Second Life: When 10 Hours Ain't Enough
I had some thoughts on this too, but MMO veteran Damion Schubert beat me to the bunch with his post on Second Life: 'When 10 Hours Is Not Enough To Appreciate True Awesomeness', specifically referencing Wagner James Au's GigaGamez article backlashing against the backlash.
Schubert explains: "For a while, the Second Life backlash was going so strong that I was considering, albeit briefly, actually whipping out a couple of posts in defense of the Linden Labs boys and sticking up for them, just to be contrarian. But to be honest, I can only take so much of the fanbois who keep trying to explain, in patronizing terms, that we simply don’t get the vision of Second Life. I get it. I read Snowcrash. Second Life is no Snowcrash. Second Life is a marvelous experiment with some real potential behind it, but it has severe issues holding it back in both design and technology, and until it actually addresses them, it will never even get into the same ballpark with its own hype."
He particularly seizes on complaints that Second Life criticizers haven't played the game long enough: "That’s right - 10 hours is not enough time to make an honest assessment of the Second Life experience. By comparison, my games rack is full of games that didn’t survive an HOUR of playtime. Electronic Arts (and most other companies) force their designers to obsess over the first FIVE MINUTES of gameplay, because most games don’t even survive THAT. Okay, someone reviewing the game should probably give it a tad more time than than but… 10 hours - not enough!"
Schubert's conclusion: "I personally played it for about 5 hours, most of which was a bewildering struggle with the interface, and a desperate attempt to find any player created content that wasn’t broken, partially textured, furry in theme, or so whimsical it was clearly an inside joke to its creator... I’m a professional game designer. I work in this space for a living. I have a vested interest in finding this information. I failed miserably. What makes you think that Joe Sixpack will make even half the effort?"
For what it's worth, GameSetWatch deliberately paid a game journalist to check out Second Life from the in-world game perspective, and what he found was interesting, but ultimately didn't keep him around.
In fact, I noticed a recent blog post from the journo in question, Mathew Kumar, which reveals: "It is amusing to me that I haven’t logged in once since finishing my Letters from the Metaverse column for GameSetWatch... I guess I find this funny because despite all the hype, as far as I can see, Second Life hasn’t made any of the improvements that are required for it to sustain the interest (I’m sure that 90% of the “residents” logged in a few times, got bored and left) or even give me the urge to log back in." So - not case closed, but I think it's a valid viewpoint.
Comments
It's not a game. Game blogs try to 'review' the experience like it's an MMORPG. They fail.
Posted by: Ralph | January 19, 2007 8:33 AM
Ralph is absolutely right. Second Life is not a game, and treating it as one is a mistake.
Despite that, it's still vastly overhyped. I have eaten up online virtual worlds of all kinds and varieties since 1993, and I still can't sink my teeth into Second Life.
Posted by: RedWolf | January 19, 2007 9:10 AM
I'm was interested in checking out the social aspects of the game so I created an account about 2 weeks ago. After about 10 hours of frustration using the searches, never finding anyone who had anything interesting to talk about except sex, and general frustration with the controls/camera/creation tools I gave up! I'm certainly not new to computers or games, and it was too frustrating, too lacking in interesting content, and too unpopulated! Maybe if the search feature could have taken me to places where there are people with similar interests (programming, skiing, business people in SL, etc) then I could have struck up a conversation, instead all I found was casinos with 2 people in them camping, not chatting. I really gave it a chance, and found it lacking in every respect. Maybe someone can give me a clue to what I did wrong? I've since uninstalled it from my computer, but if they make massive changes to their search feature, or if I just didn't stumble across the right places I might try it again.
Posted by: Ericson Wilkinson | January 19, 2007 10:00 AM
To be clear, we asked Mathew to review the game parts of Second Life - but if you look closely in there, there's plenty of commentary on the parts that aren't games, but are just themed like games.
The fact that he hasn't been back to game _or_ socialize since he stopped getting paid for it shows something, I think. Though it could be that he's just a hardcore know-nothing gamer, you never know :P
Posted by: simonc | January 19, 2007 10:39 AM
It's always been interesting to me that all the hype and positive press SL seems to get, seems to come entirely from the media.
When I go onto gaming message boards and the like, and see what the actual gamers are saying, it's almost unilaterally negative. It only seems to vary in intensity, from "It's not for me", to frothing digust and rage.
I've long suspected that by and large it was basically being hyped well out of proportion to it's actual success or quality, and articles like this, or the recent refutation of Linden's claims regarding the size of it's events and servers, definitely go a long way towards providing that balance that seems to be mysteriously lacking in a lot of the press surrounding a game that, despite being a media darling, no one seems to actually be playing.
Posted by: J_Arcane | January 19, 2007 11:05 AM
I've spent a bit of time in Second Life (I'm in a computer-overheating-imposed exile at the moment, alas), and I've spent some time in prior virtual worlds.
I think there's real potential there, but to my view the real "game" is in object creation, which has puzzle-like implementation characteristics. SL's true genius is that this thing, that is essentially work, is fun to some people, so people can ultimately earn real money for things they would do anyway.
Posted by: John H. | January 19, 2007 12:25 PM