Clickable Comments
Tony Walsh of the excellent Clickable Culture has a post up commenting on my Serious Game talk (or, more specifically, on Alice of Wonderland's notes on my talk). He has some interesting points that I wanted to respond to.
Re how much of the content is user created: Well over 99.99% of the content in SL is user created. Also, I tried to pick locations and screen shots that were user created as well (although it is certainly possible that some Linden content appeared in some shot.) Also, I'm pretty sure that I qualified the statement as "nearly everything" :-)
Re subscription model: I was reinforcing the fact that casual users of SL only have to pay the single, up-front payment rather than the more normal "everyone must pay a subscription" of other online worlds. Since everyone misunderstands this point -- and tend to err when reporting on Second Life -- I wanted to make sure I was clear.
Finally, Tony didn't like my statement that anyone can take part in creating within SL. This was brought up first to differentiate SL from conventional MMORPGs -- where RPG elements can limit what players are able to do -- and second to reinforce that the amazing examples I showed during my talk were created by residents. Not professional world/content designers, but simply passionate people motivated to make a difference. Tony is correct that SL barriers to entry are currently much higher than the web, but that doesn't invalidate the assertion that all residents are able to create within Second Life.