Second Life - An introduction

Past experience

A few years ago when Second Life was being mentioned in the news all over the planet I had tried it out to see what all the hype was all about. At the time my expectations were not the same as they are today. I was intrigued by the idea of a virtual world where the actions that a user could perform were not limited by the game plot but were literally limitless.

At that time I had found the learning curve far too steep and had given up after a couple of hours. Since then I had read in the news that people in Second were being investigated for child pornography which judging from my experience with second life is hardly something I would have though possible.

When I discovered that as part of our coursework for this module we had to create objects in Second Life, I must say that I was quite surprised. My surprise stems mainly not from the fact that we are dealing with objects in a virtual world, but rather because I though that Second Life was dead and gone. I had not heard anything about if got quite some time and thought that it must have either been discontinued or has not become an empty and lifeless world.

First test
So, I installed the SL client, created my account and fired it up. At first glance everything seemed the same as when I had first tried it out. The learning curve was still as steep and it took me some time to get to grips with the controls. I also noticed that the speed of the gameplay has not improved much. I would have expected it to be much better, mainly because now I am using a much more powerfull platform to play on and my interent connection is many time the speed of the one I had when I had tried SL. To my disappointment the speed at which the engine generates the 3D graphics has only marginally improved. Judging by the advancments in in-game graphics that has been included in the latest games for PC, Xbox and Playstation, I expected much better graphics, not only in terms of speed, but also in terms of quality.

When I first entered the virtual world, after selecting my avatar and reading some help screens I immediately made a friend. When my avatar materialised in the SL world I was immediately asked by another avatar if I needed any help. I started a long chat session with this avatar which turned out to be very valuable and helped me a lot to overcome the initial control obstacles. I must say that the fact that the avatar was of an attractive female character certainly  helped to dispell my initails suspicions !


After my initial walk around, followed by a short flight I decided to look try and visit some interesting places. I looked through the places termed as "popular" by second life itself and to my amazement most of them were derelict and empty. This could of course be due to more than one reason and not necessarily be an indication that SL use has dwindled. SL seems to be very popular in the US and as there is a considerable time difference between Malta and the US, this could have been the reason. I am sure I will find out in later tests if this is really the case. I browsed some more of the suggested or popular places and ended up in a Jazz Club. Jazz music happens to be my favourite and in real life do go to Jazz clubs and there were around a dozen people in the club so it could be interesting. On teleporting to the club I was greeted by a good rendition of a Jazz club scene. The punters were a mixture of cool looking men and very attractive women, dressed in ways once certainly not expect at a jazz club ! The music was indeed Jazz and occasionally punctured by comments from the person who owns the club. I spent quite some time at this location and explored it fully.

I then decided to visit a "real" place, a place which is a copy of the real world. I headed for Paris, France in the1900s. The scenario was quite realistic with boutiques and entertainment places lined up along the Champs Elysees. I went into some shops and looked at items for sale and started realising that I would need Linden Dollars to be able to purchase anything in SL. I then had a look at the currency exchange rate and made a mental note that L$ do not cost that much and it might be interesting to try and get some perhaps later on.

During my tests I also realised that it is possible to use SL without actually having to resort to making your avatar walk to places. You can, instead, always use right-click and send your avatar to sit somewhere or other. This makes the simulation much easier to use. I found walking to places to be cumbersome and clumsy and takes ages.

Finally, I decided to have a look at the beach. SL was reporting that there were over 30 people in this sim so I decided that it must be interesting. To my amazement, this was no ordinary beach. On arriving I was greeted by a scene of girls dancing around poles and people getting lap dances by the SL bots which although seem to have the intelligence of pocket calculator certainly seem to know how to give lap dances !

Research

As usual I did extensive research about Second Life. It seems that Linden Labs have been getting a lot of bad press about it because many media sites are labelling SL as a place where virtual sex is rife and I also read a few articles about how SL was being used by Pedophiles to ply their illicit trade. I must say that I am not surprised to see that even SL is being used as a platform for sex. The internet itself, although it has many other uses, is also very popular for sex related activities and any other platform would invariably follow suit.

I also discovered that some time ago Linden Labs had taken steps to moderate SL. They had completely abolished gambling houses which were spreading like wildfire and had moved all the sex related locations to one particular island which would be around the size of Sicily had it been a real country. I think this was a good idea when you consider that children have full access to SL and a simple warning would attract them rather than otherwise. In any case, I think you cannot separate the sexual side of things from any virtual world because human nature is what it is. The gambling houses were removed primarily because of US state laws. In my opionion they should have been left to flourish. On-line casinos are available anyway through their own dedicated websites so their presence in SL would hardly have made much difference. They were removed more because companies such as Microsoft, who used to have a huge presence in SL did not want to be associated with these things.

What do I think ?

Well, the idea of creating a virtual world has always intrigued me. I think that even without SL the virtual world is already out there through the use of social networking instruments such as Facebook and Twitter. Admittedly, it is not avatar based but a virtual world nonetheless. I think that platforms such as SL would benefit immensely by being linked to the social media instruments. Imagine if you could create your avatar through a Facebook application and then use this avatar to browse and use the internet. Your avatar would be recognised by sites you visit and you could browse the sites in a three dimensional way with hyperlinked sites being in the same "SL" type location. What I emvisaging is a rendering of the internet into a 3D world which you could browse using your avatar.

In my opinion the current rendition of SL does not have the wide appeal that it could have and this is mainly due to the difficulty to use it. As it is now I see mostly people who have an ICT background using it. We can appreciate the coding that is behind it and the hours spent by people who created places in SL. To reach its full potential SL would have to be useable by people with very little knowledge of IT and people who do not appreciate the work behind it but rather just the result.

For starters, the graphics have to improve drastically. The graphics in SL are very bad when compared with what users are expecting nowadays. Users are used to high level of realistic graphics especially when they are users who play games on the Playstation  and Xbox platforms. They are also used to realistic sounds which are so far lacking in SL. Apart from the voice system which SL includes there is not much sound in SL except perhaps for the funny sound when one flies.


I also would expect games to be a part of SL. Reading user reviews revealed that many users complain that after the initial exploration users find that there is not much to do in SL unless you want to build your own house or start a business which would require real money.


I think that there is great potential in virtual 3D world but I do not envisage this future in terms of how SL is now. I think that a rendition of the internet in 3D with everyone having his own avatar would be a solution which would gain popularity quickly. I imagine this as an alternative to internet browsing and not a replacement. Imagine if you could see the avatars of other people looking at an ecommerce website for example. You could actually talk to the others and ask them about their experiences with the product. Imagine visiting a health related website and meeting people who suffer from the same malady and getting to know them. Imagine grouping websites about particular subject under one virtual building. Imagine news related blogs which have become very popular, displayed in a 3D world with bloggers as avatars standing around the blog. The possibilities are endless.

I think that the key is with mixing the requirements of the real world with those of the virtual world and using the 3D world to navigate through the information. I think that this would make the internet much easier to use and the commercial interest that this would generate would certainly help to make the world grow. In my idea it would still be possible to build places but a lot of the places would be generated automatically. These would typically be places that contain directories of web sites linked together by some common factors. Some of the world I envisage would be created in real time as the user is browsing. Social media would of course be linked. Your facebook page would also be your home, for example. You would house your photo gallery in a room in your home and Facebook would allow you to switch from the normal Facebook we know today to the 3D virtual world version at a click.