To try and paint this as indicative of the whole of SL not being able to support individual dreams is not quite true. Though I dislike their interests, the Gorean sims are thriving successes for the most part. Caledon is nothing but one shared love of victorian life and what might have been, and going strong.
Even the Alliance Navy (Try to keep the anti-AN stuff out of this, Prok) has finally gotten a sim to ourselves for our own RP and combat play. *shrugs* And such setups as Midian City and Suffugium are shining examples of what *can* be done.

There is still thriving dreams in SL, you just need to actually look.

The fact of any business’ decision to invest money, time and effort in experimenting with Second Life as a permission-based marketing medium seems to me to be far more progressive than simply sticking with what they know; cruder, more profligate interruption advertising techniques.

Taking the movie business as an example, the reality is that Second Life can become a great way for people to share (something like) the experience of going to the cinema with friends who live on the other side of the world. Having stayed up all hours to attend the SL premiere of Ed Sanchez’s ALTERED at the Phreeq drive-in in Motorati with a good SL friend of mine who happens to live several thousand miles away, I know this for a fact.

There are always going to be growing pains as SL develops, and mistakes made. SL might not be in its infancy, but it’s still very much an adolescent application, with more than its fair share of angst and confusion. Bubbles will burst and dreams will be shattered, but the metaverse will retain the potential to change everybody’s lives for the better, and commerce, whatever its faults, has a viable part to play in that.

Some individual dreamers will still be here though Prok. It’s still possible in this world to realise unique and distinctive visions and put food on the table at the same time. That’s what the fine art of film-making is all about.

Far from firing and fleeing, the Pepsis or the Sonys or whatever are the ones who in fact will be coming in and making the lasting and compelling Harry Potter RPs sims because for them, the cost and the staffing won’t pose the problem that it does for the individual struggling with bad performance of sims, expenses, lack of help, etc.

Everybody burns out in SL sooner of later. It’s a miracle that many last as long as they do. So the winners will be those who have lots of money and staff who can spread the constant debilitations and disappointments of SL and its costs over more people and pay more money to cushion the shocks.

The ultimately result will probably look like something more packaged and sanitized and plastic than the spunky Harry Potter that this person was able to run, evidently, I only saw it briefly once. We will see a lot more dreams crumbling. The notion of Second Life as an individual dreamer’s Second Life will cave to become the notion of a Second Life for the world’s dinosaur media and public relations industries.

I hope we will soon be able to visit a new Magic Alley.

Gotta remember to do a follow-up in a month or so…