The Revolution Will Be In Another Life
In a recently slashdoted article, there was a discussion of how MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) will take over the world.
Now as I've recently mentioned, I've fell in love with the word of Second Life which could technically be the MMORPG without a hard RP part. Or even really the G part. It's a completely free form environment for everything. I've seen it used as a chat environment, a decent 3d modeling environment, a shopping mall, a wedding location, a casino, a night club, and the list just goes on. And this is just what I've seen and heard of in the week I've been on it. People are already making a living working on Second Life because of the exchange rate. This is exactly what the article was talking about, but it was glossed over for the bomb that was the Sims Online.
On IT Conversations, Will Wright, the man who invented the Sims and Sims Online spent almost half the time in the questions section attempting to explain why didn't the Sims Online do anything like what Second Life has been doing. It boiled down to that the Sims Online didn't make it free form enough and it didn't promote user interaction as much as it should have.
All that Linden Labs needs to do to get everyone into Second Life is make Second Life the last part of the article that hasn't come about in it yet. That would be making the world the interconnection between all the other MMORPGs. They have the technology to simulate everyone's avatars and move them around in an intelligent way. Even now, the different parts of the world live on different servers. They'd just have to compromise on a protocol for sending the avatar information back and forth.
At the moment, that plan would be pretty much a pipe dream. But if it does come true, Second Life would be the revolution that would not be televised. With the increases in the number of people who are playing MMORPGs and the current advancements in immersion technology, we are approaching the Meta-Verse. And I like that.
TC Out
