I've seen a lot of old, boring people talking about the negative impact of Display Names recently. I think all of the criticism is dumb, and anyone who spreads the ridiculous pieces of hear-say about things like impersonation, AOL-type names or conspiracy theories is just plain loony.
Display Names are neat.
Champions Online has always had Display Names, displayed as {Character@Username}, and it's an amazing way to get people to share names, while still remaining unique accounts. It's easy to figure out who is who, even on a system where people change character name every few hours. Second Life might not yet have all of the feature-set down (honestly I think the web-dashboard could use both names), but Second Life development is iterative. It will get there.
I haven't seen any convincing attempt at impersonation in either Champions Online or Second Life, ever. And I don't expect that to change. Anyone who loses L$ to someone without checking the recipient is asking for trouble. Who on earth would just bid on items on eBay without checking a few background details? No-one. It's the same amount of common sense.
AOL-type names {Username}, and the loss of the 'legacy' Second Life name-structure of {Firstname Lastname}, are also fine. People use AOL-type names everywhere, such as for emails. Email is the very foundation of communication these days, and change to usernames just brings Second Life back to where it SHOULD be. Most people don't want to develop a character, flesh them out and make them believable. Plenty of people want to be an idealised version of themselves. They want to live through their avatar, not replace their First Life name and escape into some avatar bloodline with six thousand unknown brothers and sisters all sharing the same surname.
Linden Lab is making a lot of progress in getting Second Life AWAY from a fringe community of people who are insane, rambling and persistantly disatisfied. I'm absolutely fine when any 'oldbie' says they will never use Viewer 2, will never use Display Names, will never embrace change or grow. They can rot. |
