Second Life - hype or crap?
Second life is a crap. Because
1. Second life is using a crappy 3D engine.
Even the Quake3 engine from 8 years ago is far superior than this crap.
Some people get excited that they can "fly" in SL. Are they kidding? If flying is a feature, then I'll call the ability to bury my body into the earth while walking another fantastic feature.
Some people claim that SL has magical scriptability. Wait. Is 3D engines supporting scripting and custom modeling a new at all?
2. Second life is a crappy software which crashes every time I try to exit the program.
Yes, that's true. And don't argue with me about that.
3. Second life is pointless.
So the SL huggers say SL is NOT a game. Alright. So what? People shouldn't judge SL with criteria for games?
I don't care if it's a game or not, as long as it has a point. People just get curious about this brand new 3D metaverse which others keep talking about. They want to see for themselves what it's like. So they create an account and choose an ugly avatar. They start from the training island. They learn how to walk and how to fly. They complete the tutorial and, now what? Exactly. No point from then on. I don't have a reason to convince myself to explore the wacky islands there and waste my 1st life.
Second life is a hype. Because
1. Grandpa/Outsider/Pretender corporations hug SL to show off their geeky side.
SL huggers claim that SL is so wonderful that the corporate world loves it.
Yes, corporates are loving SL. See who's on the top 8 SL corporate site list Reuters, Cisco, Sun, ...Wait, where's Google, or Yahoo!, or Microsoft? Now that SL is so wonderful, why don't I see any serious software and internet company dwelling there?
2. The huge media hype is due to the domino effect
The mass media is amateurish and has always been a pretender about technologies. Some day one press begins with SL. Its competitors have absolutely no idea about the "metaverse". Yet they mindlessly join the hype just because they are so worried about being left behind about the new hot "techie" stuff. That starts the domino effect and after a while people forget how this began in the first place.
3. More people are not visiting Second Life after the first few times
Latest report shows that SL is losing regular visitors at a considerable rate. Sorry I can't find the link to that article now. I'll add it once I recover it.
SL is getting more and more one time new visitors, and fewer and fewer regular visitors. This is typical of a hype phenomenon. When the hype is fading, the long tail shows up.
To sum up, Second Life is both a hype and a crap. But don't get me wrong. I believe the metaverse is the future for the internet. But metaverse!=SL. The mode of metaverse that I believe will dominate the future will be the one which replicates the real world instead of a pointless chaotic one. In a replica metaverse, one can take virtual tours to every other corner of the world. They do things they actually can do in the real world. At that time, surfing the internet will simply be an extended experience of real life. And there's no reason why it shouldn't be like that.