Get a Second Life
Get a life. Well, get a Second Life. I’ve avoided it, but it’s finally reached a point where it can’t be ignored. For the last few weeks, I’ve heard the virtual avatar “game” mentioned on the TWiT podcast, by Rebecca MacKinnon on the Berkman Center’s uses, and finally at the Morph blog about how it will be the venue for a Creative Commons meeting.
It appears the critical mass is gathering in Second Life (as opposed to There.com) and avatar-based interaction has finally reached the big time. Quite a long way from the original The Palace.
But I do have a beef - you’re supposed to choose one of their assigned “last name”s in Second Life, and they’re not only Euro-centric, but they’re incredibly New Yawk - Stiglitz, Greenspan, Krugman, Melnick, Levitt, Spearmann, Meyer, Reisman, Stein. What’s a goy to do? Oy!
So might I suggest some names to add so you don’t alienate about 50% of the world - Wong, Ouyang, Nakamura, Sohn, Nguyen, Ratchadamri, Narayan, Kumar. The real world is diverse. The virtual one should be too.
September 2nd, 2006 10:07
[…] Other successful virtual worlds in Asia, for example, have moved away from “realistic” to “cute” and “stylized”. Witness Cyworld.com and MapleStory where the characters have big cartoonish heads, and stylized bodies. Call it he Hello Kitty influence, but it’s the norm in Asia, and if you think about it, it makes sense - why with all the computing power and digital technology would you want to make avatars that looked exactly like characters in real life? Also, being cartoonish makes the characters less threatening even when jazzed up with different clothes and shapes. (Of course, having characters look like folks in real life is probably why in Second Life, there is so much sexual content.) So back to Second Life - Rebecca is concerned that Chinese language is not supported for chatting. It’s worse than that - the “last names” you’re supposed to choose for your character are all Euro-centric and irrelevant to half the world’s population. Second Life needs to improve on this if they’re going to appeal to more than just geek niches. […]