Nissan, Pontiac Drive into Second Life
Virtual Nissan Sentras
160 acres worth of metaversal motor city are being launched in the virtual world of Second Life, including four regions’ worth of Nissan driving action and a ten-region experiment in user-created car culture from General Motors’ Pontiac division. Both projects sound very cool, and though Second Life’s vehicles generally suck for much more than tootling around in (the platform runs on an outdated physics engine that Linden Lab refuses to update), each project is ambitious in its own way, and should add some entertaining features to the landscape of the virtual world.
The Nissan project, built by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), is already up and running, and features some nice drivable Nissan Sentras being given away for free, as well as miniature, remote-control cars that are fun to drive around but that can’t be taken off the Nissan sim. Two nice things about the Sentras: you can see through the windshield when in first-person view (not always true of Second Life cars), and you can actually shift gears, which I’ve never seen on an SL car before (though there may be some out there). The »Nissan sim« features a double loop, which I wasn’t able to make it through, and two more empty sims to get your driving on. Another nice feature: the main Nissan sim is connected to the two driving sims by a sim-long causeway, a low bridge that is the only thing occupying the sim. This is a great feature — I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sim limited to such wide-open empty space. More on Pontiac after a couple of screenshots:
Nissan’s loop-de-loop
Nissan causeway
The Pontiac project, being built by Reuben Steiger’s Millions of Us, is due to launch in November, according to a press release and this MediaPost story, and will feature not GM’s vision of virtual car culture, but that of Second Life residents. The company plans six 16-acre regions, known as Motorati Island, on which residents will be given space to build out their visions of virtual car culture. From the press release: “The process for land proposals begins when users are invited to the island’s micro site, Motoratilife.com, to begin the submission process. Pontiac will review users’ proposed projects and appropriate land accordingly on which users can go forth and develop their own ideas, as they relate to the Motorati community.”
Pontiac, of course, will also have its own presence on the island: “Plans are in development to build a futuristic Pontiac “dealership,” selling customizable versions of the newly introduced Pontiac Solstice GXP. Owners can then test their new purchases on a high-performance test track, fully modify them and even showcase them in a public gallery. The Pontiac Garage music stage in New York City’s Times Square will be replicated in this space and act as a venue for live music performances by real artists in the form of their Second Life avatars.”
Both projects seem very cool, in different ways. Nissan’s cars are very nice, and it will be fascinating to see what residents come up with for the native car culture sims to be featured at the Motorati site. But will corporate car culture kill native creativity in the way that resident Prokofy Neva has contended may happen as big business migrates to SL? Only time will tell, but I tend to doubt it. Corporate initiatives haven’t killed creativity on the Web, after all. Drive on.
Feeds
Thanks Mark. I also agree that corporate additions to SL will not kill the ingenuity and creative engine that is the body of Second Life.
The loop de loop is tough but fun — kind of like golf where it’s hard but that much sweeter when you pull it off. Use the lower gears to line up straight, not too far away. Then kick it into loop gear and hurtle forward. You can make minor steering adjustments during the loop. As you’re coming down the final leg, you can downshift again so you don’t hurtle into the far guardrail.
On shifting gears, I think the very cool Dominus Shadow, by Francis Chung and team, has had gear shifting and speed changes, and others might have had this feature too.
I am also looking forward to seeing what Toyota/Scion and Pontiac do in Second Life when they open to the public. Should be fun!
Dumping 6 sims of free land on the market puts an unnecessary dent in the already-fragile land market — it actually winds up ruining the Lindens’ own business model originally dependent on land retaining value, and people being willing not only to buy it once from LL, but buy and sell it to each other. Why would individuals or smaller indigenous companies buy and sell land and try to develop it when big corporations with absolutey no need to get their tier paid through micropayments of rent or content sales come along? What’s the point, ultimately if we have hundreds of such corporations making mini Linden Lab like models — hugely feting content creators and giving them lots of perks and free land, and making everyone else passive viewers, forced to flock to laggy sims to get entertained — native clubs will be forced out of business as well.
Is the plan to have the feted content creators live in this newfangled GM company town not of coalminers but PSP jockeys, and make the millions who are supposed to trudge through and interact with these brands either pay rent to Sony-made apartments or just fly around aimelessly?
Who do you think will go into the land business when the land business will now be owned by the company towns?
Of course, the Lindens don’t care if it’s GM that buys 6 islands instead of Anshe or Prokofy, but the difference is that Anshe or Prokofy have more or less freely-accessible sims that anyone can rent from if they have the money to click on the box and keep to a few simple rules. There’s no corporate-sponsored contest or connection you have to make or network you have to get on to come in and start creating.
At some point I guess the Sonys and the Warner Bros will have to move from making feted chic apartments for their after parties and figure out how to house the masses. Or the Lindens will do what they’ve threatened to do a long time which is to sell larger parcels of first land with the house and content already on it in prefabbed neighbourhoods — making it really pointless for anyone to be in the land business at all.
And who cares? Content creators loathe the class of land barons or ’slumlords’ anyway and you’d be happy to see them go. The point is, however, that an alternate system of value based in land and buildings that forms a counterpoint to content-creation skills is needed to make the society pluralistic and free. Land barons are what keeps land liquid and available just in time, and they help manage thousands of customers needs for orientation and socialization that the Lindens and even these big corporations can’t meet.
But they can’t go on doing this hard work if land is devalued — and putting it out for free even in exchange for content creation, instead of micropayments helping the inworld economy is what devalues it. It’s a fragile and complex system and I realize you don’t feel how it works because you just sit on your private islands and don’t see how the world is impacted by various policies.
The system of buying land yourself from the Lindens or renting from others creates an inworld economy where the barrier to creativity is set very low — just about anybody who is already in possession of the DSL connection, high-end graphics card, and disposable leisure time to log on SL can afford at least a few hundred Linden dollars in rent or $5 US for 1024 m2 in addition to the $9.95 subscription charge.
But if powerful and deep-pocketed companies can come in the door and suddenly lay out 6 sims and filter and fete only top creators to create “rich content” in something like car culture, they are taking the Linden model, which always feted the content creators, and putting it on crack and speed.
They create a Snowcrash like pyramid where a connected, skilled set of people are rewarded for time and skill in terms of land that is free, and the rest log on at public terminals as grey avatars. That devalues land-based economy for others, and — if corporate-sponsored content is good and compelling (and we don’t know that, it might be lame) it will suck away all the traffic and interest from all the indigenous and frankly amateur efforts trying to get started and stay maintained. It frankly destroys the “your world/your imagination” paradigm
You just defend this because you get jobs with these companies, Forseti; Walker, your blog is paid for by ESC. So it’s a system you can handily defend because it puts money in your pockets and sustains your writing.
Forseti, you are working to the clients’ spec and at a certain point even you will have to concede that it is not the most creative thing in the metaverse to make RL-like buildings of this sort.
Other people outside this loop are likely doomed, however, or at least will have to either scale way back or scale way up and adapt to the even harsher Darwinistic conditions that metaverse seems to be creating.
I’m not for protectionism, but I don’t think you should be white-washing or sugar-coating what is happening: our world is being destroyed, and only a few are going to get out on the too-few lifeboats.
Hey prok, you already know that I disagree with alarmist thinking that the world is being destroyed. I bet you’ve received quite a few new customers because of the recent PR and growth that is happening due to ESC projects like Reuters, Sony BMG and Nissan. A few extra sims is a drop in the bucket when you examine the size of the world and the growth. These sims are also for specialized use — someone who wants to rent their virtual house is still going to go to Ravenglass, OTHERLAND, Dreamland, Alliez, Hiro Queso, etc etc etc. It means more customers for clothing makers and avatar makers and animators etc. Corporations can bring in some cool and fun content, but people like choice and they love to shop and see new things. Not every entrepreneur will survive, but that’s the nature of entrepreneurship. Plenty more will.
Every 3 months since I joined SL in 2004, something comes along that causes a set of people to say the sky is falling. You know what, it’s still up there, with a 1,000,000 avatars sun beaming down.
“Forseti, you are working to the clients’ spec and at a certain point even you will have to concede that it is not the most creative thing in the metaverse to make RL-like buildings of this sort.”
I’ve blogged about this before. I don’t believe in dogmatic rules on this topic. There are times where it makes sense to get really imaginative and leave the real world behind. There are also times when a real world environment sets a tone and a mood, working off of stored emotions and memories. We take our clients desires into account and also advise on what we consider to be an optimal setting. Sometimes we get our way and sometimes not, but either way, I definitely believe that hard and fast rules of how things should look are silly. Every situation is different.
Honestly, I don’t like this at all. I am a car builder myself and trying to get into the market before they start making better car for FREE!?
No, I don’t like it at all. You are killing us here. Unless you want to hire all the car builders who wanted to make some living to build you the cars.
I know I can’t speak for all the builders alone, but you ARE killing me and destorying my dream all together. I beg you, please leave.
Second Life Car Culture with Pontiac…
Millions of Us is working with Pontiac to launch an event that celebrates car culture in Second Life. Based on the ideas generated at Car Camp, a discussion moderated by our own Francis Chung, Pontiac is developing a six-region presence that will be t…
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