Nascent cross-post alert
Every day I tell people about Second Nature who say “How cool! Where can I find out more?” and I’m torn between giving them a SLURL they won’t know what to do with or this blog which is not a lot more than a list of upcoming events and certainly no place for newbies.
With this in mind, I’m pleased to introduce a new site on nature.com:
http://www.nature.com/secondnature
Something of a work in progress, we hope this website will be a starting point for newcomers, an introduction to what Second Life’s all about and what we’re doing there, as well as providing listings of all our upcoming events and guides to the best places to see in Second Life. Obviously this is just the first version, but we will be regularly adding to and rotating the content, so if you know a good science-y place in Second Life, by all means send it over and it’ll pop up there sometime.
Most importantly, we hope this will make it easier for people who have heard of Second Life to see what it can be used for and to help experienced users follow activity. Please do take a look: any feedback is very much appreciated from any perspective – in the comments or direct to me at j.scott @ nature.com.
PS: Any SL-experts out there – next on the to-do list is to use the Reg API to allow registration through the website. Anyone got any experience/advice on that?
I’ve been resisting the pull of Second Life because I have a tendency to get sucked in to that kind of thing. I wasted hours playing Sim City during my PhD years, and now the same thing is happening with Facebook… I’ll check out the link, but I’ll need a good deal of persuasion before I sign up!
Those weren’t wasted hours! You now know how to respond if a city block under your mayorality is suddenly devastated by a meteor strike.
Did you ever play Civilisation? Now that was a time sink.
Actually I used to play with the disaster mode switched off. It was the only way I could ever get to the stage with the space port and llama sightings. I never got in to Civilisation, which is probably just as well!
A while ago one of the chaps from Linden Labs came to Nature to tell us all about Second Life. When I got home I signed up – it was remarkably easy – but I discovered a number of things that put me off, and I haven’t looked at it since.
First, it can be a time sink. My wife tells me I spend too much time at the computer already – and she’s right.
Second, I think it’s something that’s hard to pick up unless you’re used to MMPORGs (if that’s the correct acronym) and instant messaging – two things about which I know precisely nil. I found myself at a lecture for newbies, and I couldn’t ‘hear’ what the lecturer was saying because of the constant cross-chat between the assorted droids, dragonflies and so on in the audience.
Third, and just for the hell of it, I assigned myself a female avatar, and was immediately subjected to a certain amount of sexist backchat from male avatars. How the other half lives, eh? Most disconcerting.
I’ve decided not to go back.
I tried it at home. I chose an avatar – it looked about right for me facially but was fairly skinny with a beard and hair. I wanted this creature to look like me, and I struggled for a couple of weeks trying to make it fatter and less hairy. I just couldn’t get rid of the beard though. I gave up and haven’t tried again, though I am tempted.
> Did you ever play Civilisation? Now that was a time sink.
I’ve never tried Civilisation the computer game, but I do have the board game and can vouch for that as an excellent waste of rainy afternoons/evenings/nights/the next mornings.
Board games? Now you’re talking. Anyone else a fan of Carcassonne)? With expansion packs?
Sorry to keep hijacking this thread.
Henry, I agree with points one and two definitely: I do think it’s really hard to pick up if you’re not familiar with Instant Messaging and MMORPGs (P moved a couple of spaces right; Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games).
I came to SL with quite a lot of experience of IM, but none at all of similar games or virtual worlds and it took me a while to pick it up. It isn’t impossible, but it does throw so many new things at you all that once that you have to really be committed to sticking with it until you start to get a feel for it. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they reckon about only 1/10 of all registrants ever come back after the first few minutes.
I reckon the best way of getting into it for complete newcomers is with a guide. Ideally comeone sitting at your computer next to you; if not, then with someone else in Second Life showing you around, talking you through the basics.
Frank, I think that’s interesting that not being able to get rid of the beard put you off: theoretically it shouldn’t matter what you look like, should it? But it does: my avatar doesn’t exactly look like me but she does look like the ame kind of person as me, and while I might be OK with being a dragon/droid/furry, I wouldn’t feel comfortable looking like a different “type” of female human.
There seem to be all sorts of ways our perceptions about the real world spill into SL - at our very first event, several people complained to me afterwards that they had wanted to attend, but it had been full. I was perplexed, because other people had continued arriving after them. It eventually emerged that these people had arrived, seen all the seats were taken and not wanted to stand for a whole hour. Even in a virtual world…
> Anyone else a fan of Carcassonne)?
Never heard of it, but it sounds like a Web Publishing board games evening could be in order soon…
Oh Joanna. I am laughing at the thought of avatars not wanting to stand up.
I did give 2nd life a damned good go a few months ago, as you know. But somehow I lost
the will to liveenthusiasm. The ludicrously small download limits they put on broadband in thepenalcolonies doesn’t help.(and ‘RPG’ is a much over-loaded abbreviation. There are RPG7s, MMO RPGs, ordinary RPGs, and me. It’s confusing)
I used to play Civilisation, the board game, quite a bit in my youth. One friend described it as “taking almost as long as the real thing”.
Cath’s comment confused me for a moment – does Second Life have a disaster mode? Regardless, I’ve decided to avoid it, because it’ll mean less time to waste surfing the blogosphere.
My computer-based time sink was Adventure.
Late 80’s/early 90’s, it was IRC, but image-based MMORPGs are for the next generation after me (i.e., my kids + Dofus = happy kids). I purposely didn’t get comfortable with IM’ing and it’s already passé.
Just because these comments are full of “no, thanks” doesn’t mean that curious folks shouldn’t pop over and see what it’s all about nonetheless, in good company!
No, but Sim City does!
Have you tried Civilisation the computer game, Bob?
My daughters prefer to play Sims than watch TV. (Not Sim City, though). Add in their female cousin and the game works from age 3 to age 21 and still going strong…