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[Column] General: There's No Shame In Playing Second Life
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Ah, Second Life. It’s still the angsty teenager of the MMO world, even though it’s been around for more than a decade. My account is almost as old as the game – May of 2004 – but I definitely do not play in the world as much as I have in the past. Second Life really deserves full attention, or at least it can demand it, just like a teenager. It’s also full of energy and hormones and bursting with creative ideas… just like a teenager.
Read more of Beau Hindman's A Casual, Cornered: There's No Shame in Playing Second Life.
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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I play it, now and then, rarely but I do jump in. Commonly I always get WOW your character is so OLD! I was a Charter of second life and one of the few that helped make it what it is today.
It was going to be a shooter when it first started. but that changed fast
I helped in creating the first music small files I spliced together with scripts. Also made the first music player for multiple CD's and many more Including the first ever attachable body part O_O...
I'm Zypher crash. And if your in there and I happen to jump in. Say hello.
LOL
I was just going to breeze through the article and move on but that cracked me up.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I thought the Second Life quote was "People who play Second Life have no shame.".
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Yes there is. There is a lot of shame.
I've certainly read about Second Life over the years, but never pulled the trigger. For one thing, I just know that even thinking about the possibility of having virtual sex with some other hairy scrote being on the other end of the line would leave me traumatized for life. And as the author himself admitted, sex is a major part of this game. But I do realize that there is more to Second Life than virtual sex. And some of it does seem interesting even to me.
I wonder if perhaps it's something roughly like this. I have a cousin who is (was) a big player, but who has never so much as tried a MMORPG. And I'm just the reverse. Maybe Second Life players lean more toward primarily being "social networking" type folks, and MMORPG'ers lean more toward being "gamers"?
I actually played it by accident, when i played it's opensource counterpart Opensim. I had no idea it was essentially SL. It's pretty similar to IMVU, and other virtual worlds.
The virtual world is the ultimate "sandbox"/building game. You can literally customize everything; hair, skin, shape, clothing, textures, terraforming, animations, etc. You can also host events, roleplay, join groups (guilds), shop & sell, create your own adventures, create your own biographies and backstories, create your own combat hud and weapons, etc. If you have the knowledge to use Maya, Blender, Photoshop, you can make just about anything you want for SL or other virtual worlds, and you can also sell them for real money. If you don't like creating things though, you can just buy them or get them free.
It has it's downsides though, such as the horrendous lag and load times, which is due to people's custom avatars, scripts, and non-optimized buildings and textures. Their tech engine is so old though, which was in development since before 2002 i think. And then there's the shady sex business, also trolls, griefers, etc.. but some MMO's have this environment too, just visit the Moon Guard server in WoW. lol. This is where SL gets it's stigma when people think of it, which is a shame.
I've been saying for months, the next MMO that merges user-generated content with a developer-generated environment, will be a huge hit, but there would definitely need to be some restrictions by the devs; such as restricting user created content to the theme of the developer's virtual world, and also limiting things such as user-created combat, etc. Landmark is the closest thing to a SL/virtual world environment, except it's extremely limited in it's avatar customization, among other things.
SL has a high learning curve though, and it's UI, controls, and movement, are just terrible and very different than an MMORPG. These are the main reasons i stopped playing SL after a month or so. I'm fighting the movement and camera control more than anything. If you can get past the learning curve though, and the stereotypes, you'll be amazed at how customizable it really is.
That's a pretty accurate description. It's very community-driven with fansites, blogs, conferences, and events.
I saw a documentary on it that interviewed people who met and married in RL because of Second Life. Also people who quit their jobs and managed to made some very good incomes. One lady designed and built high end virtual houses for people and had a few virtual clothing stores, talk about cash shops. :-)
Man Sells Virtual Real Estate in Online Game for $635,000! WTF?
http://singularityhub.com/2010/11/21/man-sells-virtual-real-estate-in-online-game-for-635000-wtf-video/
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Seriously Beau, you could not come up with a better article than talk about an old game that was better known for it's porn than anything else?
I keep waiting for a decent article from you.
Ah Second Life, I spent quite a bit of time back in 2004-2005 in the game. I mostly stayed in the sandbox areas and built random things.
After a few months of fooling around with building and texturing I started scripting in game making rude scripts for cars and guns and what not. Had fun!
I was actually approached in game by someone and was asked to join a build team to help create the old Las Vegas island. I built the NY NY section and was paid in game which I then sold back to the LL and made a cool 350 US dollars.
The next year I just made stuff for people off and on and I actually was making my car payment every month for 9 months just by building things, texturing, and scripting. Then I started college and had minimal time for the game and slowly lost my foot hold in the world of SL.
I enjoyed the creative freedom I had in game and the money I made. Every now and then I would go exploring and would find some rather awesome things, but more often then not I found these weird perverted BDSM sex dungeons.........The "Adult Content" always creeped me out tbh.
I have no shame, I play SL and have since 2005. It's a different world these days with most high-end content generated by 3d students and even professionals who enjoy the freedom to make whatever their minds dream up. Granted that is my primary interest, asset creation I enjoy the instant feedback process and interaction with the community that's also unique to Second Life. There are even a few small indie dev teams working to produce games and content entirely for SL these days.
Sure the freaky stuff is still there but set your filters to General or Moderate and you never have to actually see it.
In the meantime it's great to see an article that doesn't feature screenshots from 2005, but here's a couple more, just to illustrate the point.
Games and mmporgs are "limited" in the sense that you can only evolve within the boundaries fixed by the game designers (I did play a mmporg for a while and had fun).
Second Life/Open Sims offer you a blank canvas + the tools to create whatever comes to your mind. There I can build things or play/invent avatars to take my example.
SL a Game? That explains how people act in it :P
SL is a sandbox world you make of it what you want, the only winning is that you enjoy your time in it.
Like other virtual place on the internet, people are 10x what they were offline. So it appears to be worse then it really is. It a snapshot of the kind of people who get drawn into it.
Some people feel there avatars are a real Extension of themselves. All good gamers get into that zone. And feeling get hurt and drama happens. Just like any virtual world.
Its free, so why not just drop by and see it for yourself
I must say this much I been on SL for a long time myself, For years I sold stuff that paid for my SL experience and other MMOS that needed hard cash to play. But, because of issues with how SL is ran by LL I closed up that operation and exploring other worlds in the opensim universe. You make friends that will stick with you a long time. But remember they are who they want you to think they are.
Played Secondlife for a summer as a scripter/programmmer. When I cashed out I bought half a semesters worth of college books.
It was actually pretty fun and an interesting experience seeing people who were there for socializing and social status. Rather than your normal MMOer sterotypes of the Achievers and Killers you normally see.
__________
Also has some combat sword and fantasy SIMs. That actually has combat that's comparable to the first dark fall, and even fell into the same metagame of circle-strafe-moonwalk-swinging.
An interesting Battle Tech combat SIM. That followed the combat rules in the table top game better than most the video games, even had tournaments for territory control(though sadly pared down due to how SL does it's territory in silly stupid unscalable ways).
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."