Blog #4 – How My Experience in Second Life is going so far

My experiences in Second Life so far have given me mixed reactions towards how everything is set up. On one hand, I have enjoyed my experiences so far in the world, and in hearing about other people’s experiences at the end of our first collective Second Life session. On the other hand, I also feel a little overwhelmed by the awesome amount of possibilities and features that are available in Second Life. At first, it’s almost too much freedom – you don’t know what you want to do!

For example, changing your appearance is quite a production since you can change your pants, shirts, accessories (gloves, jewelry, leg stockings, etc.), body shape, eye type, hair, etc…. All from taking things on and off in the inventory! Then you need to on top of that, go to the actual appearance selector and tweak your eye shape, eye color, eye width, nose attributes, etc…. You can even change the texture on your shirt to something other than what it is, so that adds another layer of complexity to changing your outfit! It’s awfully complicated, and wasn’t covered in the tutorial. It would be nice to find a private place where you could change your appearance without having to be looked at by strangers staring at your naked body, I guess.

Still, I have great respect for this unlimited amount of possibilities, for I feel that if I really want to, and I put in the effort, I could do a lot of social experimentation that probably wouldn’t be feasible in real life, and I think that possibility represents the positive promise of freedom that some technologies and new media are currently giving us.

When I really got into the midst of things on the day of our first meeting, I was amazed when I went with the group that went to the area where we found where one of our members actually managed to obtain a Spartan warrior avatar a la the movie “300.” The place we went to was a very good replication of the Bazaar where the messenger from Persia was kicked into the pit! The problem was, as soon as we teleported there, we were sitting down all the time, literally, which shows that there seem to be a lot of bugs in the world. It worries me that the virtual world is so large that I feel like unless we meet the movers and shakers of Second Life that a lot of places may lag up. But then again, if the SUNY Purchase Island works well, then I imagine there’s not that much to fear! More fun to come!