Dove Lane

I disagree, however, with the assessment that SL is a “barren wasteland” or dying. What is dying is the hype that generated a lot of curious one-time visitors last year. Only people who are inexperienced in virtual worlds would measure their effectiveness on the amount of traffic. That is the equivalent of counting page hits on a web site. No one can experience the potential of virtual worlds by dropping in once or twice for two hours and assuming they have seen enough.

Today my little avatar went to a strange location in Second Life to take a “class” on scripting from someone I have never met before and know nothing about. The attendees where there for different reasons, but when we completed our task at the end, we were exhilarated! Learning by doing is definitely the best way.

The National Academy of Engineering has declared “enhance virtual worlds” as on of the top challenges of the 21st century. This is getting serious!

Yesterday I attended a virtual presentation in Second Life hosted by Metanomics. It was one of those bizarre, amazing and wonderful experiences that sometimes just happen. I was sitting in my real life office, watching my avatar in Second Life sitting in an audience of about 50 avatars watching the Emory attendees in real time watch us watching them! It was an amazing and relevant experience.

Do we really need deep interpretations of games? I don’t debate that many game developers are well educated and are aware of myths, legends, and the literature and competitors relevant to their work. I simply don’t think it’s meaningful in any way for academics to ascribe deep meanings to stories and characters that, for the most part, are based on earlier myths and legends that were meaningful to people. This article gave me a good laugh.