Second Life
As always, I remain behind the times on the major internet buzz sites. I had heard of second life but had never indulged until last week when a friend suggested I took a look to see what I thought. I have to say that I came at this from ignorance. I had an idea roughly what second life was but have never investigated or read up on it. I had avoided it in the past as I am obsessive and anything I start has to be finished, especially when it comes to computer games.
Signing up to second life is easy and I was on within about 10 mins via my Mac. The set up gives some clues as to what is to be found later. The choice of name is limited somewhat which was disappointing. The choice of avatar was also limited and the figures were a bit young and trendy. I selected the fox figure as the alternative was surfer dude or Goth or teenager type figures.
Overall the experience was poor. The buildings and graphics are crude and the servers appear slow when lots of other people are present. The buildings do not appear or draw any detail until you are virtually upon them. Navigation did not meet expectation. I had imagined second life to be a huge land you could travel around in but this was not the case. It appears to be sets of isolated islands on the whole which you can teleport to. This was a disappointing discovery as I had imagined that one could fly high over a land full of buildings and interesting places and dip down to see the detail. This was not the case.
What was interesting was how little there was to do. I wandered around to random places in the hope of finding something to do or see that was remotely interesting. There was nothing. Second life seems to be some sort of Utopian capitalist land where people exits but there is no point to the existence. It has a ringtone economy where people spend money (real) for things that have no value or use in the land let alone externally. The price of land is staggering given that you get nothing for it.
The biggest surprise was that Second Life is a risk free environment. You cannot be hurt, there is no crime and there is no survival challenge. You exist ad infinitum with no point to the existence. Within 1 hour I was bored. I found myself trying to steal cars, break into buildings which denied me access and generally try to find something which would deliver even a modicum of excitement or interest.
For those of you who remember Stepford Wives then you already know what second life is about and how pointless an existence based on nothing would be.
Signing up to second life is easy and I was on within about 10 mins via my Mac. The set up gives some clues as to what is to be found later. The choice of name is limited somewhat which was disappointing. The choice of avatar was also limited and the figures were a bit young and trendy. I selected the fox figure as the alternative was surfer dude or Goth or teenager type figures.
Overall the experience was poor. The buildings and graphics are crude and the servers appear slow when lots of other people are present. The buildings do not appear or draw any detail until you are virtually upon them. Navigation did not meet expectation. I had imagined second life to be a huge land you could travel around in but this was not the case. It appears to be sets of isolated islands on the whole which you can teleport to. This was a disappointing discovery as I had imagined that one could fly high over a land full of buildings and interesting places and dip down to see the detail. This was not the case.
What was interesting was how little there was to do. I wandered around to random places in the hope of finding something to do or see that was remotely interesting. There was nothing. Second life seems to be some sort of Utopian capitalist land where people exits but there is no point to the existence. It has a ringtone economy where people spend money (real) for things that have no value or use in the land let alone externally. The price of land is staggering given that you get nothing for it.
The biggest surprise was that Second Life is a risk free environment. You cannot be hurt, there is no crime and there is no survival challenge. You exist ad infinitum with no point to the existence. Within 1 hour I was bored. I found myself trying to steal cars, break into buildings which denied me access and generally try to find something which would deliver even a modicum of excitement or interest.
For those of you who remember Stepford Wives then you already know what second life is about and how pointless an existence based on nothing would be.
posted by So long and thanks for all the fish at
1:33 pm
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