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Yaghish and the Second Life
by Jack Ozigard
My brother is what you might call an early adapter. He was already on the internet in 1992 and had a homepage at dds.nl that involved a virtual home, all made in 3D. With the right equipment, you could walk through the house. He was for his job on Second Life, and had a bit of money to spend there. I remember watching him walking through the virtual realms.
I'm not an early adapter, or maybe too early. I never made it into Second Life until the other day. This is a weird experience I only know from cyberpunk stories: roaming in a virtual world that is mostly abandoned by its owners. It's really spooky watching all those half-finished structures and empty rooms.
I did know about Second Life (SL), especially from the Steampunk Scene. I just didn't have the right PC for it. And know, I got a rather fast Mac Mini purchased in 2007, the year SL was very hot. Yet, the hardware or the network can't keep up with the rendering of the pictures. I always have to wait to see the surroundings. Which is a bit annoying. The graphics are not very detailed either, when I compare it to a modern game like Folklore (on the Play Station 3) it looks like something from a distant past, SL. It's a lot like Railroad Tycoon 3, the movements, the graphics, the works.
However, I was determined to see what was going on in SL, especially all things steampunk. I got the right equipment, so all I had to do was download the SL Viewer, which comes free from www.secondlife.com. It's easy to install. Next step is to create an avatar. That's pretty easy - you don't have to worry about what it looks like, because you can adjust it later.
Once your get an avatar, you can enter the virtual world. I picked Caledon, the largest steampunk "sim" in SL. A sim is like a nation. Caledon is very nice to newbies and actually has a walk through tutorial for those who never have been in SL before. In the tutorial, you get some free steampunk garments to pick from for your avatar. When you're done with the tutorial, you must have the skills to wander through SL yourself.
I started with Caledon itself. Just walking around, trying things, and getting freebies everywhere.
Then I remembered the other steampunk sim people talked about: New Babbage. So I pulled out the map and teleported my way there. New Babbage is not as large as Caledon, but has a better steampunk feel.
There's not many people there on a saturday evening. So I went to various other places, including Amsterdam (with a red light district), The Hague (only a large beach in SL) and some others I really can't remember all. I took some snapshots of my wanderings:
Look mom, I just created a brand new avatar! I didn't find a razorblade so I'm sorry about the facial hair. First thing I did when I knew how to alter the avatar was find shades so there you go, that's the only pair of glasses I found in my Inventory.
I'm here relaxing in the Caledon Library.
Here you see me at a place which name I have forgotten. Somewhere Caledon I guess. You can see my nickname here: Jack "of all trades" Ozigard. The last name is something I had to pick from a list, so it's not a free choice. I liked the "gard" part of it. I'm wearing a coat with a tail as you can see - that came from the Caledon Tutorial. I feel a lot like playing "Keats" in Folklore wearing these.
He're I'm doing a bit of meditation in Lummerland, which is a weird part of Caledon I'm quite liking. Meditation is one of these odd things you can do living your second life - someone has actually programmed a script so you can do this. It's brilliant.
This is me at "home". In Caledon Oxbridge Village you can get a room for free. Each empty room can be your's. However, people who move don't take their stuff, so there's no free room left. I picked a room with only a sofa and a yellow lamp. It looked quite abandoned. I moved in my own stuff. The bed, the pillow and the bedtable I made myself. You can buy it from me if you want... The plant I picked up at the start of my second life.
If you do own this room, please let me know, I'll try to move out.
I moved on to New Babbage and ended up in a crime scene. The lady on the ground looks a bit dead. So I take off the glasses and say "What do we have here?" I put them back on. "An energy bomb for sure..." Someone has blown the bakery to smithereens, leaving the damsels in distress.
Now we're talking. A DJ cockpit in New Babbage. Unfortunately, I couldn't find how to turn on the virtual switches. I'd better stay behind my Technics hardware.
After a while, I tried to check out how real SL is. So I headed to The Hague. The Hague is basically a boring part of beach. Here's me at the beach. Yeah, I know it is night in SL and I'm still wearing my shades, but I do that in my first life as well.
I tried to set up home somewhere outside Caledon Oxbridge Village. I found a nice house and made myself comfortable on the first floor, as you can see in the picture. There's tea for everyone. However, I do not own the place, and the "lost and found" feature of SL returned all the furniture and stuff to me shortly after taking this picture.
I went on wandering. He're I'm in an underwater train tunnel. I noticed there's a lot of underwater features in the steampunk sims. Don't worry if you can't swim, walking under water is as easy as flying. And to get on the dry again, you can fly out of the water as well. You don't even have to dry your cloths when you fall into the water by accident.
After all that exploring, I just crashed on a random bed. You can sleep and sit almost everywhere in SL. As if you get tired from virtually walking around.
Here's me hanging around in someone elses hideout. Lummerland again. I found out that sitting down and then looking around is for me the most comfortable way of watching the environment.
Some more hanging around. The different ways to sit are most probably scripts or gestures. To sit down like a gentleman, you have to buy sitting gesture scripts. So I just sit down like your ordinary punk.
This is me on a ship, waiting for a captain that never came. Nice boat though. In the background you see some shapes that haven't fully "rezzed" yet. In the water you can see a submarine vehicle, probably a Nautilus.
So here's me sitting in the Nautilus of someone else. It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen in New Babbage! Go there and see it for yourself.
OMG! Why am I doing this? I'm getting dizzy even thinking about it! Well, there's a reason for it. On this picture you can also see how the graphics suck: my coat goes right through the surface I'm sitting on. It's not only this place (Beat Island) where that happened.
This is the map of Beat Island.I'm the yellow dot. I'm looking (grey triangle) at the mountain in this picture. I looked about everywhere, but couldn't find the red zeppelin that is cleary on this map. I learned that many things happen "above" in SL, at an altitude of about 500 metres. So you can't notice what's going on there.
This is me in one of the Hotspots of SL, Swamp Hotel. But there isn't a lot going on at this Hotspot. It looks quite dead to me. But someone has put a lot of effort in it to make it a nice place. I guess it has costed a lot of virtual money too.
I never make so much pictures of me in First Life. This again is Swamp Hotel. I do think the picture shows my mixture of punk and Victoriania.
Relaxing back at Caledon. I forgot who made this all, but the Cruquius in the background is just brilliant. That's why I made this screenshot in the first place.
Im Lummerland I found a tent to wear. It's a very nice object to wear when you need something like "home". So the sun sets in SL and I'm sitting at the fire in front of my own tent. Notice the bike behind it? It comes with the tent. You can't nick a bike in Amsterdam - I tried. Real life is much more real, most of the time.
In SL, you can sit in trains and streetcars and the likes. As in the picture above, where I'm in a trolley. The motions of the trains are a bit lame though, and it isn't any faster than flying. You get the chance watching the environment while you are moved around though.
This place is called Nemo and it's a submarine mansion. It looks nice, but very empty. The emptiness is stressed by the vastness of the place.
Sometimes, you encounter other avatars in SL. Here's Luna Dexter. We didn't even greet. At least she doesn't have a tail. Many avatars I encountered made me wish to make a gesture out of "pardon me for standing on your tail". Somehow weird creatures and especially furries rule in SL. Even in Caledon you can get a steampunk furry outfit.
A critter coming to surface. Some things in SL are just so weird, I wonder who has programmed such things.
Relaxing on the beach. Have I already told I don't like sitting in the light of the sun?
And spending the rest of the night in creepy places in Caledon.
Same place. Here you can see some of the water.
Here's me sitting on someones grave. I didn't bring the rose though. I've seen a lot of graveyards in SL, and I wonder what they are for. So far, I haven't found a way to die in SL. And should one buy a grave before one dies? Or can you spook SL after you've died? At least, most of SL looks like some kind of ghosttown: buildings still standing, people moved out to elsewhere.
Someone elses house. You can actually sit down on the cat. It says "mew!" when you do. Nice kitty, nice kitty *pet*.
Same house in Caledon. I sat down on the bed, and standing up, I'm actually standing on the bed! Weird.
In the left corner, you see the text of the IM's I'm receiving, and I still haven't found a way to turn them off. It's quite annoying, overhearing the chattering of others, who don't have anything usefull to tell.
On a train again.
Look mom, I just found a brand new zeppelin! Zeppelins and other flying vehicles are natural to the steampunk sims. Look up in the sky every once in a while.
Back "home" in the evening.
Petting the dog "Balor" in New Babbage. Nice dog. Doesn't even bark.
Here's me checking out a very nice car. Vehicles enough in SL, but only the owner can ride most of them. But I think many of the owners never show up in SL again. It is like a ghosttown. Would be great if all owners would drive their vehicles. Yes, I know that I do live in the wrong time zone, but anyway...
Look mom, I just found a bomb!
So far for "politeness" courtesy or etiquette in the steampunk community. Ms/Mr Tenk (it looked feminin to me) has obviously never heard of the word. (S)he probably wasn't even born when some came to steampunk. (Later on, I learned this is the "mayor" of New Babbage - well great job you do annoying people, instead of welcoming them to your sim!)
New Babbage. Just a quite random shot. In the red, you see the beacon for my teleporting (TP in SL speak). "Scotty, beam me up!" Stuff like that. I came across a place where you could actually buy a Star Trek uniform for your avatar...
Here I do encounter some other avatars in New Babbage. People are not always what they seem to be, the child might be a grown up anyway. And the newbie from Oxbrigde might just like the clothes because of some fond memories.
The lady is just getting dressed. Don't worry. If they don't get dressed 500 metres above, you first see a "cloud", then a naked avatar, and slowley it starts to dress. That's just SL.
It's quite a crowd around here in New Babbage. Yet, it's a bit of a ladies only thing. I have encountered a lot of ladies in SL, I wonder if women are better in a social setting like SL, or are many of the women in fact man who do have a female avatar? By the look of some women in SL, it's more like the wet dream of a random heterosexual male, the way the ladies dress.
Here I'm back at Oxbridge. The dragon turned out to be quite nice. It's just an avatar, you understand.
Well then, after a solid bit of strolling SL, I don't think it's the right place to be anymore - if it ever was. The steampunk sims are beautifully shaped, no doubt about that. It's a pleasure walking around there. But it's quite dead, it's not like there is something going on there. People who gather there aren't into strangers interacting. They rush past you, or even bump at you with a script.
I played with the idea of putting up a "Daleth Embassy" in SL. But making things in Sl costs a lot of real money. SL is, in fact, capitalism working for you. Making things like mansions, or better, having a private piece of land, costs money. You can earn that money in SL, but not overnight. So you have to invest real money. To get back some of the cashflow, you have to sell something in SL. You can attrackt people by spreading freebies, but in the end you want them to buy stuff so you get some of your investment back. We're talking about hundreds of US dollars here, not just some tuppence.
What do I have to sell? Basically, nothing. If I had a realm in SL, I'd put up that Daleth Embassy with information on the world. I'd place some in-world buildings there like some guestrooms, a tavern, maybe a temple. I don't want to make money that way, but I would have to if I'd make such an investment.
Now, some years after the SL hype, the investment is probably not worth it. It's no longer hip to be in SL. There's not enough people exploring the aera. And to put it more clear: there is nothing to do in SL anymore. It's a boring ghost town. If you got some friends to meet, it's fine over there. If you got money to spend, you can do a lot to make the place yours. But for the average tourist who tries to find a place to like, it's just not worth it. I don't have a clue as for why I should make an investment in SL in 2009.
Look, I don't know what it was like in Caledon or New Babbage in the good old days. Maybe it was a place to be. The idea of shaping things yourself, if only virtual, might appeal to many modern steampunks. And indeed, I've seen a lot of pretty things there. But they are gathering dust...
I still am thinking about throwing a party in SL for the 25th anniversary of Daleth. I'm looking for a place to hang out with the guests. SL is still good for chatting. Usually, I have Colloquy for that, but that hasn't got the visual effects. SL does have that, and I wonder how important that is. After all, from the Colloquy chat, I know many of the participants from RL, and I can see, hear them when we chat. I don't need their avatars. And I guess I don't like them to see with oversized boobs, furry appearances or dragon-shaped.
© Yaghish, 2009
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