Is Second Life Dead as a Platform?

Samuel Bierwagen thinks so and makes a compelling cases as to why.

the failure of second life

In July of 2005, when I created my account, Second Life was the cool new thing. Moving between regions was kinda wonky, loading textures and objects was slow, and it was pretty ugly when compared to other games of the time; but it was generally assumed that these were teething issues, which would be quickly sorted out as new versions of the software were released.

In the meantime, the hardware and the networks have improved:

The processor's an easy six times faster, there's eight times as much memory, the internet pipe is 12 times wider, and the video card is, well, it's real quick.

and the results in Second Life?

Moving between regions is still kinda wonky, loading textures and objects is slow, and it's still pretty ugly... when compared to games made in 2005. Second Life has gained features, many of them, but it has improved not at all. Its problems are profound and architectural, and won't be solved by any minor patch, but rather, a complete redesign.

Bierwagen concludes,

Second Life as a game concept, sounds good, but was made with no thought of the fact that all the game assets are on the wrong side of a narrow, high-latency bus.

Second Life attempted to emulate Real Life in design. This was laudable, but misguided. Perhaps that's not the right word. Incorrect? Wrong? Colossally wrong?

It's been eight years, now, since Second Life launched. It hasn't come close to living up to its promise. My wild ass guess is that their asset servers will have sustain two hundred megabits a second to the customer in order to make Second Life even vaguely playable.[1] That's for SL's current, not great, graphics, nor a terribly inspiring draw distance, maybe 300 metres.

Not only would this require better internet service than pretty much anybody, outside of South Korea, has; it would take an absolutely massive investment in data centers all around the world. It only takes 40 megabits to stream high quality 1080p video. Sustaining five times that bandwidth, and maintaining consistency across all the caches would be a real trick.

I doubt Second Life will ever do it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Students and Second Life

This has to be a first. Students worried that learning might be too much fun.

Students Prefer Real Classroom to Virtual World

College students were given the chance to ditch a traditional classroom for an online virtual world. Fourteen out of fifteen declined.

When Catheryn Cheal, assistant vice president of e-learning and instructional support at Oakland University, was designing a course on learning in virtual worlds, she thought the best way to research the topic would be to immerse her class into one such world. Her thought was that the ‘motivating factors identified in games, such as challenge, curiosity, control, and identity presentation’ would help the course along.

The result: a course taught by using Second Life, an online environment.

While the interactive style could be fun, Ms. Cheal’s students worried they were having too much fun.


In her recently published study, ‘Student Perceptions of a Course Taught in Second Life,’ Ms. Cheal wrote that the 15 undergraduate students enrolled in the course raised concerns that too much ‘play’ in the assignments inhibited learning. The students also cited problems with the program’s slow speed and with challenges acclimating to virtual life.

Marketing Your Program in the Virtual World

Here's a really great marketing/promotional piece from San Diego State University. It's a Machinima (Machine+Cinema) created to promote their Educational Technology program. As Second Life and other virtual worlds become more mainstream, I think we're going to see more and more uses such as this. I have an ongoing discussion with our marketing department and our marketing users group (MUG) about starting to use some of these new - new to most - tools in marketing the college, courses, and programs. Among the tools we've discussed are Facebook and MySpace, Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogs, Podcasts, iTunesU, RSS, YouTube/GoogleVideo/TeacherTube/etc, and SecondLife. I think this video provides a great way of introducing these concepts on to your campuses and mine.

[via 2 Cents Worth]

Teaching History in Virtual Worlds

As part of a project I'm working on, we've purchased an island in Second Life and will be launching it later this summer for educational use. As I've started to discuss this with colleagues, I've found there are many who don't quite get it or have difficulty seeing the value of using virtual worlds in education. Here's something that may help. I received an announcement regarding this upcoming conference - entitled "Stepping into History: Exploring the Past through Virtual Worlds." The conference will be held entirely in Second Life on June 10, 2008. "In-World" attendance is limited to 60 participants; others may attend a virtual classroom simulcast.

The cost is $45 USD per person. Registration is available at the website: http://www.steppingintohistory.org

According to organizers:

The highly interactive experience will include "field trips" into historical locations that have been created in Second Life. We will explore 19th century America, where participants will meet Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Virtual Harlem, to hear live music from the Jazz Age/Harlem Renaissance; and Renaissance Island, for a Shakespearean play in a replica of London’s Globe Theatre. Everyone will discuss what they have experienced with simulation creators and other conference participants.

The conference will continue with a panel discussion with a variety of experts and a late afternoon photo workshop. The program concludes with a period ball at the Lincoln era White House.

Stepping into History in Virtual Worlds

What if instead of talking about history, we could experience it?

What if, instead of looking at photos or drawings of historical sites, we could walk into and through them?

What if, instead of reading the words of a Lincoln or a Ghandi, we could hear them speak?

The technology of virtual worlds is opening up a new universe of possibilities in promoting and teaching a love of history. The 'Stepping into History' conference is your chance to learn about, and experience for yourself, the power of virtual worlds at the service of history.

Video Tutorials

Video has become a really great tool for engaging students and teaching and learning in general. In fact, I've found a number of videos for my networking courses at YouTube and Google Video. Unfortunately, you often have to wade through a bunch of unrelated videos and videos that just don't work for teaching and learning. For example, a search for networking usually gives me videos related to Social Networking (MySpace, Facebook, etc). Fortunately, Mashable has posted a list of over twenty links to sites with tutorial videos.

3D Programs

• Blender Video Tutorials
• Greybeard’s Blender Tutorials
• SketchUp Tutorials
• VideoTutorialsRock.com

Aggregators

• Good-Tutorials.com
• Tutorial-Search.com
• Tutorialicio.us
• Tutorialized.com
• TutorialOutpost.com
• TutorialZone.org
• TutsBuzz.com
• VTutorial.com

Miscellaneous Video Tutorials

• GoToAndLearn.com
• iLife Tutorials
• IpodHowToVideo.com
• KillerPHP.com
• Second Life Tutorials

Multiple Programs Video Tutorials

• Lynda.com
• Tutvid.com
• Video-Animation.com
• Video-Tutes.com

Read more at 20+ Great Resources For Video Tutorials.

If you use any other sites, please post in the comments and I'll share with everyone.

An Educational Tour of Second Life

Second Life and other virtual worlds or MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) have been getting a lot of interest from academics. If you're considering using Second Life or want to learn more, here's a great slideshow - An Educational Tour Of Second Life - from Slideshare.

Jeff Han on Multi-Touch and SecondLife

MIT's Technology Review has a great 5-minute video of Jeff Han talking about his multi-touch screens and their potential to provide more natural interfaces to virtual worlds such as SecondLife. He describes it as swimming through the virtual world. Killer quote -

it's amazing the richness that they're [virtual worlds] trying to convey ... but it's frustrating that we're still trying to control that through the thin straw of a mouse and keyboard interface.