Secondfest: the shape of things to come?

This weekend I attended Secondfest, The Guardian- and Intel-sponsored 3-day virtual music festival that took place in SecondLife, the online virtual world. Intel donated the use of their SecondLife islands, and The Guardian sponsored what promised to be a stellar lineup of artists.

On the whole, it looked just like a real-life music festival: several stages, a campsite complete with tents, drinks stalls and whatnot. But this is exactly what let things down in my mind. Why would you build an exact replica of a real-life festival in an environment where you could have virtually anything? Why not put one of the stages on a cloud? Or inside a giant dinosaur? Or under water? Making the impossible possible is one of the joys of SecondLife. I think they missed a real trick here.

My husband's avatar ran into one of the festival organisers, who said the reason behind the simulation of reality was to make the festival feel like a familiar environment for newbies. While I can understand this, I think they've underestimated people's ability to figure things out pretty quickly. And to be fair, the longtime SecondLifers helped boost the atmosphere with their own visual effects and outfits (check the photos).

But hats off to the sponsors (esp Guardian) for attracting so many newbies; the festival was full of them. So will the people who joined up just to attend the festival stick around? Perhaps, if they can see past the terrible technical faults experienced at Secondfest. Audio and video streams were intermittently dropping, and many newbies who didn't know how to do the SL-equivalent of banging the top of the telly when it loses the signal, were disappointed.

And the rest of us were even more disappointed to find that many of the acts weren't actually 'performing' at all. The organisers simply played a recording and broadcast it into the festival. Seeing and hearing a live performance is the core reason for going to any gig, so this was a real let down. Had I paid anything, I would have felt royally ripped off. Fortunately, some of the artists who did perform live made up for the others; a few of them had even kitted out their avatars and were chatting to the crowd in between songs.

So was it a success? I guess it depends on how you measure it. At times, the stages were too crowded to get in, I got lost, and at one point a giant chicken was blocking my view - so pretty much like a real festival on all counts. But other times the system just felt overloaded, and the cracks were showing. The capacity of the stages was only 50 people at the low end and 200 people at the top end, so hardly a virtual Glasto. But even at these low numbers, the technical infrastructure was maxed out, causing the aforementioned streaming problems and other more comical issues, like avatars appearing with body parts missing.

Overall, I admire the ambition of  Secondfest, but I think it will be some time before promoters can confidently offer virtual festivals that rival their offline counterparts. But I do think this weekend demonstrated there is a market here, if time and technological advances can sort out the infrastructure issues. After all, a festival without mud, chemical toilets and noise-pollution does have its appeal. 

Comments

[DJ Jenns]

Hi there, I was performing on chill island at secondfest and we had live SL performances all weekend, I agree with your points made though and it didnt help that The Guardian advertised it as a live festival.

[Miko Coffey]

Thanks for the comment, Jenn. Chill Island was actually one of the best stages there for the very reason you mention (all acts live). Plus the atmosphere there was great, as lots of the crowd were longtime SL-ers. I spent some time there on Saturday and Sunday, but sadly didn't catch your set. Hope it went well.

[Leon Cych]

Hmm maybe we didn't go to the same fest ;)

[Miko Coffey]

Care to elaborate, Leon?