Guilty for thinking them fools

"Don't Touch It! It's EVIL!!!"

Im affiliated with 2 large online gaming sites/forum boards, actually work for one of em part time. I've tried for better than 6 months to get people to check out SL. 1 guy joined... one... spent about a week here and hasn't been back. Finally broke down and asked... Turns out a lot more tried it than i had thought. It seems gamers have a hard time with sl because the instant adrenaline rush and payoff isn't there. No level 10 elite gun, armor, car, or god mode to win. Many of the socialite chatters were put off by the in-your-face nature of SL. You say something the other guy dont like and you might end up getting bumped/pushed/harassed. A completely new element compared to text chat or forums. Open chat including strangers was also mentioned as a slight hurdle for those used to multi-friend IM's or single messages. The MySpacers seemed to be a good fit for SL, but the answers i got indicated the interest level just wasnt there...too boring & slow, too many idiots, dont like being told how to act or talk, etc.. Some couldn't get SL to.. umm.. RUN (imagine that), and others that could had little issues that would be no trouble for any experienced sl user to fix, but being noobs it's a different story. Nearly all of them had heard some wacky bad press about SL at one point or another, most of which hinted at sl being anything from a shady rip off scheme to an online orgy, or so i'm told. This is a small ~40 people answering, and that they're pc & console gaming/online gaming/clan gaming oriented should be taken in context. There are times I wish I wasn't so stubborn and had been turned off by SL... the pop cans are really starting to pile up in here

Just today there was an article on a Dutch website about the number of Dutch people who are active in Second Life.

The reactions to the article were typical again...

"SL is for people without RL"
"It is just Sims2... I know because I played 2 days an hour"
"SL is for losers"
"SL is a fast dying hype"
"SL is for people who cannot have RL sex"
"SL is for people with an MSN addiction"

And so on and on... There was a time I jumped into that and told how wonderful SL is... and what great things you can do... that you create the most wonderful things... even learn programming...

I stopped doing that. Their lose. They have no idea what they are missing. And in my mind I give them "da finger".

Morwen.

The big problem with this is that this encourages the wrong clientele to keep SL wonderfully creative. I used to think that this overall negativity would keep the numbers down and hence inprove bandwidth.
Of course, there are probably more people out there who are attracted by this myopic view and hence we are inundated with escorts, hosts and dancers. Some clubs I visit have a staff to customer ratio of around 10 to 1 LOL.
No, I'm not jumping on a moral soapbox here. A lot of those people are very good company (unpaid)!!

OT I brought a group of four refugees from the Starship Titanic forum here, all of whom I know IRL. I keep telling friends and relatives about SL but AFAIK no other takers ... mind you .. you never know just *who* is behind that mesmerising belly dancer!!!

<cue scene of 18 year old sitting in his parents basement playing second life, and visiting an adult club

((Camera pans upstairs to his mothers study))

<Said Teenagers mother is also playing second life. and is currently doing escort work in the same club as her son has just tp'd to, her sons Avatar hires his mothers avatar and pays using his mothers credit card>

ROFL Arwen!!!

I think you're ahead of me on the caffeine this morning


"Mum?" ... "Junior?" .... ... "MUM?!?!?""

I always said those things about MySpace.

LOL, me too!

Mandy C

Good Morning, Mandy.

Morning, Brenda.

Mandy C

MySpace? You mean where all those people with no RL are... who think who have really something, but to what Sim2 looks a world miracle... for folks who have at least 15 msn windows open at the same time... who are all lost in an dying hype?

No... I would never say something like that....

*coughs*

I used to encourage friends and colleagues to try second life a few years ago but not any more. What with the all the bad publicity, endless technical issues and very poor technical and customer support I find I am embarrassed to be affiliated with it publicly nowadays. In fact it's kind of like my interest in pro wrestling, I am happy to talk about it on websites and forums with like minded people but none of my rl friends know that I enjoy watching large muscley men in their underpants pretending to beat each other up, and only a very few of friends who are also fellow second lifers, know that I play SL

I stopped trying to recruit my friends when I realized I actually LIKED them and their friendship. Most of them are used to a quality of game that actually works as intended and to have proper support when it doesn't. Second Life meets neither of these standards. So, to keep their respect as a friend and fellow gamers, I simply tell them I play around in SL. They 'accept' that because I'm an artist and they are coders. *shrugs*

Yah, it's sad I showed my husband an article in Jane magazine to try to impress him. I was confident he'd see that sane, accomplished people played this game. His response was a scoff and "Those people have nothing better to do." I think I might resent him for that