Canada Post's Second Life - with Yankee help

I didn't think I'd have much to post anymore here since Justin's been on top of pretty much everything, but I ran across something interesting I knew he wasn't going to know, because it's in Second Life.

You know Second Life, right? World of Warcraft without the points and tasks and medieval dress code? Folks making their own avatars to look like slightly better or totally-surreal versions or themselves, then going off to dance, have sex, buy stuff, and most importantly talk to other people who might not completely suck? Yeah, that thing.

A couple days ago, I logged on and ducked into my modest rental house as usual to peruse the events of the day, and imagine my surprise finding an ad for a huge music event to celebrate the opening of the new town Maple Grove, with the major sponsor being Canada Post. Of course, I had to go.

So I teleported to the middle of this sort of prototypical Canadian small city. You would assume it's a Canadian small city because a) there are Canadian and provincial flags everywhere, b) there's a big tower at the end of one street (an amalgam of the towers in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, it seems) and c) there are red Canada Post mailboxes everywhere.

Here's what the welcome notecard says:

Canada Post is proud to showcase the retailers that are participating in the 2007 Holiday lookbook. The lookbook is a shopping catalog delivered across Canada.

Explore Maple Grove and discover the largest collection of real-life retailers sharing one sim in Second Life. In the city center, you can visit Toys R Us, Sky Mall, The Shopping Channel and Canada Post.

On Maple Street near the Canada Post Place Theater, be sure to check out Brookstone and Red Canoe. Don't forget to stop in the lookbook cafe!

Blackberry Lane is home to Sears and the Canada Post garage where you can get your own free mail truck.

On Hudson Avenue, you will find the Everything Olive store located next to our own lookbook Tower.

Thank you for visiting Maple Grove and be sure to leave us some feedback at the Canada Post office in the city center.

(Note the spelling of the last word.)

So you can start to see the intention here. These companies - some multi-national, some Canadian - joined forces with Canada Post for this sampler catalog to get Canadians to do some online holiday shopping that involves good ol' mail delivery. Fair enough. You continue to see the intention as you wander in and out of each store and find nicely furnished places to click and be taken to each store's site outside of SL.

Otherwise, there's not a heck of a lot to do there besides get that truck, sit around at the café, look at retro arcade games in the Tower, pretend to draw at the Toys R Us kids' table (but hey! I got a free pen!), skydive at Sky Mall (though you wouldn't know you could do that until you stepped inside) watch some commercials over and over and try to figure out how to read that huge lookbook you got - but can't back up your camera enough to actually view (maybe that last one was just me).

And of course, go to the theatre and check out the concerts - the place was packed on the day to hear the line-up of great musicians playing live, though only one was Canadian, despite the many successful Canuck artists in SL. It would have been cool to buy RCAF or CBC shirts for my avatar to wear, or noise-cancelling headphones from that crazy-ass Sky Mall. These are things that people in SL actually make and sell in-world, and many of the best designers and vendors are Canadian. And it's those things (virtual though they may be) that would have people coming back.

But hey, there are plenty of companies who screw up on SL, not giving people a reason to come back and then scratching their heads about how this virtual world stuff ain't what it's cracked up to be. Relatively, this build isn't bad compared to many. But maybe what is a greater concern is the possible reason why Maple Grove isn't quite as Canadian as it could be, considering it's from our national mail service and a Crown Corporation.

It's the work of American builders and an American ad firm.

Canada Post did not enlist some of the many talented Canadian builders and coders in Second Life.

So if you do in fact find yourself in Second Life for some goofy reason, feel free to visit wonderful Canadian-built areas like Canada in SL, L'ile du Quebec, or the unofficial Tim Hortons; check out great live concerts from folks like Maximillion Kleene, Forsythe Whitfield, Norris Shepherd, or Montrealer Moody; and read the fashion wisdom of Iris Ophelia. And ask yourself: couldn't some of your taxpayer's money have gone to Canada Post utilizing their talents?