The Humvee drives down a crowded street in a foreign land. A child waves. Merchants display their wares. Suddenly soldiers raise their rifles as a suicide bomber runs into the street, detonating his lethal package. This is virtual PTSD therapy.
Ever since PlayStation Home was first announced in January 2007, people have been calling it Second Life for the PlayStation 3. We take a look at what separates these two very different virtual worlds.
The Houston Chronicle wants to know why none of the US Presidential candidates (by which I mean the two that could possibly win – sorry, independents, maybe next time) aren’t using Second Life in their campaigns.
If the computing media — not to mention Linden Labs themselves — were to be believed, we should be deeply immersed in our Second Lives by now. Companies are using it for press conferences, people are having sex inside it — Sweden even has an embassy in it, for goodness’ sake. Although early in the primaries there was a flurry of SL activity, things seem to have quietened down.
The author believes that this is largely due to the difficulty in raising funds from within SL — it is difficult to check where donors are based, and many are from outside the US.
After last month’s resignation of Linden Labs founder and CEO Philip Rosedale, Kotaku readers have had only one question on their minds – is there any way I can get Grand Theft Auto IV early? The answer, of course, is no, but the knowledge that the Second Life company shall soon be in good hands will help massage the disappointment out of your collective furrowed brow. Former CEO of digital communications agency Organic Inc., Mark Kingdon is only one alphabetical space away from having an awesome last name. What he does have is an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in economics from UCLA, and he’s just thrilled to be here. “To me, the CEO role at Linden Lab combines perfectly my passions for art and design, business and technology. Until Second Life, we experienced the digital world passively in two dimensions. By enabling users to create a rich and immersive virtual world, Second Life is transforming the way we connect, collaborate, learn and transact online.
Kingdon will assure the role of CEO on the 15th of May, spontaneously appearing in the office with his hair attached to his arse and a boot sticking out of his chest, his clothing still loading. It’s an SL thing.
Linden Labs founder and CEO Philip Rosedale is stepping down. The Second Life developer will seek a CEO with more management and operational expertise. Rosedale will stay on as chairman of the company’s board. Even though SL has been the victim of hype machine backlash, the company says that no crisis has lead to Rosedale stepping down. What’s more, the company added that an IPO was under consideration. Says the Linden founder: I will be 100% involved and fulltime at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life’s work, and I am not going anywhere.
Because at some developers you hafta work with dicks, but at Linden Labs you get to work with flying dicks. Rosedale Stepping Down [BBC]
Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News revealed that people can take advantage of a known QuickTime problem and become virtual pickpockets in Linden Lab’s Second Life. Steve over at PlayNoEvil points out that “anything can that actually affect the integrity of the game or business application should be completely independent of these services to ensure that a breach in ‘the other guy’s stuff’ doesn’t affect the security of your business – especially casual applications and services that do not see themselves as having security functionality.” Linden Labs confirmed the vulnerability, but the researchers who exploited the flaw were quick to note the issue can be resolved with a simple patch. Still – I think Steve’s got a point:
Believe if or not, I cut a little out of the massive novella/feature on the Library of Congress preserving video games that ran yesterday. I know, I know. If that were in a newspaper, the world’s oxygen supply would be suffering from the distinct lack of trees. Anyway, one of the matters that we didn’t delve very deeply into was that of preserving Second Life. From project affiliate Jerry McDonough: One of the big problems with second life when they talk about preserving it is this interactive experience. Linden doesn’t do things like keep careful track of what users are saying, they’re not filling their disks with years and years of transaction logs – I’m sure the users are very happy about that – but it means that if I took everything on SL’s servers at the moment, what I’ve got is the neutron bomb version of second life – a bunch of very beautiful buildings with nobody in them.
But the topic raises a ton of ethical questions…
Avatars are important, but confining. One avatar in one game won’t necessary be usable in another. IBM and Second Life developer Linden Labs have joined forces to figure out a way to make avatars interoperable. An open avatar would allow individuals to keep their same basic appearance and data. Says IBM vice president of digital convergence, Colin Parris:
It is going to happen anyway. If you think you are walled and secure, somebody will create something that’s open and then people will drain themselves away as fast as possible.
Hrm. Not sure how this will work with consoles — the very essence of which are being “walled”. Hey, it could happen! It would be great if Fahey could take his SL avatar (above) and play Wii Sports. I am skeptical at the moment, however.
IBM, Linden Join Up [Reuters]
Despite being something of a mainstream media darling, there’s at least one magazine out there that thinks Second Life sucks: Time has a short and sweet piece up on the ’5 Worst Websites,’ and coming it at number five is the MMO that Kotaku readers love to complain we still write about – Second Life. Fans praise Second Life as a virtual hangout where you can meet and chat and buy sneakers and real estate (that’s fake stuff for real money) and dance and go bowling and have sex – suggesting that “virtual humans” doing “human things” online in Second Life is somehow less pathetic than, say, cooking Kaldorei spider kabobs or making magic pantaloons in World of Warcraft.
eHarmony, MySpace, Evite.com, and Meez.com round out the list. A sign of mainstream media backlash to come? I doubt it.
5 Worst Websites [Time Magazine]
