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13 February 2011

 
Forgotten City
This exemplifies the beauty of Second Life.
If you haven't properly tried SL you are missing out - not just on some random things but whole worlds. It may take a bit of work to learn how to get the most out of the experience, but the whole of life is that way. An easy experience is usually superficial and throwaway; only a child would be put off by a challenging environment. SL has great depths and heights, and contains the range of human endeavors and interests from the grotty to the profound. Not a chatroom or a simplistic game, Second Life is a suite of creative tools wrapped up in a 3D environment that enables you to create from your dreams and nightmares and share the experience with others in real time.

posted by - 12:21 AM

Comments:
Beautiful post!
 
Well said! I find Second Life challenging and fascinating, though frustrating at times (only because I do not take the time to learn certain skills, like scripting).
 
What experience? The "SL experience" means you come to some place, wait until things rez (or not), and then look around. There's never anything to do or interact with, beyond maybe some half assed train ride or something else you can sit on. I don't blame the creators, I know how extremely limited SL is in this regard. But still, SL worlds are dead!
 
i agree it is like First Life in that everything you need to be happy is there and yet... and yet...
 
All my life I've spend just about every minute working on some project or other, gathering ideas and thinking it over, drawing and painting and making relief prints or taking video or making photographs, handling clay, hammering and sawing, making silkscreens, building things. THAT is my fun and my obsession. SL is another creative tool for me to use.

I like working on a project and it's what I do all the time even now. I'm not alone; many people are like that, and many more are explorers and appreciators - either separately or in addition to creating. For lots of people having a little business is fun, whether or not they build the products themselves.
 
Just because you enjoy building something, it doesn't mean it's an experience for the people visiting the project. At best it's a static one, like looking at a painting or photograph. You can move the camera around but it doesn't change what you see. Now you can say that's enough, but think about it. Would it be interesting to look at SL avatars, if there was no way to communicate with them? I totally burned out on SL long ago not because the builds/sims were ugly (they mostly were), but because the level of engagement with them was so low.
 
I never said it was, although I think for a lot of people photographing/filming their avatar in great surroundings is fun and the surroundings can be a catalyst to them creating a story (which is just another type of creativity).

For me 90% of the fun is in making things. I've always felt SL has LOADS of people feverishly building things but hardly any audience for what is built - but that in any case the builder's fun is in building. That problem has not been solved yet (what to DO with builds) except for sims using roleplay and combat systems: in other words adding a game layer to a static environment. Sims like Motorati with varied and interesting builds, games, events, etc. spent HUGE amounts of effort trying to fill that "DO" void, and finally stopped as the amount of energy expended was disproportionate to the results.

That doesn't change my opinion that SL is a kick-ass set of tools for creating things in 3D that would be difficult or expensive or impossible to realise in meatspace. It has the creativity piece down - it needs to develop the other pieces.
 
What an interesting debate ... I like Second Life for some of the reasons Osprey does, plus I have met such amazing people there, with whom I have developed enduring friendships, though some I may never meet in "meat space". My "real" life is richer for the experience of knowing OSPREY, SALAZAR JACK, LUCY TORNADO, HEADBURRO ANTFARM, ZAYN TILL, YOUNG GEOFFRION and many others not as close.

Seeing Salazar's builds; creating shops in Grignano, shooting movies in Seaside Village and The Brownstone East, flying through bizarre entire-sim builds with Osprey, going through tiny doors into alternate realities with Lucy, Quackmobbing with the Ducks,doing silly dances or sledding with the Tinies in Raglan Shire ... nothing in "real" life could have given me these experiences, as they were a blend of art and interactions. I am SO glad I have been in SL for the past 7 years!
 

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