QotW10: The Simple 'Second Life'

My Very First ‘Second Life’
I felt quite disappointed seeing other classmates having so much fun in Second Life, teleporting to cool places while I was having problems accessing it from my home computer. Thus, I decided to use the computers in our SIM computer labs but those wouldn’t allow me to teleport either! Taking the last resort, I borrowed Benjamin’s lap top over the weekends. It worked fine at first...until I tried to TELEPORT. Yes, it hanged the lap top.

Sadly, my Second Life was spent and explored on the Orientation Island. Still, I tried to make the best of it and get some screenshots while watching my avatar drive cute vehicles, attempting to talk to strangers, getting shocked by other avatars falling from the sky then landing right in front of me and sitting on huge grey rats and then not knowing how to get up! It was really funny.

My Avatar: You Can Call Me “Nicki Cazalet”

I was amazed at how many different characteristics of the avatar I was able to edit to my liking. Being rather boring, I decided to attempt to just create an avatar that looked like me. However, it was more difficult that I had expected! In other words, it is much easier to create an avatar that does not resemble your real appearance.

I edited nearly everything from skin color, height, hair length, and hair volume to clothing, thickness of lips and removing the eye shadow. I dressed myself in a top of my favorite color and put on a simple pair of three-quart jeans. Even after nearly 20 over minutes of editing the avatar’s appearance, I was left with something that still didn’t quite look like me. When I was done, I asked my classmate Wei Yang if it looked like me and he replied, “It’s O.K., but you have lesser hair volume.” And so, it was back to editing the avatar again! It was pretty fun in some sense. However, the final avatar did look much better than the default avatar which had way too much make-up on! Scary…


(UPDATED!! -- Successful teleporting! Finally.)

Screenshots:



Grand Prize: This is Nicki Cazalet posing as a DJ in some club area found in Osaka, Japan. I think this photo and place is really cool. I have always felt that being a DJ looks really fun, just that I've never tried it before. Well, not until Second Life...Thus, this is my favorite place I've chosen!





Second Prize: This is Nicki Cazalet in beautiful Venice. Lovely...

Third Prize: This is Nicki Cazalet enjoying life in Hawaii...

All in all, Second Life was really pretty fun. Well, apart from the occasional lags and many technical problems. I also took a while to get used to navigating my avatar around the place. I think that if these areas could be improved on, it would make our second lives much better.

Bonus Mission #2: Second Life is Not A Game

Before Kevin Lim’s class, I’ve never heard of Second Life. Due to that, I thought it was similar to Half-Life. Boy was I wrong.



What is Second Life?
Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world developed by Linden Lab which became popular in late 2006 and early 2007. On the Second Life website, a downloadable client program enables its users, also known as ‘Residents,’ to interact with one another using motional avatars. Second Life provides an advanced level of a social network service as Residents can explore the virtual world, socialize, participate in individual/group activities, and create/trade items and services from one another (“Second Life,” 2007).

Why is Second Life Not a Game?
After you have explored Second Life, you would come to notice that there is no main goal or way to win/lose in Second Life. Moreover, one is unable to virtually “die” in Second Life either. If Second Life was a game, we would expect it to have an aim/mission to accomplish, or a points system that can rank the Residents according to who has won or lost the most in Second Life.

In a way, Second Life resembles aspects of IMVU (Instant Messaging Virtual Universe).

[Source: IMVU. (2007). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.]

IMVU also uses 3-dimensional avatars that enable users to explore the area, interact with speech bubbles and carry out actions such as hugging or kicking one other. However similar these two programs may seem, it is not difficult to realize that Second Life contains much more facilities than IMVU.

In Second Life, users are there to interact using their 3-dimensional avatars and engage in activities that they would probably not be able to do in real life. An obvious one would be that users are able to fly in Second Life. Residents are also able to explore the map and teleport to different locations. These locations may only be virtual but some are representations of places in real life. For example, Mr. Alvin Loo spent US$1,650 to buy land on Second Life to create a virtual replica of Singapore called Lion City (Tham, 2007). This would enable other Residents to visit the virtual Singapore and explore how some real landmarks may look. To me, this could be seen as an act of giving, in some way. He spends the money to buy virtual land where other Residents are free to explore and enjoy. Therefore, this does not make Second Life a game.

Moreover, apart from being able to navigate and control one’s avatar to move around the virtual world, which is similar to how people control their characters while engaging in games such as Counter Strike or Halo, Second Life concentrates on enabling its users to personalize their avatars and socialize with one another. This further contributes to the idea that Second Life is not a game.

If Second Life is Not a Game, Then What Is It?

Second Life should be seen as a highly advanced social networking program. Unlike instant messaging programs where users communicate on windows through the exchange of text messages, Second Life provides a whole new virtual space for users to break beyond the lack of social cues on instant messaging programs to express themselves in a 3-dimensional world. In other words, Second Life has brought the world of online social networking a step closer to reality.

How Real Can It Get?
Life in Second Life pretty much reflects life in reality. Residents have to work to earn Linden Dollars (currency used in Second Life) or make items to sell to other Residents. In some cases, users have made real money out of selling their created items on Second Life.

In an incident related to World of Warcraft, one guild member had died in real life and his friends decided to hold a funeral for him inside the game. “The solemn affair was disrupted when a rival guild burst upon the unarmed mourners and slaughtered them mercilessly” (Levy, 2006). This emphasizes the fact that people are merging the happenings of real life issues together with that of the virtual world. This is significant in Second Life too.

We must remember: Although Second Life revolves around a virtual, or some may call ‘fake,’ world, the interactions between users are REAL.

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References:

Levy, S. (2006). World of Warcraft: Is It a Game? Retrieved April 6, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Second Life. (2007). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 6, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Life&diff=120696573&oldid=120695922

Tham, Y. (2007, March 24). Second Life Virtual World Gets a Lion City. The Straits Times, p. 2.