In another one of my English classes, I have just completed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance. The story involves three main characters, who all decide to break away from traditional society, in order to start their own utopian community called Blithedale. The community in the book is loosely based on the short-lived Brook Farm, which was an actual attempt at a Utopian community, founded by several trancedentalists. Hawthorne lived in this community for a few months, and it is inferred that he did not have think too highly of it. His opinion of it is reflected in the underlying sarcastic tone of the novel. Although The Blithedale Romance did not strike me as being one of my favorite literary works, I couldn’t help but think that a video game adaptation of this story would fit well with the “rhetoric of failure,” which was discussed in class.

It would be interesting to adapt this book into some sort of hybrid puzzle and RPG type game. The goal of this game would be to develop a successful utopian community. As the characters of Zenobia, Priscilla, Coverdale, and Hollingsworth attempt to build a utopian community, they must make vital decisions that will have a major impact on all of them. In this way, puzzle-type games come to mind. The idea of trying to create a utopia-like setting in which one individual’s decision has an effect on another person reminds me a bit of the game, Growcube. In both situations, any move has consequences that will determine whether a community will fully evolve, or stop at one point at its development. For this game, I visualize a setting similar to Growcube, in which each character is responsible for an act to maintain the community (such as farming). The moves of each player would be based on their actual characters in the book, since each character has a flaw. For example, the character, Zenobia, does not fare well with manual labor in the book. In the game, this character might have to try to work harder and strategize wisely in order to get more points.

However, other than the puzzle aspect, the story of The Blithedale Romance would also be suited for an RPG type game. The story touches on many relationships, particularly with the characters of Zenobia and Priscilla. This aspect of the game would be more interactive. I visualize a player having to go through several stages that would represent chapters of the book. The player will have the option to choose what to do, as they go through each stage. However, this will not necessarily guarantee the player a win. The book is viewed by many people as a critique of how utopian communities often fail, so it is not likely that anyone will really “win” the video game.

            One piece of literature that I think is absolutely fascinating is Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. The novel is based on the story of a young girl, Chiyo, who is forced into the life of a geisha by her father after her mother falling ill. The book follows this young child’s journey through life in pre-World War II Japan, and tells the struggles and joys she finds living as the exotic geisha. The game I would design based on this novel would have the same kind of structure; it would be a hybrid of an adventure/SIMS-type game that portrays the struggles that Chiyo had to overcome, such as forgetting about her family, making a home for herself in the okiya that she was placed in, becoming a successful geisha, and finally overcoming the devastation of World War II.

             My Memoirs of a Geisha game would be a game in which the player would pose as the main character of the novel, Chiyo. There would be different levels, each of which would portray the various obstacles that living as a geisha in Japan would present. While some of the scenes in the game would mirror that of the novel – such as being forced to leave her village and parents – the player would have choices that Chiyo herself did not have in the actual story. For example, after being separated from her sister in Kyoto, Chiyo succeeds in finding her once again and they plan to escape late at night back to their village. While in the novel, Chiyo fails to meet her sister in time for the escape (and is therefore left behind), perhaps in the game by completing a level, Chiyo is able to go away with her sister and they face the next ‘level’ together. Of course, eventually Chiyo would have to return to the city in order to become a geisha later on, possibly because she is unhappy with the less-than-exciting village and fishermen’s duties that she is stuck with after the death of her parents.

            My game would also resemble SIMS in that Chiyo would have to interact with different characters in the game, such as the Mother of the okiya (geisha house), other geisha, her mentor Mameha, and her clients as a geisha as well. She would have to have conversations with these characters to figure out what she should do next in order to continue her quest to becoming a renowned geisha, and once she actually establishes herself as a successful entertainer, she would have to learn how to expand the number of clients and how to keep them satisfied and happy. Chiyo would also be able to pick up certain objects that would give her an edge over other geisha, such as a beautiful jade comb (a symbol that constantly appears throughout the novel) or an expensive kimono that raises her social standing among the geisha in Kyoto.

            The purpose of the game would be to interact with characters, build up Chiyo’s status as a geisha, and complete the set goal in every level in order to move on to the next challenge that Chiyo faces. By moving through Japan and experiencing the same struggles that Chiyo does would portray the same themes and societal problems that Golden portrays in the novel itself. The game would be somewhat difficult, in order to represent just how hard life was for little girls in Japan before WWII, and how they were forced to deal with a life that they did not chose for themselves, but were instead forced into by their families.

I was very excited to explore Second Life since we had discussed it so much in class, and I was not disappointed. Although I did encounter a few technical errors, overall it was a fun and interesting experience. However, I did not expect to run into these technical problems in the first place. Considering this program has been around for a few years and there are so many users online, I didn’t think that there would still be major kinks in the system. Not only did I have trouble logging on to SL, I also had trouble running the program since it kept making my whole system crash. This happened more than once, and there were serious lag issues as well with the movement and loading of the characters and sceneries in the game itself. Once I was able to overcome these issues, though, SL proved to be very entertaining and somewhat addicting.

I was highly entertained by the simple task of creating my avatar. I’ve always been very amused by make-overs and dressing up, and this game provided me with the opportunity – which I took complete advantage of – to change my avatar’s appearance over and over again. After I finally managed to decide on what I wanted Xara Olchowy to look like (which took at least an hour if not more), I finally began my exploration of this virtual world. I met some nice people during the tutorial and on Help Island, who helped me find places to get freebies such as clothing and tattoos. They also helped me figure out how to do more than just walk around, such as fly, teleport and dance. I had some good conversation about their experiences so far on SL even though we were all essentially beginners. Of course, I also had the displeasure of meeting people who were ‘hitting’ on me, and were interested in having virtual sex – something that I still don’t understand how it is possible to accomplish online.

Once I got off Help Island, I started exploring other areas of SL. I visited Vassar Island, where I walked around for a while before I found the Sistine Chapel. Although I’ve never visited the actual Chapel, I was very impressed by how well it was portrayed in this virtual world. The graphics were really good, and the images of the angels and clouds on the walls and ceiling were so beautiful. I was not expecting the graphics to be so impressive, and gained a new found respect for the creators of these virtual islands and monuments. I ran into other “tourists” on this island, who were all interested in traveling – both online, as well as in ‘real life.’ I had a few conversations with people about places that I’ve traveled to and learned that I could visit most of these places on SL as well. While I was on Vassar Island, I also got a lot of invitations to go to different clubs, islands, and information hubs that seemed to promote different users and their contributions to the Second Life world.

Although I did not get to explore much else on SL since my computer crashed yet again, I was still surprised by how easy it is to become totally immersed in this make-believe world. Even though my avatar does not resemble me in the least, and obviously has a different name and identity from myself, I still felt as though I was actually involved by what was going on in my screen, and was actually interacting with these other people who were online. Even though I do not see myself spending hours every day on SL just to meet new people, I can definitely understand how people use this site (and other virtual worlds as well) as a way of escaping their everyday lives and responsibilities, since it is so readily available and so easy to get sucked into a fascinating alternate reality.

Although I have spent three and a half years at UCI, today was my first visit to the Beall Center for Art and Technology. I am very glad that we saw the Grand Text Auto exhibit as a class because I probably would not have gone on my own, even though I wanted to.

[giantJoystick] reminded me of the Wii game system because both require physical movement from the players instead of just thumb motion on a hand-held controller. While I did not try it, I think that [giantJoystick] would be a lot of fun to play because it is essentially playing two games at once: the Atari game on the screen, but a second game where the two players must work together in order to beat the Atari game. Not only is the player playing the game in relationship to the screen action, but must coordinate with the other player in order to efficiently beat the game.

An installation I did participate in was called “Screen”. “Screen” required that I don glasses to see the words on the screen in 3-D and wear a glove in order to “hit” the words that were coming towards me. The text on the screen was already in a particular order to tell a story, but when the words came towards me and I hit them, they moved into different places among the blanks in the text so that I essentially created an entirely new piece of literature. As the “Screen” installation came to a close, all the rest of the words on the screen came towards me, flying in all directions, swirled together in a sort of vortex, and dissolved.

The installation titled “Implementation” involved stories printed onto stickers and then placed in the actual world. When I saw the photos of these stickers placed in public spaces, I was reminded of last week’s New University article titled “Campus Graffiti Vandals Arrested” because these two works are both in the public sphere, yet one is considered art and the other vandalism.

I had the opportunity to watch “Facade” both on the computer simulation and through the augmented reality adaptation. It was amusing to see that with every decision made by the player, whether to sit on the couch or simply what to drink, one simulated character would feel encouragement while the other would feel abandonment. The simulated woman insisted that there were certain rules of etiquette to follow while their “guest” was present, such as having telephone calls go through the answering machine, yet she allowed herself to confront and argue with her husband in the presence of the “guest”.

Upon hearing of the combination of interesting and annoying inherent in operating on the plane of existence known as Second Life, I was tempted into trying it, despite my aversion towards 3D games that operate online (yes, WoW, I’m looking right at you). My inkling had little to do, of course, with the fact that to create an avatar on Second Life was an assignment in the experimental course in which all contributors to this blog are enrolled. Little at all.

My aversion towards such games is not utterly unfounded, by the way. I’ve tried a variety of 3D games and found the lag ultimately frustrating enough to cause me to quit. I love the social networking and communicative aspects of the Internet, but slow-loading pixels are enough to drive me away from certain facets of that world. This is precisely the reason why back when I was a bored high school student, the bulk of my Internet time was spent on messageboards, forums, chatrooms, and the like: all of those helped me to meet people without forcing me to wait as my inevitably slow computer and dial-up connection took their sweet technological time.

Still, I tried to approach Second Life with an open mind. I figured that it had been several years since I’d tried anything like Second Life; the design must have improved in that time, I reasoned, since in that time my own computer had improved despite the fact that I’d bought it quite cheaply, and I’d upgraded from dial-up to DSL. If my cheap self and equally frugal family could move forward, I thought, designers of 3D games, with their technological obsessions, must be universes ahead. Plus, Second Life seemed popular enough to warrant smooth operation.

In order for me to avoid any possible caveats associated with the cheap technology that I own, I operated Second Life on the Mac in the Langson Library’s Multimedia Center. I logged in with the computer’s attached industrial-strength headphones blocking me off from all reality bu t the virtual kind. The character I created is named Khayyam Jehangir. The first name is a reference to my favorite philosopher/mathematician/poet (or pretty much the only person who can claim all three titles legitimately), Omar Khayyám. The last name was chosen because, of all the names on the drop-down menu, it was the only one that rang any bells in my mind (Jehangir is a punk-god figure of sorts in the fictional Islamic Punk Rock scene documented in The Taqwacores).

I logged in an began by transforming my appearance into a more realistic one. By default, Second Life characters start off as somewhat closer to the societal ideal of beauty than most people are, and so I tweaked my character’s body to better resemble mine. I had some trouble with changing her face, as I couldn’t figure out how to make her face me during the appearance-editing process so that I could see the changes I’d made. Still, I decided not to get stuck on her looks and to do some exploring.

The lag really, really annoyed me. Really. I would’ve logged off then and there if it weren’t for the assignment. Anyhow… The initial island had a few interesting places, notably the dragon, but I got bored quickly and tried some of the SurLs that were on the course webpage. They didn’t work, to my frustration, so I decided to fly around instead. I ended up on some island where there was a dancefloor. There seemed to be a restricted, exclusive area into which I could not enter. My clothes really didn’t seem up to par, so I tried the SurLs again. I explored Anteater Island but not only found it deserted, but not all that interesting and compelling.

I guess that’s the bottom line of my Second Life experience: I just didn’t find Second Life interesting. I would rather go to the Student Center and actually play Dance Dance Revolution and interact with people than log onto Second Life and, fighting lag, try to find someone with whom to interact. As much as Second Life and its ilk are touted as the future of online interaction, I am doomed to be old-school in my preferred online interaction methods.

Game Analysis Assignment

            A work of literature that I find really rewarding is Paolo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, which charts the journey of a young sheep herder in his quest for hidden treasure. The young boy is faced with the quest of fulfilling his dream, one that involves traveling for years, meeting a colorful array of people, and dealing with a series of trials. Along the way, he is guided by signs in the desert around him, some pulling him away from his life’s goal, and others which pull him towards it. Coehlo’s work centers itself on the importance of following your dream, and the insistence that even a poor sheep herder boy can find his way to that dream, and the wealth we all should strive for in life: the wealth of persistence, the wealth of the struggle – the journey itself.

The game I would design in the spirit of one of my favorite novels would be a sort of virtual/spiritual/adventure game, in which the player would pose as the young sheep herder. The game begins in his home town, where his dreams are first challenged by his parents, who insist that there is not much out in the greater world that is worth the boys’ time. Perhaps the boy is met with physical representations of the signs and crossroads that challenge him, for example a giant boulder stands in the way of his herd. The boulder represents stagnation, an inability to move forward, and he has to find a way to move it, or opt to leave his herd in pursuit of a different calling. The objective of the game is to fulfill the boy’s dream of finding the hidden treasure. The boy is armed with two things: his dream, and a book with which to take valuable “notes” on his journey. This is where the player must keep a journal that documents important advice, contacts, and the struggles and triumphs of his journey. There will be an option, whenever someone is talking to you, to right click and put something that person is telling you into your journal or library.  The player must utilize his earthly surroundings, and resources from the towns and people that he encounters along the way. The people he meets will constantly offer him tokens or clues as to where the treasure is located, some, once again, which weigh him down and others which propel him forward. In the player journal, you also have the option of sketching items that have symbolic meaning, which you can then take appropriate notes next to.

Getting the answers the boy needs demands that the right questions are asked of the appropriate people and that attention to the details are paid. After all, like the book, the game will celebrate the journey more so than the destination. Decoding the player’s surroundings in a significant way is also key. Sometimes getting to a destination involves expensive travel, and working hard at a particular job. In the novel, for instance, the boy works for years at a small shop; these jobs can be distracting, and although they are sometimes necessary to fulfilling the ultimate goal, they can stop the boy in his tracks. The player must be wary of signs that tell him he is losing sight of his dream. The option to give up and start all over is available and should be emphasized as an option, but the game should be programmed to discourage this. Even if a player is not making a lot of progress toward his goal when he opts to quit, the game itself (a very interactive role-playing game) should offer more signs, opportunities, and characters to discourage giving up. The game ends when the boy gets to his final destination, and claims his treasure.

Before I begin talking about my experiences, I would first like to note two distinct technical problems that I had while playing Second Life on a macbook laptop. First, my framerates were pretty abysmal. Second, after about 30 minutes of play on the macbook, the game would freeze up and become unresponsive. These two problems were extremely inconvenient, and they struck me as problems that shouldn’t be so prevalent and game-breaking in a game that has been out for more than 3 years. Regardless, I was still able to obtain some impressions of the game and the world that didn’t have to do with technical problems. First off, I would like to discuss my avatar. I fire up Second Life and played side by side with Annie, my girlfriend. She was more interested in the game than I was, as the idea of changing features and getting clothes were extremely appealing to her. We managed to find some areas in Second Life that offer lots of well-made freebies: clothes, flexible hair (it moves when you walk!), clothes, dresses, tattoos to make the body more realistic, tattoos added for aesthetic appeal, and lots and lots of different ’skins’, which change the color and visual appearance of the skin of your avatar. After some searching, I managed to compose an avatar that, according to Annie, looked more like a porn star or adult dancer than anything else. So I decided to go to some second life dance clubs.

The dance clubs I went to were mature rated, but they were not nude clubs or anything like that. Some of them had risque name, but as far as I could tell, they were just dance clubs for people to hang out at on Second Life. I definitely made both female and male friends when I went. The male friends wanted primarily to give me a few linden dollars and have virtual sex with my avatar, so I politely declined. The female friends wanted to comment on my outfit, give me tips on being sexier or more persuasive with male players, or they wanted to talk. One other player had a long discussion with me. At one point, I asked her what she did on second life. She appeared to be confused. She replied with “what do you mean”, at which point I fired back “like what kind of things do you do most of the time when you are online”. She took a long time to answer this question, which was odd since our conversation previous to this had been very fast paced. Then, when she finally did answer, she just said “i don’t know…talk with friends”.

This experience was interesting to me, because I couldn’t believe that this player (who told me she had been playing for 3 years), spent so much time on second life simply to ‘talk to friends’. This either leads me to believe that she did something online that she was too shy to share, OR she saw me as an outsider because I was somebody who had just created their avatar that same day. Additionally, she wasn’t really chatting much with me after I asked that question. I felt afterwards like I might have violated some unseen Second Life rule, and somehow dragged too much of the real world into Second Life. Nevertheless, I certainly felt like an outsider based on her reaction to my comments. Though I ended up being tossed away, i was worth it — she gave me some really cool hair pieces that kind of flow and move when you walk, and actually look like real hair. Then I wondered, when you get excited about virtual hair, have you played too much?

Following this experience, I spent some time wandering and flying around some of the Second Life adaptations of the real world. I went to SL versions of Japan, Berlin, and Vienna. At these places, I actually saw some other players wandering and moving down the streets, and at certain points i actually felt like I was deeply involved with the game in such a way that I felt like I was actually visiting those places. This aspect of second life was the most appealing to me because I like traveling very much, and it was like I got a small taste of places all around the world. Overall, I feel like second life has alot to offer in terms of interaction with the actual world, and bridging the gap between the real and he actual. However, I truly wish I didn’t have so many technical problems, so that perhaps I could have gotten a few more interesting conversations in, or nabbed a few more cool hair pieces!

I got a chance to take my furry avatar, Manila Harbour, to Laguna Beach, among other places after my orientation on Avatar Island. First of all, let me state that Avatar Island was a nice space to get used to walking on my new virtual feet, as well as growing comfortable in my new, furry skin, my long flowing tail. There were a lot of new second life users there on the island. I found that, just like in real life, free giveaways (such as my free chainmail) made me happy. And I found that, just like in real life, I appreciated the politeness other users greeted me with. Often, other characters would just shout “Hi!” or ask me “How are you?” And I found myself really feeling that, “Wow. I wish more strangers in real life would genuinely say ‘How are you?’ when I’m walking down the street.” Is our increasingly virtual environment, our ability to “wink at”, “smile at”, or give “gifts” to people on facebook, for example, glorifying those sentiments in our real life dealings with people? Why, I wondered, was I so gratified that some avatar randomly said, “Hi. How are you?”…the same reason that I celebrated my recent collection of new online comments, perhaps. I went to the Orange County fairgrounds for the Marketplace a few weeks back and simply asked a vendor “How are you today?” and she told me that I had made her day. “No one really asks you how you’re doing nowadays,” she said, “Thanks. Really, thanks a lot.” Simple gestures can be so much more powerful in real life now. You call someone or visit someone instead of texting or commenting them “happy birthday!” and genuinely ask them how his/her life is doing. The gesture holds more weight; it is more of a commodity. But then again, the thoughtful act of remembering someone’s birthday is taken care of for you by social networking sites. That “thoughtfulness” of remembering to check today’s birthday listings is not so much of a special or highly personal act. I digress a bit…
In considering this notion of assuming a second life, I got to thinking that you really can make a brand new life on spaces like this. Second life is dictated primarily by its members. If I want to build a building, or move to a secluded island, or create a new community, I can in second life in just a few clicks. In real life, I can’t always teleport quickly away from people that are bothering me (like a strange man on campus that creepily hugged me on ring road randomly yesterday). In second life, while I was listening to some pretty sweet flute music “playing live” somewhere on Avatar Island, I witnessed two avatars shamelessly flirting and making plans to “hook up” in some virtual hotel room somewhere. Not only did this scenario confirm for me that people in second life do engage in online sexual relations, it also succeeded at making me feel uncomfortable, like hearing the conversation in real life would have made me. I just teleported away. Second life is great. You want to go somewhere, or you feel like “flying away”, and you can. Don’t like the way you look in the mirror today? Perhaps I realized I wasn’t happy with my tail or furry face (they suddenly made me look too fat or something): I could just click to get virtual plastic surgery and instantly become a svelte “city chic” or a funky, spunky-looking “harajuku girl”. To get places, I walk by pressing arrow keys (and not exerting real physical energy beyond clicking my keyboard), I fly instead of worrying about my lack of car and the prices of gasoline, and I travel a vast world without worrying about airline ticket costs. Second life is great.

I explored the world of Sedig, and virtual hallucinations, but did not, for whatever reason, feel like I had that forewarned “disturbing” experience. However, I did stumble upon some rental properties that I wanted to scope the interiors of, but was saddened with the realization that I really can’t go just everywhere that I want to in this virtual space…if only I had enough Linden dollars to get in those rooms! So I did what lots of people who are broke in the real world do when finances get in the way. I went to the beach. I went to Laguna Beach. This made me laugh because in the show “Laguna Beach” is also a representation of wealth and privilege. Luckily, there were no primped teens, and their romantic troubles to be found there on Laguna Beach, the Second Life Edition.

Anyway, my interactions on Laguna Beach were interesting because they were guided by the curious and unexpected sound of Danny Glover’s voice, in political support of John Edwards’ campaign. Now this was far from what I was expecting when I initially thought of hitting the beach. I found myself without the desired virtual beach towel and umbrella, and met my relaxing shore of…political propaganda, pictures and posters, and celebrity endorsements. Wow. Second Life was starting to look a lot more like real life. In short, all my experiences amounted to quite the interesting experience overall, and one that, for me, shed light on how virtual spaces are a lot more interlaced with real life than we immediately think.

When I entered the world of Second Life, I really did not know what to expect as this was my first experience dealing with virtual worlds. I found it easy, however, to move around, navigate camera angles, and alter my avatar’s appearance and gestures. In the first land, where we are required to go through the four tutorials, I was making use of the “fly” ability as I noticed it took too long walking around by foot. I was also extremely entertained by the fact that you can operate vehicles and other pedestrian devices in Second Life. As I wanted to test out the boundaries in this world, I tried to run over other people with a car, and although I learned that this was not possible I was laughing at how I was pushing people around and at the mere idea of someone trying to run me over with a car in the game. Soon after doing this, however, I walked up to the people I had been trying to crash into earlier and apologized for my behavior as I said I was new to Second Life and I was just having some fun.

I also visited a location somewhere near, or possibly within, Korea where there were just a few buildings, a small grotto, and a bridge overpass which lead into the mountains and then, to my disappointment, suddenly ended. When I flew back to the grotto I walked up to a group of people who were standing around having a conversation. I could not understand what they were talking about and assumed that they were using some sort of Second Life/online lingo that I was not familiar with. As I was put off by this, I decided to look up another location and decided to teleport to a place called Pleasure Island.

Pleasure Island, having such an intriguing name, actually turned out to be a privately owned land which advertised the owner’s personal artwork and featured her domestic creations. I was very impressed by the architecture of her four level Japanese-style home which included an outdoor sauna, was surrounded by a rock garden with a waterfall, and a backyard beach with a bonfire and hammock. While I was busy exploring the rest of this world I received several notifications that I was in a private location and that I would be logged off in a certain amount of seconds. I was never kicked out, like I was expecting I would be, but I decided to leave as I did not want to upset any other users or the Second Life administrators.

I was very pleased with my first experience with this virtual world and I can see how people can become immersed in Second Life as there are dozens of places you can visit and people from all over the world you can converse with. Not to mention tons of clothes and appearances to play around with.

I heard a lot about Second Life before I actually experienced it, and now that I’ve gotten a little taste of it, I’m not sure what’s so great about it.

As other people said, choosing the avatar really does take up a whole chunk of time. I didn’t even really care how I looked, but somehow I found myself trying to tweak this or that to make my avatar slightly resemble me. There were so many options that I finally got tired of changing them – eye separation, inner eye shape, outer eye shape, ear shape, forehead shape…it’s too much! I kept thinking, “who cares, it’s only online,” but I suppose I have the wrong mentality, because some people really are attached to their avatars. My avatar still doesn’t look anything like me, but I got frustrated with the little sliding bars so I finally stopped. I was extremely amused, however, to see that I could choose how much “gravity” was being applied to my avatar’s breasts. Who thought of that, I wonder?

Honestly, I thought Second Life was a little boring. When I first arrived on Help Island, I somehow landed in between two naked people. I don’t think they were trying to do anything weird. I hope not, at least. I couldn’t get my figure (whose name is Eilonwy Trevellion, by the way) to move away. I suspected that my computer was being laggy and that their clothes were simply slow in loading, but it didn’t seem to be the case. I was stuck there (fully clothed) for quite a while, and the clothes of the two people never appeared. Go figure.

I finally teleported to the Louvre after 4 or 5 tries, and I had a lot of fun looking at the reproductions. It was a little scary to watch the buildings slowly appear, like I was stepping back in time to see some haunted castle slowly rise before me. It was completely empty, and that added to the creepiness. Everywhere I went, there was nobody around. I even searched for the most popular destinations, but at most there were two people at the same place as me, and they refused to talk, even after I said “hi” in my nicest tones. Someone also kicked me when I said “hi” to them, which I thought was pretty immature of them. I can imagine it would be pretty hard to coordinate a time to meet people. I went twice, once in the early afternoon and once in the evening, and both times Second Life was empty. Where does everyone go?!

My favorite place in Second Life is probably Amsterdam. I thought it was really beautifully done, and I can virtually walk on the roads I walked on last summer, which was really mind-boggling. It all looked really accurate to me, and I can’t begin to imagine how long it took to create. I also enjoyed a place called Fairytale Gardens of Sinano, which had really beautiful gardens and little cottages. I have to emphasize again, though, how odd it is to be in these places (real, established places like Amsterdam and Dublin, especially) in Second Life and to be completely alone. I really felt like I was in a sci-fi movie where I was the last survivor of some disaster and was roaming the perfectly clean and deserted streets of Amsterdam trying to find a sign of life.
Second Life is diverting, but I don’t think I would go there in my spare time. I spent a lot of time doing things I didn’t think I wanted to do, like fixing my hair, and I can see that learning all the tricks of Second Life would take quite some time. I flipped through the tutorial, but it looked too complicated, so I decided to wing it. If I could start over again, maybe investing a little more time into the tutorial would be a good thing to do. All in all, everything is a little less polished than I expected it would be, and the isolation really got to me after a while. I felt like I was playing a weird version of Myst, except there were no clues or anything to help me along. Perhaps if my friends decide to join Second Life, it would be more interesting. I was a little disappointed not to meet any foreign people, because I couldn’t try out my skills. Haha, just joking.