Every day, nowadays, there is news of someone reaching the shores of Second Life: companies, politicians, entertainment celebrities, famous brands. So, as it seems that Second Life is the marketing and Web 2.0 event of the day, I decided that I would set out to explore it before it went out of fashion.
After a few clicks, there I was, transformed into Trax Chandrayaan, my avatar. During the first log-in to Second Life, there was help on all sides to prevent me from getting lost. There were various notices that explained how to interact with other avatars, how to change the way I was dressed, and how to use Linden Dollars. Everything was well organized, it was relatively obvious how to proceed, but there were very few travellers with whom to chat. Perhaps I was in a peripheral section, I thought.
I remembered that I once had read about a travel agency for virtual worlds,Synthravels. I decided to contact them, and I chose a number of guides, in different languages, on different days: I would liked to have had at least a small chance of being called back. I waited. I waited a bit longer. I waited a couple of weeks. No answer: perhaps they have so much work that they cannot get round to dealing with all the requests?
So I tried logging on again, without a guide. But this time, access was more traumatic: I found myself in the last place I was in during the previous visit. No avatar, no notices, no points of reference. So I thought that it was about time to start using the many navigation systems in the system, such as the “Map”. I decided to try shopping. I reached the Adidas store: large, bright, very cool, and… empty. There was no-one to talk to. The system is fascinating: you can buy products using Linden Dollars, or you can let yourself be transferred to the official Adidas shop, where you can buy the products displayed in the virtual shop. I didn’t buy anything, but I decided that it was about time I met someone!
Where could I go? A large city, perhaps. I tried Venice… on the map there is the indication “Venetia”. I was beamed across, and immediately I had to come to terms with harsh reality: one Maia Gasparini had purchased the name and the land, and she was chasing me off her property: I had ten seconds to leave of my own accord, otherwise the system would automatically send me back to where I had come from.
My other attempts to meet someone were all rather similar. The Reebok storeresembled Adidas, in that it was empty. The Nike shop (if it was really the official one) looked more like a funfair (empty) than a Nike store. New York featured palm groves and deserted streets that had little in common with the original city, and Amsterdamhad just a series of robotic beggars asking for donations.
Even the location of the first hotel chain that has decided to invest in Second Life,Starwood Hotel, turned out to be a disappointment: Virtual Aloft is under construction, and access was forbidden there as well. Oh, and I forgot to say, of course the entire area was empty.
By now in rather a melancholic frame of mind, I decided to use the internal search engine to find the most popular and frequently-visited places, because at least there I would be able to find someone. Porn clubs, sex shops, rather ambiguous discotheques, hot venues, XXX, casinos and so forth: these locations were all full to bursting. So full that the server jammed and my avatar was frozen, in the hope of a more auspicious occasion in the future.
This, midway between straight description and satire, is the journal of about an hour’s travel. Empty shops, inaccessible streets, art cities on sale and purchased by unknown private individuals, virtual beggars, hotels closed: if it were a real world, it would be on the point of bankruptcy from a financial point of view. Sex, gambling and all related areas are of course on the crest of the wave, but what about the rest?
There is very little of what one reads about all the time on blogs and forums: at this point, I wonder whether it is the internal search engine that is faulty, because otherwise it would be impossible not to find a trace of all the events that are so much in the news outside Second Life! And so, I turn the question over to you, our readers: what were your first impressions of SL?