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Overhype

from the putting-the-reality-back-in-virtual-reality dept

Hardly a week goes by without somebody trying to drum up some publicity for doing something in the online world of Second Life, and it usually works. What’s more entertaining than the actual announcements are the justifications people come up with for entering these sorts of deals, acting as if they’ve really got something to gain by setting up shop in the game. Last week, it was the band Duran Duran saying it would eschew the typical career path of rock stars of days gone by — playing small clubs, commensurate to their current audience size — and play shows in Second Life instead. This week, a hotel company is launching a new brand with a hotel in the world, but as with most of these announcements, they’re hiding their attempt to just buy some publicity (which, again, has worked) by saying that watching how people in Second Life use the hotel could give them valuable insight into how they should make their real-world hotels. So the next time you check into a hotel from this company and there’s nothing to eat (since SL avatars don’t need food) and the bed is gone (they don’t need sleep, either), you know who to blame. Kudos to SL’s developers, Linden Labs, for creating a roaring in-game economy from which they can benefit in the real world. But to all the companies buying space inside it, you can go ahead and drop the charade that Second Life is anything but a PR vehicle.