Second Life: Homecoming

It's been months. When I last hit the Grid it was to take one final look at the project I had been working on. We were building a virtual narrative environment--ascend the Staircase to explore your "Third Life." The project was an exercise in understanding what Second Life can do and how to expand the possibilities of the world. We "identified" what people would "want" with their Third Life--some tongue-in-cheek, some the novelty of special effects. Before this project, it had been a while since I spent time on the Grid. Things have changed.

I'm Bokista Freeman and I'm two and a half years old. I'm wearing my favorite Waste hoodie with some jeans. I have prim hair and an expensive body skin. I have a huge inventory of things: stuff to play with, stuff to wear, and even whole buildings. Problem is, I have no one to play with. No reason to change my clothes. No place for a building. As I said, it's been months since I last visited.

With freshly installed copy of XP on my desktop and my laptop in the shop for repairs, I didn't even have Second Life installed anywhere. So I visited the Second Life website, downloaded the client, and signed in.

I'm in a store. Everything is rezzing still. I'm getting beginner tips from Linden because this is my first time signing in on this computer. No, I already know how to move and talk and interact, thank you. What's this store? Oh yes, it's the Gnubie store--a great place to get free stuff. When was I last here? Hmm... Oh! That's right. There was one evening over the summer where a friend from RL wanted to check out Second Life, so I took her here to get some clothes. It was a little under four hours later that she declared Second Life a wasteland. Another name on my contact list that will never sign in again.

Well let's go somewhere more comfortable. Ctrl+Shift+H! Home! *pause* "Could not teleport. No valid parcel could be found." Oookaayy, my "home" in the game is no longer there. It was probably the place where I worked on that last project. What happened to Selalu, Selalu? I look at the list of landmarks in my inventory. Eden, Or. I can't remember which place Eden, Or is, but I know it was one of the handful I frequented when I spent time in the World. *Teleport*

The environment begins rezzing around me. White ground, a Japanese looking house. Snow is falling. A Japanese Maple tree out front, a torii-shaped bench, lanterns, and a handful of pose balls. "He, She." "Slow-dance v5 - M, Slow-dance v5 - F." "Waltz - M, Waltz - F". Maegen's place. We're on a platform floating in the sky. Or I'm on it, anyway. This little house used to be our hideaway. Maegen, Em, Thom... Maegen met Thom in Second Life. I think I remember the day. Now they're married and live in Arizona, I think. He became her lifelong sub. Haven't seen them around since they moved in together.

Things don't really get cleaned up in Second Life. If you own your land, you don't have to put away your toys after playing. This house is like a living photograph. A moment captured in time. The snow falls whether someone is around or not. The flames flicker just the same. As I sit down on a mat in front of a Go board, I reflect on Morningstar and Farmer. "The basic objects from which you build the system should correspond more-or-less to the objects in the user's conceptual model of the virtual world, that is, people, places, and artifacts." This room represents an evolution in the life of Maegen. When we first met she had a giant mansion. It had a great big living room for inviting people over. Much like the communal space in LambdaMOO, the living room was a gathering place for friends and new faces alike. But the house was too big, too public. Maegen wanted something a little quieter.

She bought a new parcel of land here in Eden, Or. Now the action was outside. There was a place to sit in the grass by the little lake she formed. But all the while she was up here at the 601 altitude, building a new place. The floating house was a solution to privacy before game-laws were put into place that restricted access in various ways. Meeting new people was no longer the goal--it was about spending quality time with close friends and refining her building skills.

I moved into the "screening room". Three plush chairs face a slideshow on the wall. Wow, this place really is a living photograph. It's an archaelogists dream--a frozen moment in time, untouched by nature or human hands. Maegen must have put together this slideshow of her favorite moments in the World. They're photographs (screenshots) taken of events. Ah, there's her mansion! Oh, and hey it's me! I'm wearing this dumb M&M costume I found, sitting on the edge of a hot tub. That had to have been nearly two years ago. And the current slide? Me on one of my first days. I won't go into details, but it had to do with comically oversized appendages. Wow, I'm in a lot of these. This is strange. I'm writing this as I'm watching and I had no idea. I spent some good time in the World and had a lot of fun.

So what happened? Where did Second Life go wrong? I think it began with the name. A "second life"? I barely have time for my first life. Being social is a time commitment. Whether it be Second Life, There.com, World of Warcraft, or a MUD, these virtual worlds exist in real time. They are also always living. I sign in at 8pm, see nobody is around, and sign off five minutes later. Well what happens when my friend signs in five minutes after that? Now, as an interesting note, a little over a month ago Linden Labs announced that it would be partnering with a company to develop a standalone lightweight chat client called SLim http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/09/03/connecting-second-life-to-real-life/ which would be like an AIM or MSN buddy list for the player's Second Life contacts. The virtual world has an expectation of sociability. You can shop by yourself, build by yourself, or even explore by yourself, but ultimately the game pushes for communication. But I believe Linden Labs needs to build (or at least set up) a larger range of solitary activities.

These solitary activities should be meaningful. Buying new pants is as well and good, but perhaps more productive activities would be compelling. The players recreating their world of Myst/Uru had something to strive for. And, since they did some of their work in Second Life, it's obvious that there's room for that kind of work in the World. But that work was born out of an existing community and it's hard to recreate that kind of initiative spontaneously--especially for new players. It's hard for me to speak to the "new player experience" because it's constantly evolving. Just watching people create their characters a few months ago was radically different from my birth. Unlike LambdaMOO, the range of creatable characters was initially fairly limited and customization required serious effort. These tools have evolved significantly, which I assume alters the new player experience. But judging from people's reactions, Second Life still suffers from "what do I do now?" It's a big world out there, so isntead of just answering with "whatever you want," there needs to be a better guide to the range of activities (solo and multi).