BRANDING FOR A CAUSETwo Case Studies in the Arts: Eshi Otawara and Ina Centaur

INTRODUCTION Second Life: Its Beauty and Limits

You can create a world, and lose yourself in it—in all its complexities, beyond just the aesthetics, but also the complex, chaotic social elements… and perhaps for the very virtue of creation

Bad PR, Horrible PR Potential Fatally Limited Reach—only about 150,000 active users, with little more than 50,000 actual concurrency. SL is generally associated with substandard graphics; the “art” in SL is considered “avant garde” (but only by a

minority), and not taken as seriously by mainstream computer graphics professionals. LL was given a F by the BBB in 2008.

SL still behaves as a “3rd world economy.” An artist on SL is more likely a starving artist than anywhere else.

Content theft risks and implicit limitations of ownership. Create a product that sells, and instead of seeing it being imitated (as in RL), expect to see the exact copy being

ripped and resold. Need to use 3rd-party software to backup creations (August 2008)

SL is functionally still “beta” software, prone to crashes and unexpected behavior Minimizes newcomers to SL Creating on SL is thus that much more painful. Crashing. Varied appearances. Prim corruption. Spontaneous

disappearances. Etc.

So, why would two passionate and talented artists dedicate three years of their lives to it?

Discover our stories, our cause.

TWO CASE STUDIES IN THE ARTS

Virtual World Brands Eshi Otawara Ina Centaur

Q & A ?

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