March 2011

It seems odd to say it, but I have been rather more optimistic about Second Life recently. Not to the extent of doing anything, admittedly, but there are a few things which have made me tilt my head to one side, raise my eyebrows and briefly nod.

• I quite like Mr Rodvik Linden's public persona - doing things inworld, building houses around books and so on. A lack of an immediate overwhelming strategy, in favour of learning about how things work first. Whilst as we all know that Second Life Is Not A Game, perhaps somebody who is experienced with Games is more appropriate than somebody who concentrates more on, say, Social Media Strategy.

  Obviously I am not so green¹ as to think that his public persona indicates his real attitude, but it does indicate that he or at least people around him are aware of the sort of things which would sit well with Residents, and perhaps make them think that the LindenBoss was One Of Them. Simply having that awareness is a marked improvement, and, in terms of policy...

• There has been a failure recently to implement anything particularly absurd and regressive. (Well, all right, not as much absurd and regressive stuff as I was expecting.)

• For the first time in quite a while, I had an idea, thought "that would be terrific in Second Life", and didn't then think "but it's clearly completely pointless to do it there, let my try to shoehorn it into Inform or a web thing or a short story or oh I don't know where is the gin".

• Hamlet thinks that Second Life is dying. This makes me think that it isn't.