It seems like whenever I write about the Seattle Mariners this season it’s bad news, but when they were on their winning streak I didn’t want to jinx them. Karma.

Here we are again today with six losses in a row having sent them from second place back to the cellar. On a positive note, Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre both have been hitting better since May. Richie has raised his average from a miserable .192 to not much better .220 and Adrian has gone up 40 points from .214 to .254. Ichirio is still getting a ton of hits, just one shy of 130 with one last game before the all star break. I’m hoping today they end the first half with a win.

Baseball in my Second Life
Now let me throw you a curve ball with a virtual parallel.

Speaking of the All Star game, tomorrow I’ll be attending the first ever virtual simulcast of the MLB All Star Homerun Derby inside Second Life. This could be one of the geekiest events I’ve ever attended online. I told our neighbors about it yesterday — and they are about as non-computerish as you can get — and they looked at me like I was crazy. Suspect it will go over a little better here, but maybe not. Good for geeks to keep things in perspective.

I see the limited number of tickets to the virtual event (going for L$1,000, which is about $3 USD at current exchange rates) still aren’t sold out. They went on sale Thursday morning and only eight tickets have been sold since I bought mine a day later (14 left as of this writing). There has been some blogger press but mostly from places like 3pointd who follow Second Life. Haven’t seen much mainstream press yet, but we’re bound to see some more tomorrow. If you are going to “be there” let me know.

I’m not sure what MLB paid Electric Sheep to put this together, but I’m guessing it was a lot.

One thing that’s important about this SL event is that they are limiting attendence. I wouldn’t have bought a ticket if it was open to the masses (too many avatars, too much lagggggg). There isn’t a single bigger promoted and attended event in Second Life that I’ve visited over roughly the last six months of SL residency that hasn’t had lag issues and that includes the BBC islands gig awhile back.

This is the primary reason I’ve concluded that Second Life isn’t going to be the raging success that some others are hoping. Linden Labs has to figure out how to make it so more than 50-75 avatars can be in a single sim (server). The CEO Phillip Rosedale can claim to reporters that don’t know any better that Second Life can scale but talk to anybody who has actually spent any serious time inside SL and they’ll tell you SL works best with small groups. It’s great for a small IRC channel to provide a more immersive virtual experience, works for having a small party. Sure, Second Life can scale with servers that support 50-75 or avatars each, but ask yourself how many people want to drop $200/month on a server that can only support 50-75 people each? Not me.

So if you think Second Life sucks, why are you still there?
I don’t think it sucks, I think it’s neat and business-world useful in certain respects, only it has severe limitations for large gathering events. On the web the popularity tax leads to buying more servers and being able to scale so the experience is the same for a growing, larger number of people. In SL you currently cannot provide that same experience. And anything that mainstream media reports will drive traffic. One can only drive large numbers of people to try something and leave a subpar experience so many times before they stop returning and caring. I think that’s the downside to Linden Labs getting so much publicity for events and then being unable to deliver the backend experience.

Second Life does have its place and I think it can be great for training, education and the like but it must be be targeted in its current incarnation to smaller groups. Compare that to something like World of Warcraft and there really isn’t any comparison. WoW, Everquest and other similar MMOs can offer additional servers with the same game experience, SL offers additional servers with new/different virtual content. I suppose one could buy multiple servers and create the same content like the other MMOs but only a limited number of people could meet on the same server at the same time (and these numbers are smaller than other MMOs). It is with these current limitations that I don’t see Second Life gaining anywhere close to the marketshare of WoW.

Recently, Second Life opened up registration without a credit card or cell phone number and this prompted some long time residents to raise serious concerns about non-adults getting on the servers. As it turns out, one prominent minor, Robert Scoble’s son, was on the main (adult) grid of SL recently during Gnomedex with plenty of witnesses. There continues to be some back and forth as to whether Scoble will be suspended/banned for this flagrant violation of the Terms of Service. Scoble has a good point about how Linden Labs has limited his SL experience with his son:

And, if he builds something cool, or I build something cool, we can’t share items between the two worlds.

All three of our teenage sons looked and scoffed at the SL teen grid. Can’t say I blame them.

What Linden Labs and SL fans could and should be promoting are more events for smaller groups of adults (forget trying to get teens interested). There is nothing wrong with being a virtual meetup place. In fact, SL could and perhaps should really dominante this niche.

My neighbors and most of the rest of the internet are right to think it’s strange liking virtual worlds like Second Life. But as elated as some SL residents might be, I’d caution them to be realists about the environment and its limitations. There are fewer creative limitations, but there are several real world hardware limitations.

Now we’ve come full circle back to baseball and the Mariners being in the cellar. I have lofty expectations for the Mariners every season and they disappoint me. In many ways Second Life has provided the same feelings. I’m not going to quit liking the Mariners and I’m not ready to quit Second Life. Yet.

I’m planning on live blogging at least part of the virtual Homerun Derby event tomorrow from the grandstands. Wonder if there will be virtual hot dog vendors. Crazy?

Perhaps.

• MLB 2006 Homerun Derby in Second Life sold out
• Review: Exploring Second Life and remembering There
• Yesterday a death and a birth
• Second Life to discontinue dwell payments in effort to stabilize Linden value
• Inking in Second Life, sort of
• Bourne Ultimatum game missions day 9 of 15