Second Life: Freya Ophelia

The concept of being able to duplicate items adds an interesting component to SL that most online games don’t have. In SL freebies are everywhere. Someone makes something cool, they offer it to you. Someone gets something cool from someone else; they naturally duplicate it and pass it on. In other games players are very partial to the items they have acquired, mostly due to the fact that they can’t be duplicated. You had to earn your sword, or get lucky and find it, or spend hours forging it. It definitely creates a different overall atmosphere. In both worlds (those in which you can duplicate and those in which you cant) players strive to look cool and own amazing items. Yet, in a world without duplication, players usually have to work hard to earn some sort of currency to acquire their desired look or items. And once you have what you want, it’s yours, and no one else’s, and you’re not going to share. In SL, all you have to do is ask, or even better, just make it. Anything you desire can be yours. And even though it’s easier to look how you want, the value of something deemed “cool” by a player doesn’t go down. The generosity in SL is astounding. One thing that doesn’t fit into this world of duplication is land. Land is typically purchased, belongs to one person, and cannot be duplicated. In fact, people don’t much appreciate other people building on their land...at least the lady that yelled at me didn’t...

I was trying to work on my class project so I teleported to an area that seemed empty. I began building and soon after I was greeted by somewhat snide avatar that was extremely curious to see what I was up to. I played dumb, saying I didn’t know the land was someone’s, and that I was just trying to work on a class project. After I explained they didn’t mind much, but she explained that there are people who will build a bunch of prims on someone else’s land and leave them there. It kind of reminded me of throwing toilet paper in someone’s trees in real life. It’s a lame practical joke that’s harmless but a pain to clean up. Well anyway, I’ve stuck to the sandboxes since then. I don’t want people to think I’m a prim dumper.

I did come across some interesting experiences while working on my project...namely being stuck in my own room. The concept for my project is optical illusions in a 3D world. I decided I would try making an all black room and then put optical illusions on the walls. The room came out well after some work, I even made the entrance a hallway with a 90 degree turn so that you couldn’t see any light at all once inside the room. I stood in the total darkness, marveling at my creation, when I suddenly became disoriented. Which way did I come in? I zoomed out so I could see which way the door was, and then zoomed back in to the totally black room. Even though I had just seen which way to go, I couldn’t find the door. It was just a box for crying out loud! Why was it so hard to get out!? I think this frustrating experience actually gave me more insight into an interesting project than my original idea of optical illusions. It would be really cool to experiment with disorientation in a 3D world. Maybe for my project I will dump everyone in a black room and see how long it takes them to get out :)