you are right. OpenSim is a potential that is not being realized. I would love to read your analysis on why it’s not happening. My own conclusion is worrying. If nobody can make the case for adding a relatively small amount of effort to be able to tell stories radically different than those allowed by LL design choices, the case for the notion of a interconnected web of 3D applications is moot. Maybe OpenSims main fallacy is to aim to provide a server instead of a service. Maybe the web only really needs to consist of Facebook, with a really good Facebook API. Do you think so?

Enshi, now Ordinal…
the stories are “removed” they are past..which is what Im told i live in;) Gone. Never possible that they could have/ever have existed by the time of SL viewer 2.0;)

Are you SURE the Stories ARE the Platform? Or are they just the grease on the gears?

The Platform isnt designed (by LL or game gods) to have a past. To have a context. only to feed the coffers of now.

They say the differnce between man and animal is the ability to live beyond the now….

well they once said that.;)

are you sure i live in the past? 24 hrs ago I was ordinals future;)

cube3

This post was mentioned on Twitter by vwestland: The Stars Alive: Rezzing Dreams at the Virtual Campfire http://bit.ly/aOpqIn...

The whole piece is very nicely done, but particularly that one line hits the old nail pretty squarely.

I really like your emphasis on the “storytelling” aspect of life on the platform–in part, because I do think of myself and many of my SL friends, colleagues and acquaintances as storytellers. And the platform offers such a riotous collection of ways to create and tell stories, including both the improv and scripted theater that is rp, building 3-D manifestations of a story, and/or even literally sitting around a pub table and spinning a yarn.

But you make a wonderful point that the really remarkable thing is–s JJ Drinkwater has frequently put it–the platform enables us to all collectively participate in creating a shared narrative. The residents are a series of ensembles, playing off one another.

It’s a real hoot being a part of all this, isn’t it?

but you see, Juanita gets it. 4 years…. no longer does she need dreamy mists of green -…. but if the mistmakers bank all the green, then shes left no longer able to even visit the dream.

Yes, there are stories, and yes, the platform allows us to be personally creative, and as an artist I use and love what SL allows me to do, and will stay so long as LL keeps giving me challenging tools to play with…..but I spend less and less time in-world and I am less and less enthralled. Why is that?

I have always wondered why there’s so much emphasis on enticing new users rather than retaining the current users, but I think I am beginning to understand.In my fourth year in Second Life it’s all starting to look very much the same, and I can see why many of my long term friends are rarely seen in world any more. Sure we now have voice and sculpties and a better interface, but in-world, visually, it doesn’t feel all that different to 2006. You can do the same thing over just so many times before it’s not so interesting.

Are we just telling the same stories over and over?

media growth depends on customers, not friends.