Space
Centric’s new office overlooks a broad, coral pink plaza. It’s ringed with bronze busts of television pioneers and has a fountain with a giant Emmy Award in the middle. It’s not an inviting spot, which is a shame because it’s right in the middle of an office park in a part of town that needs as many inviting spots as it can get.
I used to think it was the color, but now I’m convinced it’s the fact that the plaza is just too big. I’m not agoraphobic, but the only time I walked across the thing, I felt like I was exposed to the entire world. All I wanted to do was hustle to the other side as quickly as possible. Since then, I skirt around the plaza’s edges. I’ve noticed that other people do, too.
Is it lizard brain instinct? Is it some buried genetic fear that something will swoop down out of the sky and eat me? Or was I just freaked out by the grinning bust of Bob Hope?
I thought about the plaza as I walked around someone’s Second Life orientation island the other day. Despite its trees and benches, the place felt too big, too open. It feels odd to complain about space when most of SL is jam-packed with clutter, but I think it’s important to maintain a balance between Stuff and Not Stuff. Music comes from the spaces between notes, but you need the notes to make the space (unless, of course, you’re John Cage). Same goes for a build, especially when that build winds up empty most of the time. Just because you have all the space in the world doesn’t mean you have to create giant, imposing structures. Scale is different in a virtual world, and I think it’s going to take some time before architects get a handle on the best ways to build.
So, what to do? Ask yourself when you walk around SL: do I feel uncomfortable? Do I feel relaxed? What is it about this place that elicits these reactions? How do experienced users feel? Newbies to SL? People who’ve never been in a virtual world? It will take time to sort everything out, but the good news is that you can remove everything with a few mouseclicks and start again. I hope there will be even more experimentation with sculptured prims in structures, bringing about buildings that would be impossible in reality but work beautifully in virtu.
In the meantime, I’ll still walk on the edges of the plaza, keeping a watchful eye on Bob Hope.
