Classrooms in Second Life

I heard about this game called Second Life in 2003 after seeing a trailer like this one. I wasn't too impressed with it, and I thought it would be forgotten quickly like so many games are.

How wrong was I? About as wrong as "Nah, buying Yahoo stock in 1996" wrong. I read this article from Wired talking about how big and dynamic SL has become. It's almost unbelievable how immersive and customizable the game play can be. If you can call it game play, as it might more accurately be described as simulating real life. I won't bother describing what the game involves, as there are plenty of videos that can show you that.

But what caught my attention today was this CNN report about teachers starting to use the game as a virtual classroom. Apparently Second Life is so flexible that it can be used by falculty to hold office hours just as easy as it is to go snowboarding or skydiving in the enviroment.

This seems to be a significant step for the genre, as typical non-gamers seem to embrace the medium. Yes WoW is insanely popular, but its insanely popular with gamers only. Second Life and other things like it (Nintendo's Wii comes to mind) have the ability to reach outside the hard core gaming audience to those who don't normally play online games. Social interaction is the key...