GAMING I The Vancouver Sun joins the up to 12,000 people that are gathered at any given moment to live, work, chat, design and sell wares, develop real estate and work at a website that is just like The Matrix, but voluntary
Randy Shore
Sun
My name is Silas Leroux and I am one of more than one million citizens of Second Life. For those of you who are as unhip and out of it as I used to be, Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual world where 8,000 to 12,000 people are gathered at any given moment to live, work, chat, design and sell their wares, develop real estate, work as prostitutes and shopkeepers or rent cars.
On my first day in-world I found a motorcycle dirt track, a gorgeous Asian market, a red light district and high fashion outlets. I also chatted with people from all over the world.
Some people work there full time as game characters, earning virtual money that they can convert into cash to pay their rent and grocery bills in RL (that’s Real Life, you poor thing).
And it’s not just bleary-eyed gamers flocking to Second Life. The corporate world is rushing to stake a claim in this online meta-verse. IBM is holding virtual meetings in Second Life, according to News.com. Reuters has purchased virtual real estate, opened a virtual news bureau and staffs it with a real reporter. Wired Magazine contracted virtual architects to design its in-world offices and opened last month. Toyota is offering test drives of a virtual version of its Scion Xb automobile.
Second Life is just like The Matrix, except it’s voluntary, and on Wednesday about 30,000 new citizens signed on.
GETTING INSIDE
The software you need to join the game downloads with the click of a button from the Second Life website, run by game creators Linden Labs of San Francisco. Another click unpacks and sets up the client for you. And as long as you have a relatively recent name brand PC or a Mac, and a high-speed Internet connection, you have everything you need. My Dell Dimension 3000 did the trick.
A premium membership will set you back $72 US for a year or $9.95 US a month. That gives you full access and a steady income, which you will want because there is plenty to buy. Don’t want to pay? No problem, you can still play but without Linden Dollars you are limited to drifting around just chatting. Linden says its citizens are spending close to $500,000 US a day.
Before you get into the game environment, you must select a name and an appearance for your avatar, your virtual self. Once you get to the orientation Island you can customize your appearance to your heart’s delight, selecting from extensive menus that will make your hair bushier, eyes bluer and legs as long as you like.
I decided to be a fat guy with big pants, a bright red sweatshirt and a Cajun name. Oddly, no one else chose to do that, but I did see a small red monkey, a girl with the head of a fox and heaps of anime types, uniformly slim with razor-cut forward-swooped hair.
Linden Labs set up nine new Initiation Islands on Wednesday bringing their total to 45; each can handle over 2,000 users. It was so busy that Linden put up a message on its log-in screen warning users that heavy press coverage has attracted so many new visitors that game play was being affected. Indeed, my initial experience was choppy and anatomical menus to customize my look very slow to download.
On the island you learn to walk, chat, manipulate objects and fly. Yes, fly.
Any time you want you can press a button and soar into the air and off to whatever destination you like, provided it is built from pixels. I bonked my head a few times and dropped into the ocean, though not fatally, before I got the hang of it. Server lag — delays in game response due to the heavy user traffic — made movement tricky and frustrating. “Are all 10,000 of us sitting around fuming at our keyboards?” I thought. “And why are we doing this instead of RL?”
The answer is: freedom.
ON THE INSIDE
If you are an overweight, frail loser with a mind-numbing job and no real friends or hobbies — and let’s face it, many of us are — in Second Life the world really is your oyster. You can look as cool as you want and spend as much time fine-tuning your wardrobe as you want. Got a flare for design, but no real opportunities to leverage it in RL? No problem. Set up shop in your own virtual workspace and sell your amazing clothes, jewelry or whatever to virtual customers.
If you are great at it, you can make Real Money. Linden dollars are convertible to U.S. dollars at an exchange rate it controls.
Wired in February profiled a Michigan woman who quit her job as a truck dispatcher to pursue a career as a designer in Second Life, creating clothes and skin textures for sale in-world. Sales were booming at last report.
With nothing to guide my first game experience, I landed in a place called Barcola. It is rated Mature. Other areas have a PG rating, so you can navigate according to your personal proclivities.
Most everyone there was texting in Italian, but I noticed a nude woman lounging next to a fountain, clearly looking for a conversation. As I approached her, game play slowed and the simulation crashed and kicked me off the system. Just a bit too much like RL.
On re-entering the simulation, I landed in a little plaza called Miramare, between two fashion outlets, LoLo and Girlkultur.
It must be an easy place to get to because nOObs (newbies, novices) kept dropping from the sky and saying “Hey, what’s going on?”
As Girlkultur did a brisk business in fishnet stockings, I chatted with Hope Alderich whose real self is Canadian, but whose avatar dresses like a Parisian hooker. The skimpy bikini-like top is an outfit that she picked up from an in-world friend, she explained.
“I love that I can wear this here,” she said. “I love looking at myself.”
I could hear other avatars yawning and making smoochy noises as we talked about a virtual affair Hope had engaged in; conversations are “audible” to other gamers in the immediate area, through the text chat field on-screen.
As I tried to be more interesting to other people, at least enough to quiet the yawning, a madman arrived and started shouting nonsense, which made it hard to follow the thread of my own conversation. Again, a bit too much like RL.
On the road
I drifted from neighbourhood to neighbourhood checking out shops and public art in parks until I ran into Zarchary Milton, whose real self resides in Britain.
He, too, was a first timer and found the long-time members cliquish. We practised flying together until I turned the wrong way and left the scene like Superman (or Neo, if you are still thinking Matrix).
As though to prove us wrong about snobby experienced users, Barnesworth Anubis stepped up and welcomed me to wherever-the-heck I was at that moment. (Read the Linden Lifestyles interview with Anubis at http://lindenlifestyles.com/?p=207.)
Anubis runs several successful Second Life businesses including Barnes Boutique, a men’s clothing shop, a furniture design house and prefab buildings. He is wearing a nifty silver-grey suit and pants. I am not. When I introduce myself as a reporter it all becomes painfully clear to him why I look so bad.
Still clad in the offerings that I selected back on the initiation island, Anubis declares me a “nOOb,” but gives me a very dapper black suit complete with shoes and fedora.
I explain that my editors suggested that I join Second Life and become a real estate mogul, in say, a month at one hour a day. Anubis, and our conversation-mate SteveR Whiplash, howl with laughter. Becoming rich in SL is almost as time-consuming as it is in RL, they explain. Set aside years, they advise.
I have been in-world for 10 hours now and RL, in the form of my wife and two children, beckon. They are deeply suspicious of this assignment, especially since it violates the house gaming rules. I sign off.
Oops, it’s midnight and I’m back. I need pictures for the newspaper so I teleport (didn’t I mention that you can instantly teleport to any locale in-world?) to Tehama Asian market. I can hear crickets chirping and snippets of conversation and music in the audio stream as I stroll through the booths and tents.
I pick up a red dragon shirt. It’s important to be well-dressed in-world.
This all very nice, but it’s late and I need pictures. Snap, snap. Off to some remote corner where an entrepreneur has set up a dirt track and created motorcycles, which he rents out for high-speed thrills.
I rent a flashy race car and try the cross-country trails that sprawl across this lightly populated region. I’m a lousy driver, but others here are not. Whoever designed this business is doing a very brisk trade and that’s because, well, it’s really fun.
I ending up spending 11 hours in-world my first day and the first eight were all on the learning curve. I spoke with people from all over the world.
What a place. Silas Leroux will be back.
Randy Shore will be in-world at Second Life between 8 and 10 a.m. Monday to Friday next week. Read his blog online at www.vancouversun.com.
GET GOING FASTER
Randy Shore stumbled around blindly in Second Life, wrestling with computer performance issues and his own ignorance. Here are a few tips that could help you find the fun faster.
– If you are running a PC with Windows XP, use your control panel to choose the system icon. Inside, under advanced, there is a toggle switch that lets you optimize for performance rather than appearance. Choose performance.
– Unless you have a really good video card — and most people don’t — don’t choose fullscreen for game play.
– Don’t waste too much time on your appearance on the initiation island. It takes a long time to get all the menus loaded and you’ll just end up looking like everyone else anyway. Buy new clothes inside the game.
– When you land at an in-world locale, wait for the architecture to fill in before you start to move around. You could get stuck in a wall.
– If you try to move with the arrow keys and nothing happens for 15 or 20 seconds, quit and log in again. You’ll come back to the same spot and usually you can get going right away.
– Use the zoom slide on the map to expand your potential game area.
– Be brave.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006