Kotaku
MIT smart-guy and gamer PhD Henry Jenkins carefully waded into the whole Second Life issue last week.
While his insights are, as always, laser-sharp, I wish he hadn't based so much of them around tearing down the arguments made by cyber-pundit Clay Shirky and his critique of the multiverse.
In a nutshell, Jenkins points out that numbers aren't the most important thing when it comes to judging the importance and influence of a game and it's cultural impact.
I certainly agree that we should be concerned if the press's interest in Second Life is fueled by inflated numbers but I also recognize that these numbers give only a partial indication of the level and kinds of investments people make in these worlds, that Second Life may have cultural importance even for people who have never been there because it embodies a particular model of civic participation and cultural production.
Jenkins goes on to say that while he doesn't think the game represents the future of multiplayer gaming, or the future of virtual worlds, he does see it as a small step forward in the the great evolution of participatory culture.
Jenkins makes some fair points about Shirky's conclusion that Second Life, in the grand scheme of thing, is one big rounding error and helps to put the whole thing in perspective with this wonderful wrap-up:
By those criteria, the Renaissance and the Age of Reason were less than rounding errors since the key innovations occurred among a much smaller number of artists and thinkers. This is to subscribe to a quantitative model of history which simply doesn't reflect the reality of how cultural innovation occurs. A small community of people can generate an enormously rich culture and can have a transforming impact on society as a whole. I am not saying SL has achieved this yet — and indeed, it may never live up to that potential — but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that the importance of SL has squat to do with such statistical measures — though what those measures have to say about its market value may be another value.I respect what Shirky is doing here in questioning the numbers. I just want to push us to ask deeper questions about the criteria we use to measure the value of Second Life.
As I wrote last time, "Second Life isn't interesting to me because of how many people go there; it's interesting because of what they do when they get there."
While I agree entirely with Jenkins' points, from a philospohical point of view, I still think that those numbers, that population and the possible bloating going on is of utmost interest to all of those companies out there looking for hard numbers to decide whether to invest in Second Life be creating a virtual presence.
I think what Jenkins forgets is that this particular revolution, if it is indeed one, is being fueled in many ways by commerce and those hard numbers he so roundly dismisses.
Second Life is most certainly a success as a study in culture and virtual interaction, but is it a financial success and how important is that to Linden Labs. I think what we are seeing here, perhaps, is a classic struggle between art and commerce.
A Second Look at Second Life [Henry Jenkins]
