What brought you into Second Life?

[windrider07]

Like the Subject says, what brought you into Second Life? What fascinates you about the game and where did you hear about the game?

[Ry0ta Exonar]

what brought you into Second Life? :

When I was talking with a friend, he brought up a subject that was presumed to be about SL. He asked me if I knew about another world (lol) which was so addictive from what he gathered that he was afraid if he tried it and he become addicted, so I thought I gave it a shot for him.

 

What fascinates you about the game :

To be able to meet people from all over the world and to bring about a better understanding about different cultures, different perspectives etc.

 

and where did you hear about the game? :

In 2007 the largest ad agency down here (Japan) ran a spectacular campaign about SL and lots of people rolled into SL as well as companies, educational facilities and such.

 

[Knowl Paine]

If it be Games you seek, then Games you shall have. May your cup over flow with Games.

Let the Games begin!

I get a little crazy when I'm tired; just ignore me.

 

 

I enjoy Building in SL, each new project offers challenging entertainment, with a virtually tangible reward when the project is completed.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I read a story about SL in my local paper's technology feature column in the summer of 2006..  I was particularly interested in the ability to create 3D content.   As a teenager I had read Snow Crash, the novel that inspired SL, and never thought I'd be able to experience a virtual world like it described as was excited about the possibilities.  Having the summer off, I decided to give it a try and have never regretted it.

I still love to build and create content, however I too have met people from all over the world which I find facinating on many levels.  I also enjoy all the music and other arts in SL and the ability to do things you never would or could in RL.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Late 2005 I was watching the my local nightly news (same as do today) and one of those "feel good" 1 minute human interest stories at the very end of the newscast featured a person who was one of the very first residents of Second Life........his avatar name I forget, but I think it was Marc Twain (or something like that).  A short interview with the real man behind the avatar sparked my interest so I wrote down the URL to the SL website, joined (paid the one time charge of $9.95 for the creation of my avatar), logged in and fell in love with it.  Been here ever since.  Didn't do anything constructive for a few weeks but I did learn that you needed land and, at the time, the easiest and best way to get land was to go premium........I did.  Got my First Land and settled in.........still there on that same plot in Philudoria on the Heterocera Continent.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I had heard something about it before, I don't even remember what, but what really got my attention was when SL got hacked in 2006 and a lot of users' info got stolen.  That reminded me that SL existed and caused me to join.

[Six Igaly]

My GF was assigned by her company to explore SL back in 2006. She did not had time however so she asked me to do it for her. Not sure if she ever regretted this LOL.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

---

windrider07 wrote:

Wwhat brought you into Second Life? What fascinates you about the game and where did you hear about the game?

---

1] Curiosity.

2] The fact that you can create stuff as well as creating shared realities.

3] Can't remember. I do remember that I found out about SL in 2004 and wanted to join but it was another year before I got a broadband ADSL connection.

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

for me it was someone I knew from another web forum. She had described SL and about how you can customize your character and all that. We ended up at the now defunct Avatar island. It was kind of a disappointment cause they had their little clique and I ended up being a wallflower. I soon moved on to explore other things in SL.

These days I log in, see if a certain couple friends are on, maybe build something, and that is about it.

Once again I get on SL looking for something to hold my interest, feel disappointed, and log out.

[Canoro Philipp]

i thought that i have done everything there is to do on the internet, downloaded programs, made a website, used IRC, i wanted to try something new, something i havent done, and what i didnt done back in 2008 is to be in a shared 3D environment. i had heard about them but they didnt called my attention, so i looked on options like IMVU or WOW, Second Life was free and the program to download was very small so i gave it a try. i was suprised about how the 3D environment was rezzed on the fly from the web. the more i explored the more fascinating it was, i never was in a virtual world before.

what fascinate me is the flexibility it has, you can customize your environment to detailed levels, with mesh that flexibility got expanded, also, how is a great tool for knowing people around the world and as a learning tool.

i read about Second Life in Google.

[jwenting]

in no particular order...

• curiosity. Kept hearing about it and slowly got curious enough to give it a try
• a means to be what I'd want to be irl but can't (for various reasons I won't go into except to maybe close friends who need to know to understand my sl persona)
• a chance to meet people, do things, that irl I can't (of course this closely fits in with the second point)
• a relief from the often hostile and competitive nature of other online communities. I come to virtual worlds/environments to have a good time, not to fight with others

there's probably more, but that covers the basics and anything else can be distilled back to this.

[Conifer Dada]

I saw a feature on BBC TV news in summer 2006 about Second Life.  They created an account and avatar for one of the presenters and had a look around.  I thought 'this looks interesting' but didn't do anything for a couple of months.  I forgot what the game was called and didn't know what to search for on the internet, being unfamiliar with terms like 'virtual world' etc.  Anyway I eventually found Second Life and joined just to see what it was like.  My first experience was a bit disappointling mainly as my computer at the time wasn't very good and it was all I could do to move from one stepping stone on Orientation Island to the next.  But it was the surreal environment that appealed to begin with.  After a while I came to realise that there's no such thing as 'surreal' in Second Life - the weird and the normal go side-by-side, often un-noticed!

[Lucinda Bulloch]

I saw a story in the news about making money out of virtual land, so I came and looked, then bought 31 sims and created needles estates, but about a year later they changed all the pricing and killed the market, so I closed it and started modular script, about 40 years ago I learned c++ and assembler use to write device drivers for serial ports and code for micro controllers, so had some experience in real time programming and lists(with limited memory it is sometimes better to use a conversation list than a huge function), but gave all that up 20 years ago, although I know nothing about today's computers and only the old msdos type stuff I have found script to be just like the old days, with limited memory of 64k(all the old micro controllers had a 64k limit), so it is right up my street and all the old ways of short cuts over memory still work, I am list city, lol.

[Sy Beck]

The organisation I worked for sent me and two colleagues in to investigate SL's potential for promotion, recruitment and marketing in the summer of 2006.  Second Life was becoming the FB of it's time and businesses and organisations thought that they had to have a presence here.  We assessed SL as having no potential for a RL business, apart from some vanity marketing, in our minds after about 2-3 weeks.  We were only supposed to be on a 3 month project, but we convinced our employer to extend it to 6 months because we were having a ball on company time and expenses.  Why we never bought a sim on the company money still puzzles us to this day.

After the project ended I was so hooked I came back in Feb 2007 on this avi because I loved building.  I bought 3 sims to indulge myself and have been here on and off with varying levels of commitment ever since.  I have since ditched the 3 sims after the VAT introduction and now only use SL for socialising with my friends.  I spend more time in InWorldz now where I can afford the tier to indulge myself in building.  Both my other colleagues are still in SL too.  One is now a university lecturer in social and online media and actually teaches classes in SL.  Wisely, this time he did get his employers to pay for a sim.

[Porky Gorky]

My best friend bought me a 1 month subscrption for my birthday in May 2004. I had never heard of SL. He told me to try it out because he thought I would love it.. I did, and he was not wrong.

 

[Syo Emerald]

I saw a video on Youtube from someone showing his furry avatar and I thought it might be fun to try.

[Koltari]

A friend of mine wrote a lengthy foum post about Second Life on a joint gaming forum. I picked up on the part about live music. As I live somewhere rather remote I don't get to go to live music shows much so thought I'd check Second Life out and see how it was. And now I'm kind of hooked :catvery-happy:

[Alexi Reggiane]

I had never heard of Second Life. In 2007, after a former roommate had moved out, I noticed an icon on my desktop called Second Life. I was curious and opened it. He had never made it off orientation island. I moved the avatar around and thought this kind of fun. I took the tutorial and then discovered I could change the appearance of the avatar and made him look as much like me as possible. Of course I didn't know his password so the next time I tried to log on I couldn't, so I made my own avatar. I searched the web for info about SL and learned a wealth of info from blogs and forums. I finally found out there was a whole world out there to explore and began my journey. Those first months I had a great time exploring and hunting for freebies. I found a cool hang out spot and learned so much more from the others there, mostly by just listening to them talk about their projects and finds. I decided I was enjoying this enough to actually put money into it and have been premium ever since.

I was really intrigued by the ability to make things and explored all venues of creation. I have taught myself to build, make clothes, animations and moved on to sculpties and am now creating with mesh. My original plan was to sell my creations for spending money in SL. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I enjoyed playing inworld too much to spend the time it takes to be that prolific. The thing I seem to enjoy most is just seeing the all the marvelous things other residents have created.

[Seven Overdrive]

In 2005 a friend dragged me to SL from The Sims Online.  I never went back to the Sims after that.    I paid my $9.95 for a lifetime basic account and shortly after upgraded to premium so I could get my small parcel of first land.  I really liked that the world was built by the residents and that is what has kept me coming back.  

Oh and it is not a game. :smileytongue:

[Knutz Scorpio]

"Overheard" others talking about SL while on a MUCK (a text only multiplayer platform) and it sounded pretty cool to me, but with Trident graphics and a dialup network I had to put it off for while.  About two and a half years ago I finally got a high speed internet connection at home so I "borrowed" an old P4 that had been forgotten about at work, scrounged an old NVidia card from work too, and signed into SL for the first time.  It was slowwwww, but still pretty cool, cool enough to put together a whole new computer so I can do SL in real time.

The ability to create a 3D representation for myself and create other content is what most fascinates me, but due to outrageous land prices and other issues most of my building and creating happens on other grids.

[Harlow Heslop]

I've been in Second Life for over six years now, and I first came to Second Life because I was a big fan of the game The Sims.  I ended up wondering one day if there was a "live version" of The Sims and when I googled live virtual environments Second Life is what popped up!  I've been hooked ever since!  

[VRprofessor]

Spring 2009 I was recruited to teach a game studies unit in an Honors course at my university.  Had a blast.  The course was canceled in 2010 and revived for fall 2011--with a somewhat altered theme.  A theme very different than I had planned on when I agreed to teach a unit. 

In mid-august 2011 I came across some materials about Second Life (I, Avatar) and a book summarizing our current understanding of how people respond to virtual reality environments (Infinite Realities).   Not sure what I was thinking, but with less than two weeks until I had to teach something I was ready to try anything--so I did.

A few weeks into the unit, as we were reading I, Avatar, one of the students looked at me in frustration and declared that she and the others were not getting it.  Having no virtual world experience they were simply lost trying to understand much of what the author was talking about.  In frustration she declared that they (my students) needed to get some experience in SL or something similar if they were ever going to learn anything useful!

I had heard the stories about the bad parts of SL and had chosen NOT to use it.  But as I informally polled the rest of the class there was a level of frightened agreement.  (My classroom presence is, I am told, rather intimidating and I suppose students were frightened I was really going to go off having been publicly criticized.) 

No fire works erupted from my head.  A few moments of contemplation and I simply declared that two weeks from that date class would take place in SL, location and topic to be announced.   Class dismissed at 1:15SLT and VRprofessor was born shortly there after.

I managed to find a number of helpful folks along the way and my first SL based class was closer to success than failure. 

None of the students in that group, or the next, found SL personally compelling so they've not come back since class.  That's okay..They all seem to have developed at least a bit of understanding that SL isn't weird.

I, on the other hand, made enough friends along the way that I just keep on coming back.   I've made personal connections with a couple of other college educators and I have managed to find some relevant groups--time to start planning for Fall 2012!

 

[Jo Yardley]

I don't remember why I came here first, probably something I saw on tv or saw on the internet somewhere.

I joined, looked around and left again after a few days.

As a noob all I experienced was lag, half naked avatars doing weird things, chatting, running around, shopping, etc.

Stuff I do not care about.

The second time I returned simply to test the abilities of my new laptop.

Luckily this time I explored the search option a bit more and found the vintage and retro scene in SL... the rest is history

 

What keeps me here?

The ability to create, share my passion for history, educate and above all experience the one thing I can't experience in RL that I'd like to try more then anything else; time travel.

[Tracy Redangel]

I've known about SL for years, and had always wanted to try it, but I had a really old computer.I finally got a new computer and tried a few different virtual worlds for a while before I finally tried SL. At first, it was frustrating, because it's much more complex than other worlds. But, there were a lot of friendly, helpful people and a very extensive wiki and you tube video tutorials to help get the hang of things. It didn't take long before I was hooked. I sort of miss those early days of discovery in SL when everything is so NEW and exciting. You can make your avatar look ANY way you want, and SHOPPING...yeah I admit it, I LOVE to shop in SL lol. The best part was the people I met. I met my RL boyfriend in SL, we've been together for about a year and a half have a dog and a cat. I've made great friends...and I've lost friends. Now my boyfriend doesn't play SL much, so I only sign on a few times a week. I mostly just will chat with a couple of friends (the ones I have left) shop, or change stuff around our land. Sometimes, I'm not even sure why we still have land. Right now, I'm trying to find a new purpose in SL.

[Perrie Juran]

I had read about it and then heard it mentioned on a Forum I used to frequent.  But had not paid it too much attention.

Then I had some things happen in RL, and I was wanting a little diversion or distraction from them so decided to check it out.

I've been distracted ever since.