"I love simulation games. I love online communities... But when I tried Second Life during the summer of 2006, I didn't get that.OK, maybe second life isn't a game so much as it is a glorified chat room. A chat room where you can play games if you really want to. A really slow, memory intensive, constantly streaming game. Did I mention it's really slow.
I just found a game with no direction and it was difficult to understand, too. A game like The Sims 2 is complex but it starts you off with some tutorials and premade characters and situations.
It would also seem that, in order to really have fun in Second Life, you need to spend money. I can have fun for free on Gaia Online and Neopets! Come on now! Sure you can do stuff for free on Second Life, but when it comes down to it, money matters.
And don't you feel irritated instead on inspired when you read about people making a million dollars on Second Life? What about the people
who teach actual college courses through Second Life? Or how about the people that take it sooooo seriously that they make Second Life their First Life? They cut out real social activities so that they can go to their DJ job and work from 8pm until 5am? And now it is becoming a big advertising thing with car companies making their Second Life cars for sale on there. Yes... Some big car companies have put their cars in the game.
It's not completely bad, but it seems like things are getting a little out of hand. That's my big beef about it and beef is fuckin' delicious!"
I'm frustrated, and I have been since I took System Simulation with Paul Fishwick. We used Second Life t0 create media content and code, but my god it is just completely IMPRACTICAL to do it the way they want us to do it. We need tools to do it out of game. What other environment do programmers have to have their computer process a game while simultaneously writing code? It's IMPRACTICAL and its SLOW, and its STUPID design. Give me an out of game IDE or compiler. Give me a modeling plugin for 3dsmax. At least the option of one. Stop asking for MONEY to do anything cool. Because right now I can download mIRC and have the same fun I've been having. Oh, and I can simultaneously browse the internet.
Until we all have internet connections as fast as Korea or Japan, Im not going to have a damn bit of fun. Oh, and if you think that I am going to log into a 3d environment to watch a webcam of class or watch a virtual lecture, I think I'll opt for the powerpoint. Thx
Love Josh
PS, advertising in SL is a joke! It's like a pyramid scheme. That is all.
Yay
2 comments:
Ok Josh, take a deep breath and things will seem better. lol. I think like evrything in life, we will face scams and violence and "All I need from you is..." experiences. It's a matter of perspective more than anything. Understanding that SL is about making money keeps me from losing it. Everyone is trying to make money in some way on SL. Everything has a string attached somewhere. I know to look for those strings and ignore them, or snip them as the case may be. It's more like RL in that way. The part that bothers me is the ammount of money peoplehave to spend on virtual things. It's complete consumerism, with little return, depending on your definition of return. For instance, you can create a virtual person, buy them a virtual plot of land, and a virtual home, then feed them virtual food. Why? When I see people around us that have no homes and are hungry I wonder how many people on SL ever realize the irony of the situation. I believe it was Keith that compared it to adult Barbie Dolls. Just like you buy plastic houses, plastic cars, plastic clothes, plastic foods, etc. you can do the same in SL, only there's nothing to hold in your hand. That's part of the reason we need more of the educational and research aspects on SL to balance out the rampant consumerism that exists there now. Just like our own world is filled with people who have closets full of clothing that have cost them more than my family makes in a year, there are also people in the world like me who participate in Freecycle (where you can give items you no longer need to people/families that do need them) and people that donate to charities, as well as people researching for things which will improve the lives of others. My thesis dealt with Boarding Schools for NAtive Americans (NA) and how the program used there (militarstic with Sloyd - a manual labor method of education) created a group of people who could not be "white" and because of thier training (and habit breaking) could not be Indian either. Because of these methods, employed by our government, we had a generations of NAs that ended up away from thier families and in a low paying, or in no job. They did not fit anywhere. Even as I did my research, I kept thinking how horrible, but how can I help? When I presented my thesis research at a national meeting, I was surrounded by anthropologists from Canada who are now using my research methods to support tribal (First Nations) court cases in Canada, where the Off Reservation Boarding School System ran much longer than here. The thing is, most of Canada's system was based on the system created here by Pratt (who's school I studied) and his methods were well defined and he stated explicitly that he wished to break tribal cohesion by them. this is why he took children as young as 4 yrs of age away from thier families, and held them in school (walled like a prision) until they were 20. My research is actually doing some good...
So back to SL, in what ways can we improve our world using the tools in SL. It won't be through clothing, it won't be through home building, or even making money. I feel the good that can be done is through the eductional possibilities, like creating schools for children to attend when they are gravely ill and cannot go to thier own schools, or through Offering low cost classes for credit for those that cannot go to a college. You could use the prim building tools in second liek to teach electrical work, or plumbing, or home construction, or any number of things. The question is of access and who would spend the time to learn these tools in order to teach these things? I see space where children who have never been to the Smithsonian can experience it, or even further afield to the British Museums, or Paris. Immagine teaching a child about the flight of the Wright brothers by recreating the flight. While movies can do that, in a movie you cannot stand in the middle of it, examine the plane, and "speak" to the WRight brothers. In SL you can. You can show the construction of a pyramid, without worry about permits and safety. You can show someone the structure and movement of a virus like Ebola without taking them into Bio-level 4. You can create a hospital, have docs work "virtual shifts" and see if your plans will be efficient. Will people "clog" a hallway wasting minutes getting to an emergency. Personally, I think there's a lot one could do, but money is needed to do it (you're absolutely right!). Just like studies in RL, grants are needed in order for research to take place. But immagine if your grant will require you to have a computer and internet, as well as land maintance instead of an entire lab or building, or plane tickets even. Have you ever done a grant budget? I have. The cheapest I determined I could do my dissertation with the research I needed to make it truly useful will be around 4000.00. This is incredibly cheap in comparrison to what some need. Mine is a low cost study which requires some time spent talking to people and moving about the SE US and visiting bontanical collections at Universities and Museums. There are already programs out there like Virtual Dig which allows you to excavate a sit in France and analyze the data found. Why not have a class in which you can do a virtual dig in SL, you can set up your site and do research based on the field notes of others as well as teaching your class about methods used in annalyzing Archaeological data. NEarly every Archeaologists I've spoken to has said they didn't understand annalysis completely until they went on thier first dig. I have a friend who consistently sends diagrams, photos, and proveniance maps to a friend in California to get help with pottyer annalysis. She could "simply" create those things in SL and have her friend wander the site, giving better analysis than single snapshots can allow.
The create of the HArris Matrix (an over used archaeological tool that indicates level and time depth in an efficent way) once said (to me, the arrogant man) that besides the internet, which allows real time collaboration, Harris Matrix is the most useful tool an archaeologist can have. The internet's ability to offer collaboration between researchers is amplified by the possbilities in SL.
So what we really need is SL, the research edition, which allows these studies to take place, allows this colaboration. There have been about a thousand times in my research where I have morph maps together with pencil and paper to see all I need. In SL, I could do that to an entire region and see the big picture that a single map (or even sometimes, multiple maps) from the 1600s cannot show me.
So there's my $.02. Look beyond the consumerism and idiocy that is currently rampant in SL and see the possibilities for what you want to accomplish. Then worry about finding a way to make it happen.
I was thinking along the same lines as you, Josh. I really enjoy gaming (both online and off), but SL is not clicking with me at all. I can easily waste six hours at a time playing half life 2. I think it is a matter of working toward something, like trying to get to a castle or find a wicked sword.
I can't imagine actually spending money in items in game (besides the lab fee!), but obviously there are plenty of people who have no issue with it.
Which type of person do you think enjoys SL the most? (If it can be generalized as such...) Someone who is, in RL, outgoing? Introverted? Happy? Sad? Smart? Dumb? It's an interesting question because if you can figure out the answer you may be able to taylor SL products/services toward them.
Maybe I just haven't found me island yet :)
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