I’ve been reading a lot of stories about the game “Secound Life†and wanted to know if anyone here on DP is currently playing it. I hear that you have to exchange real money for fake money that then can be used to buy things??? How does this game work???
It's far more than a game, I recently had a look myself. It's a whole economy indeed but you can enter for free. It's so vast it's unreal. I've never seen anything like it and I'm still only at stage 1 of 1000000 of exploring it all.
I was thinking of joining just to see how it looks but didn’t want to use my credit card. Maybe one of these days I’ll go for it.
I tried it, but the load times are way, way too long. Everything is downloaded as you play, so you have to wait for each area to load completely.
i better dont try it, this games turn out as a time waster and at the end you just push everything else back to have time for the game. played one of this multiplayer online worlds and some browser game for a while and had nightmares that someone else could attack my village there. worse than drugs!
Lol, you better not get into any more online games The only online game I’ve played was Knights Online and have to admit that it was a waste of time. I just wanted to know what Second life was like for curiosity sake.
I have been trying this game over the past weekend. It is really very interesting. But, I am not sure it is a game. It is more like a vast chat, where avatars stand in for you. Every other avatar is an actual person. There are no goals. There is no story. You go to an section of the world and walk around. You can talk to or IM people if you want. Talk is obviously in the open for anyone nearby to hear. IM is private. In the forum someone noted that the developers are saving a ton of money by not having a creative team, because the users create and expand the world. On the other hand, there have been some recent complaints about the programmers, especially their recent record with bugs. In a newspaper article here over the weekend, which is what attracted me, they said Reuters has set up an office in the Second Life world with one full time staffer. That is bizarre. Play areas are divided by age. Adults are limited to the adult universe and teens to the 13-17 universe. Realizing that there were no teens in the adult world made me a little more comfortable . . . but I find that all my social anxieties in real life carry over into the virtual one as well. There is no question the number of users is expanding faster than the servers can handle and this is contributing to latency and other problems. I had the program hard crash twice and was foced to do a shut down on two other occasions. I am still a free user. There is no rush to change status.
I was going to join just to see what it was, in a free account. However it seems that you can't have a free accout if you are under an age, they didn't make this clear to me at all I was annoyed.
I’m still thinking about it but haven’t had time to waste on games lately. Maybe tonight I’ll sign up just to take a walk around and see what it looks like.
Not just Reuters either, Adidas has invested a lot of money and there are loads more real life entities well represented inside SL. Live oncerts are being held there too. There's loads of people who earn their bread from it already and it isn't even well known yet.
Now, I would be curious to hear if it's a viable way to make a living. I know that there are people who are making a living selling SL real estate (from a businessweek article a little while back), but what is the investment required to get there?
I don't think SL is going to be a "get rich quick" kind of place. You need to change from thinking in terms of working on the web back into to working in "real space" -- even though you are in virtual space. Any of the principles which go into marketing a website go out the window. You have to be thinking "real world" retail or wholesale -- like opening a restaurant or a shoe store -- which means location and a good product is everything. Getting going is a slow process. You need a premium account. If the stipend generated from that is not enough, you need to buy L$ in order to pay rent, buy advertising, buy furniture for your store, etc. Luckily, you can let users serve themselves. But, some of the SL Businesses hire staff to take care of prospective customers. Some of the places remind of the boardwalks in resort towns. And, still under development.
This is an old thread, and I can update by reporting that SL is alive and well, and the marketing opportunities there really are limitless. Still slow to Rez, especially when there are lots of Sims present, but you get used to it. I'm really enjoying it and meeting new folks to network with. Do not in any way see it as a wasted of time. KK "KK Dallagio" in SL
I guess I did some post digging. I recently started playing Second Life and it's pretty cool. I met some neat people there but I generally don't like how there is nothing really to do, game wise. I decided to invest time in actual MMO games such as EVE On-line.
Well, you can join some role-playing communities, or even there are some gaming sims with adventures you have to explore and finish... How about that?
thankfully second life did not take over my first life. i was hooked for about 2 weeks. but as i quickly began meeting new (creepy) people, i began to feel less entralled with it.