New Links?

The Vue island has now been extended into a new region east of the first region. At the moment this pristine area looks rather like it would make a nice links golf course: just a large gently undulating space. Making it a golf course would fit in with the vision that Vue is to communicate some idea of Scottishness to the World, but would be of limited educational benefit.

The University of Edinburgh now has two regions on SL of what is planned to be a block of nine or more, and I now wonder what on earth we are going to put in all these areas.

I was reminded of this question by two visitors to Vue. First, Joop blogged about his visit and noted "so far I did not see traces of dramatic activity" and second, I bumped into Skev Writer roaming the island who pointedly stated "there is bugger all here". I must admit that for uses that involve one person interacting with the system it is hard to see how, except for the joy of jumping on the fashion, what SL provides above a bog-standard website. However, for uses that force users to interact with each other, SL has clear advantages. But this raises two problems... First, how many communal activities can the uni dream up to fill this space, and second, to get them to work requires a critical mass of users. Tomorrow Channel Four tv in the UK is showing the 2002 film 28 Days Later, tagline "His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't.", which opens with great scenes of one person roaming a deserted London. For most visitors to Vue, this must be how it seems: a creepily deserted space. To get it to work needs something to draw in a crowd to make it seem real, but what? Welcome to the Second Life World of asocial networking.