Why I Find ‘Second Life’ Boring…
Not long ago I toyed around with Second Life, creating an avatar of myself (as a short, bald old man with a walking stick that I designed…) and spent time trying to figure it out. After spending some time completing the exhaustive training island and then exploring for awhile, I just didn’t see the appeal anymore and I uninstalled it.
Well, BBC had an article I was just reading on “what happened to Second Life”, that more or less addresses the drop in popularity of this virtual world. An interesting point made in why some businesses avoided going online with SL is that it’s not always easy to get a grasp of the technology (perhaps even the navigation) and not all computers can handle it. This is definitely the case with my 8-yr old Sony Vaio, which can barely run SL. On a different computer, it would work better, but I’d still find myself waiting for places to fully load, so I’d almost be playing SL while reading a book at the same time waiting.
Anyhow, for kicks, I’m linking in some Flickr pics that I grabbed long ago of my SL adventures. I had an account and spent the time traveling and just taking in all the details of the place. Some of it could be interesting, like the interactive monastery (presumably with monks lingering around somewhere. Why would someone want to be an online monk?) while so much of SL just seemed trashy to me: there would be so many places just devoted to selling junk for your avatar. Likewise, it seemed as if places offering adult content, and advertising for these places, was prevalent throughout SL. I *thought* that I had some sort of adult filter on my profile, but apparently not.
What really struck me about SL is that its NOT really accessible unless you want to be a paying member. So much of the gimmick of SL is just buying stuff and homes and garbage, but when you start the game as a freeloader like me, all you get are a couple bucks (for a pair of shoes or something.) At least you don’t need to feed or house your avatar, but all the same, having no home in a massive online materialistic faux-world can seem at times a little bit humbling… until you lose interest and turn the game off and play Tetris instead.
I keep referring to SL as a game, and maybe that’s the problem. It’s not a game… it would be a horrendously boring game if that was the case. Rather it’s just one of those things I classify as a massive online time-waster. There can be some interesting things to see, like some of the detailed buildings and avatars, but above and beyond that, I don’t see the appeal. I’d rather “talk” with a real human over an avatar format (maybe this will change for me later, but for now, I just don’t get it.)
December 7th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
I completely agree with your assessment. I could spend hours playing Oblivion, Black & White, Sim City, Little Big Planet, etc. Heck, I rocked the MUD world via Telnet back in 1997! But Second Life was one of those things I just never managed to get into, no matter how much I tried. No matter how nerdy I was, it didn’t do it for me. And honestly? It kind of makes me feel better than I’m not the only one who basically gave up on it.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I’ll say this too… it wasn’t for lack of effort that I gave up on SL. I tried – really tried – to get into it, to travel around and check it out, but the more I traveled around, the more I realized that it was really boring, and most of the stuff, like shopping or going places, I’d rather do in REALITY, not in a poorly-rendered universe.