Re: [-empyre-] the Times and SL

[james <empyre@factorynoir.com>]

(sorry if this gets double posted, had a minor mental lapse the first  
time)

G.H.

I do not know how extensive your use of Second Life is, but it sounds  
from your previous posts as though you were involved much earlier  
than I was. I am given over to a curiosity about why you seem so down  
on it.

I have been somewhat distanced from this discussion of late, so  
forgive me if I cover something that has already been talked about,  
but it seems to me and others that SL is in a position similar to  
what the web (or AOL) was in 1997.  That is to say that it has been  
around for a few years and is reasonably popular, though certainly  
not the only game in town.

This also includes the flaws, the marketers and the businesses that  
are looking to turn a quick profit.  However that has nothing to do  
with my interests.  My experience is that SL is large enough that all  
that can be completely avoided.  This is a huge advantage, we are not  
a captive audience.  You can teleport from location to location  
without having to look at the billboards along the roads.

So if you let go of the hype, and realize that SL can be just as  
boring as RL if you do nothing, that the graphics suck, and the grid  
crashes what is left?  Well this is where my interests pick up, with  
40k people in world at a time and maybe half a million regular users  
the space is primarily a social space.  If you add to that (audience)  
the scriptable 3d environment (native works) IMHO you have something  
quite compelling.

However, this is not an exclusively SL phenomenon, at Ars Virtua we  
are working in other spaces and preparing to launch initiatives that  
utilize other technologies (of particular interest right now is Open  
Croquet and Ogoglio City).

What we are looking forward to is the "Browser Wars"  but much more  
importantly what will be the JODI of SL and synthetic worlds?  My  
feeling is that this will be the aha moment for a lot of people who  
have questioned the value of the environment.

Pardon my rant and excuse my fan boy attitude, but I am genuinely  
interested in the promise of synthetic worlds.

James Morgan
Rubaiyat Shatner(SL)
Director Ars Virtua

On Aug 14, 2007, at 7:27 AM, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:

> gh comments:
>
> If you read the article.  The final two sentences says it all;
> "Companies are keeping their fingers crossed. It could open up a  
> whole new world."
> This means a new venue for advertising and targeted sales. Gee,  
> just what I want to do with my spare time, submit to advertising.
>
>
> On Aug 14, 2007, at 9:35 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
>
> > The Times has discovered SL.
> >
> >
> > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1651500,00.html
> >
> > Ana
>
> G.H. Hovagimyan
> http://nujus.net/gh/
> http://post.thing.net/blog/gh/
>
>
>
>
>
>
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