I now have a Second Life. Which says a lot about my first one. After spending nearly four hours with it, I am convinced that the possibilities are very much open ended. Except of course that you can't loot, pillage, plunder, rape and be an overall baddy. I guess that's what FPS's are for...oh wait, thats this too. Definitely give it a look see. I will be completeing my assignment/glossary for Peggy Weil in it. My SL name is Koonthul Sklar.
So far, I think the most interesting social conventions revolve around the displacement of the user as their avatar. Many of the relevant ways of communicating are sort of cross bread with a conventional 3rd person over the shoulder, FPS, 2D file drag and drop interface. This can be annoying and jarring at times, but makes up some very funny user/avatar behavior! Essentially, it gives a whole new meaning to "talking with your hands". The community 'air' so to speak is always an un-nerving optimistic one, but that drives the potential monitary policy up, so it is also unusually productive, even in the 'unsafe zones'. Come watch me demonstrate my 'second life' this Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm in the IML. Should be interesting!
Posted by Mike at October 7, 2003 09:09 AMurgh. I'm itching to try this. mac version is coming soon...right.
interested to see what you do. i've been having various thoughts about playing in this space as well.
Posted by: will at October 7, 2003 11:03 AM
Will,
My 7 days are up. It was a thrill ride to say the least. Lots of interesting things to see and do. I think the most interesting are the social aspects of the system. An entire language so to speak as evolved. People do some interesting things so to speak. Today, my last day, I participated in a scavenger hunt for money and visited the "mature" zone. Found a strip club and also a local library. Tried to read a copy of 20,000 leagues under the sea and Dante's Inferno...but I think the text was a wee bit too much to load in one sitting. I would be surprised if it really did show up. It's coming to the Mac real soon, don't worry. I think we need to con Scott into getting our department a permanent account. Looks like it would run us 500 dollars or so.
Posted by: Mike at October 13, 2003 12:19 AM
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