Second Life (Virtual Life)

[FrostyBoy]

This doesn't exactly classify as a game, so I am posting it here in the OT.

I was just told about this online virtual world, apparently it is getting a lot of press and fame. I am not sure exactly what it is, but a lot of people are making real money off it, which of course intrigued me.

Has anyone tried it?

http://www.secondlife.com/

[Adagio]

There is already a tread about it:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=161539

...but with 7 replies, it's not the most active thread around

[DRoseDARs]

What's funny is Sn00py was the last one to post in that thread...

[Adagio]

What's funny is that he posted after I posted the link to the thread

[FrostyBoy]

Thanks for the save Adagio

[DRoseDARs]

What's funny is I still don't find this "game" interesting.

[DRoseDARs]

And Sn00py, you're supposed to say, "pwned!!1"

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
What's funny is Sn00py was the last one to post in that thread...

Not longer

[Zopperoni]

Apparently, last week, two nukes were set off in SL: http://www.thelastboss.com/post.phtml?pk=2284

SL needs a Jack Bauer

[Elok]

My impressions of Second Life are limited to SA's "safari." If their account is accurate, however, it's about time we used real nukes. Furries...ewwwww.

[Ninot]

I'm having enough trouble with this life [/standard joke]

[Gibsie]

I did read a newspaper article about it a month or two ago. Seemed extremely uninteresting.

[Q Classic]

It's garnering a lot of attention in the marketing rounds as well as the real-world that I don't think it truly merits. It's an massively multiplayer, persistent sandbox universe that's gotten the client open-sourced (which is nice), and allows for the end-users to generate their own content and upload into the gameworld.

All this would be decent enough, except the media is blowing it slightly out of proportion--and I can't decide if it's just them not understanding the internets, or if it's because Linden Labs has a very good PR team. Or both.

It can't really be considered a "game" because there aren't any real objectives (of course, by that logic, SimCity and The Sims can't be considered as such--then again, Will Wright prefers to call them "software toys"), nor is there any real risk/reward system or the like.

Simply put, all you do is walk/fly around and talk, like a gigantic chat room.

While some people are no doubt making money off of it, the audience is comparatively very small to the majority of other MMOs, and it's a relatively closed-universe--it's my understanding that a very significant fraction of accounts are people who tried it, lost interest in it within the first hour or so, and never logged in again. It's not gaining users at an eyecatching rate, and of course, because it's such a freeform-sandbox type venue, the governance is rather weak, allowing lots of opportunities for griefing.

(The client's also a bit slow, laggy, and unstable. Then again, so are some real MMOs.)

[Zkribbler]

I was looking into it a few months ago, but I need to upgrade my computer before I can try it.

There are two kinds of membership. The basic membership is free. The prime membership is about $10/month. With the prime membership, you are allowed to own land, and you're given a stipend every month of about $3-4.

The members design the world...that it, you can design and build everything from clothes, to buildings, to helicopters, to body parts

A lot of people go to Second Life just to hang out. In that way, it's a lot like 'Poly, except you have an avatar body.

But there's also a thriving economy, which is carried on in "Linden dollars" (Linden Labs is SK's creater). Linden dollars are convertible into and from U.S. dollars. I read one article by a kid who couldn't get a job during the summer, so he went to SL, and spent the summer building and selling skateboards. He made a little more than he would have made working at McDonalds. One elebrated member has made more than the equivalent of $1 million U.S. dollars buying and selling real estate.

Within SL, there's shopping centers, gambling parlors, medieval villages, SciFi worlds, battlegrounds. Basically, anything the 2+ million members want, they can design and build. You can give yourself a fantastic body or you can be an elf, a dragon, whatever--as I said, you can even design or buy body parts.

[Solver]

It's like the Sims multiplayer. Duh. A huge environment with no goals or actual "gaming" activities, where you can engage in silly chatter just like anywhere online, but with big-breasted 3D models nearby.