When I first heard of second life I was excited by the prospect of creating a virtual character, exploring online worlds, meeting some people along the way, and doing some interesting things which aren't possible in real life. The reality of virtual reality in this instance is that it's dull, and for me, meaningless. The first major draw back to second life is the visuals. I understand that it's a huge world being streamed to your computer so there's restrictions. This doesn't get away from the fact that it's incredibly boring to look at, to the point where it lacked character, and it felt soulless. There might be people walking around, and the odd few might strike up a conversation with you, but it's never going to match real life socialising. I visited clubs, shops and shows but none of them would ever be a substitute to the real thing. As I've mentioned before, second life became a glorified chat room to me, mainly inhabited by people with nothing better to do with their time.

Another disappointment for me is the way everything is centered around money. I was hoping that in my virtual world I'd be able to do what I want without having to pay for it. It's an achievement that such a society has been created, many of whom generate their own content to make the world even more interesting. It's just a shame that I can't make my avatar look how I want it to without having to pay for it.

I've never enjoyed a role playing game, and my time with second life has only bolstered this. Second life isn't even a game, it's an escape for millions of people, people who want to be someone else if only for a couple of hours a day. I however don't want to escape and I'm more than content with my real life and facebook. It was a fleeting experience, one which you couldn't pay me to go through again.

I've been using second life for quite a while now, and it's getting near the end. Other than a short synopsis of my experiences, this will probably be the last time I mention second life on my blog.

Again I thought I'd move on to a new island, just to have a more varied experience in second life. I looked up the most popular places, and surprisingly enough they were the places with mature content. It seems that currently you're free to go where ever you want in second life, regardless of your real life age. This is something that's being addressed with recent reports of online abuse. As always with the Internet, it's not policed so people are always at risk.










Still, I had a look, who wouldn't? It was kind of what I expected, it's like the real life sex trade but now it's spilling over to the virtual world. Now anyone can sit at their computer and have virtual sex. It's slightly worrying just because it's so easily accessible to everyone of all ages. That's the world wide web for you though. I think I'll call it a day with second life now.

Well, after being disappointed by the fact I had no money I thought I'd do a bit more exploring. I had a look at the list of popular locations on second life, and jumped in to the Dance Island. What I came across was shockingly sad. I walked around the various shops on Dance Island, all of which sold various clubbing outfits, some of the better ones were actually being modeled by people walking the streets who would try to flog you some of their clobber. I was quite happy with the way I looked, so I went in to the main club. Surprisingly enough it looked very much like a real club, complete with a DJ, lights, dance floor and most importantly lots of people dancing.









The cool feature of the Dance Island is that you can use the animations associated to that island, which in this case were dance moves. I got in my Saturday Night mood and busted some fine moves on the dance floor. I actually found the whole thing to be pretty hilarious, mainly because of the dancing, but also for the fact that 50 or so people got together to dance in a virtual club. People were talking in the public chat, chatting each other up, and dancing near one another. One guy even offered to phone a woman in 'rl' (real life). My god...










I'm really starting to worry about some people. Not only does second life seem like a glorified chatroom, it also seems like a place that people with very little social skills might visit to talk to other equally socially retarded humans.

For those of you who have played Counter Strike, take a look at my screen shots and you'll understand where I'm coming from. I broadened my horizons and escaped from Help Island, never to return. I decided I'd have a look around some of the character customization stores. I stepped in to the "Good Life" store, where I saw some shop assistants stood around twiddling their thumbs, much like in real life. Having a walk around I saw the scope of what you can do to yourself, and the range of avatars you can create. While I have customized my character to some degree, he still looks very much like the generic character. So I wandered over to the wall in the corner with all the women stood around.

It was amazing to see all these people looking up at a wall with how they can make their body look. I can draw parallels with real life, and people having plastic surgery. It's kind of scary that we're moving towards something not to different to what you see here, buying you're body from a menu.





























Good Life seemed to be a little female orientated, and it didn't suit me at all, so I flew to the shop across the street. This place seemed a little emo, which was fine by me. I saw some cool characters being advertised so I thought I'd have a go with them. INSUFFICIENT FUNDS was the message I got. I'm sat there looking at my screen, thinking, GTFO. I've got to earn money in this world as well, what a joke.

How will I earn money? I'm thinking of selling my body maybe. Not sure how much you get for that though.

I can remember this part of my second life feeling a bit like an episode of lost. I was stuck on the Help Island, with all the boring newbies. Being a n00b myself, I didn't have a clue what I what I was doing so I proceeding to sprint around the place, banging in to people, and just generally making their time on Help Island a bit frustrating.
















When I realised that what I was doing was getting me nowhere (and the inability to start shooting people to make things more entertaining dawned on me) I decided maybe communication would help. I started to ask people with weird names if they knew how to get off the island. I didn't know if there was a boat, or some kind of cross channel ferry boat which arrived at various times of the day. One guy I asked was in the same boat as me (no pun intended) and was completely clueless. Then I realised you can chat to everyone who's close to you, so I flew towards a crowd and asked all of them. They all ignored me, which I found a little rude, but I'll let them off as they're probably still working out how to turn the HUD off.

In second life it seems you don't have to cope with transport, instead you teleport, one great relief to me. Also, even though I was ignored by people, at least they don't called me a 'fag' like they do on Xbox Live. If you take a look at the second screenshot, it seems that sex sells even in the virtual world. Guess where I visited next...

Since setting up my second life account a couple of weeks ago, I've been doing some playing around in the god forsaken world. I took a load of screen shots, but because I hated it so much I didn't bother putting anything on my blog. The fact is, now that I understand second life a little better, I'm starting to enjoy it a bit more. I'm going to put my snapshots up in a few separate postings because I seem to remember I had some quirky article titles. Anyway, I'll start with my appearance!




























The options for editing your character are vast, and slightly overwhelming. I've never been a fan of RPG style games, mainly because I don't have the patience for it. I stuck with it a little and managed to make a skinny, athletic looking bloke with a similar hair cut to mine. Unfortunetly he also looks slightly gay, and he appears as though he might be part of a highly regarded dance school. Looking around the "Help Island" everyone else looks equally as ridiculous as me, but at least I've got dancing skills. I know that once you get out in to the second world a little more that there's lot of ways to change you're character, so I thought I'd save a lot of the customization till later.

I also took the time to learn the interface a little better. Flying for instance saves a lot of time. The HUD on the other hand is the most obtrusive one I've ever had the misfortune of using, so I turned it off.

Well I spent the last hour of my life signing up to second life, downloading the software and completing the tutorial. If I have to continue using this piece of software over the next few months I'll probably throw my computer out the window in frustration. I haven't reiterated the point in a while that I absolutely despise RPG's and MMORPG's. With that in mind I'll give my impressions on the experience so far.




The most awful part of this whole experience are the graphics. I suppose I expected them to be terrible, as this is an online game with huge environments so they're limited as to what can they achieve. When you've been spoiled with the kind of graphics seen on the PS3 or Xbox 360 you feel like you've gone back in time and you're punishing your retinas unfairly. It's very clean, linear and sharp, but ultimately it's boring. I didn't feel any desire to explore the environment as a result. Walking through the world felt like a chore more than anything. The instances of pop in is incredible, you're looking in to the distance and you can see the world loading up in front of you. There's not even an effort to make this less obvious such as a fog or smoke effect to cover up the draw distance. Even as you walk past a tree you see it load up from the low res to high res version. With my loathing of how this game looks it's hard to have any kind of fun. There are some positives in this cyberworld however.


After having a play around for a while I started to realise the scope of what you can do. I've only been on the tutorial island so far and there was a ton of stuff to play around with. For example you can sample the vehicles, interact with objects, watch video streams and buy objects. What impressed me was the tutorial system. This game at it's core is very complicated, and being thrown in to it unaided would be really overwhelming for the average Joe. You get four distinct paths to begin with, which are colour coded, and they add up to create a jigsaw when completed. When you work that out it's very clear what you have to do to progress. Tasks are indicated by a big flashing circle and when you reach it a step by step tutorial is provided which you go through at your own pace.


The main reason we're using this software is to play with the character creation feature. I've not decided on how I want my character to look, so I'm saving that for later. I had a look at what was possible though and it's a very in depth system they've implemented. I'm actually quite looking forward to getting stuck in to that.