Hamlet has an article where he is pointing to Kat Alderman’s  comment (here) on Hamlet’s article: Second Life No Longer a Creation Platform, But an End-Point Display for Creativity.

Candid shot

Kat’s statements that caught my attention are:

And even though I have other points, the last I will address is this: By the time I first rezzed in 8 years ago, most of the people creating accounts weren’t creating accounts to have a creative platform, they were creating accounts to make connections. Because they weren’t easy to make, they left.

They still aren’t easy to make, even though Linden Lab has made the UI more user friendly. They aren’t easy to make because there are a lot of elitist attitudes, which began with the “artiste” types who couldn’t lower themselves to reach out to noobs. And, as will happen because of human nature, the elitist attitudes infected the commercial builders and designers, who in turn infected the retail bloggers, who in turn have infected full time residents who’ve never blogged or built a thing in their SLives.

So, the majority of people join an MMO to make connections…

Looking to see if that is true, I find Nick Lee wrote a paper on why people play MMO’s. (Reference)  The TL:DR is: MMO’s are popular because they appeal to large numbers of people with different motivations. So, they join for lots of reasons according to Nick.

Nick Lee is a co-founder and the analytics lead of Quantic Foundry, a consulting practice more or less about game analytics. Nick combines social science, data science, and an understanding of the psychology of gamers to generate actionable insights into game play and game design.

Greg Tito wrote: The Psychology of Playing MMOs. He never mentions a player’s desire to meet others. If that were the prime motivation for peeps playing MMO’s, I would expect Greg to notice.

Robert Moore wrote: Who Plays MMOs: An Analysis of MMORPG Player Demographics and MMORPG Player Stereotypes. There are numbers in this article that break some of the myths about MMO players. The interesting one for us is: “80% of players normally play with someone that they know in real life.” So, meeting people is probably not a primary motivation for playing.

So, the first premise, majority join to meet people, made by Kat is probably not as true as one might think. Certainly not a solid foundation for building further conclusions.

Another part of Kat’s comment is: “…because there are a lot of elitist attitudes…” Does this mean there is a large variety of attitudes or that many peeps in SL are elitist? From the context of the article I’ll say Kat is talking people numbers. So, where does one find the objective/factual number of elitists playing in SL? Or is this personal empirical experience and opinion? Probably.

Another hard to substantiate premise is: “…began with the ‘artiste’ types who couldn’t lower themselves to reach out to noobs.” What!?! Did Kat survey the artists of SL? Or again is this personal experience with a limited number of people paraded as fact?

Building on this Kat goes on to espouse that we are all infected with elitism from artists that is driving people out of Second Life… Are you buying this? Do we drive the artists out of SL to remove or stop the spread of elitism?

I doubt Hamlet is buying. The elitism idea is grist for the mill of controversy that drives clicks. Be skeptical of those that proclaim without substantiating their point of view.