What Second Life should learn from Myst

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Excellent observations.

Somehow I've found myself immune to the supposed allure of such things as Second Life. I spent probably 10 minutes in it and left yawning. But I know exactly what you're talking about with regard to Myst. It provided that full immersion experience that leveraged multimedia (particularly sound!) to bring that emotional attachment. I, too, turned off the lights when I popped in the CD... then I played it three days straight until I finished it. No point in working.

One of the factors I think is essential for virtual anything is that it be better than real life. Myst provided that with a surreal fantasy world that was nonetheless credible.

In the late 90s I was shown a virtual world that a colleague of mine was working on. It was a virtual art museum. Huge galleries with paintings on the walls, etc. My criticism at the time that it didn't improve on a real art gallery; in fact it was measurably worse. If you're dealing with 2D art, then a 3D environment adds nothing. There's no advantage to having to walk in real time down a long virtual hallway over scrolling a list of thumbnails or popping directly to a webpage as a result of a search. Even with sculpture, having to walk around a piece isn't better. I have to do that in a real museum. To improve on reality, I'd be allowed to pick the item up and examine it while an arbitrary number of other people do the same thing. No waiting. So a 3D Quicktime scan is just the ticket. I'm not sure my colleague really appreciated the criticism, but he did at least put in hyperlinks for "teleportation". (I note that the URL is still in use with a more traditional web design.)

For similar reasons I seriously don't see how Second Life improves on reality. Merely substituting for reality isn't enough by half. I can think of countless more abstract but better ways to handle personal interactions, moving products, or playing games.

Can they fix that? As long as they attempt to model another world instead of a better one, I'd say no.

Posted by: dave.leigh@...   Posted on: 03/24/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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