1. this is pretty much parallel with the game vs. platform aruments, except describing the people rather than the sl world itself makes a big difference. because it's different for everyone, sl will change depending on who's doing the talking. so game or platform is moot. it's what you get out of it: immersion or augmentation, and no one can rightfully argue with you.

Posted at 6:31PM on Sep 25th 2006 by parker mcteague

2. I tend to go both ways, as needed by context. My relationship with Danielle is, of course, strictly immersionist in nature, but I have no problem with bringing in RL details to flesh things out. I approve of connections between RL and SL in general, and think that's the migration path by which SL will become or lead to a true Metaverse. But yes, there will always be room for hardcore immersionist enclaves (not all of which are like the Goreans...the Starfleet Command SLQ folks on Galaxy also get pretty immersionist).

Posted at 4:12PM on Sep 25th 2006 by Erbo Evans

3. Actually, I always go for 'RP' realms for other games. I don't want to listen to l33t-speak or the latest football game or someone's views on tacos when I'm playing a game.

But SL isn't a game... So I don't particularly care; there's areas for everything.

Except roleplay! I'd love to find some roleplay realms. Right now, there's a tiny few of places, and new things like Mtv's island, which have rules and such, but who wants to roleplay a vapid Mtv viewer?

It'd be a great thing to have more tools available to roleplay groups. I've had alot of fun in freeform and coordinated roleplay on MU*s in the past.

(...And when is your comment system going to do something like give me a dern cookie or remember my IP so I don't have to play pong with your email service?)

Posted at 5:40PM on Sep 25th 2006 by Crissa

4. A very limited and not helpful dichotomony, because it overlooks that for many, many MANY people (most?) -- and the increasily large networks of people coming into SL through other existing social networks -- SL is about socializing, and usually about finding a mate or a set of very close online friends. That means it has a smattering of RP as people dress themselves up to look better than their RLs, though they don't necessarily run off and go Gor, vampire, or Sith -- they just get bigger boobs or tats and pecs. Then they proceed to socialize -- they are merely augmenting their RL and in fact often take the relationship into RL in some fashion, either by meeting in RL, or at least having the relationships take up a great deal of their RL day, usually in the evenings after work instead of going out to socialize in RL.

So it's those in these very deep and intertwined interstices of immersion/augmentation that are going to determine its future through sheer numbers. You wish the Lindens would pay more attention to this and stop pitching to geeky shooter gamesters, on the one hand, and university librarians, on the other.

Oh, unless you thought only those doing business as PR flaks get to be called "augmenters" because they view SL as merely another technology. But hey, you don't get to define the use of technology as only its business use, when it will have social and entertainment use for many people, too.

Posted at 9:24PM on Sep 25th 2006 by Prokofy Neva

5. For anyone interested, I'll be hosting an in-world open roundtable discussion of the "Immersionist/Augmentationist" debate next Monday, October 9, at 6:00 PM (SLT) at the Aztecha Sky Temple. Everyone is welcome to participate, and all points of view will be heard.

Details: http://secondlife.com/events/event.php?id=310203&date=1160442000

Posted at 5:47PM on Oct 3rd 2006 by Zebediah Godwin

6. The chat log of the discussion on "immersion vs augmentation" is available at :

http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2006/10/immersion_versu.html

Thanks, Zebediah for hosting this very provocative discussion!

Posted at 11:46AM on Oct 10th 2006 by Rik Riel