No more Second Life
Over the past few months or so, I've given Second Life about 6 hours of my primary life. At first, between all the rapidly aging machines I own personally, I didn't have a single one that did the place justice. Now though, I've got a work machine with enough horsepower to do it up right.
Anyway, although I wouldn't call mine a dedicated attempt at living an alternate life, I think I've seen enough. Between the awkward controls for navigating space which make me yearn for Quake 2, and the 90% crud which comes from all ecosystems of "Consumer Generated Media", I don't think I'm going to get it.
So, like the people who say mostly these same things about podcasting, I think this is a signal that Second Life is not meant for me. It might obsolete sliced bread for some people—but all it does for me is make me want to waste time with Everquest, wash my brain out with Zork, or script something in a MOO.
Of course, I've never really bought into the whole Cyberspace / Metaverse thing past recognizing it as a neat device in William Gibson novels. I mean, why would you ever want to limit info freako space to a shoddy simulation of meatspace's meager 3 dimensions?
Archived Comments
Maybe people want to feel more pover that they can't have in reall life...
I'm trying to find the post where I'd said this, but once upon a time I compared my spare-time programming projects to running the experience treadmill on Everquest.
For a long time I've had a rather irrational interest in these online simulations of the world. I'm not sure why. I've tried a bunch of them, and it's interesting to note the differences and similarities between them and speculate about how they came about.
I've never really stuck to one, though. I don't know whether it's just that none of the implementations have done it for me yet or whether my interest in them is purely academic, but I can certainly see where you're coming from.
Second Life seemed like an interested diversion, with some opportunities to run it in the background doing menial things like camping to "earn money". But there hasn't really been too much going on in there that really merits sticking around for the long haul or investing and "First Life" cash thus far.
Being a Mac user, with a cable hookup, I'd much rather get some serious performance out of the game, rather than big lags and serious rezzing issues.