Virtual or Real Life?
Yesterday evening I downloaded Second Life an online three dimensional, graphically intense virtual world in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) category. This morning, first thing (well, SECOND thing, after reading The New York Times I cancelled my seven day trial membership in Second Life (affectionately called “SL” by the in crowd.)
The “Why” is easy. While the graphics are impressive, and navigation is reasonably intuitive, I’m going to wait for computer hardware to catch up with the vision of LInden Labs which created SL. My impression: my current generation one MB (Lenov) T41 Thinkpad isn’t beefy enough to present a completely smooth flowing 3D gaming experience. Every now and then I’d see slight pauses, maybe it was generating new graphics or fetching something from disk, I don’t know.
There’s more: my 30 minutes of exploration convinced me the game doesn’t have the level of artificial intelligence needed to approach a realistic experience. For example, I walked my character (”Ron Marlin”) off the shore and into the sea. I proceeded to walk the sea floor, with never a gasp for air. It was cute how it followed the terrain of the sea floor, and I was able to walk back up on the shore, none the wetter.
I learned about Second Life by listening to a podcast of a speech by Cory Ondrejka. He’s a fascinating guy. From Cory’s bio:
“Prior to joining Linden Lab in November, 2000, Ondrejka served as Project Leader and Lead programmer for Pacific Coast Power and Light. At PCP&L, he brought the “Road Rash” franchise to the Nintendo for the first time with “Road Rash 64″ and built the core technology teams that completed multiple products for Nintendo and Sony consoles. Previous experience includes Lead Programmer for Acclaim Coin-Operated Entertainment’s first internal coin-op title and work on Department of Defense electronic warfare software projects for Lockheed Sanders. While an officer in the United States Navy, he worked at the National Security Agency and graduated from the Navy Nuclear Power School. Ondrejka is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he was a Presidential “Thousand Points of Light” recipient and became the first person to earn Bachelors of Science degrees in two technical majors: Weapons and Systems Engineering and Computer Science.”
How often do you find a guy who worked at the NSA then developed video games? How cool is that?
While I “resigned” from Second Life (for now), I remain fascinated by the large number of people who are living VIRTUAL LIVES. My next-door neighbors are avid participants in World Of Warcraft. They are perfectly ordinary upper middle class professionals. He’s a senior software guru for a start-up company on the East Coast. He mainly works from home, using his $29.95/mo. 3 Mbps Verizon DSL link to his “real world” of work (but he travels a lot).
They have a wonderful kid, and two great-looking horses. They mow their law, feed their horses (and their kid). My neighbors attend church every Sunday, and (I presume) pay their taxes and keep the mortgage and car payments up to date. In other words, they are just like you and me.
EXCEPT… they also are deep DEEP into living in an MMORPG community. I emailed them about Second Life, and they responded that it sounds like an interesting game, but they are too involved with World of Warcraft to even dip their (virtual life) toe in another MMORPG pool.
This is a big deal. I do NOT understand it. If you do, please email me.
r j e f f r i e s [a t] g m a i l [dot] c o m.
Sorry, gotta run. It’s almost time for me to go to my REAL WORLD job where I earn REAL WORLD money. And talk to REAL WORLD PEOPLE.
Wait a minute. YOU are reading my blog, and you are REAL. Where should we draw the line between REAL and VIRTUAL? Let’s explore this topic.
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:02 am
My Dear Mr. Marlin,
Sorry your experience with SL was not one you wish to continue–but
maybe your underwater walk was easier than expected because you
are really an aquatic craniate vertebrate of the large oceanic sport fish variety! You’re lucky you didn’t get hooked taking such a risk in the water.
Well, maybe not–because why did you start on land? Hummm. And not wet?
You may be right. Not good enough.
June 23rd, 2005 at 1:31 pm
I never considered that possibility. Just to be clear, SL is promising, and I’d guess that if I sat beside an experinced user and learned (as they try to do online, but I did not take advantage of) it would have gone better.
But the (inadequate) seed on my ThinkPad did not create an awesome user experience. I am not done with wanting to understand why people gte so (pardon my pun) “hooked” on Second Life and similar 3D graphical online game environments.