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Not a Gamer

As I’ve mentioned before, I have wasted — I mean “spent” — a lot of time in Second Life, so it’s probably natural for the average person to assume that I’m a hard-core computer gamer. I’m not. Really, I’m not, and here’s why: I have no patience for computer games. Games mean heavily structured game mechanics, hours of learning the controls, grinding, leveling up, and of course frustration. That’s not entertainment to me; it’s a chore and a colossal waste of time. I don’t want to get into the debate over whether Second Life is a “game” or a “platform”, but I can say this about it: when it comes to Second Life, time spent there means free-form creativity and the possibility of real-world income. There’s a real-world reward and the winning scenario is defined by me, not the big boss at the end of the level.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t tried games. I have. They all got uninstalled and the discs/cartridges gathered dust. Back in the nineties, I’d play all kinds of things: Quake, Duke Nukem, Descent, A-10 Tank Killer (or was that the eighties?)… and more. Since then, I bought a Nintendo 64, which, like my Wii, I largely ignored until I gave it away. I also tried MS Flight Simulator, Rise of Flight, and assorted others that just failed to catch my interest.

So no, I won’t try Angry Birds or Farmville any time soon, and I guess I missed out on the Portal craze, though even without playing it, I do know that the cake is, in fact, a lie. As for Warcraft, I gave it a try, got slaughtered in the newbie area a few times, and figured out that it wasn’t worth it.

Honestly, I have better things to do than grinding, shooting, and leveling up. In SL, I say that my winning scenario is to keep an airport running and in the black until Linden Lab shuts down the servers. I think I’m winning.

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Where’s the action in SL?

I logged into Second Life a couple of times recently with the idea of exploring and engaging in things I don’t usually. So I started with the Search window. It’s so amazingly hard to find a link to anything good, but this Search window makes it almost impossible to even just browse the list.

I may be wrong here, but Search is supposed to present organized lists of links, right? Isn’t that something that we’ve had for over fifteen years on the web? And somehow that’s beyond the capabilities of LL devs? You can’t navigate easily, the search basically doesn’t return expected results, and you can’t bookmark for later exploration without actually going there and making a landmark. It’s just phenomenally poor design and implementation.

I couldn’t find much with the search function, so I wandered through each of the dozen or so featured links and found a handful interesting but empty locations. Nothing truly engaging. I know there are people in SL doing fun things. I’ve been engaged in SL since 2003. But I can’t, despite my best efforts, actually find them. At that point, I ended up wandering through empty sims for an hour or so.

Essentially, there is no way to get to good content beyond word-of-mouth and shared landmarks. That is inexcusable this late in SL‘s life. We need a Google of SL, and then nobody will say there’s nothing to do in SL. They’ll say there’s too much.

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My predictions for Second Life in 2011

As the year in Second Life tumbles towards December 31, 2010, like a griefercube spinning and screaming towards the edge of the map, our thoughts naturally look ahead to what the metaverse will bring us in 2011. This year was, without a doubt, turbulent for this particular piccolo pixelated planet (sorry): massive layoffs at the Lab, fewer benefits for educational users, obvious deep flaws in the official viewer, a third-party viewer fooferah (AKA, “Emeraldgate”), and — on a personal note — the sale of my Bay City lands and my exit from that unique community. I think I can speak for other SLers when I say that I’d like 2011 to be the bearer of good tidings for weary avatars.

So for the year 2011, here are my predictions, and don’t hold me to any of this, because I’m full of crap. Continue reading “My predictions for Second Life in 2011”

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I killed Cubey

For the better part of a decade, I’ve engaged with the Internet with a more-or-less consistent pseudonym, persona, avatar… handle… or whatever you want to call it. First I was the blogger, “Cubicle Dweller“, then “Cubey”, and finally “Cubey Terra” in Second Life. It worked for me, for the most part. Lately, though, I became concerned that I had taken a back seat to a fictional character. Just like when Leonard Nimoy published “I am not Spock” to reassert his identity as an actor rather than a fictional Vulcan, I wanted to set Cubey aside in the same way. I am not Cubey Terra.

So I killed Cubey. First I killed Twitter Cubey who had only a modest 200 followers. But Cubey wasn’t dead yet. His persona lurked elsewhere. So next, I killed Facebook Cubey, an avatar with a list of several hundred “friends” that he’d never spoken to, let alone actually befriended.

Continue reading “I killed Cubey”

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Second Life’s missing Canadian content

It’s sad news when a high-profile Second Life destination closes down, and it seems to be happening with alarming frequency. Today I heard that the “Visit Mexico” sim will be shutting down, and it made me wonder why there’s no “Visit Canada” sim. Maybe someone should build it. Hey, maybe I should build it!

Just picture it: An entire sim dedicated to nothing but Canadiana. But no! One sim is too small to contain the vastness that is Canada. I would need at least a dozen to capture the full glory of each province and territory.

Visitors would be required to wear the appropriate avatars of famous Canadians (Justin Beiber, William Shatner, and Céline Dion) or Canadians that the CBC execs think are famous (Ben Mulroney, Rita MacNiel, and a guy who used to play bass with The Northern Pikes). On arrival, red-coated RCMP will check and approve your avatar, search your inventory for copyright violations, and give you a good tasering. After that, you’re free to explore!

Continue reading “Second Life’s missing Canadian content”