Why the Metaverse is ashamed of Second life.

 

There is a standard apologetic tone when a Second life users explains to the Metaverse developers that yes, we already do that in second life and have been doing it for years.

You feel the room tense up.

Most, if not all, ideas have been tried and work pretty well in Second Life and have done so for years.

Metaverse creators’ sense there is gold waiting to be discovered as processing power and internet capacity approach the point where things could be amazing. This is probably true with a “but.”

The but is everyone who actually wants to enjoy this virtual world is already doing it. Everyone who isn’t doing it is either developing their own or just isn’t interested and will never be interested. There is another group who enjoy talking about it but never really use it in that "I’m fascinated by the potential but not enough to really use one kind of way.”

Why won’t they be interested, Judas? It will be fantastic, and they can do anything in it.

They can already do anything in Second Life and a lot of the “anything” is deserted.

Some parts do OK. Clubs seem popular ,people type to each other listen to music and watch their avatars dance on screen. I enjoy it they enjoy it. But you think it’s a bit weird and it’s really not your kind of thing, besides you probably don’t have a laptop and it barely exists on tablets right now.

You also really don’t want to play Second Life in a room with other people. At heart it’s a chat room and you don’t want people looking over your shoulder asking you about it.

Developers creating their own Metaverse don’t like to think they have to match Second Life’s feature set as a bare minimum before they can really break any new ground.

So, they discount it completely and work on a unique selling point. a single feature: VR or server structure, or some other gimmick that could well be a lovely new thing, but on its own fails to set the world afire.

Second Life hasn’t set the world afire either, but it does OK for itself. It's survival sure as hell ain’t based on burning through start up cash like the current batch of Metaverses.

 

Judas