At first, this just looks like out-of-touch olds doing old out of touch things. But once you start looking at who was behind Linden Labs - a project bankrolled by Paul Allen, with former executives from Electronic Arts, eBay, Disney, Adobe, and Apple collaborating on the project, its incredibly clear that this platform was an early effort at staking out online space in some kind of bizarre real estate / intellectual property play. Pretty much screams CIA cut-out, even before you watch high ranking folks in the government spill into the lucrative online gaming worlds that would run laps around Second Life.
this depends entirely on how much value you put in attending virtual concerts and/or doing weird sex stuff with other people who have horny avatars
Even as all that goes, Second Life was a flop. Everquest and Ultima Online and even fucking Runescape ran laps around it. There was no real reason for this platform to exist, much less get the attention that it received.
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So I'll lead in with the observation that Second Life isn't unique. Activision Blizzard was headed up by a CIA operation's manager until very recently. And we can all guess how those individuals managed to make that particular lateral move.
But Second Life was much weirder. It got released back in 2003, around the same time as a bunch of 2nd big generation of MMOs and was generally regarded as a flop. Despite that, it got a ton of political attention. Case in point a number of Democrats set up Congressional Offices in Second Life and several of Obama's speeches were held there.
At first, this just looks like out-of-touch olds doing old out of touch things. But once you start looking at who was behind Linden Labs - a project bankrolled by Paul Allen, with former executives from Electronic Arts, eBay, Disney, Adobe, and Apple collaborating on the project, its incredibly clear that this platform was an early effort at staking out online space in some kind of bizarre real estate / intellectual property play. Pretty much screams CIA cut-out, even before you watch high ranking folks in the government spill into the lucrative online gaming worlds that would run laps around Second Life.
Even as all that goes, Second Life was a flop. Everquest and Ultima Online and even fucking Runescape ran laps around it. There was no real reason for this platform to exist, much less get the attention that it received.