Some Final Thoughts on SL and the Course

Now that the course is coming to a end I think it would an appropriate time to discuss a few things dealing with both Second Life and the course. These thoughts may come across negative, but think of them more as critiques; I enjoyed the course!

To begin with Second Life, what is the purpose of it, I ask myself this question nearly everytime I exist in the world and wonder what should I be doing. There is no clear purpose, there is no goal, no true rewards, for myself I do not want to live a second life on top of this first life. Therefore when I log on it feels like a chore, and for this reason I will probably not log back in after this class is finished. I have always enjoyed virtual environments, I enjoy the environment more than the game itself in many situations. My favourite genre of gaming is MMORPG, where I can live in a world but also constructively progress, interacting with other avatars has more of purpose than just to socialize; interacting allows for teaming, trading, and learning. I think that Second Life is not meant for everyone, it has a lot to do with who you are as a person. For the same reasons as before, I would not log into a chatroom, but I do think that people who are prone to chatrooms would find Second Life enjoyable. I do not have the desire to converse with strangers, the only time I do is when it helps me to progress, but in Second Life, this is not possible. If the only thing I am gaining out of this is social entertainment, why do it in an environment such as Second Life? Playing dress-up was fun for a while, gaining Linden bucks was equally as fun, but after a while it is old news and loses its novelty. I know another aspect of Second Life that many use it for is the building application. But this application is less friendly then starting out; it is a nightmare! Most of the simulations I enter are empty, so socializing isn’t even really there. The only places that are busy are concerts or strip clubs, at concerts people just scream about the music they are listening to, I find it really lacking appeal, maybe my view is naïve on SL but I really do not connect with it. Who wants to live without goals? Second Life is a neat idea and definitely worth checking out, but I would not consider myself a permanent resident.

Secondly, while I enjoyed the course, I feel like it did not reach the potential that it could have. Many of the students did not take the Second Life environment seriously, they attempted to analyze it, in seminar or lecture, without actually existing in it. I think this became apparent when students began asking questions in our online lectures such as; what is afk?, or simple command buttons on getting around. If they had spent any significant amount of time in Second Life they would have come upon answers to these themselves. It might even be more evident, in that of a class of around 60, everytime I log on, no one from the class would be online. None of this matters to myself, but it is a shame when we go to seminar and are discussing such trivial issues when we could be hitting the core of the theories presented in the readings. I have no clear solution to overcome this problem if the course is to be re-taught. The blog work forced students to log in and experiment with Second Life. But I think it would have been entirely possible to write them without truly going in there; by reading online and finding pictures there. The blog work itself allowed for us to get the question, but enter the environment for maybe a few minutes to find the answers to what we were looking for. No matter what, people are always going to take the easy way out, there needs to be a way to captivate interest inside of Second Life so that we can truly discuss virtual environments.