Introduction to Cultural Theming

Being still mostly US-centred (two thirds of the Second Life® live in the US), it is not surprising that almost all “thematic builds” in SL are vaguely inspired in American culture - even the ones built by non-US residents. After all, American culture is available world-wide - through movies, books and TV shows, the whole world gets an image (even if an “idealized” one) of the “American look”, and SL is not different. Even non-Americans tend to emulate American styles and themes on their own builds, since they also know that their audience will expect them.

Thus, it’s not unsurprising that clubs, casinos and malls have a very similar aesthetic and functional look. While certain exceptions do exist (ex. Japanese-style areas, Neualtenburg with a realistic medieval German look), there are not many. Perhaps the largest exception so far is the Neverland project, appealing to a “British look” (despite the Peter Pan story and settings having been re-interpreted by both Disney and the later Hollywood production), at least on the Olde London sim.

The current proposal will try to bring the Mediterranean/Atlantic appeal of the Portuguese aesthetical look of the 18th century, incorporating modern-day elements in terms of “entertainment” concepts. The city of Lisbon has been influenced by its particular geography and location, as well as its importance as the cultural capital of Portugal for several centuries.

The choice of recreating Terreiro do Paço (”Royal Palace Square”) is based mainly because of its historical significance - most “major crisis” in Portugal were associated, in one form or another, with this immense plaza (20,000 sq. m) opening on the river Tagus (the largest fluvial plaza in the world) - commerce, earthquakes, and revolutions played their acts here - as well as a cultural tradition in the past 20 years, which have brought rock festivals and other types of artistic expression to the Terreiro do Paço.

Besides the building itself, the proposal envisions the animation of Terreiro do Paço, in the form of events and a “living museum”, depicting several facets of Portuguese culture and history. Some of them will be clichéd, some will be more “realistic”, all of them will be great fun!

The buildings

Most European capitals and major cities are strongly influenced by late 19th-century “boulevard” urbanistic planning - starting with Paris, but later present in almost every city. This was perhaps the last stage of European city redesign (except perhaps for the 1950’s reconstruction of zones destroyed by WWII bombing), where almost all antique structures have been razed down, and new streets (”avenues” or “boulevards”) created from scratch to adapt cities to the much larger traffic, and also bring elements of greenery to the streets (beyond the parks). This was also a phase where the old city grids established in the Middle Ages - small streets that crossed each other without order - almost disappeared, and Renaissance or Baroque elements (large plazas with fountains and statues) where integrated into the new avenues.

Lisbon had a different story to tell. While there certainly are a few late 19th-century “boulevards” (Avenida da Liberdade, Avenida da República), and lots of new quarters started around 1911 (after Portugal became a republic), urbanism in Lisbon is decidely 18th-century (although a complete 17th-century quarter still exists, the “Bairro Alto”, literally the “High Quarter”). There is a strong reason for this - in 1755, a tremendous earthquake, the largest in recorded history happening in Europe, followed by a tsunami and a fire, completely devastated the capital (except for a few isolated spots). The Marquis of Pombal, at the time Prime Minister, ordered the rebuilding of the city with a very “modern” approach - and did it in an amazingly short time. The city was the capital of an Empire and could not stop.

While several details pf the rebuilt are fascinating historically - like the notion of valuating property by the square meter - the most notable aspect of the Marquis’ plans was the groundwork for a new way to design cities. Thus, instead of small alleys, criss-crossing the landscape to the whim and desire of the land owners, the new Lisbon (nowadays the “Baixa” or “Downtown) was a city not unlike Manhattan in planning: wide streets crossing at right angles, and city blocks becoming administrative units. The citizens of Lisbon at the time despaired with the width of the streets - and the truth is, they are wide enough even for modern traffic - and felt that much “building space” was wasted that way. Nevertheless, the Marquis’ will prevailed.

There is also a very uniform building theme, which we associate nowadays with the “Pombalin style”, and which contrasts fully with the Baroque (highly decorative) style at the epoch. All buildings in downtown Lisbon are 3 stories high, have the same proportions on the façade of each floor, and have similar plans, excepting for a few details. New plazas (like “Rossio”, literally the “Horse Square”; or the “Cais do Sodré”) have additional exterior decorations, but keep the overall design. Thus, the Marquis could be thought of a SL builder who created three or four types of buildings and set up a script to replicate them along the streets Differentiation was typically achieved by applying one of only four “typical” colours (pastel green, pink, ochre and cyan) - since so much paint was needed, these were the only ones available - or hand-painted tiles. Even today, most buildings and homes in Portugal use variants of this colouring scheme, and tiles are still used as wall covering and decorative purposes.

[For curiousity's sake, we should mention that all Downtown Lisbon (including the two plazas, Terreiro do Paço and Rossio) has been built on top of a river flowing into the Tagus. Most of the buildings are on top of thousands and thousands of tree logs who did fossilize quickly while remaining flexible - an expert solution to deal with earthquakes and flooding. The parts not covered with that "fossilized forest" are incredibly old, and part of the old Roman city of Olissipo has been discovered in the last years. Apparently, one of the major streets in Downtown Lisbon uses the old Roman sewage system, and a Roman horse racing field ("hippodromus") is under Rossio.]

Finally, the new Terreiro do Paço became a landmark in itself. Originally, this large square had the Royal Palace and the Customs House, as well as several buildings for merchants and storehouses for the docks. The Marquis proposed to build a new Royal Palace and a Customs House, but keep the Terreiro do Paço for all ministerial buildings - i.e., creating the “administrative city” inside Lisbon. Except for the Royal Palace - the King was shocked with the cold, efficient forms of the new city, and built himself a Baroque palace inspired on Versailles - the ministry buildings actually still serve the same purpose nowadays. Merchants occupied the Downtown buildings instead of the Terreiro do Paço (also known as “Praça do Comércio”, that is, the Merchant’s Square), leaving the imponent ministries to welcome visitors and merchants from other countries to what was still the capital of a world-wide empire at that time.

The culture

Over 200 years later, the Terreiro do Paço still fulfills its planned role - it’s one of the centers for the Government. However, the growth of the ministries has forced the State to get new buildings elsewhere, while still keeping the buldings surrounding the plaza. Downtown Lisbon, however, is one of the major commerce zone (outside the malls). This means that both are viewed as the “heart” of the city.

In the past 20 years, the function of the Terreiro do Paço has been enhanced with cultural and artistic events. As mentioned before, there have been rock concerts, New Year animations (music, fireworks), and several artistic shows held on the Terreiro do Paço. However, since those types of events can be held in so many different places in Lisbon, the city council hasn’t decided what to do about the Terreiro do Paço - one reason being the difficulty of diverting car traffic from it. Also, since Rossio is filled with shops and esplanade cafés, it probably meant that there was no interest in doing the same in Terreiro do Paço (it still features Lisbon’s oldest restaurant, the “Martinho da Arcada”).

SL being the place to apply our creativity, our project will try to focus on a “what-if” scenario, exploring the usage of Terreiro do Paço for street animation on a constant basis.

Thus, we propose to reconvert the ministery buildings into cafés, with esplanade tables flooding into the Terreiro do Paço, as well as having the “official” Numbakulla shop here (part of the Baixa will be created as well, and these will be probably rented for resident homes). One section will be used as a “virtual museum”, where “automated vendors” will give out information (notecards, textures) about how the RW Terreiro do Paço was built and how strangely similar the approach was to SL building. The “Martinho da Arcada” restaurant will become a clichéd Portuguese pub/restaurant (currently under construction by the project proposers elsewhere). Since the River Tagus will have to occupy part of the sim (2.5 miles wide, in front of the Terreiro do Paço, but we will not build it to scale…), we will recreate one of the typical ferry boats, the “Cacilheiro”, and use it to host parties.

The main space of the plaza will be used to mount semi-permanent structures and do “live rock events” - as in the RW. Unlike clubs with DJ streaming, we will feature a platform with a group playing instruments, which will recreate the “feeling” of open door festivals in an 18th-century plaza. Music will vary from contemporary rock bands, songs of the Portuguese “fado” (world music), to traditional University singing groups (”tunas”, a group of perhaps 20-30 male students in 19th century clothing, singing rowdy versions of “fado”).

We will also feature contests for unique objects/art forms in SL, to be exhibited under a clear sky. Recently, the art of sculpture has been wide-spreading in SL and we would like to welcome it to the Terreiro do Paço (for some obscure reason, Portuguese artists are quite fond of sculptures…).

Other events will be held on special occasions. Thus, in June, Lisbon features the so-called “Festas dos Santos Populares” (the Popular Saints Celebrations). Stalls selling grilled sardines and “sangria” (a popular drink made of wine, orange juice and soda, drunk almost in all the Mediterranean countries) are opened spontaneously all over the old neighbourhoods, and we will have them in our SL Terreiro do Paço as well. Street animation is traditionally the “Marchas de Lisboa” (Lisbon Marches) - a contest, started around 1940, where each quarter in Lisbon presents an original music (of a special type) and allegoric cars parading in Avenida da Liberdade. Unfortunately, a 1:1 recreation of Avenida da Liberdade, Rossio, Downtown Lisbon and Terreiro do Paço would require 6 or 7 sims so, for the sake of convenience, we will hold this festival only at Terreiro do Paço.

It’s also usual to have sport events at Terreiro do Paço, something hard to recreate in SL, but we will try to do a vehicle competition instead - bring your own vehicle and run it for 10 or 20 rounds across the Terreiro do Paço. This is an event which may become a championship, done on several occasions, and with its own site showing the current classification of the several teams.

Another event will be a reconstitution of a large 18th century popular celebration, appealing to the clothes designers in SL. They have faced the challenge of doing 19th century clothing for Olde London - now it’s the time to do 18th century clothing! This will be completed with dance animations for Minuets and Gavottes (with syncronized dancing), streaming of Baroque music, and a spectacular fireworks display over the Tagus.

After the initial building to create a remarkable place in SL, the secret for the project’ longevity will be the events hosted there. Unlike “automated scenarios” like Spitoonie, Neverland, SimHorror, SimCast or Dark Life - which rely essentially on clever scripting - the Terreiro do Paço will be an “event zone”. We feel that the “human touch” in SL is much neglected and only used by the clubs - thus their success! Here we will have completely different types of events (while certainly including “life” rock music shows as well…) to appeal to a larger part of SL’s population who is tired of having only clubs, contests and trivia for their “socializing” - redefining its appeal.

While browsing for more information about Second Life®, I came across a plethora of web sites and blogs on MMOGs and MMORPGs, trying to understand what direction the online gaming industry is taking these days.

On the other hand, I have also been in touch with several residents inworld and ask them about their own ideas on the subject - namely, why they prefer playing SL instead of other games they tried. Most residents are quite indifferent about the “why” they like the game. I remember meeting with Chris Altman, another resident sharing Philip’s vision, and he sadly reported that I was the only person he met so far thinking along the same way Fortunately, there are more - many more!

So, the question I asked myself was, what makes a MMOG/MMORPG successfull?

The media are quite clear on one point. “Winners” are certainly the games with more users for the longuest period of time. With this in mind, they seem to regard most MMORPGs as failures. And phenomena like City of Heroes - with 180,000 users in a few weeks since having been launched - are highly praised by the media, since they can’t really understand how these numbers “exploded” so suddenly. And we’re talking about a very simple game here - pick an avatar, choose your superpowers, choose one of the 10 available cities, go there to have fun blasting other people’s avatars out of the sky. Pure fun! Immediate success!

On the other hand, they laugh at Electronic Arts because they had promised “over 2 million users” in The Sims Online and peaked out at about 80,000 (there has been a decrease in the past weeks, of course). So things seem not be going very well. Overall feeling is that MMOGs/MMORPGs are too expensive to design and mantain, and that they are not economically viable over a long term period. The main reason for that is “lack of interest” by the players. After a few weeks “visiting the views”, everything is simply not “new” anymore, and it’s time to change to another game - or have the game’s creative staff throw in more content. Of course, that’s one of the reasons why the games are so expensive to maintain! The company needs to fill up the game with content, and more content, and even more content, just to keep players happily paying their monthly fees…

There and The Sims Online seem to encourage players to create their own content in a way. This would mean a longer longevity. However, neither of these games have a realistic “virtual economy”, it looks much more like a way for the company behing those games to make money, than something which “emerges” from the game itself. Still, they are around, and There seems to make money for reselling their technology to the US military. TSO, of course, has the multi-billion EA corporation behind it to sustain the financing. A few dollars lost here or there are always good for taxes

Here is the reason why the media doesn’t “like” Second Life®”. If you list game features and corporate identity side by side, you’ll see that Second Life/Linden Lab hardly fits on any classification. So, the media don’t know what to do about them! Read the MMOG/MMORPG reviews, when coming to SL, there is usually something like “I shoudn’t be reviewing SL, since this is hardly a game” written down. And they are right! SL is hard to review. Why?

A few examples. All major online games boast about the number of players the have online - the more, the bigger the income, and the more solid the company running the game. But Philip boasts about “a solid economy“. Well, many online games don’t have an economy at all, so how you can compare them?

Many also boast about the incredible amount of different avatars and clothing combinations that can be created. Second Life®, besides having 200+ options to fine-tune your avatar, simply allows you to upload the clothing you wish (or the “skin” you desire). Even if you boast a game with a zillion different avatar combinations… in SL, you have infinite combinations. That’s a number which makes the media shudder.

Online games are also very proud of telling their public how many “skills” are available, or how many different “technology trees”, or how many objects are for sale. Second Life does not have any “skills” at all. As for objects, you can build whatever you want - so the question is irrelevant again.

Some gaming companies like to tell their gamers how many programmers and creative art designers they have to do produce content. Again, this shows the level of commitment the company shows into designing new content and “recreating the game afresh”. While most reviewers are appalled at the ugly, chaotic state of affairs on SL - absolutely random design, with varying degrees of “quality” - the truth is, LL-created content has decreased from 90% or so after Beta finished, to - what? - 1%? 0.1%? Just to give you an idea, “Linden textures” are about 36 MBytes (you download them with the software). The current texture & data database is over 100 GBytes in size. So, 0.3% is Linden content? And, as the grid expands, Linden content will be less and less. So how can you measure the success of SL based on how much new content Linden Lab produces? In terms of SL, the less they produce, the more it comes from creative and talented people - the residents. So the media can’t handle this paradigm shift very well…

What do the media and the reviewers “compare” then? It’s easy: they compare frame rates and degree of realism on rendering the virtual world. Since the technology behind SL is so different - it has to be, for a fully dynamic world with collaborative building - I feel it’s unfair to compare “apples” with “oranges”. One open-source 3D game I played for a while, featuring Python programming for all its objects (you can script whole universes with AIs if you wished), fully allowing everybody to upload “objects” created with their 3D tools, often featured 80 fps (!) using OpenGL (either under Windows, Mac OS X or Linux). Ok, sustained rate was perhaps much lower, perhaps 40-50 Compare that to the average 10 fps in SL. Yeah, you guessed it - this game is not a dynamically changing multi-player environment The team behind it are still figuring how to get the multi-player part working well, and sure thing, no collaborative working or changing the world dynamically by uploading textures in real time. No, Second Life® is truly unique on that approach, and the net result is: bad reviews because the frame rate is low!

Slightly changing the subject, and trying to “define” success in another way besides getting a table of features and checking off what does not apply to SL, another fascinating insight by Philip “Linden” Rosedale which I found on the interview he gave to the The Second Life Herald is that he believes that Second Life® will have around one million users in three years. This is a very optimistic view. Why does he think that so many people will join? Well, his theory is that SL is a collaborative creative environment where you have more freedoms than in RL, and, in a way, you can accelerate the time scale in SL to do rapid prototyping - not only on computer-related stuff (like games or so), but on a social scale. This means that SL society, after a few months, attained a level of stability which usually takes several years in RL (just think about all those countries emerging as new democracies with new societies from beyond the Iron Curtain, 15 years ago - they’re now free, and after 15 years, their own societies aren’t stable yet…).

Now all this combined makes SL attractive to the residents. I love to quote Philip, and one idea he has is that SL is not a game, but a place. So you “travel” to this place instead of “joining a game” - it’s like having vacations on another country. Things are similar - since SL models itself upon RL - but still different. This is quite different from the notion of “pure entertainment” provided by most online games, or “virtual 3D rooms” like TSO or There. SL is all about a growing community, gently guided by Linden Lab, but which shows the first signs of self-rule. Something appealing to us is logging in over and over again, and having a notion that things have changed, but stayed the same. This means your friends are online, there are still sandboxes in Morris and Cordova, the L$ is stil worth about the same, and Elite is still the biggest club in SL - but probably new stuff has also been brought in: new content (new clubs, new shops), new ideas (like SimHorror), new people, new ways of doing old stuff.

So, where does all of this leads us to? Recent talks with Andrew Linden - which seem to reflect much of what has been said - shows that LL is worried about “exponential growth”, just to please the media and give us a warm, cozy feeling that everything is going well in the right direction. SL as a “gaming platform” simply does not attract a large number of people by “word of mouth” - currently, still the biggest way to attract people to this “virtual environment”, in a steady way with which LL is able to keep up the growth. Meaning that unlike other games, people at LL seem to think that they should throttle growth, not encourage it - until the platform is ready to handle it.

Since the completely unexpected funding by Benchmark Capital, LL has found a way to speed up their growth. They seem to want to concentrate on stability and speed of the technical side of Second Life® - instead of making more money with a large marketing campaign that would attract millions of users. Now this is something very unexpected coming from an US company - relying on quality instead of quantity. Being an European and educated under those principles, I really appreciate the way Linden Lab seems to be running their own approach to become” successful”: stay small, grow in a sustained way, focus on quality, improve the platform and the experience of current residents, make them spend more on SL instead of attracting new people that would just log in, see that the frame rate is around 10 and that vehicles get lost across sim boundaries, and never return to SL again.

While this approach certainly will find fully acceptance on my side of the Atlantic, I expect that the quantity-based US business approach will always “rate SL negatively”. LL should have 100,000 residents by now - like other games with the same “age” - and not a “mere” 15,000. So, from an US business perspective, LL is supposed to be a flop. More than that, this also means that their Return On Investment will take ages, and not just one or two years. Again, the fast-paced US economy will scorn that type of medium to long-term approach on online gaming, since the “usual” way of doing business on online games is launch a new platform, get 100,000 users after one year or so, launch another new platform based on the first one’s success, and so on, and so on. But if you read Philip’s interviews you’ll read things like “in 2007 we will have one million users”. Linden Lab plans ahead. This also means that thousands of residents will simply not understand this model of thinking, and give up on SL since things “do not happen fast enough”. I also believe that this is one of the reasons why the number of non-US residents is growing much faster - we simply have a different approach. We prefer (and expect) quality, and are willing to wait for better quality, and support companies focusing on quality instead of quantity.

Worse - the media seems to believe that most online games are flattening out or decreasing their customer base. Some talk about “the end of the MMOG/MMORPGs - they were a nice experiment, but they are not financially sustainable”. So how can a company talk about “quality of service on a sustained growth basis” when the media don’t believe in virtual online platforms any more?

Last but not least, and despite all limitations, one of the amazing things about SL is it’s customer support. Most (but not all) Internet-related businesses usually have a 500-to-1 or 1000-to-1 ratio of clients vs. tech support personnel. With the introduction of Live Help, plus the Mentor group and the in-world universities doing classes on SL-related stuff, you have around 300 people or so doing some sort of “customer support” (of course there are different levels of customer support, but this is precisely what all companies of the world do). Since there are about 15,000 residents, this means that 2% of the SL population is engaged in some sort of “organized” customer support - or, if you wish, it’s a 50-to-1 ratio. No business I ever saw on the Internet has been able to have that level of customer support when you have a customer base of a few thousand users. You may argue that Live Help/Mentors/University courses are not really “Linden Lab”-based customer support, but you would be wrong. Creating an environment where people actually are willing to volunteer their own time to help other customers is the trick, and it’s incredible hard to encourage spontaneously. The closest thing to this is, of course, the open source community (even the one having a company behind it, like MySQL).

Residents live Second Life®, and they are willing to go to extremes to help and work with Linden Lab™, for free, just to make sure we will all reach those ambitious goals set for the future. Several of us - and I would think there are a few thousands thinking like that - already think of Second Life® our “common” project with the Lindens and “act” like it were like that - even if we are fully aware that LL is “just another company wanting to make money”.

Now how on Earth is the media able to measure that and call it a success?

Welcome to Second Life!

Welcome to Second Life! For all of you just starting, I hope you have lots of fun in this virtual world!

My name is Gwyneth Llewelyn, and I’m a Mentor. This is a group of users — almost 1600 by now — who help newcomers to get started. You’ll see them mostly at the Welcome Area — like on the Ahern complex, Waterhead or Plum, where most of you probably entered this world after leaving the Orientation or Help Island, or on one of the “public sandboxes”: Morris, Cordova, Goguen, Newcomb, Sandbox Island, etc. — places where everybody may freely build (but not sell items!). You can always ask Mentors for help, they are here for that!

If your questions are very technical - mostly connected to objects or a bad/slow connection — you should get in touch with Live Help, an option you have on the Help menu on the top gray bar. They are also users, volunteering their time to answer your questions online. Finally, you may also find Liaisons. These are employees of Linden Lab, the company that runs this virtual world. You’ll notice that all of them have the “Linden” family name. Lindens may sometimes be very busy answering questions to other players, so be patient if they don’t reply immediatly! Think of them as the inworld technical support staff of Second Life. They also have special tools not available to users to fix the most complex problems.

How do you “talk” to these helpers? If there are few people around, just chatting on the Chat box at the bottom of the screen is ok. You can call them by name to make sure that they understand they’re being addressed, for instance, say “Gwyn, can you help me with this?”. Remember to press the History button (to the left of the input box) to scroll up to view past conversations — it’s a very useful feature!

If there is a crowd around, you may prefer to use Instant Messaging, or IM for short. Simply right-click on the person you wish to talk and select IM. IM is like a secure mobile phone — it works across the world and is completely private, no one will listen to your IM conversation, and you can talk to as many people as you like. You can even send IMs to people offline — either the messages will be stored for them until they log in, or they can be forwarded to an email, if you select that option from Preferences.

How do you IM a person who is not online? Well, the easiest way is to trade calling cards with him/her. Right-click on the person and select More >> and then Give Card. The other person needs to accept the card (most will), and afterwards you always will know if he/she is online or offline. Their cards will show up on your Inventory (more on that later): white if they’re online, grey if they’re offline. Simply right-clicking on the card will allow you to open up their Profiles, and from there you’ll be able to send them an IM.

Two users can also become Friends of each other. Right-click on the avatar of the other person and select Add Friend. Both have to accept, and from now one, they will show to each other on the IM list. Just click on the IM button to get a list of all the friends you have, and to see who is online at that moment. Then you can IM them directly from here, even if they are elsewhere in the world! You can even get this list from Second Life’s web site, on the Friends menu. Friends can also be tracked on the Map, so some people will prefer to simply trade cards.

Some “slang” and what it means

Most of you have probably some experience with online chatting, so you’ll see everybody using “lol” for Laughing Out Loud or “rofl” for Rolling On Floor Laughing. “ty” for Thank You, “yvw” for You’re Very Welcome, and “brb” for Be Right Back are also very popular, as well as all the usual smileys. The cool thing about SL (Second Life) is that you can animate your avatar when saying those things! You use Gestures for this. Select that option from the Edit menu (or right-click on yourself), and you’ll see that you can bind animations and sounds to “triggers”, special keywords that will start the gesture. Most players will have a trigger for “lol” animating their avatars with a belly laugh, or really smile when they type

Other acronyms are unique, like SL for Second Life (also referred as in-world), RL for your Real Life, and LL for the company Linden Lab. We call LL’s employees collectively “The Lindens”.

Your persona in SL is the avatar, which is usually abbreviated to AV or “avie”. You, the user, are referred as “a resident”.

SL is run on around thousand computers, colectively called “the grid”. Each computer runs a bit of the world, which is known as a “region” - the region name is shown in the top bar. The computer running a region is called a “sim”, short for “simulator”. Most servers on the grid are pretty powerful, so they usually run several “sims” at the same time. There currently are about three thousand sims overall.

Each sim handles a region of 256×256 meters and about 15.000 objects which can be built from several types of primitives (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc.), called “prims” for short. Also, one sim can handle about 50 avatars at the same time.

“Lag” can be caused by many things. The major reasons for lag are usually related to some sort of network problems. Second Life’s servers are currently located somewhere in California, US, and the furthest you are from there, the longer all data has to travel across the world, crossing several “Internet hubs”. It’s often very hard to understand what is going wrong when the connections are not working as well as they should

But it also happens when too many avatars are in the same place, or too many objects are being displayed at the same time, or even some faulty servers. The latter is usually fixed quickly by the technical staff at Linden Lab. However, many people also wonder why Second Life is usually slower than online games. Unlike those, Second Life is a fully dynamic environment where everything can be changed by the residents — nothing is ever stored locally on your computer (except for a disk cache of recently seen objects/textures). This means that a different technology has to be used to bring the dynamic world to your computer — live streaming. It’s quite different from other technologies, and while Second Life aims to provide you with an average of 15 frames per second, sometimes your computer simply cannot keep up with that with all the objects being downloaded to you (textures come heavilly compressed over the stream, and your CPU will have to work hard to decompress them and send them to your video card as quickly as possible). As a rule of thumb, a very dynamic location will usually need a constant stream of around 100 Kbps, but this can spike for a short while when you have just entered a new region and need to download everything that your avatar sees.

The easiest way to move around regions is by teleporting. You can click on the Map button, select a point at random in the map, and you will be teleported to the nearest point possible — sometimes needing to fly, drive or walk the rest of the way. But if you wish, you can be teleported (”tp”) by a friend directly where he/she is.

Abiding by the ToS

Please take some time reading the Terms of Service (”ToS” for short). Unlike some sites or programs where you can safely press Enter and forget about it, here the residents live by the ToS and it is actively enforced by them — you can report abuse by someone or something violating ToS, and this can lead to suspension or even expulsion from Second Life — or even a lawsuit against you. We live in a virtual world where everybody can do what he/she wants, except violating ToS. The first thing to notice is if you are in PG or Mature land (you can look to the top of the screen to view in which area the current sim is). PG is much more restrictive - no violence, no sex, no offensive language, no running around naked or with “revealing” clothes (or even changing clothes!). If you think this is too restrictive, stick to mature regions and events.

At the very least, you should read the Community Standards. Since they’re so important, we’ll copy them here:

Intolerance

Combating intolerance is a cornerstone of Second Life’s Community Standards. Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish the Second Life community as whole. The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life.

Harassment

Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

Assault

Most areas in Second Life are identified as Safe. Assault in Second Life means: shooting, pushing, or shoving another Resident in a Safe Area (see Global Standards below); creating or using scripted objects which singularly or persistently target another Resident in a manner which prevents their enjoyment of Second Life.

Disclosure

Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Lives. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident — including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident’s privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.

Indecency

Second Life is an adult community, but Mature material is not necessarily appropriate in all areas (see Global Standards below). Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M). Names of Residents, objects, places and groups are broadly viewable in Second Life directories and on the Second Life website, and must adhere to PG guidelines.

Disturbing the Peace

Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident’s ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace.

Money

SL has its own economy, and it’s sometimes hard to follow, so if you are interested, there are residents offering classes on economy. To summarize it, there is an inworld currency, the Linden Dollar (L$), and you can use it to buy objects, land, clothes and services. Uploading stuff (images, animations, sounds) also costs L$, as well as rating other residents.

Thanks to several market exchanges like the LindeX, among others, you can convert US$ into L$ and vice-versa. LindeX works like a real life money exchange, where people trade on the floor placing buy or sell orders for US$ or L$, currently as an exchange rate of around US$3 for L$1000. Money is not “created” that way — it only changes hands!

So, how do you get money? Besides a limited amount that you get when joining (nothing for a Basic account, L$1000 for a Premium), Linden Lab will also pay you a “weekly stipend” every Tuesday. Imagine it like a “social payment” which will allow you to do some basic spending without working Premium accounts recieve L$400/week.

If that’s not enough income for you — and believe me, making a living from gaming at casinos or betting on horse races is not a good idea! - you need a job.

Land

Second Life has a very complex economy, but also a very stable one, and if you are interested in reading about it, you can consult the economy section of the SL site.

Briefly, there are some scarce resources in Second Life, and competition for those resources is what makes the economy flourish. One resource is CPU Power. CPU Power is what you need for each machine to run a sim and send objects and textures to you. The more objects there are, the more CPU power the machine will need (as well as more bandwidth, of course). Since CPU power is available at a fixed amount, it makes sense to “compete” for that resource.

Second Life has an “abstraction” concept for CPU power: land. Land is not just “space to build things”, but the important thing about it is how many prims you can build on land. Currently, for each 512 square metres (m2) of land, you can have 117 prims on it. So when you buy land, besides real estate, you’re getting an “allowance” on how much burden you can put on the machine that runs the sim. Since this is tied with “real world” economics — you’re renting part of a machine’s CPU, hard disk space, and bandwidth allowance - Linden Lab will charge you extra per month beyond the “original” 512 m2 “allowance” that you get for Premium (Basic accounts are not entitled to own land — but they can rent it from other residents).

This “extra charge” is called land usage fee and is due monthly — you pay for the maximum amount of land owned on that month (and not for “average”). There are different “levels” of land usage, and these are called “tiers”. So, if you want to own land, you have to do the following steps:

Find a place which is for sale. You can get information from the auction system. First Land (the land that is reserved for newcomers without any land) is cheapest, at L$ 1 per square metre. The rest is mostly speculation - as in the real world, location dictates pricing! If you don’t find anything on the auctions, you can try to make deals directly to people, or contact a land baron as your real estate agent.

Buy the land. This means that the land gets to be assigned into your name.

If you don’t have enough money to buy it, the SL client offers you to move to the LindeX to buy some L$ with the payment method tied to your account (credit card or PayPal account)

If you don’t have enough “tier” — meaning that by buying this new parcel, you will be over your current allotment - you have to go into the next tier before you confirm the sale. Remember that you will be billed for the highest setting you have put here on tier.

Beware of scams. Since First Land is so cheap — well below the usual prices — lots of unscrupulous residents will try to “buy it off” from you. Make sure that you don’t get overexcited by an offer which will give you 50% or even 100% profit. Real prices can be way over that, and so you should take a look at the auctions to get a feeling on what your land is currently worth.

Do you need land to enjoy Second Life? While the answer is different for every resident, you can do everything else with a Basic account, just not own land. So even if you really need land to build your own home/shop/club, but don’t wish to “tier up” (ie. start paying an additional fee to Linden lab every month) you can just rent it from land-owning residents. There are several different sorts of agreements available, from renting shops or booths at a mall, to rent a parcel of land on the mainland, to “land deeds” on private islands. Since all these agreements are mande between residents, they can vary wildly from place to place, but the resident running the rental operation will be more than happy to explain you how it works.

Inventory and what you can buy

The Inventory is your personal handbag — like a real world handbag, it’s quite hard to keep it organised and find things you put in there, but unlike real handbags, it is infinite in size.

Here is stored everything that you carry with you — from objects and items you have bought, to all your clothes (so it’s a portable wardrobe as well), textures, notecards, scripts, cards you have traded withand even more strange things like your own body (!) and animations and gestures.

You start with two folders — Library and My Inventory. Library has some common objects, default gestures, default animations, and even some default avatars. My Inventory is all that you add to it!

How do you get new objects? Well, one way, of course, is doing them by yourself, as we have already seen. The other way is to buy them from other players. You can trade/exchange items directly, or, the way most people do it, go to a shopping mall or a store/shop.

Stores or shops are usually owned by the merchant - the person having their wares to offer. You can search for keywords on Search >> Places, and you will get a list of shops offering these items, and teleport to each one in turn to check for pricing. Most shops are open 24h/7, but in reality you won’t find many sales reps inside — almost all transactions in Second Life use “automated vendors”: machines that will show you a picture (or a 3D model) of the object you want to buy, you pay to the vendor, and you get the object.

Malls, like in real life, are large structures which host several shops (which are usually rented by the week). They also have automated vendors. Normally malls have dozens of small shops inside, and this means you can get a wide selection of products to chose from. However, due to the way Second Life works, this also means that big malls will be very laggy and hard to “navigate”.

Finally, you can also offer and buy services (i.e. hire a scripter or a builder). It’s easier to do that on the forums, there is a group for such offers. Of course, some people set up “offices” in Second Life for the sole purpose of meeting with other residents who want to hire their services.

Events and what to do

So, if you don’t have a job — which is time-consuming — and have just arrived at the game and haven’t talked to nobody yet, what can you do to spend your time?

Fortunately for all of us, there are Events! Events is the “social life” of Second Life. Hosted by residents, they cover virtually anything — from inworld classes on scripting, building, economy (or even self-improvement!), to contests where you show your mental skills (or your skills at building things), to parties (and yes, there are a lot of parties), to discussions and debates. Sometimes there are unique events, like fashion shows or art happenings; sometimes there are recurring events, where you will meet the same people at the same spot.

Events can be broadly classified in the following main areas — contests (or games), where you can win money or objects; classes, where you get some courses on various events, and where you usually pay for attendance (except for Mentor events which are always free); parties, held for all possible reasons; chat/discussion events; cultural events; and all the sort of possible entertainment events which don’t fit into any category.

Make sure you list all events for the day and see which ones you would like to attend — then press the Notify button. 5 minutes before the event starts, you’ll be notified with a cyan dialog box, which will also offer you teleport to the event.

Attending events is the best way to meet new people, as well as a good opportunity to show off your skills — social and other wise — to get some ratings. And yes, it’s true, most “parties” and contests in Second Life are mature events, but there are generally enough “non-mature” events around as well.

Ratings are a way to show people your appreciation of their skills, talents, or personality. Each rating costs L$25 to give.

Skills and jobs

Unlike “online games”, SL does not have a concept of “character improvement” — say, after a playing a while, you pay an amount of money, and earn “skill points” to advance “a level”, which will enable you to get a better job, for instance. Second Life is just like your real life — if you want to make money and have a job, you need to employ your own skills. And, of course, if you want to be an employee, you need to find an employer — another resident who is currently better off than you, and needs someone to help him out since he can’t handle all his work responsability. It’s up to you to apply for a vacancy — like in real life, you will need to convince him that you have the required skills and are “the right guy for the job”.

What kind of jobs are available? Well, for the completely unskilled, not many. You might get paid just to “stand around” in a certain place (usually a mall or a casino) just to attract other users (people tend to gather around places where other residents already are! A crowd draws a crowd). Some clubs also offer jobs to dancers (for about the same reason); and a few shops use sales reps or people to advertise their products. There is not much choice for a completely unskilled resident; you must become creative in order to succeed!

Another relatively unskilled job is modelling — clothes designers often employ their own avatars when taking pictures of the clothes, but the top clothiers will need models, since there are a few fashion shows in SL. Modelling is well paid, but you’ll need expectionally good looking avatars and good animations for going on the catwalk. There are not many offers for modelling, though, but there are a few agencies.

Most of the other jobs are usually self-employment or require some skills to get hired. For instance, if you’re charismatic and an extrovert, you could get a job (or self-emply yourself) as a sales representative or event hoster. You’ll see how events work on chapter 7. The ultimate job in this area is, of course, the Land Baron — how we nickname the real estate agents. They just need to be very keen on the real estate market, have some starting cash, and be very good buyers and sellers. It’s a very profitable job!

If you’re good at working with a graphical design application — like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or GIMP — you have two good choices, one is becoming a clothes designer (it needs one of those programs and a PSD template which is provided by Linden Lab to design new clothes), the other a master texturiser. There are already thousands (if not dozens of thousands…) of very good clothiers, well-established in SL, so be prepared to get into fierce competition here! Designing clothes for SL is mostly a creative task, it’s not “hard” to do (if you’re skilled with a graphical design application), and lots of fun!

If you have a good sense of 3D space and a keen aesthetic sense, you could probably become a “builder”. This is a generic description, since there are several builder types — house builders and “object” builders (like furniture, or cool-looking devices). A very good builder is usually a good texturer, too — so while all building takes place inworld, textures are done in a graphical design program. Most people are “simple builders” — it’s a very entertaining — but the trick to become a “professional builder” in SL is doing amazing stuff with a very low primitive count. That’s the real challenge. As an example, I have seen a fascinating motorbike in SL which uses 200 or 300 primitives, it looks amazingly realistic — but you can’t drive it, since all vehicles can only have 31 prims! The challenge here is doing the same good-looking design in such a limited amount. The same applies to houses and furnitures, since the average land owner will have a limited number of primitives available, and low-primitive designs appeal to a majority of users. If you seriously want to enter this market, be prepared to compete with people who have been building stuff for over a year and a half, and they know all the tricks of the trade. Unlike clothes — which is a purely creative thing — building requires knowing all the tricks. There are several inworld classes to tell those tricks, but you really need to take your time experimenting before you have “sellable” objects.

Cool objects are usually “scripted” — this means that they have a behavior inworld, they are dynamic, they interact with avatars. Good examples of this are vehicles and weapons, but most objects will need a script to work properly (like a lamp which is turned on, or a door that opens and closes). Scripters are residents having learned the Art of LSL Programming. LSL is “Linden Scripting Language”, similar to Java in concept and even syntax, and is very easy to learn (but awfully hard to master) if you’re a knowledgeable programmer in the real world. If you aren’t, you can still learn it, but don’t expect to make a living of it.

Strangely enough, the economy in SL never caught on with the idea of selling scripts. Scripters work in two ways: they are freelancers, doing scripting for other residents (and this guarantees a large income, but not a regular one), or they work with a builder (or are good builders themselves) and script objects. A scripted object sells for much more than an unscripted one (even a simple lamp that turns on and off will sell for more than the same lamp without a script). Amazing scripts which work perfectly well are usually “given away” by posting them in the forums or on the Bad Geometry Wiki (currently at http://secondlife.com/badgeo). Again, take into account that most “tricks of the trade” were already found out by the master programmers doing scripting for one and a half year. Still, there are new insights and development from complete newbies who come to the world without any idea of “established best practices” and try to innovate.

You have probably found out that you can buy all types of animations for your avatar, too. Animations are done on a special 3D animation program. There are lots of them available — many, like Blender, are for free — but Second Life requires a special format used by the expensive program called Poser. Poser (http://www.curiouslabs.com/go/products/poser) is quite easy to learn — even if you are not an expert — and if you have never done 3D animations before, you’ll be doing your first ones after a few hours of playing around in Poser and reading tutorials. Free alternatives are DAZ|Studio (http://www.dazstudio.com/) or the popular, very light-weigth Avimator (http://avimator.com) which is an open-source application developed by some talented SL residents!

Simple animations are easy to do, and that’s why they usually are given away for free. Complex animations — like dances — are very, very hard, and often they even require capturing a real person doing the dance, translating her movements into a special file format, and tweaking it in Poser to upload. This requires professional (or at least semi-professional) hardware and a studio, and hours of work. That is the reason for not existing many animators in SL, and there is relatively low competition — just a handful of “professional animators” doing business.

The Forums

The forums at http://forums.secondlife.com (and many blogs and external sites) are the “life outside Second Life”. Since you can’t meet a reasonable number of people at the same time inworld (one sim will hold a maximum of 50 avatars or so, but if you have 25 at the same spot, it’s so laggy that people tend to go away), one way to discuss things with a far wider audience is on the forums. Still, remember that while you sometimes have up to 10,000 people or so inworld, the last record was 350 people at the forums at the same time. Despite its million posts on more than 100,000 threads, the forums represent a tiny part of Second Life’s population — perhaps just 10%, more likely only 5%.

You can discuss about everything in the forums — as is typical for most web-based forums anyway — but even if you don’t really care much about discussing and arguing offline, the forums are a precious source for staying in touch with developments in Second Life. News and important information are announced by the Lindens here. Most events are also announced — and sometimes with more information than on the “event blurb” inworld. And here you can also see job offering, announcements on sales or on people to hire. Finally, there are the “technical forums”, where people help each other with tips and tricks, or even post free scripts.

All normal rules of behavior apply to the forums (ie. both the ToS and the Community Standards). Several are moderated, and this means that you should try to be cordial and informative on the forums, or risk to be expelled by a moderator. Remember that the people reading your posts could meet you inworld!

Moderation vs. Addiction

Some last notes about the psychological effects of Second Life. Like several other games, Second Life is not for everyone — many new people join, test the environment for a few hours, and give it up as hopelessly boring — but, if you like SL after the initial period, the probability of “enjoying it too much” is very high.

The CEO of Linden Lab, Philip “Linden” Rosedale, attributes the addictiveness to Second Life mostly to creativity and a lack of rules. You can be whoever you want to be in Second Life, and do whatever you want to do. If you conform to ToS — a few “common sense” rules — there is not much more that people can “force” you to do, so you feel a degree of enhanced freedom that usually is absent in the real world. For some people, this can be an overwhelming experience.

I can olny recommend moderation. If you feel that you’re enjoying Second Life too much, set hard guidelines for connecting and disconnecting times — and keep to them. Have your friends know about your scheduled time inworld and respect it as well as reminding you it’s time to logout.

After all — you want to have FUN in Second Life!

last updated: 2006/07/25