From Luca the Guide on August 11, "A mini documentary styled overview of Second Life, from inside Second Life. Its cultures, people, economy, features, outlook, history, social fabric and so on .
"'Is it worth getting into SL in 2021?
"Second Life is an open world 3D social virtual world, the precursor of the virtual reality or VR platforms we see today. But is it really on its way out of the Metaverse game as some believe? Or does it hold the keys to realizing the Metaverse as it is envisioned by many futurists and sci-fi authors? This short film seeks to answer those questions.
:Everything about its history, social fabric, cultures, technology, economy, virtual land system and what the Metaverse truly means is explored in this short Second Life documentary."
"Have we looked beyond what have been shown to us about Second Life and
give enough time to make sense of the more intricate meanings behind the
virtual things that resides inside it? Maybe now's the time.
"Look
and presentation are very important factors in how we perceive and see
things. And back then, SL might look 'unpleasantly weird' to take its
place as "the Virtual World" we have dreamed of for decades. To the
majority of its users, media people trying to cover it, and therefore
the mass public in general. As a result, SL didn't get the prolonged
mainstream attention it deserves, and initial hype died out.
"But
times have changed, people are getting more and more tech-savvy each
day, technology are getting better, hardware availability and computing
power are growing exponentially, channels to show and present things
have branched out far beyond the mainstream media of the old, and
powerful computers are getting cheaper and more accessible even as you
read this.
"If there's a time to make Second Life, and the concept of Virtual Worlds cool again, now's the time. This is my attempt."
Luca posted the video on threads on the SL Universe forum, and Reddit. So far, it's the Reddit thread which has gotten the most responses. One wondered if Luca's depiction was also inaccurate, albeit with "the best of intentions; you show it at its finest. You show the carefully landscaped lawns and
delicate topiaries of some properties while ignoring the windmills,
gnomes, and pink flamingos decorating others. SL is a raucous place. It
isn't just a contemplative escape from mundane FL, it's parties and sex
and combat and music. Art and vision. Steampunk running into Star Trek
-- it's a cacophony of colliding creative concepts -- an atom-smasher of
ideas!"
Other people had other thoughts, such as Saffia Widdershins' response to Hamlet Au's article on New World Notes, "Second Life is an elephant inspected by the blindfolded. ... there are
more people with more diverse ways of enjoying Second Life that there
are wrinkles on the hide of the elephant. One of the joys of doing
Designing Worlds is that we discover new ones all the time. Some
people's Second Lives will focus on one thing, many people's will
overlap a range of areas." Saffia brought up Pooky Amsterdam's "A Year in the Life - Second Life" (2011) as another example.
