After seeing this years Independence Day Blockbuster, I was going to rail HARD against the industry for not taking advantage of using Second Life for the movie Transformers. Boy was I wrong, not only wrong it seemed that I missed some of the upcoming events. Whoops, my bad. This year’s summer blockbuster is Transformers, it’s a really good action film, the action, effects, storyline are all very good. After seeing the film, I was shocked that there had not been anything done in Second Life promoting the movie, taking advantage of the creativity in Second Life at all… well I was wrong. There is the “Sector 7†Sim, where you can visit the Sector 7 Labs, get screen shots of the film (which to be seem pretty useless in SL, you can’t download them onto your computer), you can also get a free Bumble Bee avatar (which does look pretty cool).
BUT (oh yes there is a but!), the sim does not really take advantage of the creativity of the Transformers movie. Where are the other transformer avatars? Where is the make a transformer? Where is the community integration with the film in Second Life? There isn’t anything in the sim that builds on the film, no secret files, no additional storyline plots, no character descriptions, nothing that we’ve come to expect from websites to make things “sticky.†Granted, I understand companies are exploring Second Life, but for crying out loud, there is such a great opportunity to really, and I mean really, get creative (transformer contests, transformer avatars, customize your transformer avatar, additional stuff, links to the album, the film, information about it, additional history on the transformers)… all of that stuff is missing. So far, the only thing that has happened has been a Q&A in the Sim. But Q&A’s happen in chat rooms, they happen on websites, a Q&A in Second Life is not a major “thing†when you’ve spent a lot of time and energy into a build like this. What shocks me even more was… the car companies in Second Life who had a major presence in the movie (you see tons of Toyota, GMC and other car logo placement everywhere… at one point it almost feels like a car commercial), there was none of it in the Transformers sim.
While, yes, I was initially wrong about there not being a Second Life experience for Transformers and while the initial experience is pretty cool, and it looks good, it wears off very, very quickly. I’m disappointed!