I keep reading this in different places: "Second Life might not be the 3D Internet everyone keeps talking about; if they're not careful, a better competitor will come along." Can this be true? We've got an MMO Watch here at SLI that announces new virtual worlds as they're created, but so far, they all fall short of the supposed ideal 'SL Killer' -- a space that allows users not only to interact, but create whatever they want. That's the one big advantage over all other MMOs that SL currently enjoys.
I suppose it's possible that someone out there is working on this exact thing, but there's a reason there aren't a ton of others already in existence: it's hard to do what LL has already done, and the people who are attracted to this sort of endeavor are already here in SL. Those who have invested time and money into their residency are committed to the platform. What would make them leave?
What would an SL-beater look like? Better, more refined graphics, a la Sony's Home? Well, that sort of power comes with its own price. It's limited to the Playstation 3, the creation aspect seems negligible, and it's commerce-driven; you can rest assured you'll see lots of advertising for PS3 games at the very least.
Would it win over SL in lag-free, crash-proof operation? Any MMO that allows realtime server-side creation opens itself up to the rigors of the Internet, with packet loss and latency issues same as any other server farm anywhere in the world.
Would it be free from the abuses of griefers? That's a human-side issue; griefing will always exist, no matter what the platform. It's simply what a certain type of person feels the need to do.
So, given those points, who could possibly be out there ready to assume the mantle of 3D Internet? Who could catch up to, and surpass the massive lead that SL maintains? Working with the same limitations that LL endures with regards to hardware and software, who can beat Second Life?
1.
The SL Killer or Web 3.0 (4.0 or whatever) will most likely be a distributed application. Assuming that SL will be Web 3.0 is as likely as thinking that the whole internet will be hosted with one provider.
I expect (sooner or later) to see something akin to the Apache Web Server, so your sim will run at home or on an internet providers cpu farm. I expect a standard for communication and data (like now HTML), but as long as it's not an open system (RFC or ANSI based), it won't be anything more 3D-Internet than Microsoft's MSN Service or AOL *is* the 2D internet.
Does anyone remember CompuServe? They were the big boys (togeteher with AOL) in the good old times, but they were proprietary and just got plowed under when the open internet came.
Posted at 11:51AM on Apr 18th 2007 by Markus