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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Second Life

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00:04 / 12.11.05

Oh, fine, I'll give it a go. I've needed some stress relief.

I've been hearing a lot about Second Life, and I'm downloading the software now— I want to see if I can run it on my computer, which isn't quite a 1gHz Mac but seems to do well enough, all things considered.

Would anyone like to get the bonus for referring me? If so, post your character's name here.

Oh. And discussions and opinions about the game are also welcomed.

10:18 / 12.11.05

This review gives a fairly negative picture of the game, more or less saying that if you aren't a graphics designer or programmer, then you shouldn't bother. That doesn't make me want to jump in, to be honest.

12:01 / 12.11.05

My username there is (available on request), if anyone wants to credit me....

That's an interesting article, Lurid, unusually well written and raises some fair points. I would say though that the "spending lots of money" thing isn't really true - certainly not compared to other MMORPG - unless you want to have a really, really big virtual world of your very own.

It is the case though that unless you're interested in building, creating and/or scripting, you probably don't need to pay them money. A basic account which lets you log in, wander around, edit your appearance, chat to people, go "ooooh... pretty" etc is free, and you can just download the client for nowt as well. You only need a paid subscription to build permanent stuff and own land. (There are sandbox areas where anyone can build anything, but objects there vanish after a while.)

12:08 / 12.11.05

id entity, you might have trouble with it depending on your graphics card and RAM. I'm using a 1.5Ghz Powerbook with a gig of RAM and a Radeon 8500 and I *still* can't run it on full res and detail, whereas I can play UT2004 no problem. It's not just Macs either; PC users seem to get less performance than they'd expect compared to other 3D games, and they bitch about it constantly in the forums.

That is a bit of a flaw really. (The engine that the game is based on is due for a new version soon though I understand.)

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17:52 / 12.11.05

Yep. My g4 is waaay too slow. still, it was fun for a bit. I'll keep it in mind for ifwhen I upgrade this thing.

15:35 / 01.10.06

I just found this thread whilst Googling for myself and I thought I'd drag it back up. I've been spending pretty much all of my online time in Second Life for the past nine months or so - initially I got bored, which is quite easy as a beginner in SL, as it's very easy to log in and think "so what do I do now?" There are no quests, no people hanging around with "!" over their heads or whatever. I got involved with building and scripting and a few communities, though, and started to post on the forums, and now I like to flatter myself that I am a reasonably well-known personality, partly down to my overwritten and stylistically inconsistent in-character blog perhaps.

I was a bit surprised not to see more Barbelith posts about SL seeing as how it seems to pop up quite frequently - it's been on the cover of Business Week for instance, it gets Slashdot mentions, the BBC have a dedicated sim (i.e. server) there and that reprobate Warren Ellis posts about it on his blog fairly often.

I don't really know what to say about it here, as there's, well, just so much I *could* say; there are so many issues to do with virtual worldbuilding, the conflict of outside influence vs virtual citizenship, the influence of corporations, expressed social behaviour of avatars and so on.

N.B. I am trying to keep my identity there separate from my "fridgemagnet" identity, I've put in for an edit on the post I made above, but PM me and I can certainly tell you.

15:52 / 01.10.06

It's maybe not a lack of interest, fridge, as much as a worry that SL looks dauntingly complex. Something that you'll get most out of if you become a creator yourself, which treads dangerously close to looking more like work than leisure.

16:22 / 01.10.06

The basics of getting into the world itself and being able to do stuff aren't complex - there are two (count 'em) beginner islands with live helpers to acclimatise people now, and even when I started with just the one a basic familiarity with 3D games means you can work everything out very quickly.

Beyond that, though, yes, it's not very rewarding unless you actually have a goal. That isn't necessarily as a content creator, though that's the route I've gone down - there are people there who are purely there socially (it's the ultimate chat client after all, not just voice/textual but a full set of animations, physics etc). Some people get hooked on business aspects unrelated to content creation, such as land dealing. Ellis, I believe has done a bit of that.

A lot of people get a lot of satisfaction from homesteading in SL, where they have a small plot of land which they furnish with houses and accessories bought in-world. There is also a lot of role-playing of various sorts that goes on (particularly furry and Gorean RP).

I, personally, have trouble expressing why someone would be interested in staying in SL apart from to create, because the experience of creation in a social setting there has been such a pleasurable shock for me. The in-world scripting language, which is necessary for pretty much everything, is quite simple to learn if you are a programmer IRL, but if you're in SL and you can script, you become a magician - you have power over the underlying state of the world, particularly if you can also write web apps (which I can) since items in SL can communicate externally.

It's intensely seductive. Quite frankly, I spend so much time in SL because people love me and what I do there. It's not limited to programming - the basic building tools are easy to master and it's amazing how many people who consider themselves computer-illiterate turn out to have incredible talents in 3D modelling when given access to them. Texturing, fashion and skin design is also another area where people suddenly find they have abilities they would otherwise have never noticed.

01:01 / 03.10.06

You're making it sound a bit more compelling fridge. Maybe when I upgrade my home machine, I'll spend a bit more time with it. Right now my late model tibook doesn't make it feel anything but a vrml botch job from the past.

My boss wanted me to check it out since he read about it in Business Week so I gave it a look. Much better on a multi-screened rig on a decent network behind it. I kept thinking that it had a great deal of potential but I knew that we wouldn't be able to pull off a good effort for him... team too busy and small.

Have any good screenshots of your domain?

Professor Silly

03:47 / 04.10.06

My lord, I entered and registered almost 4 weeks ago, and now I too spend nearly all of my online time ingame. I've been building textures, which is getting me very more and more proficient with Photoshop, and I'm learning a bit of programming too with the scripting.

It seems most people are there to party, not to build things or run a business...and for them the game could get fairly expensive. I've had some interesting conversations concerning whether having sex ingame equals cheating in "real life"...opinions differ radically.

(I can't help but think of the book "SnowCrash" whenever I'm in there)

But again, I think the really cool thing about this phenomena involves the training of LOTS of people to use a simplified version of the 3D graphic engineering program and how to write program. Just think of the potential explosion of homemade computer animation just around the corner!!!

12:16 / 04.10.06

banshee - I sent you some links to my own stuff. In general the best place to go for SL pictures is Snapzilla; there's also a Flickr pool. The busiest site for SL video is probably the SL YouTube group, but I hate YouTube so I don't use it.

Yeah, the hardware limitations are irritating, as I mentioned above. However I've recently got myself a reasonably hardcore PC, pretty much solely because of SL, and the difference is astounding - exploring is so much more fun, building is so much easier, you can see actual textures rather than waiting five minutes for everything to stop being grey (well, mostly, anyway, there've been a lot of grid attacks recently). I've run it perfectly well on my office Dell too. Bandwidth can be an issue sometimes, particularly if you're sharing wireless with a flatmate who randomly bittorrents stupid stuff, but tweaking the settings can help, and the only times I've noticed it being a problem, WoWers on the same connection have similarly been complaining about latency (i.e. not really SL's fault).

On the subject of filming animation ("machinima", crap word but seems to be the only one around) SL is an particularly good setting for it, given the level of customisation of scenery, appearance, animation of characters, scriptable camera movements and so on. There is a monthly machinima competition run by Alt-Zoom studios and the winner this month, Game Over, is terrific. Well, I think so anyway. I really should start doing a bit more "artistic" work rather than just adverts and what is really just virtual vlogging.

12:28 / 04.10.06

It seems most people are there to party, not to build things or run a business...and for them the game could get fairly expensive.

That's the constituency we content creators get our money from! It can't all be just passed around in-world....

It can get expensive for some people, yes, if they're big shoppers, and especially if they go for big-ticket items like skins, certain gadgets, custom builds and land to put it all on. The phenomenon of deliberately overpriced items, conspicuous consumption, is something that I've definitely seen, though I think for most heavy consumers it's brand, either from a particular SL designer or a copied RL "prestige" brand.

The most money I've ever spent on one item is L$3,000 (about $10 for non-SLers, depending on the exchange rate) for my skin, but I don't think that's unreasonable for an item which lasts forever, I'm unlikely to change, comes in a few different varieties and has personal customisation. Other than that I might buy one or two items of clothing a week (L$250-600), and upload a dozen or two textures and sounds (L$10 each). I know people who buy new things pretty much every day.

It's not like There, though, where you have to spend money to change pretty much any bit of avatar detail, and you still end up looking crap. You can spend nothing in SL and still look both good and individual.

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23:48 / 22.02.07

Okay, it took me about a year, but my G5 can handle SL, a little. So now I'm in the world. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the place— am still a basic member with no income and pitiful creation skills. Touch scripts don't always work for me/my avatar; there are a lot of items around that I can't activate for some reason. I have some ideas for wearable scripted items I want to create, but I need to figure out scripting first. Nonetheless, if you want a new (and I mean new) SL friend, PM me.

19:44 / 23.02.07

PM sent. Unfortunately SL is in a period of some extreme instability right now, as they try to desperately re-engineer the software to cope with the huge increase in demand, while the thing is still running. It will get better though I'm sure; I've lived through a lot of this.

23:03 / 10.03.07

I've registered and I'm interested to see what you guys are up to. PM me!