![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Get a Life, they said ...
Sunday, December 30th, 2007 12:48 pm... so last night I created a SecondLife account, and spent a few hours playing.
I feel kind of dirty now.
Technologically speaking, it's pretty fab, though there are still rough edges where (like early DOOM) I find myself embedded in walls; where an object doesn't behave as it claims to behave; where even my high-spec laptop struggles with rendering and resolution. (There's a reason I didn't try this before: the system requirements.)
My first impulse was to make my avatar look like me. I suspect quite a lot of the SL population go for wish-fulfilment, but for some reason that route didn't interest me. OK, my avatar's hair is somewhat redder than mine, and the eyeliner is a nicer shade of green: but people who know me in real life would probably be able to recognise me in SL (though I don't think the converse would be true.)
After that, though, I spent a lot of time wandering around. Yay flight. Yay teleport. Yay pretty backdrops and clever effects. I noted:
- I am even shyer in SL than in RL. Every time anyone else got close, I fled.
- When I first ventured online, back in the early 1990s (email) practically the first thing that happened was that I got propositioned. Same here.
- I am, as yet, not interested in doing anything. I just want to sit somewhere quietly, and watch.
- I am not inclined to spend RL money on SL acquisitions: nor am I prepared to do anything in SL (such as getting money by clicking surveys) that will affect anything outside the game.
- Notwithstanding that, there is a certain desire to acquire, a desire to 'build' a house (or, better, a ship) and make my own space and so on. But I think that's probably more to do with the sense of aimlessness, the lack of a game plan.
- It really did feel like being in Gibson's or Stephenson's cyberspace (though some of the avatars reminded me more of Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun)
- I can imagine using it the way I use IM / Jabber: a virtual meeting-place for people I already know, either from RL or from online communities.
- I can imagine using it to explore some of my psychological boundaries, like the shyness.
So, do any of you have SL accounts that you use? What do you do with them? Why? Where?
I feel kind of dirty now.
Technologically speaking, it's pretty fab, though there are still rough edges where (like early DOOM) I find myself embedded in walls; where an object doesn't behave as it claims to behave; where even my high-spec laptop struggles with rendering and resolution. (There's a reason I didn't try this before: the system requirements.)
My first impulse was to make my avatar look like me. I suspect quite a lot of the SL population go for wish-fulfilment, but for some reason that route didn't interest me. OK, my avatar's hair is somewhat redder than mine, and the eyeliner is a nicer shade of green: but people who know me in real life would probably be able to recognise me in SL (though I don't think the converse would be true.)
After that, though, I spent a lot of time wandering around. Yay flight. Yay teleport. Yay pretty backdrops and clever effects. I noted:
- I am even shyer in SL than in RL. Every time anyone else got close, I fled.
- When I first ventured online, back in the early 1990s (email) practically the first thing that happened was that I got propositioned. Same here.
- I am, as yet, not interested in doing anything. I just want to sit somewhere quietly, and watch.
- I am not inclined to spend RL money on SL acquisitions: nor am I prepared to do anything in SL (such as getting money by clicking surveys) that will affect anything outside the game.
- Notwithstanding that, there is a certain desire to acquire, a desire to 'build' a house (or, better, a ship) and make my own space and so on. But I think that's probably more to do with the sense of aimlessness, the lack of a game plan.
- It really did feel like being in Gibson's or Stephenson's cyberspace (though some of the avatars reminded me more of Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun)
- I can imagine using it the way I use IM / Jabber: a virtual meeting-place for people I already know, either from RL or from online communities.
- I can imagine using it to explore some of my psychological boundaries, like the shyness.
So, do any of you have SL accounts that you use? What do you do with them? Why? Where?
