December 27, 2006
The popular MMO Second Life has been featured in a number of stories recently on GamePolitics and in the mainstream media.From the Mark Warner campaign stop to the establishment of a Second Life presence by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationn (NOAA), wherever you turn these days, it seems like SL is the place to be. A number of corporations, including big media like Reuters (SL screen shot at left), have also set up shop inside the game.
But an investigative blog piece at Corante questions whether the current buzz surrounding Second Life is real or a marketing creation. Author Clay Shirky wonders aloud whether game publisher Linden Labs has juiced the number of actual SL users:
If you like your magic tricks to stay mysterious, leave now, but if you want to understand how Linden has managed to disable the fact-checking apparatus of much of the US business press, turning them into a zombie army of unpaid flacks, read on...
Linden’s definition of Residents, however, has nothing to do with users at all — it measures signups for an avatar...
They reported adding their second million Residents between mid-October and December 14th, but they also reported just shy of 810 thousand logins for the same period. One million new Residents but only 810K logins leaves nearly 200K new Residents unaccounted for...
Like a push-up bra, Linden’s trick is as effective as it is because the press really, really wants to believe...
Shirky cites mainstream coverage of SL's supposed population in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Forbes and Fortune. Shirky's piece also appears on ValleyWag. For some additional perspective, check out the comments about Shirky's article on Terra Nova, a site which dissects MMO's in a serious way.
Comments
I play There.com for the simple fact it's more stable, no one chases you around with extra appendages, they don't give false statistics to the membership and the CEO actually cares about it's members and has interests that support people both in and out of the virtual world.
However i do agree that this "bra pushuppery" clouds the fact that SL is more like a slightly less sucky sims ripoff then any real means to advertise.
Better than SL anyday
"Two million users!" is to "810,000 logins" as push-up bra cleavage is to real breasts.
Anyway, I played SL for maybe a day or two and aside from the horrible slowness of textures loading (not my computer or connection's fault) it found it to be boring as hell....
Ladies underwear has never been my strong point.
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