I can be pretty hard on corporate islands in Second Life. They build meeting venues, arenas, and training areas only to let them waste away from inattention. “If we build it, they will come.” They think, overestimating both the allure of Second Life and their own brand equity. Content is king, and the content can be mighty thin on those corporate islands.
And then there’s Fujitus Siemens Computer (FSC). Normally, duplicating or expanding on what you did in real life is a recipe for irrelevance, but on FSC Island it works.
I think FSC Island works because it isn’t trying to be anything more than it is – a virtual analogue to a typical real life district sales office. Now, I’ve been to lots of these places in real life — Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and so on, and FSC Island has that vibe in spades. Everything is clean and beautiful, and fits into the corporate design ethos (in the case of FSC, lots of blue-green, right down to the leaves on the trees).
What they don’t have is the stuff that’s intended to attract visitors, because the place is obviously not designed to attract visitors. It’s there for invited guests, who will rez at a small Second Life orientation center and then will no doubt be ushered by their hosts to the conference room or through the product displays. It’s GoToMeeting or WebEx in 3-D. There’s no dance club here, no art gallery, no scavenger hunt. This is a corporate, not consumer island, thank you.
Now I’ve got to be honest here. I’m guessing that this island is not intended to attract visitors because that’s how it seems. It’s odd that island access is unrestricted, though. It could very well be intended as an enertaining destination, in which case it has achieved new levels of success in the Craptastic Derby. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
That’s not to say the island doesn’t have its amusements. After all, the corporate visitors still need something to occupy them during their lunch break. You don’t want them wandering off to Dell Island or anything.
So, to tkeep them occupied there are a few nicely desgned giant computers. A laptop spins and extolls its virtues on its screen. Across the way an open desktop PC shows off its innards, with important features periodically highlighted (in the requisite blue-green glow, naturally).
On the other side of an island another computer displays a video of a couple of salesfolk explaining in thick German accents why their computer is so environmentally friendly. (One amusement — every picture I took of the screen seemed to have them looking down, right at my avtatar. It was very surreal until I realized I captured them looking at their cue cards).
Finally they have an amusing, if difficult to control Pong game played on a giant monitor. Because nothing shows how shows how your computers can handle advanced data processing like Pong. They also give away a Pong HUD game in the office lobby (and the ever-popular crappy t-shirt, naturally). Maybe it has to do with some advertising campaign that isn’t readily evident to me.
If you’ve made it this far you’ll realize that I don’t have any compelling reasons for you to visit FSC Island, unless perchance you are a current or prospective customer. But that’s okay, it’s not trying to appeal to anone else.
