I have been hearing about this online multiplayer thing called Second Life for a while, and I thought I’d check it out. Big mistake. It goes VERY VERY slowly, at least on my connection, and the program crashes about once every ten minutes. But it seems interesting enough that I keep wanting to try to get it running again, so I get trapped in a hellish, tantalising cycle of waiting and crashing and more crashing and then even more further crashing and rebooting the likes of which have not been seen since I tried to run Rebel Assault on my old 486. The idea is, people can buy virtual real estate for ten bucks a month or whatever and sublet it, and also create any sort of items they want in the simulation and try to sell them to other people, so the bottom line is the thing supposedly has a GNP of 64 million $US. Seems interesting. I’m not sure I see how the economy works yet. People being what they are, I assume people have found some way to use the simulation for pretend sex while pretending to be various furry animals.
But as I say, it hardly works on my computer. At this point, I’ve got all the graphics options turned as far down as I can get them, and I seem to be barely able to inch my little guy around at a snail’s pace. Half the time he keeps walking in one direction forever and ends up at the bottom of the sea. And then I get booted out of the program. So if you have a fast intarweb connection and a good graphics card, please check the thing out and report back to me. It’s free to create a little character guy. Mine looks more or less like me when I’m dressed for work, except for the tiny details that he doesn’t have glasses and I have him CARRYING A MUTHAFREAKIN SWORD. I really wish the program worked better for me, because strolling around as a virtual version of myself with a goddamned sword is pretty much my lifelong dream.
2 comments:
Ha ha! I think I'd like a virtual parrot on my shoulder. Do you think it can be done?
I read something the other day about crime in Second Life. Not sure how that works, but I found it funny.
I've seen a guy with a duck on his head, so I assume a parrot or two would be no problem. As for crime, I think people try to figure out ways to make virtual copies of the hand-crafted virtual items that people are trying to sell.
I am now the proud owner of one Second Life currency unit. It's worth like one 300th of a dollar. I got it for sitting in a chair in somebody's store for 10 minutes. I guess they figure if you sit in the chair you'll end up buying something. Suckers! Now I only need to repeat that several thousand more times and I can buy myself a virtual car or TIE fighter or something.
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