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>The final and most important lesson of Second Life was that most people do not want a 3D world chat room. Isn’t this is what most teenagers use Fortnite and M

>The final and most important lesson of Second Life was that most people do not want a 3D world chat room. Isn’t this is what most teenagers use Fortnite and Minecraft as.

m1gu3l 4y ago
On the internet “most people” are an imaginary statistic we toss around thinking it means anything.
mehlmao 4y ago
They use Fortnite and Minecraft as something to do while they chat in another client, usually Discord. Modern multiplayer games have largely reduced (or eliminated) communication with people you aren't already friends with.
kmeisthax 4y ago
No, not really. You're thinking of Discord. Fortnite and Minecraft do have chat features in them, but those are features tacked-on as a last resort. In the case of Minecraft you don't even have voice chat. In the olden days of the Xbox 360's heyday[0], all we had were one-on-one voice channels or in-game chat, the latter of which would be an absolutely toxic nightmare of getting shouted and screamed at. Furthermore, Fortnite and Minecraft are games whose camera and movement controls are optimized for the specific game mechanics they feature. If you want to create a generic 3D world, then you have to also create a generic set of controls to move and look around that world; and those controls are always going to be awkward and difficult to use. Maybe you built a regular house, in which case Sims-style point-and-click-to-move and a fixed camera angle would be your best control option. Or maybe you built a racetrack with cars, which means you want WASD-steering with a car-locked third-person camera. Your FPS level wants first-person or over-the-shoulder third-person. Second Life tried to do all of the above, so they gave you a default behind-the-head camera that vaguely works in open spaces, but you have to use Maya-style camera orbit controls to look at specific things. You can scroll to zoom to first person, but you can't use any of the builder controls in that view because of mouselook. And all of this was complicated enough that Linden Labs felt it was necessary to add "easy" movement and camera controls driven by UI buttons, but not to add click-to-move for third-person mode. The thing is, when I look back at Second Life I can't really think of a way that it could have been done better. I can think of features that it's missing, but that wouldn't fix the clunkiness of the controls. Anything I could think of to fix camera movement would bias in the direction of a particular 'genre'; and making people switch between "FPS mode", "car mode", and "hanging out mode" would be a total pain. This isn't even getting into the other problems these projects have, like the fact that 3D worlds are really expensive to build, or that the copyright maximalists will have a field day suing you over all the pirated content that your users will inevitably port in. [0] As in, "blades dash" era 360
LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
Roblox and Minecraft both are good examples of Worlds where people meet up to socialize and play games. I'd say, Roblox is more sticky, as there's a built in friend list and chat/messages without being in game.

>The final and most important lesson of Second Life was that most people do not want a 3D world chat room. Isn’t this is what most teenagers use Fortnite and Minecraft as.

m1gu3l 4y ago

On the internet “most people” are an imaginary statistic we toss around thinking it means anything.

mehlmao 4y ago

They use Fortnite and Minecraft as something to do while they chat in another client, usually Discord. Modern multiplayer games have largely reduced (or eliminated) communication with people you aren't already friends with.

kmeisthax 4y ago

No, not really. You're thinking of Discord. Fortnite and Minecraft do have chat features in them, but those are features tacked-on as a last resort. In the case of Minecraft you don't even have voice chat. In the olden days of the Xbox 360's heyday[0], all we had were one-on-one voice channels or in-game chat, the latter of which would be an absolutely toxic nightmare of getting shouted and screamed at. Furthermore, Fortnite and Minecraft are games whose camera and movement controls are optimized for the specific game mechanics they feature. If you want to create a generic 3D world, then you have to also create a generic set of controls to move and look around that world; and those controls are always going to be awkward and difficult to use. Maybe you built a regular house, in which case Sims-style point-and-click-to-move and a fixed camera angle would be your best control option. Or maybe you built a racetrack with cars, which means you want WASD-steering with a car-locked third-person camera. Your FPS level wants first-person or over-the-shoulder third-person. Second Life tried to do all of the above, so they gave you a default behind-the-head camera that vaguely works in open spaces, but you have to use Maya-style camera orbit controls to look at specific things. You can scroll to zoom to first person, but you can't use any of the builder controls in that view because of mouselook. And all of this was complicated enough that Linden Labs felt it was necessary to add "easy" movement and camera controls driven by UI buttons, but not to add click-to-move for third-person mode. The thing is, when I look back at Second Life I can't really think of a way that it could have been done better. I can think of features that it's missing, but that wouldn't fix the clunkiness of the controls. Anything I could think of to fix camera movement would bias in the direction of a particular 'genre'; and making people switch between "FPS mode", "car mode", and "hanging out mode" would be a total pain. This isn't even getting into the other problems these projects have, like the fact that 3D worlds are really expensive to build, or that the copyright maximalists will have a field day suing you over all the pirated content that your users will inevitably port in. [0] As in, "blades dash" era 360

LeeroyWasHere 4y ago

Roblox and Minecraft both are good examples of Worlds where people meet up to socialize and play games. I'd say, Roblox is more sticky, as there's a built in friend list and chat/messages without being in game.