Who wouldn’t want a ‘#Second #Life’?
Written by Fareed Warrad on September 2, 2009 – 4:37 PM -
So what do you do when your first life is not going the way you feel it should? You play Second Life of course! Second Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life caters to users aged eighteen and over, while its sister site Teen Second Life is for younger users. The service is free but users can pay $9.95 a month for the premium version which includes a $300L (see below for information about what this is) a month and the ability to buy land and a up to $100.00 worth of L’s a month)
What is so intriguing about SL is its a totaly interactive way to communicate and interact with other people. It’s different then modern social networks. Yes the “profile” it gives it’s users to fill out is not very appealing, but using SL makes you feel like you’re there face to face talking, touching, feeling, breathing with the other residents. Honestly it’s so capitvating that literaly it has pre ocupied my time for the past two months for twelve hours a day! That’s the downside to SL, because it is so addicting. The best thing is in SL you can be whomever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are in RL, or even what kind of personality you have in RL. SL can take a obscure geeky nerd and transform him into a modern day gangster, or excuse me “gangsta” and place him in a simulated ghetto (that’s exactly what it did to me, ha, ha).
Throughout my four months on SL I’ve come to learn alot about the game, which I cannot agree on that classifcation, that in which I will discuss later in this article. The main two things is, nice people, I mean really down to earth nice people that are willing to help noobes (new, first time users) are scarce and rude, mean, obnoxious idiots are plentyful! It seems that people who use SL think they don’t have to use the same manners and common courtesy they would use in real life. Luckily users who are in-world (those who are currently playing Sl) have the power to ban, eject, or freeze people who cause problems, so long as they have been given special rights to a perticular land parcel or SIM (A sim can be a city, or basically several land parcels as one unit).
Owning land is not that difficult thanks to Linden Labs. You can pay tiers (as they are called in SL, which is more like rent) per week and have total control over a land parcel, or a SIM or you can buy it outright from Linden. Paying tiers is the cheapest way to do so as you are dealing with indipendent users, but beware as you can be scammed by some unruly residents. Owning a shop is even eaiser, you don’t even need to pay for land, as you can just rent a location per week. Of course you have to be talanted at creating some kind of product, which in SL range from Clothes, Furniture, Cars, you name it. If you have it in RL (real life) you have it ins SL. Not to mention all these items can be sold in-world. For that, Linden Labs created SL’s own currancy known as the Linden Dollar, or “L’s” for short. Linden Dollars can be purchased using US currancy and even exchanged for US currancy. L’s aren’t worth that amuch though as $2,000L’s is about $8 or $9 USD.
As I mentioned earlier in this article the creator of SL, Linden Labs considers this to be a game, which is in my opinion a bad classification. To me, a game is something you play in an effort to win or beat the game. You don’t do that in SL, as they’re nothing to win, nothing to beat. If you die in SL (which is possible in certain SIM’s/Land Parcels) you will just be teleported back to your home SIM. The whole porpoise of SL is the experience, the adventure, the ability to do what you cannot do in real life, to live out your fantasies, whatever those may be.
In-world I spent the last several months as “Jaydon Breda” a half black young gangster who decides to run for Mayor of a SIM city known as New Jack City (which is based on the movie with the same title btw). As Breda I also became a car salesman as I opened two car shops known as “Breda House of Cars”. I have a girlfriend, a campaign manager, lots of friends, several adoring fans, and of course, employees who work at my car shop, selling cars. None of this in which I can say is true in real life! That’s the beauty of it though, as mentioned before you can be whatever you want to be in SL. So as my “educational” journey and reporting on SL comes to a close of course I will be playing the “game” less and less, but there will always be a time in which I will run back to my “Second Life”. (FW)
