Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog



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Fark Garlicster Metafilter Plastic The Register SciFi Daily Sexblogs Slashdot Space.com The Smoking Gun Zeropaid [ CARTOONS ] Corrigan Children of the Atom Fiona Smyth Maakies MacKay MNFTIU.cc Secret Lair Smell of Steve [ VARIETY HOUR ] B3TA Hoogerbrugge Milk & Cookies Mumbleboy Onion Rathergood XE [ RERUNS ] [ 2005 ] JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST [ 2004 ] MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER [ 2002 ] [ 2003 ]	Monday, July 25, 2005 Online Persistent Suburbia "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." Gant flies, considers rental options. I tried Second Life after it was linked on boingboing the other night. Second Life is a persistent virtual world and would make a interesting "what not to do" case study for future machine overlords. All the pieces are there -- it's technically and visually brilliant -- but the system falls apart on values, organization and structure. Someone could write a book about what's wrong with the place. I'm going to use TRANSPORTATION to illustrate how and why this thing flops. In Second Life, transportation options are unlimited. You can walk, run, fly and if you want to get somewhere quickly, teleport. At first glance this may sound useful but it ignores an old truth: the journey is the fun, not the destination. Being able to fly and teleport takes the fun out of exploring. Because you can get anywhere you want without any effort, travelling loses its value and seeing the sights isn't interesting because it removes the feeling of reward. Placing limits on how avatars can travel by employing an hierarchy of travel methods would make the world much more interesting. Here's how a transportation hierarchy could look: BASIC (Free): Walk & Run MASS TRANSIT (small fare): Bus, Streetcar, Subway COMMUTER (larger fare): Train, Airplane, etc PRIVATE VEHICLE: limited only by cost of vehicle SUPER POWER: Flight The personal power of flight should only be available for those who have excelled in the world and earned it. That gives flight value. And the value is flight should be very, very high, available only to an elite few. A transportation network would solve some of Second Life's other problems. A transportation network requires infrastructure such as streets and stations where strangers meet in passing. If you're a newbie and want to meet others, what better place than on a train ride across town? Right now, people seldom meet in passing because they're flying around in a big, empty landscape and if confronted, can easily fly away. You're much mroe likely to talk to someone if you're sitting next to them on a train. The current configuration really only encourages meeting people through direct confrontation. But that's not how we meet people in real life, often we meet friends and acquaintances while engaged in activities. There often isn't a sudden, initial confrontation, typically we see them around the 'hood from time to time, get familiar with them and eventually meet. The lack of "wander and bump" is a large barrier for newbies. Sprawl is a big problem in Second Life. Because there are only two real challenges in Second life: make money or make friends, the world is skewed and the result is a place of mostly empty malls & flea markets with "For Rent" signs in the windows, casinos and -- the most popular establishments -- fetish dance clubs. Having a transportation hierarchy would curb the hellish sprawl. If transportation has value, building close to others becomes a priority and a more compact urban form would be the result. This is desirable because, again, it increases the opportunities for meeting others and would make the place feels less "empty". Here an example of a potential scenario that is ruined by the unlimited transporation. Say a player wants to create an eccentric, wise old avatar who lives in a remote cave on top of a mountain and doles out wisdom to those who visit. In the current system, you just fly up and over, check it out and yawn. But with a transportation hierarchy, it becomes a journey: you take a bus to the train, take the train out to the wilderness, rent a jeep to get into the interior and finally, climb the rest of the way. When you finally reach the wise old fool, there's a sense of accomplishment and the story of your journey, "And then, when we finally got there, it was just some naked idiot who wouldn't chat!". Imposing naturalistic limits on some other systems would also improve the world. One thing that would benefit from this Good & Evil. The set of Second Life laws impose good behaviour on everywhere and takes away the choice to do good or evil ... even 'God' give us that! And if there's no evil, is there still good? Instead of explicit rules, there should be a natural set of consequences for doing good or bad ... but that's a whole other post. One last thing: Avatar creation is GREAT (see my giant, Gant, at the top) and shouldn't be changed (except enhanced ... I would have liked an eyewear option). 3:10 PM , # , \|