Second Life's Mistakes Should Inform Today's Metaverse: Lessons From 19 Years in the Metaverse

[Celerity]

A conversation with one of the few people who have real historical perspective on digital communities

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/6233ecafdc551a002089fb15/lessons-from-19-years-in-the-metaverse/



In 2003, Wagner James Au was a young freelance writer in the Bay Area covering massive multiplayer games like The Sims Online for Salon and Wired. During that time he got an assignment to review a new virtual-world game called Second Life, made by a company called Linden Lab. He started poking around this nascent digital world and, soon after, met the developers, who made him an interesting offer to embed as a reporter inside the game. Au had complete editorial freedom to cover everything Second Life, including weird goings-on, harassment, and cybercrime. Eventually, Au wrote one of the definitive books on the game, The Making of Second Life: Notes From the New World. He still exhaustively covers developments in Second Life on his blog, New World Notes, the longest-running metaverse news site. One of his most recent posts is about Russian Second Lifers who run digital businesses in the game, and are now trying to escape sanctions by fleeing the country.

Au is, in short, one of the few people with a real historical perspective on, and lived experience in, metaverse communities. Since Facebook rebranded as Meta, the idea of the metaverse has been consumed by a kind of ahistorical hype cycle. Brands are flooding into the space and people are issuing broad proclamations about what a virtual world is supposed to look like. There are also plenty who are dismissing the metaverse as “something nobody asked for,” but as Au’s experience shows, there are millions of people who’ve been dutifully cultivating and thriving in digital worlds for decades now. Au is a sharp observer of this space and, to some degree, an advocate for digital worlds. But he’s also a journalist and a critic. He offers a hopeful look at the promise of metaverse communities but also pulls no punches talking about the ways in which craven actors threaten to bring the whole experiment down. I found his answers about Meta’s forays into the metaverse to be especially worthwhile.

Charlie Warzel: People talk all the time about the metaverse as if it’s this new thing that Facebook is trying to bring into existence. There are people like yourself who’ve been documenting metaverse communities for decades. How big is Second Life right now?

Wagner James Au: In terms of users, Second Life is still vibrant. There are about 600,000 monthly active users and about 200,000 daily active users after almost 20 years. One reason I keep writing about it is that there’s so much there. And so much interest from people who’re involved in these worlds.

snip




my add


that picture does the designs in Second Life no favours, it is far beyond that rudimentary level shown above

examples (these are all real avatars and buildings, etc, the pics are taken in the game)

[Scrivener7]

1. Yuck. I've never spent time in any of these sites, but all I see in those

photos are images of dismal places and porn-ready female-like things.

[eShirl]

4. well, people choose what their avatars look like. some like that look.

but one's avatar needn't be subjectively good looking, or even human

similarly, you can create your own place and build it/ make it look how you want

and make your own clothes, make things and write scripts to program how things interact

[Celerity]

6. there are thousands of types of avatars, running the gamut from human to mythical creatures, to

Last edited Sat Mar 19, 2022, 10:43 AM - Edit history (1)

animals, to inanimate objects, etc etc etc.

As for dismal, that is simply your opinion, same for the porn projection. I disagree with both, but that is hardly a shock, given the overall negative responses to many of the real world architectural posts I put up in the Lounge all the time. My aesthetics vary greatly, apparently (and unsurprisingly, given my age and background differences) from a majority of posters (at least those who care to respond) here.

No biggie, we all like what we like.

[Scrivener7]

8. Yes. You are right. It is just a matter of preference and opinion.

As time goes by, I find myself leaning away from technology, rather than leaning into it, and I find that I am moving out of step with many aspects of our culture.

This might be one of those areas.

[Delphinus]

2. I feel

really, really, really old. This is something I just don't understand.

[Celerity]

3. Well, the metaverse is hardly new, it's been around for 2 decades plus. I grew up with it, literally

[eShirl]

5. we joined SL back in 2005

there were people that had already been there a couple years

[JCMach1]

9. Even farther, I would say. MMORPG's go back to the 1980's. Granted, early ones only had

rudimentary graphics.

Even earlier (pre-internet) with MUD's and FIDONET. There's a long history.