Get a life and Cyberspace love critique

Second life love, critique.

Kelly Bruce/Cantrell.

I had the unfortunate experience of experimenting with second life myself during the first year of my course, and at the end of it was thankful that I would never need go on it again or even think about it for that matter. However I now find myself unfortunate enough to have to again revisit second life in order to write this critique for a critical studies assignment. Oh the joy.

“Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace love” is a 40 minute BBC documentary that was aired in 2008 and features a few couples and their experiences with second life, the 3D virtual environment brought to us by Linden labs.

Carolyn, a 37yr old mother in the U.S. began using second life because she was depressed and fed up with her mundane life as a typical stay at home domesticated mother/housewife so she stumbled upon second life one day and soon found herself creating a sexed up barberella type avatar and flying around in second life chatting, shopping and living the life she so dreamed of.

She soon met a male avatar and they began a year long emotional affair, resulting in Carolyn spending more time in second life than in her real life with her husband and children. She was then willing to fly over 5,000 miles to be with this virtual other, and leave her husband and kids behind, whilst they waited for her return.

Another couple met on there, got together and then went back on second life to get married! And of course there are the people that build properties and design clothing etc to be sold on second life for linden dollars that can then be exchanged into real dollars.

So why do we hear about these kind of stories in the news? I even read one about private detectives setting up virtual agencies on there in order to catch out virtual cheating spouses, it almost sounds like a joke right? There are also strip joints and sex parlors on there that have been pre-programmed so that if you put your avatar into a virtual bed or chair that has the required action scripting built into it then your avatar will carry out the actions programmed, for example inappropriate sexual gestures or dance moves.

My view is that there is a minority of people with addictive personalities, a minority of bored repressed housewives with a poor quality of life, men going through a mid-life crisis, horny teenage boys, sex-obsessed middle aged men who pretend they are going on there for “business” opportunities when really they are just bored, have probably had too many affairs and visited one too many strip joints and are now seeking out some new form of sexual stimulation.

I mean let’s face it, how much money can you “actually” make on second life? And who would want to? From my perspective I think that all of this is a front to cover up the seediness that is really “second life” and yes I am going to get a grilling for that from those that like to spend time on there, because I guess it has educational benefits too, and some of the surroundings and scenery I have seen are fantastic and require real skill, imagination and dedication to build.

However just as money makes the world go round, and sex is the number one marketing tool in any advertisement, it is also the driving force behind late night cable TV, the internet, and of course the sex industry is probably the richest sector in the world, sex will also be the main driving force behind second life whether intentional or not.

I can see how some who are not used to the world of gaming or even computer generated movies and animation may become hooked on the 3D world that is second life and may find themselves in complete and utter awe of the graphical capabilities, but as a gamer myself I found the graphics laughable, and not one bit gripping, second life was not a place I would like to stay in for long as visually I find it a bit of an eyesore.

Again it depends on your personality, some may not be bothered at all by the blocky graphics and slow loading times, or the glitchy interface, they may instead be enthralled by the 3D building capabilities and ability to create whatever your imagination allows, and then to own the intellectual rights to your creation…

Me, I would rather blast some zombies on my playstation for entertainment or read a book about the fundamentals of cat behaviour, I just sincerely hope that this will be the last time EVER that I have to waste any of my precious time thinking or writing about the travesty that is second life.

Second life podcast

I forgot to put our podcast up earlier, so here it is! (not very good quality but you get the idea)

Finished! word summery/ evaluation

well I've made a design for the outside instructing people on what we are and what we do and how they can get the most out the service, I felt a sign would be easier and more eye-catching than a basket or a box with instructions in it.

Katherine has managed to find some mannequin dummies and scatter them around which is brilliant! I wish we had found about this earlier because I had ideas of having all the characters really funky and bizarre but plain and simple is better than nothing I guess!

I'm not sure if we have to write a word summery or not so I will write one anyway, (I hope we do have to write one after me now wasting valuable morning time to do one!) 

Evaluation/first thoughts:

At first I didn't really care much for second life, seeing it as a "glamorized" chat room for people who didn't get out much! (I'd been on it once or twice a couple years ago and it was full of strippers and Chav's- from the impression I got from the way they were speaking and the strippers said they were strippers in real life and second life!) and from that I just couldn't be bothered with it, I never really knew about all the building and stuff you could do.

Anyway at the start of this project we were shown how to build basic items and script, but unfortunately I was catching up on another brief for the first or second session, (because due to my old hard-drive crashing I lost half of my previous project) so having missed that session I was clearly behind and that kinda through me off track and it took a while for me to get on board again.

I didn't really get into modeling until we got into our groups properly and started making it, before that I had just been throwing ideas about and doing research- petrified of actually going into second life and probably delaying the process for as long as possible!

Objective:

Perhaps I should outline what our objective was, we had the choice of healthy living or health and well being from the direct gov website and we then had to use second life to build a 3D environment based around the chosen area. My group chose health initially focussing on general health and our plan was to make a virtual doctors surgery with different rooms for different problems but after a talk with Anna we realized that it would be better to chose one specific area, and I had been toying with the idea of sexual health anyway, so we all agreed that to make it a sexual health clinic, and that it would have the most use for second life users. 

It is often an embarrassing  topic for some and obviously can be quite sensitive, so we felt users would benefit from having a confidential place where they could go for advice and information if they needed it without the awkwardness of being face to face.

We started by developing leaflets and undergoing market research- by asking people to fill in our questionnaires, from this we found that people were thinking along the same lines as us anyway so that was easy! of course a few mentioned the elderly, but I can't really see them using second life or needing sexual advice...

 

Building: 

At first Hoi Kam had built some sort of romanesque looking thing, which I found quite daunting, if she could build that in 5 minutes what could I do?  that kinda put me off for a while, as it was already in place, I didn't know what to do, but then we got our heads together and decided exactly what we were going to do and the next time I visited 2nd life there was a nice big empty space for me to work with, the building had already been made, minus the ceiling and floor! so that inspired me to start something, and then I spent the whole day making a floor and a tunnel into the outside near the sea! (It sounds simple but for a novice it wasn't and I had to mess around with the terrain, textures etc for a while) the next day I started making simple things like block benches, inner walls, I had ideas to hae a gazebo and chairs about the place but couldn't make them for the life of me so I improvised and went and found some freebies! including a water fountain!

Outcome:

Our finished product is fantastic! we are awesome! that's all I have to say. sorry that was a joke, you will have to endure more of my writing yet! The outcome looks great visually and we have the posters with the info and the links, we have freebies and blog links which is great, we have dummies everywhere, (thank you Katherine) which look great too, but of course there are things missing which prevent it from being what it was supposed to be, BUT these things are not possible to achieve as a college project, however if this really were a government funded operation then the following could have been in place: 

A) Interactive nurse, that can respond to simple Q&A interactions

B) Private rooms for consultations, (we have these but they are not "protected" so that conversations therein cannot be picked up)

C) Actual human health officials to control avatars so that advice given is from an authority, (however this would NEVER happen! but it's a thought! and it would never work because no-body would take it seriously and thus the "officials" would be wasting their time)

D) Appointment system, I have written this on the welcome board just for the purpose of this brief, but of course this isn't going to happen without the "staff" and a drop in would be nice too. (this is getting rather silly now so that's enough of my alphabet bullets, I think I am taking myself too seriously!)

Conclusion: 

I'm really pleased with what we have accomplished, I'm happy that I did some scripting and designed the posters and welcome sign, I love what the 3 of us have done, and am really glad we all got to work together! the only thing I would have liked to be different is my confidence in modeling, I would like to have been able to make more in terms of furniture etc. but I don't feel that I didn't contribute, I still feel like I did as much as possible for the capability and limited skills that I have! (for example I made blog links and gave out alot of ideas) Katherine and Hoi Kam were fantastic to work with, and I doubt this project would be what it is now if we hadn't all worked "together". I certainly enjoy 2nd life alot more now from this experience and can see how useful it can be from many different angles, I will definitely consider using 2nd life alot more from now on, (not professionally!) mainly to practice building and perhaps to make my own projects around?

Second Life project!

My avatar wearing the uniform Katherine made and the hat Hoi Kam made!

(boxes with freebies and blog links)

(inside one of the four consultation rooms)

So now we have our STI clinic almost finished! we did a 5 minute podcast tour of the clinic on tuesday, (see video) and from the feedback we got as a result of that we found that we may need to include instructions for outside users on how to use this space, I plan to write something up and have it outside in a box or as a medical leaflet that you are required to pick up.

I designed some posters last week on photoshop and have put them up around the clinic, I just need to figure out how to put links on them to relevant sites, (we only did a few sessions on scripting and I was trying to re-do my interactive story at that time as it had been lost on my piece of crap hard-drive at the time! so I missed out on alot of the sessions so it seems I have to work it out myself!) I also made some neon 3k boxes in a room in the sky that will give out freebies but again I haven't been able to figure out how to do this yet, I need someone to show me step by step how to do it, at least the first time! I've got the script but what good is that if you don't know what to do with it? Hoi kam made a hat which is in one box but of course seeing as I don't know what to do it doesn't work! and Katherine made a T-shirt which I plan to put in another box but she has it set on no copy no modify so I can't do anything with it yet so will need to ask her to change that and re-send to me.

I plan to provide links to our blogs, once I've been shown how to do it with the websites or figured it out then I should be able to do it with the blogs then we need a dummy avatar for the nurse/receptionist! god knows how to do that! Anna said you can get free ones but I'm not sure where to look or what to look for so will need to find out more about that too. so much to do and so little time! gah! 

here are some more up to date pictures:

(Private consultation rooms, above)

(To the right of the reception, consultation rooms can be seen behind)

(some posters, below and above)

Second life project!

(My sky room)

(the new rooms that have been put in)

On Friday I met up with Katherine (in second life) and we made some changes in order to make the place more "Japanese" as was our original plan, we made the floor darker and the logo panels white lights, I also made an enclosed area with the 3K logo as the walls and changed the tunnel into a bridge! which I am very pleased with! I made a big sofa with 3K logo on it and put various leather sofas and tables here and there, the outside area was made into a funky little pod/garden!

and over in the right there are Japanese silk screen panels and another waiting area, Katherine wanted an "outside/in" area in the middle of the room so I suggested a fountain, we then put a wooden oriental style "hut" (can't remember the correct name) over it and added flowers and trees! Katherine put the reception in front of it and some rugs on the floor. all we need now is posters putting up and links to websites! we also need to design a nurse avatar and a receptionist.

Second life

We needed furniture, I was thinking "chairs" we had a reception desk outside, but I couldn't make a chair, I never got the hang of it, my chairs were pathetic lumps of wood. I decided to go on an adventure to see if I could find any...

(Needed a new outfit!)

(In the "sex" gazebo)

(Gazebo I got but it turns out to be a "sex palour" type thing with different sexual positions scripted into it for when you make your avatar sit down, people really have some time on their hands! we are a sexual health clinic but don't think this is really appropriate! so we either have to re-script it or replace it!)

(Dancing!)

I like this tree, I was thinking we should have trees like this in our place!

Second Life 3k sexual health centre!

On Thursday I came back into college for the day to work on our 3d environment as I had been ill for the beginning of the week and the week before so wanted to do some catching up! 

I noticed we now had a new building, which compromised of 4 walls and a door! The first thing I decided to do was add a door sign of our logo (as you can see in picture) and then I decided to give us a wooden floor!

(wearing "3K" logo on clothes!)

(wooden floor I put down)

I then decided to experiment a little and make use of the water outside as I wanted to have an "underground" kinda "secret area so I made a ramp down to the outside of the building into the water ending with a serene moat type thing, (I forget what they're called?)

(my ramp)

(sat on the pier)

You can see in the last pic that there is a bright neon multi-colored tunnel there now which I added next and changed several times, then adding a gazebo then removing it! 

(above view of the "tunnel")

Second life survey

This is the survey questionaire we developed and put into practice as part of our market research.

Second life...

We have been modeling today, like last week, only thing is last week my hard-drive crashed and I had to go back to an older version of my flash project and get it back to where it was! as that day was the deadline I spent the whole day working on that as I couldn't do any of it at home and did not want to spend days catching up so I basically did it through the second life lesson therfore missing out on some modeling basics, but I thought it better to just catch that up later than loose marks on my flash as it was now being handed in late!

anyway today we had to make a T-shirt, which I sort of got the hang of but want to make a better one before I upload it, then we made a top hat and then a staff, or lollypop in my case! it took me a while and my model's were not as good as everyone else's! but in the end I think I made a decent stick, then I decided to make my Avatar fat like me and have changed her hair and clothes, I prefer the way she looks now though as at least she looks a little more interesting! the first just looked too "normal"! 

My Day in Second life

"Hmmm? I wonder what he uses to get his legs so smooth?"

Me sat chilling on a bench whilst everyone else seems to be flying away!

All By Myself... doing some yoga... (check out my huge Ass! haha)

Me above the world!!!

Me and Angrybeth!! she's so cute!

Me and hoi kam and our new friend!

This is so F*****g hillarious! I split my side laughing just looking at it! I think it's Rob Lang but not sure, he was just this tiny evil jelly-baby like creature chasing around with a gun shooting at people! hahaha! it looked so funny! especially when he was running!!

"gotcha! you little sucker!"

Been taking for a ride! weeeeeeee!

this is how you get in a tiny car!