Second Life Education Research

Before reading this post be sure to read the posts by Henry Jenkins and Clay Shirky (Beth Coleman is weighing on this as well but her post wasn’t up when I read, still not up as of 2/1). Jenkins, Shirky, and Coleman plan to have a conversation regarding Second Life via their blogs over the next week. This is exactly the kind of dialog that needs to happen as we reach a critical moment in virtual world adoption. I’ve posted responses to Mr. Shirky’s opinions before which he graciously responded to. This new round of discussion is fascinating so I’m weighing in here on my own.

First, a fair attempt at summarizing the main points of Jenkins and Shirky in this latest round.
Jenkins:

1. The population numbers of SL are probably inflated but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. As Jenkins puts it: “Second Life isn’t interesting to me because of how many people go there; it’s interesting because of what they do when they get there.”

2. SL functions as an extended sort of carnival. Notable because it does last more than a few days and because serious businesses are starting to see the benefits of taking a role in the party.

3. SL is important as an artifact of participatory media. Whether SL lasts or not, the model will influence future attempts.

Shirky:

1. The SL population numbers are inflated which has caused (or was caused by) inaccurate media hype. The real user base is much smaller and therefor less revolutionary than is currently believed.

2. The great majority of people who try SL don’t like it and don’t stay. This is a significant argument against the suggestion that SL is a web 3.0 model.

3. SL is not an MMORPG and shouldn’t be lumped in with WoW and others to add to its credibility. SL can’t claim to be not a game and then try to benefit from the success of games. We can’t have it both ways.

4. SL is not the future of immersive worlds or VR.

Of course, both Jenkins and Shirky have written much more complex arguments than these summaries can cover but I think it’s important to boil the arguments down to see what’s really being discussed. I would like to suggest that this is two very different arguments which I hope both writers will address in the coming week as the dialog continues. Meanwhile I see two threads common in both response…
Population
I’m concerned by the disparity between the reported number of accounts and the actual logged-in users. Though I support SL and hope for its success, I want an honest picture of how the environment is progressing. Sure it’s nice to claim 2 million users but boasting inaccurate numbers does nothing to benefit the future of the project. I’m left wondering why so many people sign up and leave to never return. I also wonder how the retention rate of SL compares with other technologies. Unlike ten years ago when choices were limited, there is a plethora of virtual spaces to inhabit today. Are retention rates for all virtual environments going to be slightly lower thanks to competition? Most of all, I want to know why people try SL and why they leave SL. Is the hype giving off the wrong impression of what the space is like? Are the hardware requirements prohibitive? Do people lack the drive to decide for themselves how to use the environment? We need more info here. Not just more accurate numbers but reactions from users.
SL as participatory media:
This is one area where I hope all parties can agree. User-created content at SL’s level is a new trend. Whether users really make money or not is another issue that I won’t deal with. However, the ability to make the environment into whatever a particular user desires is a revolutionary concept that will certainly have long lasting impacts. To view this another way, however, I think it’s important to see this kind of participatory media as result long in the making. Comparing SL to Wikipedia shows us that there are few substantial differences in the model of content creation. Though SL is visual and the objects created are owned by the creator rather than the collective, it’s easy to see that the ability to create content on an individual level and have that creation effect the whole (the SL environment, economy, culture etc) is a similar process to contributing one’s knowledge to Wikipedia or another public collective project. As Cisco has so cleverly stated it “We > me.” The collective or distributed model of content creation will win out in the end. Top-down methods of media like today’s MMORPG will go to the wayside when open source code for spaces like SL is in the hands of the many creative minds connected to the web. I predict not the downfall of SL, not an amazing success for Linden, but a huge shift to user created content on a scale we haven’t seen in a visually immersive environment.
Most importantly, this kind of discussion signifies that virtual environments like SL are worthy of discussion and worthy of study. It’s nice to see some of today’s great minds putting in the effort to understand the SL phenomenon.
Stay tuned for more!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.