I spent a fascinating evening at the Austin Games Conference last year talking about where SL fitted in the virtual world family tree and I’ve been wondering about it on and off ever since. Where does SL sit on the spectrum of virtual worlds? Which worlds influenced it? What does it do that hasn’t been done before?
After I commented that skateboarding and flocking fish would have been impossible in a text world the debate has kicked off again at Terra Nova, with Cory arguing that 3D worlds are different to text worlds, that 3D is not just window dressing and that Second Life is not just a graphical rehashing of everything that has been done in a MOO.
Whether or not 3D virtual worlds are fundamentally different to text virtual worlds, one important difference is that 3D graphical content is far more expensive to produce, something I was worried about when I first encountered Second Life. Would enough people put in the effort to create 3D content? Wouldn’t most of Second Life end up being a 3D landfill site full of bad 3D content?
I was amazed when I discovered that there were enough people willing to put in the time to build a 3D world and 3D avatars and that most of the world looked really good. While it’s simple to describe an avatar as “dark and brooding with a sense of mystery” or a location as a “maze of twisty corridors all alike”, it’s much harder to build that brooding avatar or the maze of corridors in 3D.
The cost of creating 3D content encourages people to use higher levels of creation, like montage or assembly rather than building from scratch. If the goal is to create the dark and brooding avatar in a 3D world, it’s much easier to go shopping for the right look than it is to build it yourself. In a text world the cost of authoring is so cheap that you’d have cut the virtual cloth yourself.
My own avatar is the combination of a Victorian suit from Neverland and the arm from a Marcos Fonzarelli steambot. Creating the avatar from scratch would have taken me days, whereas fiddling with existing bits took me a few hours, yet the final result is definitely my own work. Of course the desire for people to buy objects as raw material is also great for those people building objects from scratch, who can then sell instantly created freely created copies of their wares.
The result is a model which looks a lot like the real world. Most people don’t have the time, skills or resources to build objects from scratch and so are creative by choosing, buying, combining and modifying existing items. Creation is expensive, but due to free mass production, buying is cheap.
I used to think it was funny that having started from a blank slate a lot of Second Life turned in to a blinging shopping mall. Now I wonder whether it’s a natural consequence of building a user created 3D virtual world.
I think it is a natural consequence. People were figuring out how to ebay characters and items since what? Ultima Online? Earlier? I think it's amazing to have watched companies do a 180 on their attitude toward this behavior, from strictly banning accounts - to looking the other way - to formally encouraging it.
Posted by: HiroPendragon | June 30, 2005 at 03:08 AM
Game companies can profit off the transactions by shaving an American Express cut off the transactions.
Posted by: Someone At Microsoft | September 25, 2005 at 01:53 PM
I'm sure ll would like nothing more than sl to be seen as a complex set of tools with limitless opportunity. Unfortunately that is not the case, today sl is no more glamorous than a for sale sign or a mini mall.
No obtainable goal = no sl
Posted by: rabbit | October 21, 2005 at 05:28 AM