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!