The announcement that a game-industry veteran was chosen as Linden Lab's new CEO rekindled a long-standing controversy in the Second Life community about games. It boils down to two main questions:
- Is Second Life a game?
- Should Second Life become a game?
Before I give you my answers, please take a moment and consider your own opinion . . .
Really.
Please read no further until you check-in with your own thoughts on each question. You'll get a lot more out of this and have more fun if you follow the rules. Hmm. Maybe I should change the design of this post so you have to type in your own answers before proceeding. I could give you a nice badge as a reward. It would kind of like . . . let's see . . . a game.
Please read no further until you check-in with your own thoughts on each question. You'll get a lot more out of this and have more fun if you follow the rules. Hmm. Maybe I should change the design of this post so you have to type in your own answers before proceeding. I could give you a nice badge as a reward. It would kind of like . . . let's see . . . a game.
Second Life is a game in the same way that Microsoft Word is a program for writing game articles. Yeah, it can be used that way, but Word is a document platform that supports anything one might want to write about. And Second Life is a 3D virtual environment platform that can and does support a multitude of uses. At this very moment people are using Second Life for a diverse variety of purposes such as business meetings, recreational shopping, concerts, digital sculpture, sensual encounters and of course, gaming.
So the problem with most discussions around Second Life and games is that they focus on a particular way the platform is used, rather than on the underlying platform itself. Its like the story of the blind men and the elephant.
