I don’t really have a first life between the theater and this week’s disaster commonly known as “it’s January and we need you to design until you’re blue.” So to spice things up a bit–and because I keep reading all these other stories about it–I ventured over to Second Life and now have my very own little avatar.
My roommate groaned when I mentioned that I’d done so, until I explained that I’ve never played an RPG before. I don’t really see this as something I’ll get dreadfully into, but from a professional/informational perspective, it’s intriguing. It’s incredibly Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. If you have an avatar and haven’t read that book yet, you really really should. But from the RL of me I’m not into battling people–which seemed to be the focus of a number of the RPG’s that I’ve seen. You conquer someone, get their money, buy weapons, etc etc etc.
I went through the orientation. That was initially not working well because my avatar wasn’t appearing on my screen. Reloaded and she appeared. But I did my initial teleport and now I’m wandering around going….now what? So I’m going to have to back search through some blogs I read and see if I can get some coordinates of stuff I’m interested in doing. I know InfoIsland is supposed to be fabulous, I just have to figure out how to get there.
I can see it being fun/fabulous but I can’t see it becoming the be-all and end-all that some people are predicting. The online courses via Second Life really scare me. I went to graduate school with people who had never used anything more difficult that a word processor. I recall on various occasions teaching how to attach documents to an email and other basics. I do not begrudge that this education needed to happen, but you want me to explain to someone how to negotiate their avatar when they’re having trouble understanding email attachments?
I think I want to go back to the video game I played in college (badly). It was a farm game where you worried about wooing a woman and planting and brushing your cows to make them happy. Does anyone know the name of that game?