second life (2): get rid of the game designers

I suspect that most of the developers that work at Second Life have a background in games. Which is problem because SL is currently too gamer. In game design, you can't make things too easy otherwise you lose the players. There is an optimal level of difficulty and it is not zero. Except that for SL it should be zero - if it wants to attract non-gamers (i.e. me).

I am tired of bumping into walls. I am tired of not knowing how to get off the freakin' beginners' island. Stop making me play a game you *****. STOP IT!!!

second life (1): learning in context

So I was having a coffee with the ever-engaging Anne Bartlett-Bragg and we were talking about Second Life. Neither of us are fans (bah humbug) but ABB outlined an interesting experience she had whilst teaching a bunch tradespeople to be trainers. She tried her damnest to pitch the Web 2.0 stuff (blogs, wikis, tagging, etc) and got a big yawn. So she showed them SL and they loved it. What they used it for was quite specific.

The motor mechanics and hairdressers didn't want SL to teach their apprentices how to strip down an engine or apply highlights. You can only do that with real hair or a real engine. Instead it would allow them to teach customer interaction skills with real people in an environment with visual cues. Because the people are real (enough).

virtual worlds (2): damned lies

I love data & statistics so I was mightly pleased to find this article in The Economist. Marvel at the lovely feats visual rhetoric created by Florence Nightingale & co. While I think that virtual worlds have some utility for training (where the skills being taught are primarily concerned with information manipulation), I think the real action is in visualising things you can't find in the real world. If we will indeed be Competing on Analytics more and more in the future then we will need robust ways of understanding this data. Most people are more comfortable with pictures as opposed to numbers so visualisation tools will be critical.

virtual worlds (1): lessons from poker

I'm a bit wary about virtual worlds. Over the festive season, I spent a few hours playing online poker and it reminded me that: (a) I'm not a very good poker player & (b) You don't necessarily want a faithful reproduction of the real world in cyberspace.

Lets focus on issue (b) for now. When you play online, you get a little avatar (in my case, a hillbilly with a plaid shirt and a trucker's cap). However my avatar did not exhibit any shaking, sweating or indeed any behaviour to find him in Mike Caro's book of poker tells. And that suited me just fine. The basic transfer of information in poker is through betting - the amount bet and the speed with which that bet is placed..

Would I want an avatar that gave too much away?

The other point to make is that while online poker is conceptually the same as playing in room full of sweating card sharks, they are different experiences. Not least in the "tells" department.