How has SL affected your life? Whats your story?

[Ftwist]

How has SL affected your life?
Has it been for the better or for the worse?
Have you made friends in SL while losing friends in 'the real world'?
We tell each other our stories here and try to offer advice :)

[Phil Deakins]

Why?

How about you tell your story first?

Considering that there are only 2 avatars with the first name, Ftwist, one of which was created today (you, I assume), and their profiles are totally empty, I doubt that you have any kind of story to tell. Perhaps you are just a programme and your post will later be changed so that it contains links to whatever website(s) you are promoting in the search engines.

[Ftwist]

Hi Phil,

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. and thank you for also taking the time to ask some questions.
My account is indeed new, however I have played SL before and I won't be sending you any links to click on.
I played SL many years ago when it had great media attention, however my gaming attentions were turned to Xbox Live when it was released and therefore my account got neglected and I stopped using it.
Now I am in university and I am undergoing research for my dissertation with a keen look on how online games supplement our lives, whether in a positive or negative way.
I want to know how SL has changed since I last played and how people now interact.
I wanted to see if the SL community are still as helpful as it used to be and whether it is willing to accept me or whether it wishes to remain hidden amongst its many worlds waiting for me to come in and win your hearts!

[Phil Deakins]

Well that's good to know - to know that you aren't a programme

I would like to say, "you first", again, but you don't really have a story. I'll give it some thought and see if I can write a worthwhile post for you.

[Ftwist]

Yes my story isn't that great.
I played SL after being introduced to it by the media and I got totally consumed, I believe that online games have a great benefit to peoples lives, my attentions then turned towards Runescape (another popular online game) where I spent even more of my time, as more of my peers played it. I then grew up some more and school took over my life and I found myself swining towards more pick up and play games like COD and the likes.
And now here I am, after a few more years I am a design student looking into online gaming and it's affects.

[Phil Deakins]

I can't say that SL made any hugely radical/dramatic changes in my life, but it did make some small ones.

I've made a few friends from around the world who I wouldn't have known existed. They would probably have prefered it to stay that way but it didn't

When I joined SL in 2006, I'd already decided that I didn't need to work any more for a living but I was still doing some work. I'd done some calculations and decided that, as long as I don't go silly, I wouldn't need to earn any more money. If I live to be 100, then my calculations would have been wrong, but that's very unlikely lol. So joining SL changed my life in that I stopped doing what I was doing and spent most of my waking hours logged in. And it's my nature to start up a 'play' business. I was amazed to find that it didn't take long before it was earning a very liveable wage for me, so my financial reserves went up and up. The change was that that SL became the focus in my life. It became what I did in life. I said that that change wasn't hugely dramatic/radical but it sounds like it was. It wasn't, because I'd already decided that I didn't need to work any more, so stopping what I was doing and focussing on SL wasn't such a big thing. I can't say that it enabled me to stop working and earn a living from SL instead, because I would have stopped anyway.

I can't think of any other changes that SL caused.

ETA: I just thought of something else. I live alone, so I don't have any company for most of the time. I do go out a couple of times a week and enjoy some company but the rest of the time, I'm on my own. Because of that, SL provides a social aspect for me and I don't get to feel alone. Any such system would provide the same thing for me. It just happens to be SL. That might be more the sort of thing you are expecting.

[Tex Monday]

---

Ftwist wrote:

How has SL affected your life?

Has it been for the better or for the worse?

Have you made friends in SL while losing friends in 'the real world'?

We tell each other our stories here and try to offer advice

---

Sorry to be a pain in the a** but this is the third student working on a paper that's contacted us in the past few days. Would really be nice if you all got together, set up a website and pulled your answers from there...

And I apologize for being snippy..just tired of answering these questions.

OK..now that I've had a chance to calm down and breathe....

SL has affected my life by being able to play out senerios and RP that I could never do in SL.

I believe it has been for the better, as it gets fantasies out in the "open" without any kind of RL reprecussions. I have also made a lot of friends here that I keep in touch with through email/FB.

Haven't lost any real friends. I am not on constantly..only in the evenings. I still communicate and have wonderful relationships with my wife and son.

Sorry about before and I hope that helps.

[Ftwist]

Thank You for sharing Phil that is very interesting. I'm glad that SL has positively affected your life and how you live it.
If you don't mind me asking, how are you making money from the game? (I know there are various ways to do so what is your method?) (doesn't have to be in depth, I'm just curious)

[Ftwist]

Thank you for taking the time to reply Tex.
What scenarios do you play out? Things you can't do normally because it is frowned upon?
Would you be able to enlighten me to the "RL Reprecussions" you may have faced if you did these things in RL?

[Tex Monday]

---

Ftwist wrote:

Thank you for taking the time to reply Tex.

What scenarios do you play out? Things you can't do normally because it is frowned upon?

Would you be able to enlighten me to the "RL Reprecussions" you may have faced if you did these things in RL?

---

IM me inworld sometime. Too much to chat about here in the forums.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Ftwist wrote:

Thank You for sharing Phil that is very interesting. I'm glad that SL has positively affected your life and how you live it.

If you don't mind me asking, how are you making money from the game? (I know there are various ways to do so what is your method?) (doesn't have to be in depth, I'm just curious)

---

I'll give you the short version

I started by buying land and renting out skyboxes over it. In case you are very new, skyboxes are usually homes in the sky. That's what I rented out.

After a while I had some land that was no good for skyboxes because the sky was too cluttered and ruined any view out of windows. So I used it as a yard sale, to allow my tenants to sell their own stuff without paying me anything. It was a bonus for them. I'd made bits of furniture for my skyboxes and I also sold that there. Then I thought I could have a small shop for my furniture on top of the yard sale area, and so I made more furniture for that. It grew very quickly, and in quite a short space of time, it was earning at the level I mentioned in my previous post. At the time, I had over 60 tenants and the shop earned as much in a day as all those skyboxes did in a month. Naturally, I let the skybox business fade away - when people moved out, I deleted the skybox. I specialised in very low prim furniture, which is why it did so well.

More than 2½ years ago I decided to do away with the shop and I've been letting it run down since then. After all this time, it's still making worthwhile RL money for me. When it's no longer worthwhile, I'll close it.

[Melita Magic]

No I don't know you and I don't need any advice. Thanks all the same.

This is like four people wanting to poke and study us in the past week or so. Stop with the kicking! /tm some comedian

[Ftwist]

Four people is not a lot. If you don't like me asking questions there is no need for you to comment on this thread.
I have had members who have been extremely helpful and nice towards my question and I am not pushing anyone to answer these questions.

[Ftwist]

That is very cool! I find it really interesting that you are able to make a living from SL.
I will have to come and visit your shop at somepoint if that is alright?

[Melita Magic]

Well, that's the thing about a forum. You start a topic, people will reply.

 

---

Ftwist wrote:

Four people is not a lot. If you don't like me asking questions there is no need for you to comment on this thread.

I have had members who have been extremely helpful and nice towards my question and I am not pushing anyone to answer these questions.

---

[Phil Deakins]

By all meas visit my shop - and be sure to spend a small fortune there It's only a quarter of the size it used to be though.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Ftwist wrote:

How has SL affected your life?

---

I started getting asked all kinds of weird questions about how SL affected me.

 

It is interesting that the OP mentions Runescape because on the day when I first logged in, I was also looking at Runescape. I found that to be confusing and not interesting enough to bother with, whereas this made some sense to me despite joining during "the great gray bug" when for many people, SL had no textures and only one color: gray. And I was one of them... on a 2003 Mac iBook in 2006. I never figured out where things where in relation to each other and what the map was all about back then, but it still made more sense to me than that MMO did.

 

SL has been great for self reflection and exploration. Exploring different music options within SL led me down a path that made me realize I was one religion while thinking I was another - and so I'm now professed as a Rastafarian. Reading a notecard that used to be at the club Irie Vibes got me to ask "is that right?" and start reading about it outside of SL - only to realize stances and arguments I'd been putting forth about life, morality, and spirituality all my life where in the teachings of a pack of ghetto Jamaicans connecting to their ancestral roots.

(And I thought I had just come here for the free sexxors - but that... well... boring and not me...)

 

[Ftwist]

Thank you for sharing that Pussycat.
Did SL make more sense than Runescape because it is more realistic? (It's not all just one theme like Runescape, and there are RL places eg Paris?)

[Cado Taurus]

Hello my name is cado taurus , i was checking the forums for a few things like i always do , (about mesh tutorials etc.) and i stumbled apon a question , how has second life affected your life .....

Well here is my story , i got out of the military and was sitting at home bored one day with my wife , she told me about second life back in 2006 or 2007 , i started playing and didn't like it at first until i was told , "you can build stuff and sell it dude " i was hooked from that point on , i have seen this virtual world destroy relationships , cause parents to ignore there children , and people become social when in the real world they are not . and many pro's and con's - for me i learned to ignore the drama and keep building and meeting people . when i got out of the military i thought of myself as a stupid grunt , thats all i did , but i now build and do many things here and help others and have joined many groups that i have had friends in for many years , many of them i have seen in person , I even got divorced from the person that introduced this virtual world to me , but in turn i did find another person i met on sl and we have been together for 4 years now and i have two children i have custody of from the previous wife who intorduced me to sl , (she was one of the people that ignored there children for this virtual world )

Anywho , we have been together for a while with my two kids , and we have 1 child together who is 2 now and we are very happy playing sl together and bieng together - along the way we have seen drama , happiness , anger , and tears -- and pixels . but all in all it has affected me in a positive way i would think , it takes strong will and a great partner , along with some freakin brains to stay in this game , so i salute all of you - but my story is my own and i would not change it .

I'am a builder , when i was told i could not be smart enough to build , I'am in world and out world with my wife - when we where told relationships dont last over sl .

My name is Cado Taurus and that was my story

Been here for a while and going strong