CSI:NY - A First Look
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the time is nearly upon us... The time of the CSI:NY Deluge. As I write this, the programme in question is still a good 12 hours from going on air, but already the metaphorical leaves are beginning to swirl and the windows rattle. The Electric Sheep Company and CBS, along with their chums at Cisco by the look of it, have obtained a mind-boggling 416 sims to support the inworld game - and these have just opened to the public.
Before we take a look, let's just consider what we know. Of the 416 sims, half are given over to orientation, and the other half to the game itself. I believe ESC are sizing based on around 40-50 avatars/sim. This would suggest a peak of around 10,000 people in orientation and a further 10,000 actually playing the game. I understand that Linden Lab however are planning for up to 3,000 registrations per minute! Quite how these numbers can be shoehorned into the available space is anyone's guess - but there is a feeling in the current SL community of "batten down the hatches, we're in for a rough ride."
Here's a few snaps of the build:
The Orientation Zone:
Some familiar landmarks:
Some game stuff:
There's not much to say about this really. In my view, it is an interesting experiment but the lack of maturity and stability of virtual worlds like Second Life means this is happening far too early. Perhaps in another 12-18 months. We will see.
As I don't follow the show, or have any interest in it, I am not best positioned to judge the merits or otherwise of the gameplay - which looks fairly straightforward to my eye. I have to say that the in-yer-face shameless promotion of Cisco I find particularly jarring. But then, I like to be seduced by advertising, not beaten about the head with it.
CBS have finally opened their tie-in web pages here.
2 comments:
That TV episode was TERRIBLE. It was EMBARRASSING. And it gives SL as abad name. It looked more like Dungeons and Dragons than SL, and everybody in it was a psycho killer, a slutty woman or a geeky teenager, and they had them doing things you can't even do in SL, like going around picking up people's shoes that fell off, and picking up a calling card and getting a virus that wiped out an entire FBI computer network, and finding where people live in RL just by talking to them and tracing their computer. The graphics were bad, the animation was bad, it
looked worse than the bad Star Trek sim video Electric Sheep did. It was just so bad, I cannot believe they had the nerve to show it.
Sabri. Thanks for the update. I've read a few posts about it, and opinions are mixed - though most I think broadly agree with you.
I gather the overnight peak concurrency only hit around 50K, which doesn't strike me as high. It may be early days, but it looks like this might prove an expensive shot in the dark that has missed its target.
And damaged SL into the bargain.
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