Blogpost 6: Secondlife and Emergence
One aspect of emergence that I noticed immediately when I started playing was that the character goals and my goals are the same. The game provides no story or goals, only the structure for players to make their own. For my play style, there is no overarching story, just the story I make through the look of my character and what I want to do with him. I did very little on the line of exploration and chatting, one of the greatest and most unique aspects of the game, yet I still managed to play for many hours. What compelled me for so long, was the look of my character. I went through a few different outfits, a few different faces, a few different hairstyles, and at no point was I bored or not enjoying myself.
My original character was hideous and served no real purpose, but as I went through the character creation system a few more times, I tried some themes.
Original character:
This beauty is my battle dwarf. Primed and ready for a fight, my dwarf celebrates a birthday for some reason.
Battle Dwarf:
This bloated green thing is my checkered troll. Breaking every branch on the ugly tree as he fell into this world hasn't broken his spirit.
Checkered Troll Body:
Checkered Troll Face:
And the last character is the brilliant combination of my last two creations. He is robbing this money tree to pay for a costly surgery to bring him back to normal. The money tree only forked over 3 dollars, falling well short of the 50,000 dollar plastic surgery.
Money Tree Robbery:
And these were my actual thoughts as I was creating these creatures in the game. The game did not create the story for my characters or help guide me through making them. The game simply provided an engine that allowed me to create the story (emergence in action).