I recently began to play Second Life, after finding enough settings to tune down that I can actually play it on a computer normal people can afford. Still kind of laggy though.
So apparently, Second life is a game made by the people who pay to play it. Wait.. That’s not right, its a game designed by some players who are paid by other players with money they bought from the designers?
Anyways, most of the game is driven by user content, which means if you don’t know anybody already in the game, it is going to be boring as hell. Especially if you have a weak net connection or graphics card and therefor can’t go to crowded places to explore and meet people.
If you guys know anything at all about me, you can probably guess at what aspect of the game interests me. Building. Building in the game is a bit odd. I can’t say its overly complicated, as if you tried using a 3D modeling program those things get really complex and difficult to handle.
At the same time, it is rather.. awkward. Especially if you are used to doing it differently. Just yesterday I met somebody who made a very detailed robot suit, grenade straps along several body parts, at least 4 different high tech guns, all made using the simple shapes you can use in game.
Sandboxes are where you go to build apparently, as most normal land forbids editing. Sandboxes though have this nasty habit of auto-returning your items too fast. One I remember claimed a 7 hour reset, and had my items returned a minute or two into editing, then it happened again a few minutes later, I think they meant to say 7 minute reset.
I think it is just about necessary if you are serious about building to get your own land, though that costs money. It also costs money to upload textures. I imagine Linden Labs makes quite a bit of money off of people trying to learn how to build.
I’ll probably have more to say later on the game, as I’ve just started out, I would though like to add that though my tone might sound like complaining, I actually am not, I’m just stating observations, it doesn’t really look bad so far.