My problem with Second Life...

We've spent a lot of time in class talking about Second Life (as you can also tell by perusing everyone's blogs), but something has been bothering me about my Second Life experiences and I'm still having some issues coming to grips with it.

I am by no means new to the whole 3-D environment from a game perspective - I've been playing 3-D video games for a long time, and the controls are very similar to the controls for Second Life. The closest games to Second Life that I've played, in terms of the environment and movement and fact that they're on-line and massively multiplayer (just like Second Life) are America's Army (which I think no longer exists, but was developed by the US Army), World of Warcraft (which I think everyone should have heard of by now), and City of Heroes (or City of Villains, depending on your preference for good vs. evil). I think that what overcame some of the limitations of the 3-D environment, which I'll get into below, in those three games is the mechanism in place for progressing. Your characters, in-game, would have levels and goals that you have to reach to achieve them. Those goals are progressively more difficult as you gain higher levels, but they give you a sense of purpose and that's probably what keeps players of those games coming back. For example, every expansion for World of Warcraft has lifted the maximum attainable level for characters in the game, and many of the higher levels are only obtainable by interacting with other characters in game.

However, in Second Life, I don't get that feeling of purpose. I only get a 3-D environment projected onto a 2-D screen, and I interact with that environment using a keyboard and mouse, just like in the video games. However, I think that since SL lacks any real goals to attain (outside of Orientation Island), the controls feel kind of bland. What I think would really set it apart and make it a more of an immersive experience would be if Linden Labs started to develop some real 3-D interaction. There are devices out there now that are in the early stages that Linden could look at and maybe adapt. 3-D controllers like the Novint Falcon are bringing and almost physical sense of interaction and they'll only get better (I'm think maybe a glove-style controller that we've seen in movies and such to interact with 3-D environments on screen). That would be a start. The other track to take would be to give me a real 3-D environment. If I turn my head, I don't want to see the wall of my office, I want to see the wall next to me in SL. There are glasses on the market that will project the screen in front of you such as those from i-o Display Systems, but I'm thinking more along the lines of the helmet from Blue Thunder (yes, I said Blue Thunder) - the image in the pilot's helmet (not to mention the gun mounted on the front of the helicopter) moved as the pilot's head moved, so why not something like that for full immersion into a game space like Second Life? 3-D controllers like the Wiimote for the Nintendo Wii are already measuring how the controller moves through space in three dimensions, but again, it's plotting that movement on a 2-D medium.

If Linden Labs is not going to turn Second Life into a video game experience (and why would they??), then they probably should be investigating how to make Second Life more like a real virtual reality and not one that we are two-finger typing our way through. Live audio chat is a good start (giving the feeling of having a normal conversation), but the next steps in virtual reality are where Linden could really shine (and charging for the peripherals wouldn't be bad for their bottom line, either...).

Just my $.02...

Jim