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Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale | |||
Introduction
One
of the very first sessions kicking off the 2006 Game Developers
Conference was a keynote for the Serious Games Summit, which deals with
game development in the areas of education, government, health,
military, science, and corporate training. In it, Linden Lab CEO Philip
Rosedale, in a talk named 'You Can (Not) Be Serious' offered some
fascinating opinions, both on the future of virtual worlds and the way
in which his own company's efforts are helping to stretch boundaries.
Firstly, however, Serious Games Summit chair Ben Sawyer introduced
Rosedale, noting that there are over 100 different research-oriented
projects within Second Life,
and indicating that it could be an interesting future. Linden's CEO
started with a Ted Turner quotation of no little piquancy: "Life is a
game. Money is how we keep score", before moving on to some interesting
introductory remarks on how he came to found Second Life.
Rosedale noted that he had a background in physics, rather than
necessarily wanting to make games, and had a major interest in
simulating real life. He noted: "Games can be seen as constrained
simulations with goals", and continued: "How do we use computers to
create a digital simulation of the world?" He suggested that his Linden
background was the idea of simulation, and the overall concept: "As
people, we can imagine the world to be a lot better... than it actually
is."
Second Life - From Top To Bottom
The Linden CEO then ran over the basics of Second Life,
explaining that the virtual world sought to link a large amount of
computers (now around 2000) to create a physical world in which you can
be immersed, and "strove to control a sort of digital atomic system" -
small solids glued together to make physical objects. Over the top,
scripting languages allow you to automate in-game behavior. As an
example of technology being adopted in intelligent ways, Rosedale
pointed out that the technology to build kites has been in Second Life
for a year and a half, but people have just worked out how to make a
kite (something that the Linden staff hadn't even considered!) in the
last couple of weeks.
A number of interesting stats for the virtual world were then rolled out. At 32,000 acres, the current virtual size of Second Life,
which has more than 160,000 users, is bigger than Boston. The service
currently carries more than $5 million dollars per month in goods and
service transactions, and there are 10 million in-game objects,
including 15 terabytes of user-created data. The game uses 2 teraflops
of CPU power for the simulation, and 230,000 discrete, differently
named objects are sold or traded monthly. Some of the other major stats
noted during the presentation - 43% of all users in Second Life are female, with a median age of all Second Life users of 32, and 25% of all users are international.
Interestingly, Rosedale suggested that a certain level of consumers in
terms of population is really necessary to have any virtual world
thrive, noting that a lot of virtual games picked on "your favorite
brand world" can fail, and there's a "certain critical mass that you
need to make things like that take off". Since Linden opened up Second Life so that members can join for free, though renting land still requires a monthly payment, membership has thrived.
One of the most interesting slides Rosedale projected on screen during
this time was on the growth in users with profitable businesses. But
most interesting, almost as many users as who make money each month
lose money, showing that the virtual economy is shaking out in ways
reflective of the real-world economy - not all merchants are winners!
Second Life Vignettes
In the next, more abstract section, Rosedale presented a number of concepts that he called 'vignettes' from Second Life,
demonstrating several ways that the serious game community might be
able to leverage the massive virtual world. The first of these was 'The
Memory Palace', which he explained thus: if you were trying to recall
the latest three files accessed in your 'My Documents' directory, you
probably can't remember them, but you can remember a list of the items
in your kitchen, most likely. This is because you've been building a
space in your mind three dimensionally, and storing information in it.
Thus as people are able to build areas in Second Life, they can create unique context that people can remember - as a memory tool, there's synergy there.
The next vignette was 'Virtual Work', and Rosedale touched on the "tremendous challenge associated with management", noting that Second Life
was a fascinating social environment in which to manage other humans.
The skills of management in virtual worlds, which are comparable to
real life, present great learning opportunities for anyone working in Second Life - a possibly positive educational resource.
In addition, the Linden CEO looked at the avatars that people give themselves in Second Life,
initially commenting: "We have often said that they give you an ability
to run away from your identity", but noting that, in his opinion,
that's not actually true. The idea that you can invest a lot of
yourself into your virtual character means that you are "...more likely
to express yourself more deeply with others in virtual world", it was
suggested - what you choose to look like means actually more, and this
is a good trap, since it pulls expression out of us.
'Serious' Applications For Virtual Worlds
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Second Life | |||
In
his final section, Rosedale turned to some examples of educational,
training or other practical 'serious games'-related subjects. In
particular, he looked at the simulation projects started by Dartmouth
College to work out distribution of medical materials in crisis. This
involved modeling a plane and trucks in Second Life, and
simulating pulling up in a truck and distributing material from the
plane to work out logistics. Another real-world example that came up
later was a company that specialized in tank leak detection at gasoline
stations, and trained people by having them walk around in Second Life
in a model of the gas stations, being able to see under the ground to
understand the architecture of the underground gas pipes.
In addition, the concept of movie making in Second Life
was discussed, with Rosedale pointing out that open systems afford the
ability to do some sort of theatrics. Apparently, a Linden employee
hired people in-world to build sets and serve as extras and serve in
the film. Classes and schools in Second Life are also rapidly
increasing, with 17 classes this semester, including ones in
architecture, urban planning, anthropology - the world even has an
ethics policy, given the increasing complexity of interactions in the
world.
Therapeutic uses for the world were also mentioned, including a Second Life
island for adults with Asperger's syndrome, who can then experiment
with interacting with each other. According to Rosedale, the people in
program reported that they were better able to overcome their fears of
connecting to other humans in game, and were also able, in some cases,
to translate that skill to the real world.
The final
application focused on by Rosedale was charity giving, since in-game
microcurrency meant it was easy to give somebody a dollar. The
referenced example was the American Cancer Society, who had a charity
walkathon, and raised a per capita amount of money, in a short period
of time, comparable to what they would make in small American town over
several months.
Virtual Question Time
The entire session ended with a question and answer session, which
actually brought some intriguing questions about the complex online
world that is Second Life.
The first question was simply whether there is crime in the virtual
world, to which Rosedale replied: "Yes, but not in a game-like sense".
He did mention that there is fraud in-game, for example: "Buy this land
because there's going to be a shopping center next to it", a concept
that drew mirth from the audience.
The real-world tax implications of Second Life
also came up, with Rosedale noting that the selling and buying of
in-game items was indeed a "taxable event" as an individual - but many
of the other concepts, including the idea of property tax levied by
real-life governments, were very much not discussed and untried right
now.
In ending, Rosedale mentioned the official website for those interested in using Second Life for 'serious game' purposes, http://secondlife.com/education
- but the most effective conclusion to his talk was actually something
discussed early on, when the Linden CEO, very much in 'visionary' mode,
suggested that "New mediums are always used for entertainment first",
something he suggested was true of TV, instant messenging, email, as
well. He hoped that Linden Lab would be known for the fact that, in
developing its technology, it had "the intuition that fun is first" -
and as a SGS keynote, Rosedale's well-crafted lecture was certainly
fun.
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