SecondLife Seasons

These are the times that tries avatar's souls.

Summer (for most Secondlife residents.) takes many of us outside. We breathe the warm air, swim, walk and rejuvenate and our Firstworld friends gobble up more of our time. Many SL'ers question "why am I in a digital world" and that thought coupled with the multitude of Secondlife repelling forces make us who remain wondering, "Should I sort my inventory?"

If you perform you'll notice your July and August patrons are so much less it makes you worry about your own relevance. Putting together a cast and having them show up has increased difficulties and tensions for the producers and directors.

Tossed into these 'summer doldrums," are other movements playing in the background. You may have noticed "The Rezzables" have pulled out of SecondLife. Well, they left a sim, Greenies, as if an explorer discovered the New World ( a world not so far away as the moon but more like the discovery of the Western Hemisphere) and having built an outpost there, of reasonable size, decided to pack everything up and leave. Behind, they left a marker, a used candy wrapper , hoping that would be enough to have future travelers follow them to find their new civilization.

I've been to "Heritage-Key". It is far more rudimentary then SL was 4 years ago. It has crashes, avatar fright and of course blonds cannot be found. But most important, it's a closed world. An island without pretty girls and handsome men. An island without pina coladas. Already their candy wrapper in SecondLife has blown behind a rock and is decomposing.

Rezzables is no different then many other corporate pioneers. The corporate entity is after 'profits'. If the future didn't hold any and the past did, the corporate world would find a way to go back in time. Captive audiences are another desire. But, the most important ingredient in corporate success is an expanding customer base. Customers filling the capability of the corporate entity and then expansion filling a larger baloon.

Now, all the variou Metaverse open grid worlds face the same problems. Lack of quality and lack of customers.. In actuality, these "Open Grid" systems are closed entities when it comes to "content." Oh, someday, perhaps all these grids will connect and a new SecondLife type metaverse will develop similar to what we have today with the sims not under one umbrella. Will it work? I don't have clue but I know it won't yet.

So, as the Twinities, Google Livlies, OpenGridies, Wannabies, Rezzables and others open and try their hand at a closed/open system and a closed society they will either disappear such as Google Lively or perhaps in the case of Rezzables they will simply watch them slowly derez into a lost tribe.

In the end, Avatarity will prevail as Humanity has regardless of the corporate desires of the new Endrun's sprouting up alone today.