Mobile phones continue to invade video games, now, with a story from The Register. Hands up how many people use Second Life. Or have used Second Life. Or have heard of Second Life and fancy trying it.
If you’ve not come across it, Second Life is an entire virtual world, where you can exist as a whole virtual person, and have virtual friends, and virtual money, and buy virtual land, and… well, you get the idea. It’s, in essence, a whole virtual world where you can be anyone you want to be.
And let’s face it, no way were people not going to use it to market stuff to other people. Yesterday, Second Life got its first working mobile phone that can make calls and send texts to what users call ‘meatspace’, but which the rest of us call ‘the real world’. (Although that begs the unavoidable question of “why don’t they just use a real mobile phone, since they too live in the real world?” That opens up the disturbing possibility they may have forgotten that…)
There’s mucho debate (well, a bit of debate) about why NEC have done it. Is it to justify the expense of setting up 2 islands last year? Is it a proof of concept for their system to distribute content.
Or is it, as I suspect, a massive exercise in product placement? Let’s face it, outside of Japan, NEC aren’t exactly well known for their mobile phones. Their last foray into the Western market was with their e-series of phones, for Three. What better way to market your stuff than get a load of obsessed SL fanboys-and-girls to use it to ring people in the real world, and never have to log off again?
The NEC communicator is available for the duration of the Mobile World Congress, on Tokutoku Island, if you’re a Second Life fan. Meanwhile, I’ll be in a different virtual home, meeting my friends. It’s called the pub.
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