Second Life - My Experiences

It's hard not to come into Second Life without thinking that you are just playing an online version of the Sims.

Whilst i am excited by the idea of an online world which features Avatars the appeal of Second Life somehow fell short. A large part of it was an initial confusion as to what I was meant to do or where I was meant to go. I explored for about 1 hour around the world only to find myself just as confused as when I started.

From what I could see - anything you wanted to do required Linden money, which is actually real money. I initially questioned this tactic as when currency becomes involved you automatically question whether something is worth investing money in. In this case, I would have to say no.

The fact of the matter is Second Life now just seems like a fad that raged in the Noughties. Whether it was too early for it's time might be a consideration but from my network of friends no one is dying to join the network. It would be interesting to see whether the lure would be different if Linden money did not require an actual transaction to take place.

Half of the fun in games is that you are entering a different world, so when money becomes involved you lose that aspect of fantasy as to continue doing anything you need to step back into reality and reach into your wallet.

However, this does not disregard the potential of Second Life which I think is huge. If the success of James Cameron's Avatar is anything to go by, our society is increasingly interested in the idea of avatar's and differentiating between reality and a 'second realm' If they jumped on the success of the film, Second Life could take off - really, as it is essentially doing everything the other social networks are but in an incredibly rich graphical format.

I think where second life really gains its advantage is the graphical nature of it's world, as opposed to staying as flat web pages you have a 3 dimensional world that can be created and customized to your taste. Here the potential is huge already with individuals 'performing' re-enactments of famous artworks in the digital realm.

Ultimately, as a tool Second Life is very powerful but the real problem is who is on it? Until they can find a way to lure more users onto the site it really doesn't fulfill much of a purpose for new users. But I do hope in time, the internet's interface becomes much more graphical and that we completely change our perception of a web page being flat .. maybe exploring the web in the future will be more like Second life? Where websites are actually structures in a world? and Social Networking sites are the recreational parks of this world.