EDITORIAL: 24 Hours in Second Life—A Wedding, a Light Show, and Some Choreography! (What the Newer Social VR Platforms Can Learn from SL)

As I have often said before, Second Life is the perfect example of a mature, fully-evolved metaverse, which the newer social VR platforms would be wise to study and learn lessons from. Just because it doesn’t support virtual reality does not mean that you can’t learn something from its 18-year history.

One of the ways in which I keep my finger on the pulse of Second Life is to head to YouTube, do a search for “second life”, then sort the results in reverse chronological order by the time they were uploaded (i.e. most recent videos first). Usually, I scroll back 24 to 48 hours to see what the latest SL videos are, and I always find something to delight and surprise me.

So I did this yesterday evening, and today I wanted to share with you three videos which perfectly illustrate all the wild and wonderful ways in which people are using Second Life. Platforms need to attract content creators, and in this SL has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations! See also this blogpost.

First, the newer social VR platforms need to ask themselves: Can you host a wedding? (In VRChat at least, the answer is “yes”.) Second Life weddings are big business, and you might be surprised to learn that there are dozens of wedding venues, many stores selling wedding dresses and bridesmaid outfits—and even businesses which specialize in making professionally-edited wedding videos!

Another question the newer social VR platforms need to ask themselves: Do you support particle effects? You can see the particle effects in Second Life at work in the fireworks in the previous wedding video, and here is another example of the creativity which can be unleased with the proper particle and light systems!

Finally, I ask the social VR platforms: Can you dance? Second Life boasts what may well be the single biggest selection of avatar animations on any platform (a quick search of the SL Marketplace pulls up tens of thousands of dances), which lets you unleash your inner musical director and create stage shows like the following:

So don’t be so quick to dismiss Second Life as antiquated and outdated! There’s life in the old girl yet! The creators of the newer social VR platforms might just want to spend a bit of time investigating, and get some ideas for new features or as-yet-unexplored new market niches in the metaverse!

Who knows? You just might yet entice a future wedding videographer, lightshow mastermind, or musical choreographer to your new platform!