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Major League Baseball In Second Life 40

Posted by Zonk from the get-your-digital-pop-cooooooooooooorn dept.
Jerry23 writes "There's apparently an upcoming Home Run Derby in the world of Second Life, sponsored by Major League Baseball and created by The Electric Sheep Company. In proto-interactive TV style, fans can tune their laptops to the multi-player recreation and chat with other Second Lifers while they watch the real deal on the tube. And of course they can also pop over to the virtual souvenir shop and drop some hard-earned loot on a pixelated jersey." From the article: "[T]he virtual derby will not be a separate contest, but will be 'a real-time Second Life re-enactment' of the real thing, featuring avatars for each of the eight Derby players -- Major Leaguers competing to see who can hit the most home runs over the course of two rounds."
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Major League Baseball In Second Life More

Major League Baseball In Second Life

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  • Slashvertisement (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mrxak ( 727974 ) on Thursday July 06, 2006 @02:08PM (#15668779)
    In other news, Electric Sheep Company writes in to slashdot to tell everyone about themselves.

  • Wow (Score:1, Insightful)

    by MrSquirrel ( 976630 )
    and sometimes I wonder if I have too much time on my hands. Really though, I find this an interesting crossover of media forms -- like little kids holding their own home run derby in the backyard... except replace "little kids" with "30 year olds living in their parents' basement" and replace "the backyard" with "the internet which requires no physical effort". I guess I just don't understand it -- I know I'm a nerd, and I have a large disliking for professional sports ("Oh yay mr. baseball, you hit a bal
    • This whole thing is a little bit scary. Maybe not cult-scary, but at least wasted-life-scary.

      • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Photon Ghoul ( 14932 )
        Sort of like reading Slashdot, reading an article about 'scary' people and taking time out of your day to comment on said scary people.
    • Right. Lots of people can do your job. No one else can do that baseball player's job as well, or he'd be out of a job, like you...
  • Could you take something like this, or perhaps the Super Bowl(tm), and virtualize the game, and then rebroadcast it, because your work is transformative enough that it's not considered copyright infringement?
    • In the standard warning that they spout out during baseball and football games, the prohibited activities also include "depictions or accounts" of the game. I would imagine a play-by-play re-enactment like this would fall into that category.
      • What they say is allowed, and what is allowed by law are not necessarily the same. And since you have not agreed to any contract, you only have to follow the law, not what they say. (Of course, I'm sure Second Life and Electric Sheep have signed a contract with MLB.)

        By law, the question is whether the work is a derived work of the original. A full play-by-play or reenactment would clearly be a derived work. An "account" of the game that merely summarizes what happened would not be a derived work. And becaus
  • Doing this in real-time is pretty damn sweet. (Or am I completely out of it and this is nothing novel? The article seems to think it's impressively new.)

    I'm still not sure why anyone would pay $3 to watch it, as the only clear benefit over ESPN is not having to listen to Chris Berman and you can do that by hitting the mute button on your TV. But then I'm not a MMR-whatever-it-is'er in the first place...

  • how's this supposed to work? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I skimmed TFA, and it doesn't appear to explain how the players in the home run derby actually...well, play. Can anyone explain how the game decides when a home run has been hit, and what factors are involved?

  • What's up next, you ask? (Score:3, Funny)

    by SLot ( 82781 ) on Thursday July 06, 2006 @02:32PM (#15669018) Homepage Journal
    A steroid probe, of course.
  • I considered attending - but the entry fee (approx U$3 at current exchange rates) is far too steep to justify, considering I get the real thing for 'free'.
  • I call lack of citation on the original poster's mention that MLB sponsors the event. The linked blog says that the virtual event would be held in conjunction with an MLB real-life event, but it does not say that MLB sponsors the virtual event.
    • Hi there, I'm Sara Van Gorden, and I was one of the builders in Second Life for the ESC/MLB project. The Home Run Derby event was indeed sponsored by MLB.com, including the creation of virtual merchandise officially sanctioned by MLB and utilizing the offical logos, etc. for the Home Run Derby. The MLB reps were on hand throughout the creation of the build and attended the SL event, and also helped provide a live stream of the live HRD into Second Life. :)
  • I'm sorry, I just got done with my set theory class, and I did not realize that the sets [wikipedia.org] of Second Life and Major League Baseball intersected [wikipedia.org]. I was certain they were disjoint [wikipedia.org]?

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