Holo, I agree. For some, it's valid as a game (tho I'd like to know what those who think it a game consider as the goal).
For a great many of us, SL is the wave of the future -- those of us who have the "view of Second Life as a cybercultural environment and microcosm of civilized society"
To have any less vision than that is to shortchange not only the residents and Linden Labs, but the loss of SL being an ongoing part of the future, relegating SL to a footnote in Cyber-societal history.