Second Life: Right idea, wrong time?

Apr 1, 2009 by Dirk Singer

In yesterday’s post I wrote about an idea that was once ahead of its time (mobile newspapers via a former client Mobizines) but which now has come of age thanks to dedicated iPhone applications. I wonder if the same ‘right idea, wrong time’ principle could also apply to some virtual worlds, in particular Second Life.

To recap: Two years ago Second Life was the name on every marketing manager’s lips with a stampede of companies rushing in to build their own ‘islands’ and create brand experiences…which by and large elicited a collective shrug of the shoulders from the residents.

Despite the odd scandal and talk of how it could benefit from the recession (virtual nights out are cheaper than real ones etc), Second Life has, compared to the acres of coverage it once received, been by and large invisible to the public eye over the past year. So, I was interested when my colleague Russell forwarded me this piece in the Telegraph asking whether Second Life is on its last legs.

I won’t rehash the arguments in the article here except to say it contains the usual themes of ‘it’s all about sex’ (didn’t people once say that about the Internet as a whole?), people who go on there have no social skills (as opposed to people who just sit glued to the TV all night?) and the numbers are low with only 580k human beings using it (depends of course on your perspective but I agree, it’s woefully underperformed).

With the knives being well and truly out in some quarters for Second Life, the article made me think of that oft quoted Gartner report two years ago which said that by 2012, virtual worlds will be mainstream…just maybe not the virtual worlds that are around today. In other words, the individual applications might have been failures but the overall principle of people wanting to spend time in a 3D ‘world’ is still sound – the time just wasn’t right.

Virtual medical schools

In fact, as a point of balance to the Telegraph piece, this article from the CNN website points to some of the potential that virtual worlds hold. Imperial College in London has built a virtual hospital in the much maligned Second Life, for third year med students. The idea is that the students get more from learning in a virtual world, than sitting through a lecture or reading course notes.

And according to College lecturers, the idea is that eventually medical students here in London will be able to use their virtual hospital as a forum to learn alongside their peers from North America, Japan and Australia.

Using virtual worlds as a way to teach people to save lives? Seems to me that whatever happens to this or that individual platform, that is both a need and a benefit that’s not going to go away anytime soon.

Image – Second Life by Bettina Tizzy

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