Exploring SecondLife: Getting Acquainted
November 22, 2007 – 2:34 pm
(My Avatar in SecondLife… still working on it. Hair is wrong. Face a little tall I think)
So what is second life and why should you care? SecondLife is a virtual, 3d world. You enter this world via software you download onto your computer and run (like most executables). One of the neat things about SecondLife is that you can create all sorts of neat things in it. Cars, clothes, islands, buildings, you name it. You can then sell the things they make using SecondLife’s virtual currency. But it goes one step further, there is an exchange rate of SecondLife currency to actual USD. Yup, you can make cash in SecondLife.
The thought of a virtual economy where you can sell virtual assets and exchange your in-world currency for real-world currency isn’t as silly as it sounds (I promise). There seems to be a consistent 40k or so people online each time I have checked. And considering you can literally create a building to set up shop in, I imagine you can have your place working more than just when you’re there (an odd concept in reality).
As far as what one does in SecondLife? I can’t really answer that one yet… still kind of figuring it out as I spent the majority of my time trying to figure out how the hell to move around and the other nuances that go along with SecondLife. In all honesty, I am willing to bet this is why more people don’t adopt it (or don’t come back after spending 5 minutes in the world). Your first encounter with the interface is clunky. Really clunky (and so far hasn’t gotten better). I also realize this is a pretty open, Morrowind-esque world, but there is little direction in terms of where you go once you “figure stuff out.” And maybe it’s because I should never become a beautician, this just being additional evidence to that fact, but I probably spent an hour (or two) tweaking my character’s appearance trying to get him to resemble me at least in one form or another. I’m closer, but not there.
Surprisingly, you don’t start off with any SecondLife currency. None. Zip. This kind of surprised me at first, but then again, 270SL to the USD, I figure the price of most items are low enough to where I can throw $5 for experimentation’s sake (there goes having lunch tomorrow, curse you college finances!).
Thankfully, a buddy of mine also decided to hop on and try out SecondLife while I was. Since we were both new and trying to figure out just what the hell was going on (I think he fell into a volcano. No, really.), our experience when we met up in SL was more or less:
“Hey.”
“Sup.”
“What do we do now?”
“No idea. We could go for a walk?”
“Uhm…”
Keep in mind, while I have sunk about 2-3 hours into SL thus far, I am still playing around and learning the ropes. I will update accordingly with any new info/links and tips I get. In the mean time, if you happen to know of a party going on in SecondLife, let me know (via twitter, facebook, what have you)!
A few things to help you along in your own adventures:
- When you go into edit appearance mode (right click on your dude/et, edit appearance). In order to rotate your camera, you have to click on your person’s body. You can’t just click anywhere. This was a fun source of frustration for at least 10 minutes.
- When you’re getting your “free stuff” that costs $0, you still have to “buy” it. Yeah, that one threw me off.
- This isn’t a tip, but if anyone can tell me how the hell to rotate my camera while not in edit appearance mode, that would be awesome.
