewhat paradigm-shifting social experiment, in that it first introduced many people to the idea of virtual worlds, especially in terms of virtual economies where people make real money.

There is a lot of banality in SL, but there are some really talented and creative people in there too; it's a matter of knowing where to look.

For someone who has never played; how does SL allow one to be creative?

You can design and sell objects. The objects can consist of a 3d model and some programming to give it functionality. Example include clothing and body modifications; furniture and buildings; vehicles like planes, boats and dragons; and all sorts of other stuff.

There's a lot of possibility in SL, it's a shame that interacting with it is so clunky and awkward.

There's a lot to be said for it, but it is clunky, and hard to learn ...

OTOH there's WOW, which is better looking and easier to get started in. They're heading for 12-million users, which at $15/month makes SL look like Woolworth's.

But the ability to design objects, do shows et al means that for Maker-types the equal of SL exists nowhere else (that I know of).

There's all kinds of stuff being done with SL. For one, there's a .NET global user group using SL for meetings. If I remember correctly, IBM has a large presence there as well as several other big companies.

The economy itself chugs along and practically prints money for Linden Labs, as well as the sellers.

They recently started selling servers to private companies as a means of allowing them to bring the control 'in house' instead of being open to the entire Grid.

To be honest, nothing happened to Second Life. It was just forgotten, for awhile, and will inevitably rise again whether it be through extension of this version or the creation of something new, like Blue Mars.

This was a big story in 2007, when the Second Life hype bubble deflated. Seems strange that the BBC suddenly notices/remembers.

Did the author just do a system clean before a Win7 update and realize (s)he hasn't touched it in years?

It's like you're looking perfectly into a newsroom.

Journalist: "How about this pitch: 'Second Life, where is it now?'"

CoS / Section Editor: "Brilliant. An exploration of how the media jumps on a new technology bandwagon, defines it as essential, assumes it will last forever, and then forgets about it almost immediately. Just be sure to put a link on our Twitter feed when it's done."

Well, the BBC is a UK outlet; as per the story, it only became big then in 2007.

apparently, second life insiders don't think much of this article: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/11/five-bbc-fact-fails.html

It got made into a movie starring Bruce Willis.

I read an article that explained SL pretty well. There were essentially 3 things that drove the second life economy: Gambing, shoes, and porn.

I think right when Second Life started to decline, they also had a massive crackdown on gambling in the virtual world. (Before then it had been common place for there to be entire Sims devoted to gambling lindens).

So they killed gambling, so the only things left were shoes and porn.

But gambling had been the really big thing.

When I did second life I found it very difficult to meet anyone who was genuinely interesting. (not that there was no one interesting, just finding them was _hard_).

My own experience of SL doesn't quite match the article's analysis. I didn't stay because it always seemed like a ghost town, even in its heyday, and the GUI program itself is slow as a dog (not to mention the network response).

it always seemed like a ghost town, even in its heyday

I spent about ninety minutes on Second Life a couple years ago, back in the days of its hype, and my vivid impression was that it was an urban planner's worst nightmare. Kind of like Phoenix.

Everyone had land -- land was considered important and valuable, right? -- so the world consisted of many separate buildings each alone in the center of its acre of land. But the majority of the buildings were deserted, presumably either because not everyone was online at the same time or because they were all off someplace else. After all, if I wanted to sit around by myself in a house full of rooms that I had carefully customized, why would I have logged into Second Life?

So I wandered around looking for the mall, or the city, or the theme park, or someplace which might actually have some activity. I spent a lot of time traveling around -- all that suburban living makes for long commutes! -- until I finally found a building full of people, but of course they were all robots and when you talked to one they either started to have sex with each other or offered to have sex with you.

Wake me up when they invent a virtual world that's more like Paris than post-apocalyptic Las Vegas.

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