Maybe my memory is fuzzy. What I do remember is spending a lot of time in that store because I was fascinated with how brands might take advantage of virtual worlds. I don’t remember other merchandise but then I do recall the store was this massive place with a few kiosks and then the shoe configuration booths and maybe the other merchandise was at the other side of the store, which seemed like a sim away at the time (I was a noob, so who knows).

Now, as a noob maybe I missed the button where I could order the “real shoe” – how many orders did you say you got again?

Look – all of this is experimental. You’re beautiful, wonderful, a giant David, congratulations. As you know, I don’t typically dwell on the ancient past, thinking back to the ‘good old days’ when there was more of a culture and people were more polite and the brands were piling on not wanting to miss out on the next best thing.

Funny how none of them were LAUNCHED as experiments – I don’t remember press releases saying “BMW is trying an EXPERIMENT in Second Life, something at which they expect to fail but learn from it”, interesting how it’s only an experiment after its done, similar to ESC and the CSI build “Oh, it was never MEANT to drive traffic or be a long-term thing” when all the quotes from the launch made them sound like they fully expected to change the media landscape or whatever. I suppose they said “NO” to the bridge to nowhere.

Anyways – again….all of those ‘experiments’ were useful in their way. The fact that every company piled on media hype contributed to a sense of promises not delivered.

I’m of the opinion that we’re headed down the same course today. When Philip claims that business collaboration in virtual worlds is EASY, that it’s significant – I mean, give me a break.

Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

I did some work on the sim for the developer, back in the day…

This is like comparing oranges and apples. This was also pre-scultpie and a lot of other options we take for granted today.

Did you also know that you could click the avatar’s shoe configuration, it would then click out to the RBK website and you could order that actual shoe for real in that configuration?

The store wasn’t just a ‘shoe store’ they also sold merchandise, the Scarlet Heart’s range of products and NBA shoes… (full disclosure I worked on the clothing range as a freelancer.)

My suggestion is, if you’re going to write an article about an SL historic project, do your research correctly.

You’re also repeating an old story, we’ve been here before and the experiment was just that, an experiment. Good luck to the new retailers of shoes in SL, we’re all on a journey here, learning from the previous projects to build more compelling experiences. As they say, we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants.