June 2007 — News
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Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 1)
This was distressing because there was no way I wanted to continue exploring without an acceptable appearance, particularly when the first avatar I met was a guy looking up and down at me. It was curious how the immersive experience right from the beginning began to change my mental framework. I knew that right-clicking on my avatar would allow me to alter my appearance, but I kept getting the message "Can't change appearance until clothing and shape are loaded." Thinking I'd missed something, I logged out, then downloaded and unzipped a couple of template files I found, and logged in again. This time my avatar at least had skin color and a shirt. Eventually, I was able to change Amareal's skin tone and shirt color and get flaired pants, pointy shoes, and a new hairstyle. Whew! This took a while, and she still looks plain. I learned upfront that the learning curve was going to be steep.I learned from Virtual Bacon (personal communication, June 8, 2007) that users sometimes experience a lag owing to lower bandwidth or extremely high SL useage at the time, which might have been the reason it was taking a long time to download my City Chic female. I just didn't know that at the time. Virtual Bacon (aka, John Jamison), the creator and owner of the SL island of imagiLEARNING, assured me that I would not have had to do anything extra. This usually happens to only relatively new avatars.
Amareal Gets the Basics
My experience of learning about SL, navigating, and communicating, was excessively frustrating. Most times I had no idea where I was, and I knew I'd need a few more tutorials, if I were not going to give up the exploration. Initially, the "in world" tutorials weren't doing me much good because I could not figure out how to access the content while exploring. I'm not saying they are not good. I just needed something to read before entering SL, so I'd understand new vocabulary, commands, and how to use such things as notecards, inventory, and gestures. I needed to see pictures and a few video how-tos. I felt somewhat consoled in that I was not alone in my frustration when I read Amy Gahran's post (2007) at Contentious.com.
I found The Complete Fool's Guide to Second Life by Foolish Frost helpful. There's a growing list of SL video tutorials, plus the Top 10 Second Life Tutorial Videos on YouTube, which helped to explain inventory and how to make gestures, for example. Inventory is anything you collect in SL that you can put on your avatar, use to build, or give away. There are many free items to collect, including a free house, which I now have.
