I’ve been following the Second Life phenomena for the past six months or so. For those not in the know, Second Life (SL) is a virtual online world which has very powerful in-game tools that allow players to interact with and build the world around them. The world’s structure and textures are streamed directly off the server as you travel around. With some 1 million residents, whole societies exist with SL. It’s a game that really does allow you to live in whatever world you can imagine.
I’ve played the game a fair bit. I spent a good 48 hours virtually non-stop exploring the world. I ended up un-installing the program since it was just a little too addictive and time-consuming for my liking. However, if I didn’t have far too many real-life commitments, I could certainly see the game taking up considerable amounts of my time.
While SL is still a bit too clunky in the interface department for it to become mainstream, it’s an interesting glimpse at what I think will be the dominate force in the games industry 5-10 years from now.
With that in mind, it’s somewhat interesting to note that Reuters recently commissioned a full time reporter to work in SL. With the in-game name of Adam Reuters, he holds office hours inside the Reuters building in SL. His frequent reports can be found at http://secondlife.reuters.com/
What’s going to be most interesting to watch, is the fall out from this movement. With this kind of mainstream validation of the existence of SL there’s going to be hundreds of companies chomping for a place in this evolution of gaming.
Interesting times, indeed.
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