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| The best place in Second Life |
Things that I've been up to:
- No good.
- Finished reading Pippin Barr's book
- This poopy educational gaming class
- working four jobs
- being sick three times in a row
- moving
- going to the abandoned amusement park known as Second Life
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| My Second Life avatar: CaptainWobbegong Resident |
It was recently realized by one of my friends that all of the computers in the library studio have Second Life installed. Second Life is a virtual environment that really rose in popularity during early/mid 2000 in academia, entertainment, and even politics. It is now quite vacant and dying a very slow painful death.
My friend came to the studio (I work there) to do some work and noticed the peculiar program, beginning an interesting conversation. She then went on to create an amazing creature; the demigod we now know and love as Poopypops.
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| Poopypops Resident |
No matter where Poopypops went, the few people who were online would flee. Soon a few more people, including myself, began appearing on Second Life and exploring the environment for ourselves. I was pleasantly surprised. For me, it was reminiscent of my experience with World of Warcraft because my favorite aspect was exploration. As the years passed, I became too familiar with every nook and cranny of that world and it started to feel a little like a pre-set Disney ride for babies.
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| Captain Wobbegong and HoneyButts enjoy a sign in a museum. |
But Second Life is different. Second Life is a user-modified beast. It's hideous, sure, but it's a sandbox. It's an abandoned sandbox full of things that no longer retain their intended contexts and other unique experiences. The people...I'm a little suspicious of them and why they still use SL. But I'm not part of their society. I'm a foreigner in their eyes.
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| Captain Wobbegong enjoys the Second Life museum |
It's a ghost town for the most part, but I would like to do something
with SL and redefine how it can be interacted with.
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| I think I actually remember seeing this project on 60 Minutes some years ago... |
Two really great things in particular that I think are worth checking out are the Univ. of Queensland's Schizophrenia simulation (linked to the SL map location) and the churches/monastaries/temples. I got to attend a Christian church while I was there and it was really bizarre/interesting to see people practicing their religious doctrine/rituals in that space. I even saw people's avatars doing yoga outside of a Hindu temple. Most of the areas are abandoned, locked away, or altogether gone.
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So I've been really holding off from really talking about my educational gaming class because I'm still trying to figure out my place in it. It's halfway over and I couldn't be more grateful for that.
This educational gaming class is killing me. 90% of everyone is in education, more than half the class doesn't play games, and there's that one really ignorant lady who always twists every conversation into how her life experiences are move valuable or enriched than everyone else's and that videogames turn people into killers. The other day, she proudly announced with a huge fucking smile on her face that a baby died in Korea because videogames were indirectly tied to the neglectful parents. Does her bloodlust know no bounds?
I knew it wouldn't be like my other gaming class and I welcomed the challenge that none of my classmates would be from an art background, but I'm finding it very hard to stay motivated and engaged in the class. Doing the readings isn't an issue for me. The issue is that I have to write a chunk of shit after every single thing only to be told by my professor in response that my opinion is consistently wrong or incorrect without really getting into any actual detail that would help put me on "the right path." He's really hard to talk to and I feel like he's not really that invested in the class... I took the class to learn, not to get the perfect grade, and I'm learning a lot...about educators not valuing the arts...
That sort of reminds me...I finished reading Pippin Barr's book a while back, How to Play a Video Game. I loved his essays on interfaces and game values, but I didn't anticipate that the book was very basic. Regardless, it was a good read and a great primer for people interested in critical gaming (or gaming in general). I think that a lot of people are starting on McGonigal, but Barr's book is much more realistic with console game examples. McGonigal is more about social aspects of games, diverging out from general games. It ends with some great resources. Now I'm reading (inbetween some Kurt Squire stuff for class) Ian Bogost's Unit Operations when I have time...which isn't much time anymore.
On top of all of that is my new job in a design firm near campus. I've learned so much from just the first two weeks of being there. Working with actual clients is a novel experience for me, although the particular client isn't the most...respectful. The other day, I showed her the wireframe for the account page I made and she questioned my gender, which really wasn't necessary to continue through with discussion what the page needed to be changed to...but it's their money, I suppose... ¬_¬
There were a lot of things that I intended to do this summer, but I haven't had much time at all. I'll be moving across the street to my new apartment next week. What a pain.
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Journal entry for June 20th:
A few days ago, I started playing some MUDs, Second Life, as well as Civ III, and I started thinking about the process involved in the story that Squire talked about where the students were learning how to write in their own MUDs.
A couple of my friends and I had a similar experience growing up, but with web design. It was around 1996 or 1997 (age 9) when people could just sign up for free to get their own web pages on services that had templates. As these templates became more customizable, many people my age were looking at the code and painstakingly teaching themselves these concepts in order to make the coolest web page or forum. There was a turning point when I stopped doing this and focused entirely on learning Photoshop while many of my friends to this day are web designers. I am currently trying to teach myself to code websites, but it doesn't come as easily when I was little. I always believed that the compulsion to learn when one is very young is so strong that one would be willing to struggle through the steep learning curve, whereas when one is older, this is more difficult.
Many of us, as little kids, made somewhat useless websites. Mine was a page where I posted my artwork. A particular favorite of mine was the Tamagotchi Graveyard, where owners of Tamagotchis could go to mourn the loss of their virtual friend. Like I mentioned in class, the content that students generate on their own is very questionable, but also showing reflection on what they are learning, encouraging them to explore and establish their own values and methods of thinking. I almost believe that there has to be dissension to get to this.
My favorite example of this is a fanfiction piece that a child wrote in reaction to reading the Diary of Anne Frank. Even though it's absolutely ridiculous, you can just imagine from the child's perspective that they read this book and simply wanted it to end better, creating this story in reaction. When I was in middle school, many classmates wrote risque stories about Harry Potter, one of them even going on to become a fairly well-to-do writer. Fanfiction.net, in turn, was banned in my middle school. Despite this type of reactionary material being somewhat jaw-dropping to some, especially instructors, I think that there is gold where students are putting in their heart and soul, even if they are discouraged. This type of action is similar to the learning that takes place during transgressive gaming, wherein the player plays a game to exploit part of the algorithm for plays within the bounds of their own established rule set. Many games accomodate this by making achievements based around this type of play.
I recently logged onto Second Life for the first time, nearly a ghost town, and realized that the interface is very, very difficult to use. The reason I went to it was because all the writings on it are very interesting, but now the users are so few. I had the opportunity to talk to these people and see what they thought in regard to how Second Life would have to change to remain relevant. I still think that it is potentially a very useful educational tool, but the barriers are too great. (Even for a high powered computer, it is very taxing) Being in Second Life is like being an explorer in ancient ruins. I also got to attend a church service in Second Life, but it was very awkward.
My experience in both SL and the MUDs were similar in that the community is very small and hard to access. It took a lot of time in both to be able to interact with those communities, but I am still an outsider in both.
I'd like to curate an impromptu Second Life convention as an experiment and meet with people there to see what kind of functionality it can have despite the mass desertion of users. The problems with SL that I see, can't be ignored, but it is still an interesting virtual space.
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Bonus: here is a link to the best place in Second Life.
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