MLB.com and Electric Sheep Play at Bobblehead Baseball

Tiny Boston Red Sox go head-to-bobblehead with wee New York Yankees in new stadium seating 45

By Pixeleen Mistral, Herald Sports Desk

“We're super psyched," said Hank Hoodoo of the Electric Sheep Company virtual world services firm, talking about a "real-time, virtual world enactments" of two Red Sox-Yankees games that will take place in Second Life on September 15th and 17th. "We had a lot of fun with the Home Run Derby, and this is taking aspects of that to the next level... a fully automated, live-XML-feed, bobblehead extravaganza level. I'm sure it won't be perfect but it will be great to watch, I guarantee it”

I was feeling a bit jaded when I started looking into this story, since it is yet another RL in SL event. Will we ever get enough of these RL in SL events, I wonder? Perhaps at some point soon, there will be an SL event in SL and it will feel like a first or at least unique, but we are not there yet. Not quite. For now, all we can do is play ball.

Since it is getting hard to come up with marketing “firsts” in SL these days, the co-sponsors (MLB.com and the Electric Sheep) are resorting to a mashup of uber-cute bobbleheaded players, set in an SL model of a stadium that has not been built in RL yet. I really think they are missing something here. Couldn’t we also get politician Mark Warner to stop by to throw out the first pitch? I’m sure his SL action figure would love to get out of whoever’s inventory he is stuck in right now.

In any case, this time it's all about baseball, with a live re-entactment of a couple Red Sox vs. Yankees games on the 15th and 17th. Tickets were put on sale at slboutique.com as of Monday evening, and there is limited seating (45) due to the limited capacity of of SL sims. Let’s hope the major media pick this up, and someone owns the broadcast rights, since I have no idea how major league salaries can be supported by stadiums full of 40 or 50 SL avatars. On the other hand, the living expenses for the bobbleheaded players are minimal, and there is no indication that anyone is threatening to move the teams to new sims unless they get a new stadium in SL. This really is a better world than RL, after all. Look for XML-enabled hotdogs at the game, and watch out for a cuteness overload on the primitar baseball players.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

*Ahem*. Our New York Yankees are not "wee". They are...simulated on a monetarized socializing platform, I'll thank you to know.

[Mr. F]

Wow, those are both cute and boring.