Students Blog

In the online game world of Second Life, the overall game play is very intriguing and amusing. The overall interface is very easy to use as it is a combination of the controls that are pretty standard in mmorpgs and first person shooters. The first overall impression of the game is that the world was really open to exploration. The ability to fly around and look at everything whether it be up in the air or on the ground or in the water just kept me occupied for a period of time. The lack of health and deaths in this world also made it easier to explore as I would not fear dying when I suddenly decided to drop my guy from very high to the ground and stop him from flying.
Once I got finished with testing out how my character moves and works (through repeated flying and dropping), I decided to move on and to teleport from the training area into the town. Once I got into the town, this was when I notices a lot of changes.
The overall avatar customizing tool is very powerful in all the selections that can be done. However, with all the options, it also became very difficult to figure out completely what is going on. As a new player in the Second Life world, I asked and talked to many people as I went from place to place. People were pretty friendly overall and I could tell that there was a wide range of players and that it was geared towards an older generation simply by the way people had their avatars dressed and the way they communicated with one another. As I finalized my avatar, I decided to try to make it have some sort of a resemblance towards my real body, yet make it so that it looks different enough that you would not be able to tell. This was to make it so that while I will grow somewhat attached to my character, I will not be at a loss if anything should happen to it as I am exploring.
One thing I noticed right away is that there is a pretty strong economy in the game. While you can buy in game money with real money or play random casino games and gamble, it all takes a lot of effort or time either way. It also takes a lot of money to buy different equipment and to further your status in the world. However, in seeking out different areas and exploring, I was able to get a lot of free stuff from people whether through talking or through trading.
I realized that in playing a role of a student exploring the world and then writing about it, people were willing to help me a lot because of the thought of helping out. In terms of emergence, the world is very intense in that anyone can create their own items and their own games. There are basically no limits except maybe in the amount of time people have to design the world.
One of the games that I played was called tringo. It was a combination of bingo, tetris, and some form of puzzle game. The goal of the game was to form cubes and to get the highest score possible. While it was a simple game overall, the people were all very nice and helpful in answering any questions that I had and even helped me take some pictures. The game was simple yet captivated a lot of people because it was quite fun at the same time because of the competitive nature. The game also demonstrates the emergence of a spin off of Conway’s Game of Life where certain rules were applied to a simple puzzle game.
I made my first two friends in Second Life while playing tringo and they helped me get along. One of the guys shared a lot about his personal background and why he was playing the game. He was working pretty hard in his real life and seemed very honest and real in that he did not try to change his real life personality in the Second Life world and would therefore be a disliked by other players sometimes. He talked about how some of the people in Second Life were very fake and that this was their form of emergence in the world similar to that of how people wanted to be a part of the mob or gangster in the Sims Online.
In my personal emergence in the Second Life world, I found that I wanted to make my character look cool and to have fun through the whole process. As I traveled to different locations whether it be mature or non mature content, I found that people has decorated and built their houses and areas to what they liked and catered to people with similar interests. One place I visited had UFOs and airplanes while another had a bar and were serving drinks. There was yet another where there was a gun shop and many other vehicles that were available for purchase. It was at this weapons dealership that I met another guy who was looking for a way to get at his neighbor. The guy owned 3/4s of a mountain and had built a very nice mansion. However, his neighbor was ruining the real estate look simply because he built a shack there. This stark contrast angered the guy I met and he was looking for some way to get the neighbor to either leave or change. It was through this interaction that I saw how people wanted to emerge in the virtual world creating the ideal environment that they may not be able to have in the real world. The massive amount of body shops and body changing areas was also amusing in that people wanted to design their avatar to be perfect a lot of times even though they themselves may not be in real life. Through exploration, the social aspect of my character has started to emerge in the Second Life game world. In following other actions, the other parts of my identity eventually begin emerging in the rest of the game world.