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That is not the real problem. The real problem with virtual worlds is fun. Or lack thereof. Virtual worlds are not entertainment media. There are entertainments within them, but the worlds themselves are neutral. That's true of Decentraland, Second Life, Sominium Space, and even VRchat. You have to make your own fun. Or find some place where someone else has made something fun. The world itself is completely indifferent to you. It's not like playing a game, where the game forces you to do something immediately. It's like arriving in a new city on a bus and being dropped off at the big bus station. (Second Life's Social Island 10 is the Port Authority Bus Terminal of Second Life.) This completely throws many new users. They want to be entertained, or told what to do. If your idea of a good time is being given access to a good workshop, Second Life can be very satisfying. Minecraft players do fine in SL. FPS gamers, not so much. If you're not very creative, it can be extremely frustrating. A majority of the population is not that creative. Second Life has a social scene, and until you figure the place out, you're on the outside looking in. This drives many new users nuts. Some try being annoying. Then they discover the hard way how Second Life handles that. They get banned from a club by the club owner. They find that some clubs share ban lists, and now they're locked out of multiple venues. Anyone can ban anyone from their land for any reason, and Linden Lab will not interfere. Linden Lab itself does do some rule enforcement, but you have to file a complaint and wait a few days until the tiny Governance unit gets around to it. This is for situations where you'd call the cops in real life. There's no outsourced army of minimum wage moderators armed with ban hammers. It's all social pressure. You can get a vehicle and just drive around. You'll pass houses, stores, gas stations, art galleries, coffee shops, farms, malls, vacant lots... Just like real life. It turns out that if you let people build, mostly they build familiar stuff. There are castles, fantasy areas and space stations, but mostly, people replicate suburban America. Much of Second Life is rather banal. Linden Lab decided to build an island of unfurnished suburban houses with nice landscaping and rent them out, for people who wanted a pre-built lifestyle. After five expansions, there are now over 60,000 of those, with each user paying about US$100/year. People have parties, BBQs, and other suburban stuff. Really. The technology is not the problem. Figuring out what to do once you have the technology is the problem. |