I'm sorry to bring this up, but I think it is still perfectly valid to ask why SecondLife is getting tihs kind of coverage. Yes, I understand that games are available through it and people do some creative things there. If you look at that criteria, though, you'll see that there are LOTS of services (which is what I think of SecondLife as, not a MMO game) that qualify.
Everyone from AOL, Yahoo, and MSN through to Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest have games available that they serve as a portal for. This does not mean, though, that I would expect to see the latest news about the new CEO for Yahoo posted on Kotaku. In this case, we have a company who provides a portal where some people game and many do social networking who has purchased two vendors of virtual accessories. I enjoy Kotaku a lot and have read for years; I just can't see how stories like this serve the gaming community that is your audience.
I'm not here to hate without explanation, I just feel like there needs to be some understanding or at least some clarification of what qualifies as "gaming news."
@Orwellian: It's getting coverage because, like it or not, there is a future possibility that Second Life's engine will end up being built upon by game developers to give you your next Doom/Quake/Starcraft/WoW/Half-Life/Flight Simulator.
It may not look like it'll happen now, but Linden Lab and the open source community are working toward a future where it can.
@saturday.citrus: More or less, yeah. Which means that with amazing DIY world creation and avatar customization, you get both the pinnacle of creativity and the worst and most deplorable bits of the Internet all in one package.
01/21/09
01/21/09
Everyone from AOL, Yahoo, and MSN through to Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest have games available that they serve as a portal for. This does not mean, though, that I would expect to see the latest news about the new CEO for Yahoo posted on Kotaku. In this case, we have a company who provides a portal where some people game and many do social networking who has purchased two vendors of virtual accessories. I enjoy Kotaku a lot and have read for years; I just can't see how stories like this serve the gaming community that is your audience.
I'm not here to hate without explanation, I just feel like there needs to be some understanding or at least some clarification of what qualifies as "gaming news."
01/21/09
It may not look like it'll happen now, but Linden Lab and the open source community are working toward a future where it can.
01/21/09
01/21/09
01/21/09
"Hey, what happens when you allow maximum creativity in a collaborative, open environment?"
"The best of everything and the worst of everything."
"...oh."
That's just how things go. If you wanted only the best, Second Life would have to be a restrictive, and thus uncreative world.