Leading a Second Life.
Sep 22nd, 2007 by susheel
Ah again a long week with no updates to the blog. Actually this was something I was planning to write a couple of weeks back but never got the time. As it goes, a few of months back I had downloaded Second Life and decided to give it a try. I am still pretty new to this concept of Second Life so these are basically my initial reactions. Once again, the game is something new, something I certainly look out for thesedays. I haven’t really played any MMOs before this one, so I was a bit exited. Installation and setup of the software was a breeze. I did get a nice name for myself and decided to sign on.
The game features a in-depth tutorial but I found it a little bit difficult to understand. There were some poor unfortunate souls in there who couldn’t understand anything at all. I think the tutorial focuses more on how the program should be used, but fails to address what Second Life is all about. I would rather like a tutorial that explains to me the “possibilities” in the game. I would like the tutorial to explain to me the different experiences that can be had in the world of Second Life. Essentially how to go about having a very different life. Maybe some examples of how others, maybe senior players have gone about and created their own worlds. Yes, the tutorial does a good job at explaining stuff like which keys do what and what needs to be done to achieve something, but fails to address finer issues with the game. Like, for example, how to do macro level things like building your different life. You tend to pick things as you go along, but I would have loved a more in-depth tutorial.
The game is basically a 3D world or should I say a 3D chat room. You can log into a place and the content then gets pulled off the net into your PC and slowly you can see the world. The login interface looks deceptively similar to a chat or an IRC application. Maybe the developers intended it to be that way so players can pick things up rather easily. I tried to log into different places to see that it was all about. I must say, places with high number of users are particularly slow. Unfortunately these are the very places that are interesting and worth a visit. Catch 22 there. If you want to logon to Second Life you better have a high speed connection, else you can forget about it. Other places I visited were mundane and uninteresting. Some places were plain weired! Some were disturbing (, parents watch out there).
The game is great if you like to make friends on the internet or spend your time chatting on IRCs. The game allows you to push this further and adds a whole new dimension to your social networking experience. Second Life provides players with “Unlimited Freedom”. You can check out the FAQ for more details. You can even earn money off of Second Life, I haven’t explored that part however. The fact is I got bored rather quickly. I am not the kinda guy who you would expect to find on a chat channel, or one who spends a lot of time on a social networking site, so I quickly lost interest. I have too much things to do as it is in my First Life. I haven’t given up though. Maybe after a few days I might try again and see if I can really get the hang of a “Second Life”.