Bored Game or Board Game?

I immerse, but as me. I tend not to do anything i wouldn't do RL. I can be a slightly magnified me of course, but i don't really roleplay as such. The people i love in SL are very similar. We can do things we'd probably never achieve or do in RL. Own a club, go to several music events a night and buy expensive fashion and houses.
Ok maybe that is RP?..lol. But by and large we do it as "us". We connect and share and chat throught RL issues as well sometimes.
We know a certain amount about each others RL's but far from it all. And for us that seems to work. Just like minded people who love and respect each other.
If i see someone getting led around on a chain i don't really get why someone would want to do that, but i'd sure as hell would fight for their right to do it.
And i'm sure they'd fight for my right to be me....dull though that could seem to a full on roleplayer i guess.
In all my time in SL i've only ever found a handfull of people who sneered at or mocked anyones chosen lifestyle in SL. A previous post said that you can tell a lot about someones RL by their attitudes in SL. I agree....anyone whos that intolerent probably has some RL issues too. So basically for me its not as simple as do you immerse or not.
I "live" SL fully when i'm in there, my AV is me and my thinking comes with me.
Even in SL i could never bring myself to own slave's, rape a woman or do anything else that seems abhorrent to me in RL.
But i do understand that other people use SL to act out those fantasies in a safe environment. And it takes two to tango...so each to their own i say.

I find it very interesting that you say this, because my experience has been that for new residents, their chat is more about SL because they want to learn about it. The very first few days tend to be the "what do I do here?" and "how do I do (something)?" days, and that's clearly an immersive attitude (the idea that they're going to be "doing something" in SL rather than using it as part of something larger they're doing that involves RL as well).

It's also easy to pick up wrong ideas. As I mentioned, there is a lot of "false immersion" in SL, some of which is deliberately there and some of which is only there by accident. A friend actually summarised it beautifully, as she said: "SL is the world in which there are twenty different brands of cheerleader uniform, and one sports event per month." Learning that stores selling such things are basically just fancy dress shops, rather than representing actual character roles (which is a common assumption in light of the whole "immersion" dream and the way that other game-based worlds work) is something that only comes later.

So.. the residents who talk most about RL seem to be the middle-aged or some older residents, who are bypassing most of SL's content model because it's proved to be futile for them. Of course this does not apply to _all_ older SL residents, especially not the content creators, but it's more common than I think many people admit.



On th other hand, even some brilliant roleplayers I know have left SL for text-based games because graphics are too slow. It's horrid to have a neat idea and then realize that you can't actually do it without interrupting the RP to go shopping (which might also mean charging your credit card!) or spending a few hours building an item that you'll probably only ever use once.

That's an interesting twist: SL for RL's sake (as opposed to RL just as a topic of conversation), and it sounds correct that many move toward that use of SL for RL purposes as SL works its way into RL significance. Exceptions here might be those who learn about SL for purely RL reasons (career or academic pursuits, RL courtship, and Get Rich Quick delusions, for example), who'd have RL objectives from the start, and die-hard gamers who have no RL ambitions for the "game" at all. (Dunno how long the gamers last it out, though, given the inherent limitations of current technology and bandwidth for supporting dynamic content.)Maybe my prurience trigger is set too tight, but I doubt it takes much time in-world to form a pretty good idea of what sports to cheer in those uniforms. A month ago I would have disagreed completely with this (and I don't actually grok what's "futile" exactly), but now I think you may be right. The counter example is rampant at Welcome Areas where all the young'uns trade hometowns, but I now have a general impression that the "youth" migrate more quickly or completely from such topics. (All speculation, of course--and anybody believing expensive "market studies" based on self-reports of attitude and demographics is invited to my seminar on how to make a killing in SL real estate.)

That's true. The fear, I think, is that if SL becomes too tightly bound to RL then any attraction of it actually being a "Second Life" at all will be lost. Essentially, if SL is just going to be a tool for achieving RL goals, then almost complete break-up of the grid to OpenSims is likely to be inevitable because it's unlikely that there would be many people just "flying around and enjoying the environment" once those things had happened. But I might be just being too pessimistic there.



Well, yes, but not everyone's interested in that particular activity. I mean, if the shops selling the uniforms were marked as sex shops I think you'd probably see less sales.

I only snarl at frontloaded questions.

Come on! Why not just ask "Are you like me, or are you a moron?"

I am having a grand adventure in SL (see my photo journal and am able to overlook lag, wonky graphics, scripts that don't work and the occasional blingtard to immerse myself into the fun. And chatting with others, about anything, is part of that.

Part of that fun also comes from pointing and snickering at Gor fans, but I don't call that snarling.

Sigh...I'm a moron.


This is the perfect attitude IMHO. Rather than try to pick apart every little thing and categorize it, just go experience it and enjoy without worrying about whether your just chatting or you're fully immersed or caring about what others are thinking about you. Let them get what they want out of SL for themselves. Make friends, explore, try new things, experience others' creativity! Who cares what category it falls into. Just relax and if you crash occasionally or some newb with a plywood penis demands sexxies. It's not worth getting upset over.

I make fun of Gor, too. But I also make fun of BDSM, furries, child avatars, adult human avatars that are afraid of different avatars, cowboys, Star Trek Fans, landowners, the homeless, paranoid weirdos, builders, scripters, people who don't build or script, the OP, and anyone else I can think of. I don't mean to cause harm with it, and it's rarely taken that way, except by people who are too serious to have fun.

I don't like to apply the word "experienced" to myself... I'm too noobie for that. But, I've been having a blast spending as much time as possible inworld. That usually means up to 4 hours a day and possible 10 or more hours for Saturday and Sunday. There isn't much I haven't done yet. (^_^)

But, do I care about people who are in more or less than me? Noes! (>_< I have friends now who are taking a break because they've been in for over a year or years and are burned out by things. I have others that are inworld so much that I wonder what they do for RL monies. It doesn't make me think differently about them or compare them to anything. It's just a curiosity to me. Some of them do scare me though... Maybe just as much as I scare them. (=_=)y

I know what you mean. SL is immersive for me, and I would never snarl and condemn any level of involvement in it.

However, just to clear up a couple of points: shyness and fear are two different things. I am "shy" -- or introverted rather -- in real life and in SL. It does come across as rude to people who are more extroverted, but that is the nature of shy people. That shy nature is not a disease, but a perosnality trait, and an asset in its own way. I like to believe I can be more quietly focused on problem solving than the majority of people I meet. We introverts are outnumbered about three to one, so we are a minority group, and as such have encountered our share of persecution. To say to us "Don't be shy, " may be as rude as telling an obese person not to be fat. I'm pretty sure this isn't what Jig meant in her original post though.

As to whether I'm having a less immersive experience because I don't chat with people much -- who can say? If all conversation asked deep questions like this then I would probably chat more. Most chat I've come across is just silly. It's fun for about a minute and half; then I'm wanting to go look for an interesting build to explore.

So for me, shallow chatting is less immersive than exploring on my own. But I also notice it's hard to have really deep discussions in world because of the nature of the medium. Who would have the patience in real time to wait for me to type even one of these paragraphs? Many people also have to wait for my lag infested system to catch up with theirs and that makes interacting very awkward at times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we can't really tell what others are getting out of the virtual world, but it's bound to be different for everyone.

At least it amused me at the time....lol.