世論 What Japan Thinks

I know I’ve got a couple of readers who are active in Second Life and my Second Life surveys seem to go down quite well, and I can’t find much on this elsewhere, so here’s a quick report on Panasonic’s Maze opening up in Second Life.

Apparently, just search the Second Life world map for Panasonic (or just click here) so you can teleport to their maze. There you’ll find an Olympic stadium (let’s all dress up as Tibetans and picket it…), an eco zone, a Viera living room zone where you can experience their 150 inch television, history of Panasonic zone, and finally, the rather bizzare Joba zone, where you can virtually experience their virtual exercise horse while watching a virtual television that virtually presents the virtual you virtually riding on your virtual virtual virtual horse through a virtual show jumping course, or something virtually similar to that.

It’s probably already under development, but imagine if you could buy an adapter to map movement of an in-game horse to your Joba, or even better, team up with Nintendo to create virtual jousting. Throw in a Wii with Wii Fit, and you can have also have hand-to-hand combat when you get virtually toppled from your nag!

Having looked in passing at English lessons in Second Life just a few days ago, this time it’s Second Life in general, with a survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research, their 6th regular Second Life survey.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 27th of March 2008 1,091 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample was male, 16.1% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, and 28.2% aged fifty or older.

Second Life, or Sadville as The Register calls it, is an online 3D virtual world where you can do and build whatever you want, but most things inevitably end up revolving around sex of often a rather perverted nature.

I personally have never played and have no intention of doing so, not least because my poor PC isn’t up to taking the strain.
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Second Life from Linden Labs, a virtual world that is gaining a lot of support from major companies in Japan but is still to actually officially launch in the country has been getting a lot of press coverage recently. To find out how it was affecting the average consumer, MyVoice performed a survey about using Second Life.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2007 12,386 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’m not sure what the correct verb to use for being in Second Life is. “Play” seems too trivial and “be” sounds pompous, so I’ll just stick with the neutral but dull “use”, which is actually the direct translation of the Japanese verb used by MyVoice.

I’m sure one could draw conclusions from Q2, where the image of being unable to communicate with foreigners was stronger than that of being able to communicate with them!
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Sadville, as The Register is wont to call it, will be released on a mostly unsuspecting Japanese audience this summer. Although some Japanese companies have already set up virtual shop in the Second Life metaverse, with the new headquarters for mixi (the giant Japanese Social Networking Service) even featuring on prime-time news, until now only an English-langauge client has been available for Japanese users. In antcipation of the imminent client release, japan.internet.com reported on the start of a new series of surveys by goo Research on this very topic, Second Life.

Demographics

Between the 28th and 30th of May 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,102 members of its internet monitor group. 53.0% of the sample was male, 17.0% in their teens, 20.9% in their twenties, 18.0% in their thirties, 16.8% in their forties, and 27.3% aged fifty or older.

I won’t be found in Second Life, as my rather ancient PC does not have the required horsepower, and I have enough going on in my First Life to not require an escape to a Second.

New visitors might also be interested in a survey on virtual world English lessons and an awareness study on Second Life.

It also seems that Sony plan to release their own similar world, called “Home”, and TransCosmos and other companies are planning one called “meet-me”.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into
awareness and use of Second Life. Over three days in the middle of February 1,073 people from goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Demographically, 51.5% were male, 13.0% in their teens, 23.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 21.4% in their forties, and 20.8% in their fifties. Note that at the time of the survey there is no Japanese language version of Second Life, and I am unsure as to even how well it supports Japanese language, but the launch of a fully localised version is not far off at all, it seems.

I get most of my information regarding Second Life from first The Register (possibly NSFW material) and second Something Awful (definitely NSFW!), so my view of it is, shall we say, rather skewed. I have no intention of taking part myself, as I’ve never been much for socialising in my First Life, let alone the Second. Quite frankly it all sounds too scary!

Coincidentaly, I also got my very first Japanese Second Life spam last night advertising the chance to meet some bored housewives for virtual rumpy-pumpy in a virtual manshon. The advertisement featured photographs of real-life women and a real-life block of flats, which seemed rather much like it was designed to entice you into the real world via the virtual.
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