Plunder Airship Outpost is brought to you by the same folks who brought you The Block. As such, there isn’t much here in terms of entertainment and oddities… except for the fact that it’s a work of stunning imagination.
Where does one get the idea for an post-apocalyptic steampunk pirate aerial outpost held aloft by all manner of balloons, propellers, and jets, anyway? Seemingly mobile stores have “docked” at the outpost, each floating in the air by it’s own unique method. A giganticblue robot keeps FORM in place, while Gear Shift is suspended from a dirigible. DaVinci-esqe screw rotors keep another store in the air. It gives the illusion that each store was uniquely designed by it’s owner, though in reality they were all created by the same (very talented) individual.
The mix of stores is very similar to that of The Block. That said, I go to Plunder more often. Mainly this is because the theme makes for a brighter, happier shopping experience, but I also find that the “central platform with stores attached” is easier to navigate than a maze of streets. (Maybe that’s a function of male shopping. Look around, locate the store you want, zip in, zip across to the next one. Or maybe it’s a lesson for the real life malls).
If you look around the platform you’ll find a teleporter that will send you to the Plunder Lounge, located in the airship hovering you It’s a great design, and of course it’s empty… but the views are dandy. Actually, from the windows you can see other stores hovering near Plunder, testaments to it’s success.
Look inside the airship for the log describing how history of Plunder. Whether the stores really joined in the order shown here, who can say? But it’s a fine detail and the kind of thing that helps illuminate the rationale for such a place.
As I look at an area like this and I think about “theme shopping,” I’m beginning to wonder if it would work for a real life mall. Appeal to the broadest range of people is bread and butter to a mall, and the themes we’ve explored are very niche. We can afford to do that in Second Life. The stakes are low and rebuilding is relatively cheap. In real life construction and real estate are expensive, so they can’t afford to take a big risk. Is there a mall theme with broad appeal that would be less banal than a set of generic corridors and fountains?
“Themed” RL malls work, to a degree. The problem is that theming in of itself adds a great deal to the cost, and they generally lack real vision (however, look at the way many mall stores are facading more interestingly now, and there’s Universal City which, while it isn’t one well defined theme, has done a lot more interesting with their facades. As well as Hard Rock Cafes. Both of the latter do make up for it by charging a premium). Plus, actually, RL malls aren’t as much of the cashcow as you would think, so it generally isn’t seen as “worth it.”
In SL, we don’t have to worry about structurally sound and safety, nor, aside from prim usage, building materials for complex shapes, and so on. There’s been a push towards “box stores”, not only because they are cheap and easy, but also because they contain the Walmarts/Targets/CostCos, where you can make your money stretch further than in a mall, as well. Is this a smart choice, in a post internet world? Possibly not- I know they don’t give me any incentive to shop there rather than just order things (with the unfortunate inability to try things on, but then you’ve also got places like Zappos with free returns and shipping so you’re just out a couple of days instead of instant gratification).