User:Vovkjn/Second Life

From Wikiversity

Second Life – the most widespread virtual environment

SecondLife (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible on the Internet and creation of a new account is free. Residents can explore, meet other users, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world.

In Second Life avatars are able to take any form, for example human, animal or even vegetable. Residents are able to create themselves as they look like in real life. A single user account is able to have only one avatar at a time, although the user can change his/her avatar appearance as many times as he/she wishes. Avatars, like everything else in SL, can be created by the user or bought pre-made.

Avatars can communicate through the local chat. Chatting is visible to any avatar but only on given distance. If a message is sent to an offline user it will be saved and viewed when he/she log into the virtual environmnet.

Second Life has its own currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ is used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other residents. Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, and devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewellery, flora and fauna, and works of art. Services include opportunity to work and get money for this, business management, entertainment and content creation, to them building, texturing, scripting, and animating [SecondLife. (2007). Retrieved from http://secondlife.com/whatis/]. Residents can purchase L$ using US Dollars and other currencies on the LindeX exchange implemented by Linden Lab, independent brokers or other resident users.. According to figures published by Linden Lab [Nino, T. (2010, aprill 28). http://www.massively.com/. Retrieved from http://www.massively.com/2010/04/28/second-life-q1-2010-metrics/], about 64,000 users made a profit in Second Life in February 2009, of who 38524 made less than US$10, while 233 made more than US$5000. Profits are from selling virtual goods and renting land.

The strong points:[edit]

• User can register for free and does not need to spend any money. Avatars can be fully upgrade by resident. After spending some time with the controls the user can make an excellent-looking avatar.
• There are actually thousands of items available for free all over SL. To them are clothes, buildings, vehicles.
• The resident can build and script anything he/she likes. This could be hair, shoes, clothes, etc. for his/her avatar, games, furniture and houses. If other users realize that your creations are good enough they will pay you for them. There are people that earn their primary income in this way, up to $30,000 per year.
• The user is able to create own role-playing game. In other words users are able to make their own rules and follow them. Some people find such an idea incredibly attractive. SL provides freedom so that people can do anything from program a card game to building up a new marketing place.
• The community is generally very friendly and mature. You can ask for an advice and talk on the themes you are interested in.

The weak points:[edit]

• Some things do cost money and it takes a lot of time to create marketable product in order to earn it. In this case there is only one option: purchasing in-game money with credit card.
• Obviously it is not a game and most RPG players will consider this a negative point. However, some extremely fun and sophisticated RPG can be created with a group effort. Rules can be written up and assigned, combat meters and weapons can be created and pattern can be implemented to prevent cheating.
• The lag is sometimes so extreme you literally cannot move your avatar.
• The price of owning your own land on which to build, hold events and set up shop can be extremely high.
• To create something you must have some experience working with graphical tools. It is not as simple as it seems to be.