AMD gets sucked into Second Life gimmick
By John Pospisil
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has announced that it will maintain a display hall and auditorium in the much-hyped Second Life online virtual game (note the use of the term “game” not “world”).
AMD is hoping to use its new AMD Dev Central Pavilion on AMD Dev Central Island to engage with developers (both amateur and professional) about working with AMD. Its virtual hall will be available for meetings and training, and its auditorium will be used to run seminars. The first AMD event is scheduled for February 25.
“The Second Life metaverse is a gathering place for both new and established developers. Through the interactive virtual experience at the pavilion, we hope to provide developers with an outlet to learn and grow, such as helping them to optimize native code for multi-threaded applications,” said Paul Nolte, an AMD project manager Second Life Pavilion.
AMD joins other companies, such as Cisco, Dell, IBM and Sun, in establishing a presence on Second Life, seemingly oblivious to the fact that far, far fewer people actually play Second Life than the much touted 3 million registered users – but more on that in a moment.
What I find bothersome about companies jumping on the Second Life band wagon is that often do so thinking that they’re doing something innovative and ground breaking. What’s actually happening is that they’re getting sucked into Second Life hype.
Obviously AMD believes that Second Life is a good way of reaching developers. The logic being that game developers are likely to be “residents” of Second Life.
I’d would like to point out a number of issues.
First, while Second Life likes to talk about 3 million registered accounts, there are only around 100,000 active residents. It has a churn rate of 85% (yes, you read right). In other worlds there is small group of hard core users. Most people come, have a look, get bored, and don’t come back. I’d like to see how interested companies would be if Linden Labs touted the 100,000 figure instead of 3 million.
Second, there are other virtual games out there. Companies supporting one game over another, send a negative message to developers who are members of other gaming communities.
Third, trying to do business in a virtual world is far more difficult and time consuming than doing business via a regular web site. To access Second Life, for example, you have download a viewer, set up an account, work out the controls, orientate yourself in the 3D world, and them clumsily try to locate and get to the company you’re interested in finding out about. Personally, I’d rather google the company name, and access its web site, and this is why I think having a Second Life presence is a gimmick more than anything else.
As far as gimmicks go, setting up a shop front on Second Life is probably not a bad idea. At least it’s still getting publicity, and column inches, for companies that are doing it.
However, I suspect in the medium term, once the novelty of Second Life has worn off, companies need to start looking for a new fad in order to generate PR.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
under
Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!
February 19th, 2007
Man, you are so wrong! The future lies in virtual 3D worlds like second life, and amd are taking their message to the heart of the games community.
February 19th, 2007
old fogey
February 20th, 2007
Hey Guys – As project manager for this initiative, I really do appreciate the constructive feedback/criticism. I do agree with Laser that there is great potential in 3D “metaverse” platforms, especially considering that more and more people are choosing MMOs over traditional recreational media outlets. Keep in mind, of course, that companies like AMD aren’t abandoning more traditional outreach avenues. And of course, only time will tell whether or not Second Life evolves into the de facto 3D Web client. If it does, though, concerns about the client user experience will simply fade away (I remember when folks thought Netscape was complicated!). If not, then maybe we’ve reached a subset of the developer community that wouldn’t generally interact with our developer Web site.
For now, we are very excited to have a place to interact with developers and enthusiasts — something sorely lacking on the 2D Web. When compared to developer conferences and expos, Second Life provides a relatively inexpensive venue for conducting similar activities, but without the travel overhead and high-cost conference passes.
Cheers!
Paul
February 20th, 2007
“First, while Second Life likes to talk about 3 million registered accounts, there are only around 100,000 active residents.”
Sadly there has been a lot of inaccurate reporting of SL account/resident numbers, and from the articles I’ve read the inflated figures are not coming from the Lindens but from tech writers.
To say “Second Life likes to talk about…” and not cite some sources is lazy, and then to quote the biggest number you could find, is actually being part of the hype. /me wags finger
I’d partly agree with you about the medium/long term effectiveness of these endeavours (such as AMDs), but they have cash, it’s a popular thing to do, it does have a strategic link (SL needs grunt) and it’s kinda fun. It’s not like AMD are pulling the plug on their website, it’s just another angle.
Reading your article, I think I’m right in saying you don’t have much time for SL, that’s fine, each to their own. But you should be aware the SL crowd are early adopters and see themselves as such. There is also a strong contingent of programmers in SL, hang-out on any onf the SL scripting groups and you’ll see they are very into it.
As for calling SL a game, I think Social Activity is more accurate, and it boils down to being a very interactive chat room. Manufacturers and vendors setting up shop is somewhat akin to setting up an IRC channel, which rarely attracts negative comments.
SL is not for everyone sure, but it’s not for nobody either…erm..if you know what I mean.
Thanks
February 21st, 2007
Someday this article will be included in a book of smartypants technology flubs, along with “640K is more memory than anyone could ever use”.
People evaluate the future of a technology in what it can do TODAY. That is a grevious error. It’s like dismissing the original IBM PC because it can’t run windows 1.0 very fast.
SL is a proto, “toy” version of the real thing.
February 27th, 2007
I’m interested in the sources for your reports, in terms of your statistics of the 100,000 active users, and the 85% churn rate. How did you go about gathering this statistic and what sources do you cite?
July 16th, 2007
Game? Geez. That’s why IBM has 4,000 employess in Second Life, I’m sure. Not to mention Pontiac, Toyota, ABC, Reuters, Amazon, Sun, Dell, Bantam-Dell Books, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Cisco, and many, many others. Oh, and lets not forget Harvard Law School, Princeton University, NOAA, and many other major universities, federal and municipal agencies. I’m sure since you see this is a “game” you’ll find these same entities with presence in WOW, EQ2, Dark Age of Camelot, etc. My, my, where have you been?