boy meets girl in China' slinternet - China's second life preparing
Yesterday I pointed at some comments Linden Lab, the producer of Second Life, made about China. Today Virtual China points at a Chinese version of Second Life under construction, hipihi.com.
It is going to be an interesting match, if the US firm decides to take on China at all. Still wonder what Chinese department will be in charge of our second life.
Update: Kaiser Kuo is optimistic about the chances in China.
My gut tells me that done right, this could be quite substantial in China, and might have more legs than its U.S. counterpart. For one thing, MMORPG culture is pretty deeply embedded among Chinese netizens, and many players are very used to "repatriating" currency earned in the in-game economy to real life.
2 comments:
You can of course try to copycat the Second Life but you could also try to innovate someting new.
Unfortunately, the Chinese are not widely know as an innovative nation. This is why I was really delighted to hear about this new venture (I'm an Associate Professor of Knowledge Management by myself. I make reasearch and teach here in China).
A new entertainment genre, called the "Trem Trekker Diaries" is a Web 2.0 concept initiated at Jimei University, Xiamen, Fujian.
A short detective story is published every week. The hero, Krem Trekker, solves criminal cases and at the same time comments the life in China. The idea, however, is that the Chinese readers can influence the story by voting.
The ultimate goal seems to be to give the (so far unheard) voice to the Chinese youth. This is why the adventures are published in real-time in English, too.
There is also quite a lot of insider information and interesting background material. The whole stuff is at:
http://www.kremtrekker.com
Second life is thrilling new thing but at this point I can't see that it would be the thing for masses just because it's so time-consuming. 15 minutes a day is not enough there, you need hours to really achieve anything. My opinion is that second life is for people that are interested in spending a lot of their time in the virtual world.
But what is there for the rest of us who can't or don't want to spend so much time online? Blogging is a great tool for expressing yourself but not everyone of us has something to say (at least worth writing about) so what do we have for them? Maybe it is Trekker Diaries and that type where you visit now and then and can contribute easily. And you are enetertained at the same time.
I agree that we can't just copy what is done somewhere else but we need new innovations too. But I don't say that the amazing new innovation can't happen in second life...
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