A Tale of Two Virtual Cities

Here's a video of the new OnLand build in Blue Mars posted on Youtube.com by philipjamesbryan. Given that OnLand was the subject of my most recent post, and that it may be difficult for some to directly experience Blue Mars, I thought it would be interesting for you to view it this way and then make some comparisons to Second Life.

The video appears to be largely unedited, but it still gives you a good sense not only of OnLand, but also the Blue Mars interface, its features, navigation, etc. You can also see how deserted Blue Mars is at this point, but as others have said, Second Life was pretty quiet too, initially.

Contrast this view of OnLand, which seems like an image from an ultra-clean, super orderly version of Singapore, with the video segment below from Second Life (NSFW), which is quite the opposite. And, before you jump up and down about unfair comparisons based on the stage of development of each world or other factors, I know and understand that.



I'm offering this up as a sharp contrast between a system, such as Blue Mars, that is apparently catering to enterprise users, and Second Life that supports a diversity of social activity, including the hot mess represented by this specific encounter in SL.

My ultimate question is whether this is where we're heading; toward a segregation of virtual worlds between the clean, orderly vision of Blue Mars for power users, and a messy, distracting, and ultimately dysfunctional vision of SL as a second class virtual world for everyone else.

Judge for yourself and comment if you like.