what's your motivation to visit SL?

Hi
as part of my master studies research, I would like to know what is your motivation to visit Second life site, create an Avatar and participate in Second Life activities and events?
thanks, J.C

My motivation was two-fold, first the Anshe 'whoever' millionaire story, and the possibility to make money and that I could get on with a Mac.

After 24 hours my motivation for staying was completely different.

I was bored on a Snowy Saturday and I stumbled across SL while online shopping. It gives me a few hours of entertainment each day.

I saw it on TV .. .BBC program about the future of the net

I saw a news snippet about Reuters buying into an online world and thought Wow, better check this out ..... curiosity .. rapidly followed by addiction. Quite unsociable in Real Life till then .. bloody nuisance now

I read about it in a newspaper article last January, and thought it would be something fun for my daughter and her friends... so I checked it out. 9 months later, I'm still here... and I never 'introduced' it to my daughter.

I originally came here because people were raving about it on the forums of another game I was playing, and was getting fed up with people keeping on about it, so I came over to do some research and to be able to tell them that, actually, compared to that other game, Second Life was a load of crap.

Then I discovered how flexible the build tools were, and how easy it was to make stuff and create your own world with custom content - something that the other game didn't deliver.

I hardly play that other game now.

Broccoli

People... he's asking about motivation. That's not HOW you got here, it's WHY you came - or why you stayed.

My motivation to visit comes form a long-standing fascination with how people manage their fantasy lives. I've seen it a lot in real life, and as soon as I heard about virutal worlds I was equally fascinated by how people do the same thing virtually - what's constant, what changes, all that stuff.

SL was the first virtual world that seemed both good enough, and unrestricted enough, to permit free expression of fantasy-life desires. I stay interested from two basic motivations.

1) progress bars. Every time some piece of work looks like it's going to take ages, I log in while it's ticking away in the VNC window. One never quite knows what one will find!

2) payback. I may not have built diddly-squat, but I do seem to get dragged into a whole wide and weird range of conversations!

I guess I kinda answered why I stay in why I came in the first place ... its the ability to build stuff, anything, when I want and how I want, that keeps me here.

I'm not much of a socialiser in first or second life. to be honest - and am much happier sitting in a corner of a sandbox somewhere trying to build something than on a dance pad in a club somewhere.

Broccoli

Like I said, it was snowing and I was bored. I never played any online game or other online activity, I barely used my computer at home. I figured I'd spend the weekend fooling with it and then forget about it. But I found it entertaining and absorbing. I think I was online till 1AM that first day. While the novelty has worn off, it's still entertaining, and I'll stay as long as it remains so.

/me scratches her head at the methedology being used to gather data and states "What type of research is this for? MA/MS thesis?"

My motivation: Research project.

Maybe a better question to ask is why we reside?

How: Read about it on one of my favourite weblogs and was intrigued.

Why/Motivation: To build and Script, to experiment and learn. Quickly saw how the interaction with others was enjoyable and developed a small group of friends and we'd show off what we'd done or learnt and help each other when stuck. At the back of my mind was making some money from what I could do but I've never seen that as the target, merely a by-product on a few occasions.

I here came a year ago after seeing a bit about Second Life on BBC news. I liked what I found and my personality and appearance were set within the first day or two, give or take the odd enhancent!

My motivation for looking was curiosity. Now it provides my RL-er with a bit of escapism and the potential for creativity is every bit as real as old-fashioned painting or sculpture. If the likes of Michelangelo or Da Vinci were around today they'd more than likely be working digitally, while Salvador Dali would have gone down a treat at Burning Life!

When we get Windlight, and later proper cast shadows and light stops passing through walls, just imagine!!

I'm still just trying to save money on my car insurance.

Have you called Geico?

I came here to do Furry roleplaying with one of my best on-line friends. Two years later, we are Partners in SL and still love roleplaying here.

As I have developed here, creating things has become my primary focus. I come to Sl because I love to bulld and to terraform and to make clothes and textures. I look forward to the creative oppourtunities and that actually is what most of my hours in SL consist of - being creative.

But even though I love the creative aspects, I still roleplay here, and if I couldn't RP with my Partner I would probably leave SL. So my original motivation to be in SL is still the strongest, even though I spend a smaller percentage of my time here pursuing that aspect.

I came here first in 2004 out of curiosity. A bunch of people were migrating from "The Sims Online" at that time, and I came over then as well. I stayed for a bit and then wandered away for a couple of years and then returned with a new avatar.

What keeps me here? Pretty much the socialization and the relationships with people I have met in SL. I like the creative aspects as well, but they wouldn't keep me interested in SL at all if that were all that was on the table for me here, and I have no interest at all in running a virtual business. It's a few hours of fun socializing with SL friends in the evenings for the most part for me, and I value those relationships, so I stay.

No but I've dated a couple of guys who turned out to be cavemen.

tons of people origionally came here from TSO via There.com

I was sick, sick, sick. I had no car, no way to leave my house, and had just moved to a new state where I didn't know anyone. I was bored, lonely, and in pain.
I went looking for ways to enertain myself for the loooong long hours I'd sit alone. I found There first. I got in and immediately I hated it. I turned and told the person in the room, there's got to be something better than this.
Reply?
"Second Life"
The reason I keep coming? I love it. Between all the down time and grid issues, I do love Second Life and all of the friends I keep here. I also run my business here in SL, which is the only way I make money in RL. That sort of keeps me coming back. I can't think of much better way to make money than to sit around doing art all day. When I said in highschool I wanted to make a living with art in some way, I was laughed at. Whose laughing now?
The end.

I joined because I wanted to spend time with my rl sister, who lives several states away. She kept saying she didn't want to do phone calls, not even Skype, and I could rarely get an e-mail response.

This has worked well - I get to spend a minimum of a couple of hours (of the forty or so hours I spend inworld) with her every week, talking about rl stuff. It feels like a real visit, better than the phone and she's given me a crash course in sl, so its been like having my own guide.

I'd tried sl before my sister joined and found it boring and confusing, all in one. It has helped to have a family member guide.

I've stayed because it is fun, because of the people I've met and the ability to learn new things (I love building, making stuff, figuring things out, playing etc.)

I'm a little sadomasochistic and I find SL the perfect way to abuse myself with a video game.

I had heard about it about a year ago, and never followed up on it. Then a couple of months back it popped up in a news feature on the TV, so I decided to log on and found it kind of interesting.

It fills a little bit of a boredom void for me. I recently stopped working full time, my boss swears it is only temporary) and my husband travels on business quite a bit. I live in a town where I have not made friends due to the fact that I work(ed) full time and have no kids to get me involved in local activities. I've always wanted to experiment in the roleplaying genre, but my husband isn't into that at all, so SL affords me the ability to delve into my fantasy life.

I'm still not sure if I'll be here for the long haul. Right now I'm spending a lot of time getting to know the ins and outs of the whole thing and enjoying it quite a bit. I guess if I started forming real friendships here, it would become a lot more interesting but as of yet, that hasn't happened so it's just kind of a lark for now.

I like to tinker and customize, and was getting tired of the WoW treadmill. I build new levels in games, mod interfaces, that kind of thing. I'm also one of those people who's a source of what the metaverse crowd call "emergent play" - I make up games inside of other games. Exploration games, economic games, "dollhouse" games... As a kid I made Barbies leap out of windows wearing paper-towel parachutes, and Hot Wheels would show off their new custom paint jobs while fighting off invasions of dominos.

I've got new friends I've met here, and more than a couple RL friends who I talk to more than I otherwise would if we weren't on the grid. The lindens I make go into tier, buying shinies, and occasionally another piece of land.

One of the things I didn't expect that I found in SL is that I get a big kick out of sharing my toys. I've handed out copies of stuff in other games to friends, but never "published." Here I've got those Sound Prims that people grab up every day, I've got Avatar Toolbox which gets a couple thousand pageviews every month... and I'm realizing that I really like knowing that people enjoy and use things I make.

I came here because of furnation.com, a while back (two years now? We still had referral bonuses!) they had their front-page advertising SL. I eventually decided to look and thought "hey, that does actually look pretty cool" and so I joined.

The main draw was being able to build things in an interactive environment. I'd been looking for good 3d tools for a long time and having tried Maya, Lightwave, etc. and being horribly disappointed with the lack of usability, I decided to give it a go. I found the build-tools to be so simple that I got into it very quickly and the workings of a store quite quickly.

My main draw now are my friends that I've made here, and continuing my store, which makes about $30 USD profit a month for doing things I enjoy. I'm looking to expand my business, literally rather than economically, by building a bigger, better store =)