Hacker Friendly

Science Library Pad has an interesting piece on a user’s experience of Second Life vs. World of Warcraft. Specifically, the question is why so many people spend hours and hours playing WoW, but spend about five minutes at a time in Second Life (at least, at first).

Second Life is like the blinking cursor on a Commodore 64 screen. READY, it says, and you don’t say “what is the narrative” you say “what can I do with this?” … Second Life is a hammer and nails, not a book. You don’t ask “what’s the narrative of a hammer?”

The verdict? WoW is a “fun game” because you do the sort of things you have likely done in other video games: explore, kill things, collect things that help you kill bigger things, and level up. But with Second Life, it’s not a question of what there is to do, but what you can do with it.