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Second Life
There are a lot of really intelligent and influential people in the world that love Second Life. It’s important enough that News.com writes about it all the time, and magazines write cover stories on people making their fortunes inside of it.
I think it’s boring.
The idea is really great. The implementation? Not so much. As someone who spends a considerable amount of time in a virtual world, I don’t understand how anyone could use an interface that is so poorly constructed. Is it much worse for me because I’m on a Mac? Is it really supposed to look like someone’s idea of what virtual reality should look like, if they lived in the 1980′s? And is there anything else to do other than program sexy actions and create “nude” skins for avatars?
I issue a challenge to you, SL fan – show me a good time. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places (I’m still bitter that they didn’t make my cubicle in the CNET offices…) and so I’m missing all the fun stuff. Drop a line in the comments and tell me what your favorite (non-sexy, please) activity in Second Life is, and we’ll go on a little trip. I want to be proven wrong!
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I think the same exact thing for Second Life AND MySpace. How do things so poorly designed and written make it so big? I tried Second Life for about 3 hours. I spent most of that time tweaking the look of my character. Then I thought, “SWEET! Now let’s go find stuff to do.” Easier said than done. I searched half an hour outside of the starting area just *looking* for somebody else. Then I thought I’d check out the CNET SL offices since you had mentioned it on BOL. Nobody. (Don’t you guys have a receptionist at least?) I promptly gave up and returned to WarCraft.
Although I must say the streaming music and video within the game world was pretty cool.
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#3 written by KevinWI 5 years ago
I never played Second Life, but I was into There for a while, which came out before Second Life and clams to have more members. There was supposedly “family-friendly” and banned any nude skins or sexual acts in a “community-chosen public place”. When I was there, I just flew the boats and went to “parties” which was usually just chat rooms and bad music the host picked.
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#5 written by Jet Knife 5 years ago
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I haven’t been in SL, so I guess I can’t dis on it from personal experience, but I’m not sure I get it either. I really don’t think I understand why they hold book signings and talks in there. I watched an interview with Suzanne Vega and the content of the interview was good, but it was incredibly boring to watch. It was just two avatars sitting, moving their heads back and forth… I mean, there’s no lip synch or anything, and they can’t do much other than sit or stand, so why bother?
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I searched far and wide for fun things to do in SL but like you I could not find anything that would keep me coming back.
I guess the main draw for some people is the extensive scripting language, and ability to build objects. Considering how poor the building interface is, I’m actually impressed how some of the more impressive buildings or objects are created in the game.
Some people slave away photoshopping cool skins for their avatars. Others design crazy contraptions. And all of them want to sell their creations to you.
Then of course there is the gambling and shopping. Some people like it – but it’s snoozvile to me.
SL seems to be an endless strip of casinos, and stores of all sorts. Every time I logged in I kinda felt like walking around some weird, mall full of furries and naked people doing silly dance moves.
Once I actually found something remotely intriguing. It was some private island arranged as a role playing environment. They had strict rules about how your avatar had to look (ie. no furries, aliens and etc..), proscribed dress codes for different social classes and whole range of social rules. It seemed something like a “virtual” LARP or something.
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts I could not find any “locals” who could tell me more about the whole thing so I gave up and left.
There are also bunch of weird experimental stuff going on in there. Supposedly somewhere in there there is an island with a working ecosystem (ie. plants that grow and die, rain and etc…) and some weird house that rotates the rooms around when you walk around it.
But it’s all kindoff bland compared to some of the mainstream MMO’s out there.
I really want to like SL but there is just not much to do in there – at least not for me.
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Same as everyone above. Second Life is amazingly boring. You join, it is slightly novel for around 10 minutes and then it is so boring. What could be more fun than going to a virtual Nike store and buying a pair of virtual trainers? The only reason I can think for playing SL is if your life is even more boring but there is another solution: Play First Life.
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#10 written by Hiro_P 5 years ago
The hype surrounding Second Life is crazy. After reading and hearing how fantastic and engaging this virtual world was, any respectable geek had to step up to the computer and have a look. Even IBM and other corporate types were investing wads of cash into representin’ their companies inside SL. Then again, I’ve never been keen on dragging the advertising world into a game where I’m trying to take a break from reality. If I ever see Coke machines scattered around Stormwind City, that’s the last straw.
Upon trying SL for the first and even second time, I wish I would have RTFM. Second Life is indeed powerful, not to mention their generous policies concerning user created content. But I think it’s the same overwhelming power via the rather jumbled interface that drives a good share of new users away. It might be better to leave the heavy-duty tweaking controls hidden for the time being and have a simplified interface instead. Just figuring out how to clothe myself was a chore. Patience lost. Before I logged out last time, I’d managed to remove all of my clothes, though not exactly on purpose. If you play SL again, and happen to see a nude guy who looks cold and lost, say hi.
If you want to find the core strengths of these online worlds, it has always been, and I suspect will always be, the relationships/friendships you develop and nurture within them that keeps you logging in. That takes time and commitment that you either do or don’t. People are continually searching for a sense of belonging and community in their lives. My hat is off to those who find what they need, be it in real life or the virtual world. Take care.
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It’s boring to me too…
Unless you want to put a lot of time into designing an object (after, first, learning how to use the system) the you have to learn how to write a script for it. Then, unless you just want to use the object yourself, you have to find somebody who is willing to give you some $L for it. And then it probably wont be enough to make up for your time spent on it.
The most fun I had was shooting a friend with a pair of 9mm laser handguns. (You can better graphics in Halo and America’s Army) Ok, that was second fun to driving around on one of my vehicles, but still…
So, my character, Pcrobot Signals, is on an undetermined hiatus. I could show you around the shooting range or take you for a spin in my motorcycle tho.
What would be fun was to set a time (post it in advance, or mention it on BOL) where you, and maybe even Tom and/or Molly, could be at the cNet offices in SL and chat with your fans for a bit.
Just my $L2.
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There’s fun stuff to do on Second Life? I checked out Second Life about a year ago, and didn’t last an hour there.
I spent 45 minutes creating an avatar, headed off to a populated area and spent 15 minutes getting annoyed trying to move around while fighting the lag. I might have tried to stick it out, except the folks that I chatted with in that short time told me that as laggy as it was, things were actually less laggy that usual…
I haven’t been back since…
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#14 written by Edster 5 years ago
Are you kidding? SL is way better than WoW! Take a look at the facts: SL was created under the same assumptions that made “Web 2.0″ successful, that community-generated content would continue to attract more users, which would lead to more content, which would attract more users, and so on — until infinity! Sure, they rely on said-community to generate half-completed buildings and infinitesimally exciting activities like a billion tringo games, a googol casinos, and more dancing poles than Vegas and Atlantic City combined! But, that’s the beauty — I can’t think of any other place that provides you with more ways to develop a slot machine! I myself like being able to fly from place to place arbitrarily — without that stoopid 70th level restriction — and, you can own land, which you have to pay (real) money (and then you can build your own casino with a tringo game AND dancing poles to attract pole dancers, which will attract more users and more lindens, to build more poles, to attract more dancers/users/linden — to infinity).
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You know, they had sites like this back in 1995, the only difference between now and then is that the bandwith is better. It’s still boring. Really, let me leave my family and friends in live 3D and living color to go hang out with a bunch of crudely developed avatars of people that have no life. Right. And don’t give me crap about seeing different places – I’d rather have a satellite picture from Google Maps than a bad 3d rendering of Le’ Tour Eiffel!
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As with many new tech things, it’s in the way you use it, and the community you find. I’m developing a game curricula right now with a local college, and we’re doing a little SL integration.
Most of the fun things to do involve simple tourista events. For example, it’s neat to walk around the Millenium Falcon. Or stand atop a scale model of a Klingon warship. Or vist NASA’s rocketship center… Notice a theme here?
My kids love watching me go to the “Future” and walk off a 5,000m platform to my near-doom. They like to fly around, although I have to keep an eye out so they don’t stumble into ponro theaters!
SL does indeed have a crappy interface. And the world right now reminds me of the more sophisticated VRML experiments of yore (yep, Cybertown is still around!).
Linden could do a lot to help, but they’re too busy fixing bugs and deploying more islands. Sad, because they think this is a platform that will just run itself, whereas they have a unique opportunity to raise the bar.
The best things are the areas you can’t see– simulations, training areas, schools. These have great potential that is only now being explored.
I’m Superpixel Gerard in there if you want to see some of these cool things (or tour our in-world campus). -
I too am one of these people who created a SL character and then spent a couple of hours bored out of my skull wondering what the hype was about. I’d much rather play SIMs 2 and have no one to talk to than deal with bad interface and mind-numbness.
On a side note MySpace is pretty sorry too and people certainly use it incorrectly. The younger girls at work are on it every free minute they have and basically use the comments sections as “let’s wait a really long time for a reply” chat windows.
There’s gotta be a better way.
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Someone else with a simlar opinion:
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/journal/journal.php?user=toothpaste&id=573&readcomment=1 -
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I’m with you… I don’t understand who would actually spend time in second life…