A rebuttal to “Creating a Glitch In The Industry” by Christian Nutt
Also a sideline commentary to Chris Pirillo’s ignorance.
Why is it that every time some big-shot in technology suddenly thinks they’ve figured out the magical missing piece of online virtual environments, they invariably make an ass out of themselves in public? Just because Stewart Butterfield knows a thing or two about how to let you share photos online (Flickr) doesn’t make him qualified in any regard whatsoever to lecture about what makes a virtual environment system successful.
“Post-Flickr, Butterfield has moved forward with plans to launch Glitch, which he hopes will become a successful social online world in a way different from traditional MMOs”, says Christian Nutt, a reporter for Gamasutra.com, but he’s already managed to nosedive this plane into the ground as far as I can tell.
From Stewart Butterfield:
Second Life... Yeah, "was."
Yeah. Yeah, well... In both cases, I think, there wasn't enough game context. Well, there wasn't any game context to take off. I remember the first time I ever installed Second Life and sat down, I was like... First of all, it was super fucked up then. I mean, it was really buggy... That was probably 2003.
And actually at that time, there was kind of a buzz. There was Second Life, then there was There, and then the Sims Online was about to come out. We felt like that was like, not "social games" in today's sense, but there was going to be this era of social games, and all of them busted basically.
I think There [did] just because they spent too much money, because otherwise a lot of it had really nice polish and nice feel. When you were talking to someone, they had a great way of doing eye contact and spreading people out in a group, so it was a good social experience.
But again there wasn't any game there, and it was all about these brands. I don't want to go into a virtual world and look at Gap shit, American Eagle T-shirts... It's just... I don't know, it seems kind of gross.
I'm sure you could write a psychology thesis on it or something like that, but you can't really role-play in that context. If you have real world brands in front of you, you can't... You can't invent a persona because you can make yourself look different and you can fly and stuff like that. I don't know, it definitely breaks the magic circle. There's no real opportunity for playing.
The first thing I notice is that this guy swears about as much as a sailor, and the second thing I noticed was his shallow understanding of virtual environments based entirely on archaic and limited exposure to the systems he feels the need to write off.
Imagine if I were to criticize the feasibility of the World Wide Web and Internet today based on a limited experience I had from 1998. Doing so would ruin any chance I had professionally to embark on an Internet related venture, and the only reason I could possibly raise venture capital would be due to the investors being as ignorant on the subject as I was.
Of course it would be in his best interest to discount any other virtual environment to date, merely because he’s attempting to make his own called Glitch. However, based on his limited experience (which is about as robust as a goldfish in an ocean), coupled with his penchant for comparing the worthiness of technologies today based on his limited exposure nearly ten years ago, I can promise you that Glitch will crash and burn under that misguided attitude.
World of Warcraft is a game.
Glitch is a game (or will be).
Sims Online is (was) a game.
Final Fantasy XI Online is a game.
Second Life is not a game. When you log into a virtual environment system like Second Life, there is no pre-planned goals for you to follow like “Collect 100 Coins and Save the Princess”. The goal of Second Life is essentially whatever you want it to be, and that takes a bit of imagination on your part, because you aren’t exactly being spoon-fed pre-made storylines or goals like a game would gladly do for you.
Sure there exist games with pre-planned goals in Second Life, but those are simply part of the greater whole of the virtual environment much like the World Wide Web happens to have pornography and sites like Newgrounds.com to play games. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and this understanding apparently escapes Mr. Butterfield with deft precision usually reserved for Ninjas.
… and they’re holding Mr. Butterfield’s common sense hostage
Sandbox Virtual Environments are asynchronous interaction and creation. Unlike a “social game”, this type of virtual environment thrives entirely on the creations of the users, and not some multi-million dollar digital art studio (Square-Enix). Everything you see in a virtual environment like Second Life was created by the users of that environment, and therein is the power of a virtual environment over a mere “game”. There may exist some companies that specialize in game creation within Second Life (such as MadPea), but it’s an exception to the rule and still is dictated by the user generated content rule of thumb.
I’ve heard the same sorts of misguided criticisms of Second Life from Chris Pirillo (lockergnome) who went off on a tangent recently about Second Life and how it was essentially overrun by gambling and porn, and how he didn’t understand the point or “what to do” when he logged in back in 2007.
Meanwhile, one of the residents of Second Life ( @OliverSzondi ) reached out to Chris and offered to take him on a tour, which Chris accepted, and then streamed live while criticizing every aspect.
So here are two examples of high profile people recently talking about how Second Life is inferior, and how they simply “don’t get it”, and yet their experience with the system is under a handful of days and based on usage from many years ago which predispositions them with unfathomable bias. In the case of Chris Pirillo, we’re talking about a guy who immediately assumes since his experience with Second Life consists of a cursory glance that it can’t possibly be anything to do with him.
A word of advice, Mr. Pirillo – You are an avid user of the Internet and are a technology celebrity. The assertions and claims you make against Second Life are of the same merit as if somebody told you that the Internet is simply a wasteland overrun by pornography and gambling, and therefore should be discounted entirely. It is sweeping and wholly ignorant generalizations such as this which damage your credibility in the technology field and bring your ability to accurately assess the merits of technology under suspect.
You did not need a guided tour of Second Life to see the sights, Mr. Pirillo, you simply needed to click that Destination Guide button on the right side to see all of the interesting events and destinations. It’s one button to click, and it’s staring you in the face for the entire time you took the tour. Also, you took the time to adjust your graphics to minimum settings, yet it never occurred to you to uncheck “Autoplay Media”; therefore, it is by your own ignorance that every place you visit starts playing music, but not because the viewer is at fault.
I find it very interesting that you, Mr. Pirillo, chose to use Text to Speech to read off the text chat for you, but apparently it never occurred to you to turn on VoIP in the viewer to actually talk.
And therein is the point I’m making both in regards to people like Stewart Butterfield as well as Chris Pirillo. You simply cannot make an accurate assessment of a technology based on extremely limited exposure, and definitely not if that exposure was many years ago.
I'm sure you could write a psychology thesis on it or something like that, but you can't really role-play in that context. If you have real world brands in front of you, you can't... You can't invent a persona because you can make yourself look different and you can fly and stuff like that. I don't know, it definitely breaks the magic circle. There's no real opportunity for playing.
Again, I had to reiterate that last part of the quote from Stewart Butterfield because it outlines how substantially ignorant this man is on the subject, (Chris Pirillo obviously speaks for himself in the videos above… which is a shame because he really should have known to keep his mouth shut and apologize for being ill-informed and ignorant of the technology prior to talking about it)
Apparently Stewart Butterfield has never seen a RolePlaying Community in Second Life like INSILICO, and he has no concept of what the Second Life Destination Guide is about since his exposure to Second Life dates back to 2003 for a handful of hours. Clearly this man is not exactly a marketing genius if he is unable to understand the potential of incorporating the ability to allow real-world brands into the Virtual Environment as an offering.
Since there is no real opportunity for playing, as he asserts, then clearly MadPea Island and all of those games must be a figment of my imagination. I must have been a peyote licking lunatic (more than usual) when I was racing cars on a track, or enjoying the Craig Lyons concert yesterday night with Lindsay, because I was pretty damned entertained. Of course, multiplayer gaming such as this Bomberman game in Second Life must also not exist according to Mr. Butterfield.
The difference here is that Second Life is a creation of its participants, while games like Glitch will be a choose your own adventure with multiplayer. In this regard, virtual environments like Second Life (and generally any sandbox virtual environment) are vastly superior to any pre-chewed story line you could dream up.
Those who fail to “get” Second Life are the same people who have spent less than a week using the system. A word of advice for all technology professionals: If you have spent only a few hours in Second Life 4 – 8 years ago, you need to keep your mouth shut. Your ignorance on the subject is appalling at best.
I’m sure Mr. Butterfield will make an interesting game, but if I were to reliably forecast the fate of that game in ten years, it is highly likely to not exist or be in a state of smoldering digital wasteland.
The people who log into Second Life do not need uninspired, non-creative, ignorant people who are incapable of thinking for themselves or making their own destiny and story. While there are plenty of such people logged into Second Life already, it stands to reason that the level of willful ignorance displayed by individuals such as Chris Pirillo and Stewart Butterfield far surpass the average newbie of Second Life. How can we tell the difference?
They log in and ask somebody “How do I play this game?”
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