Thursday, August 21, 2008
Project Update: Second Life (SL)
At first, we were completely clueless as to what we needed to do in order to get adequate information. After about 30 minutes of aimless wandering, we came across one helpful "second-lifer". We met her on the Journey Fan Club Island, and had a long and informative conversation on how the game plays a role in her life. Through this conversation, we could see how the keywords of ideology and identity play a significant role in this second life. Out of everything we got out of her, there was one topic we found particularly interesting. She talked about how she had a husband on second life, and how they both "plead the fifth" on if they have a real life marriage. This idea of a virtual affair is quite interesting. We don't want to spoil too much of what we discovered, but one other comment roused our interest. Someone mentioned that the best way to meet people in second life was to search "free sex". We thought it was a curious statement, which reflects the game's ability to allow you to play out your every fantasy. We wonder if this is a common use of "SL". We plan to further investigate the motivations behind creating this second life.
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I am quite interested in this project. I think you will have so much to explore, in terms of "ideology," "culture," "identity," "virtual," and so on. The medium touches on many of the different keywords we have explored so far. One of the challenges for you all, I think, will be to narrow and focus because your project links so well with many keywords; the writing pitfall might be to skim only the surface when I in fact want you to tread carefully (to extend the Indiana Jones metaphor here) and dig deeply into specific aspects of this project. Even with taking extra time to work on it, remember that people spend years in this virtual world. You will only get a taste of it, and that is okay. Take your "newbie" experiences and do a careful and close analysis with the keywords and questions we have broached in class.
Namasann wrote me a separate email last night and mentioned that he and Joanna decided to make a separate avatar. My first question is, why? Is the one that Mike created the "control" avatar you mentioned earlier? Also, he wrote that they could not get people to talk with them in Second Life: as a group, I hope you are thinking about why there would be disparity here. Does it have something to do with the avatar? With the different approaches between Mike, Kelly, Nikki (and Tyrone?) and Joanna and Namasann? These are all issues you should be thinking and writing about, as a group.
Finally, did you figure out a good way to archive your exchanges? I downloaded Copernicus yesterday, which is a free screen recorder, but I have not had a chance to experiment with it yet. I will let you know if it works well. If not, I am content with screen shots.
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