I don’t talk much about Second Life here for a variety of reasons. I think it’s sufficient to say that it’s not really what I’m looking for in an online experience. Just the same, despite the bad stuff I have tried very hard to keep an open mind because the idea, at least, is a good one. Scott Jennings regularly has good stuff to say, but today as I was reading Broken Toys he actually made me understand 2L for the first time … a little.

As someone told me explicitly, in these exact words, “In Second Life, men tend to become worse, and women tend to become better.” Freed of their concern for their appearance, age, and RL social status, women take to SL with relish and feed off of each other positively. Most of the most dramatic areas in SL are female-owned. It’s been known through studies that middle-aged women tend to be the social hubs in MMOs - in a social MMO like SL, this becomes raised to the Nth degree. It’s alien to almost anything online that’s come before, and I suspect that alienness - that singularity - is what inspires SL’s most fervently myopic defenders to tilt at the wheel again and again. Because in spite of the flailing newbies, crashing platform and constant drama - this is something that SL’s partisans want to see remain. It’s what is missed in most media coverage, and it’s what the partisans are terrified may go away, washed away in a tsunami of media backlash, moral judgement and clueless administration.

This may just be cranky, but to counteract my tip of the hat this morning - BAH.

Second Life to Charge For Last Names

The company’s business development team decided to create a vanity name feature in part to help legitimize the growing number of executives, political candidates and other famous people who stage rallies and give stump speeches in the virtual world. With the new feature, Linden Research will try to verify that avatars with high-profile names belong to same-named owners. For now, it’s nearly impossible to determine the offline identity behind any avatar.

They’re going to be charging $100 upfront, and then $50 a year after that. What. The. Hell? I … don’t have words. I’m not really the biggest fan of Second Life, but I’ve always regarded the place as a good place for artistic folks to do their thing. Gimme a break though, charging that kind of dough for a last name? Hey guys, maybe you should work on your server code instead of holding people up at gunpoint for what amounts to an addition to a database table?

A Late, Incomplete, and Pessimistic Review of the Buried Sea

I should really spend more time playing through more of the missions before snapping to a judgement about The Buried Sea. What I have seen so far is a lot of running around in huge complex zones to hunt down instances and hope that something along the mission doesn’t get fowled up along the way. My time is the most important commodity I have. I only have a few hours every week to play these games. More and more hobbies take up that time and I have to decide exactly where my time is best spent. Should I keep trying to slog through poorly designed missions until I find the ones that are good enough, well tuned enough, and rewarding enough to spend my time? Or should I go somewhere where I know the sort of output I am likely to expect?

The end of the review kind of trails off into complaining about The Burning Crusade, with Loral saying how he’s basically tired of EQ’s shit and is happy he has something else to play. This is Loral Ciriclight, Mobhunter, saying this. Yee-ikes. I guess you take a step forward, and then you take a step back, eh EQ?

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which oversees such well-known hotel brands as Sheraton, St. Regis, and Westin, will launch its newest chain, Aloft, in the online society Second Life in September. In the brick-and-mortar realm, the plan is for the first Aloft inn to open sometime in 2008, catering to active, urban 30- to 50-year-olds. But the real-world lodge will be preceded by a 3D cyberversion designed to prompt feedback from virtual guests and help guide the earthbound endeavor.

Hotel chain taps Second Life to test new brand - PC News at GameSpot

There is even a VirtualAloft blog that will give you a preview of the virtual preview. The idea is that users will make use of the hotel in many of the same ways that real patrons will. By hanging out in the clubs, public spaces, and using the rooms for many of the same ‘activities’ that real paying customers will, the company hopes to get an idea of ways to tweak hotel designs before the buildings are built.

I mention this because I think it’s kind of interesting, from a sociological perspective, and because I find the use of public spaces and such in hotels very interesting.
I also think it’s another crazy ass use of Second Life by marketers who don’t really know what the hell they’re getting into. “Oh, Second Life. Yeah, my cousin’s nephew was telling me about that, it’s that place where you can fly all the time, right? Let’s market to those people!”
That’s all well and good, right up until a cat-girl avatar played by a guy in Hoboken, NJ has sex on their hotel bar with an avatar that looks like Dick Cheney. Then we’ll see what’s what.

Joystiq has spun off yet another gaming-related blog, this one dedicated to all things Second Life. Second Life Insider looks to be an interesting peak into a world that I just haven’t had a lot of time to hang around in. Here’s hoping it’s as interesting a ride as the one provided by Mr. Au.

Good luck to the editors; Here’s hoping your time at sea is a good one.

Buzzcut has a nice piece reflecting on the physical reality of Massively Multiplayer Games. From the point of view of an architect, being able to fly or teleport is quite confusing if you’re trying to undestand something’s physicality. Or, on the other hand, it can be quite freeing. From the piece:

I had one student who grasped this immediately. Everything he built in SL hovered, floated or cantilevered out at impossible angles. He was having the time of his life doing sculpture and calling it architecture. In the real world, no matter how goofy a Frank Geary building might look, it’s physically rational. And in that way, also limited. Online architecture is truly unbounded.