The Beginning Of The End - Second Life Galleries
by
on March 16, 2007,
Having heard the murmurs come out of Linden Lab to become the curious Second Life several years ago, and having watched it grow to a (allegedly) multi-million-strong world of avatars, where digital nookie lit red is as secretive and under-the-table as it is in reality and where some members manage to create fake stuff in exchange for real currency, I have to say I’m disturbed. Not about the adult activity. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s that the virtual world where people once could “pretend to be their dream selves” has become a hodgepodge of people looking to take money from people looking to waste money. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who’s never “set foot” in Second Life.
Only within the last few months to a year have the media put their technology writers on the Second Life beat, where they skim the surface, looking for stories about folks who manage to attain six-figure salaries by doing various tasks. Reporters and columnists visit the real faces behind the digital façade in their homes or places of business and give them the opportunity to become Z-list celebrities, if only for a short while. Many of those moneymakers know very well that their enterprising avatars have short legs (few say so, for their benefit), and are getting their pieces of the virtual world pie while the getting’s good. Astonishing, however, is how many more characters active in the game continue to enjoy their time in the rat hole.
When it was young, Second Life had promise. It was cool. It was a Sims-like world where people could build their own houses (or anything else, for that matter) and could interact with fellow players. Basically just have fun. Some place to “get away from it all.” No more. Now nearly everything one sees or hears about the game is about green – and not the good, environmentally friendly kind. Just yesterday, Second Life Galleries, a website/photo host/forum mashup was announced on PR Web. It’s a joint project by SecondLifeGalleries.com and Nexzani Group. And it’s ugly.
Really, it’s a bizarrely hideous mashup. If it were a forum only, it wouldn’t work, as Second Life already runs such a venue. The name wouldn’t fit anyway. A photo host it is supposed to be, but you’d only know it with a big sweep of the vertical scroll bar. Why that is, I can’t say. A website? That it is, but I’ve no words to describe the layout. Maybe you could give it a go.
Second Life Galleries will fail. My guess is far sooner than Second Life does, but fail it will. There is no reason for it existing, and it stands today, Second Life is losing its reason to remain a viable player in the gaming industry. Maybe its virtual bubble will burst, or Linden Lab will let it go out stage left while it is place to go to do something with nothing.
I’ll end this 500-word comment by summing up Second Life and the late-to-the-game train wreck known as Second Life Galleries with a rhetorical question posed by its creator, Alan Espasandin: “What better than to create a place for Second Life residents to make their first stop after their second life? It’s like coming home from vacation. You have to share the pictures.”
Think that about says it all, does it not?
