Second Life, Games, and Virtual Worlds
Clay Shirky, a well-known author on things internet, in his post “Second Life, Games, and Virtual Worlds,” asks:
will Second Life become a platform for a significant online population? And, second, what can Second Life tell us about the future of virtual worlds generally?
It is the second question that connects to our upcoming readings on virtual reality. Shirky states:
With that said, I don’t believe that “virtual worlds” describes a coherent category, or, put another way, the group of things lumped together as virtual worlds have such variable implementations and user adoption rates that they are not well described as a single conceptual group.
Shirky goes on to note the differences between games and other virtual worlds, asserting that it will be some time before technology can advance enough to make those other worlds as popular as games, to enable them “re-create the full sense of being in someone’s presence in a mediated environment.”
As we blog and create our websites, we should be asking ourselves how the design and environment of our blogs and websites mediate communication and interaction among us and others.
