Back to Second Life

A while back, I had my first adventure with Second Life, and basically just gave Crayon a hard time for their island being deserted at the time that I was wondering around. Today, I had my second adventure in-world, and the Crayonville island was anything but deserted. At one o'clock this afternoon, the winner of the Coca-Cola Virtual Thirst competition, in which contestants created the Second Life 'essence' of Coke, was revealed.

crowd of people:


So I show up to Crayonville, get transported to an amphitheater on the other side of the island, take up five minutes just trying to figure out how to make my avatar sit down (I never did finish orientation island), and watch the proceedings. By about 10 after, there was quite a crowd in the amphitheater, and I'm watching all these conversations pop up in the corner of my screen, though I have absolutely no idea how to talk back. I really wish I had a better idea of how SL actually works, because it also took me quite a while to realize that there was an audio feed that I had to turn on to go along with what I was seeing.

In the beginning were several people standing at the front of the amphitheater, one of which was the woman who created the winning entry, all standing in front of a very large box.



When the box finally opened, it revealed a large, nicely designed, bottle of coke, apparantly a new kind of "vending machine of the future", which would dispense a unique Coke experience.



The bottle itself turned out to be a puzzle that the designer was solving in order to dispense this Coke experience. However, I guess there were some technical difficulties due to the large number of people in the room causing a lag, so it took a while to solve. When it was finally all put together, out of the bottle came some very pretty bubbles and a giant snow globe photo booth, complete with penguins, ice fishing, and bottles of coke.



15 of These vending machines will be placed around SL for other people to solve the puzzle. There are three different types of puzzles, and those who can solve them will receive prizes. Everyone seemed to be very excited about the whole thing, and even though I am completely incompetent when it comes to SL, I agree that it's a pretty neat way for people to interact with the brand in a whole new way. I especially like this promotion because it actually ads something to the game, instead of taking people out of the game - as was mentioned in the presentation. Over all, this was pretty neat, and an exciting sign of things to come.