I took a trip into the world of Second Life recently. The idea behind this virtual world is that people can do what ever they like with their avatars. They can fly, build, buy, change appearances, and even enter into relationships with other players. I made my avatar, named Minmax, and spent half an hour wandering around and getting used to the world and controls. My first impression was not exactly good. As I am something of a gamer, the worlds that one could enter into seemed very small and limited. There were many options of places to go, but beyond site seeing, I felt like there was nothing to do. What interactions I had with other avatars was, frankly, stupid and something of a waste of time. None of the theme worlds really gave anything to me and the socializing users seemed to all to be trying to impress me or to get my avatar to do something sexual. Compared to some of the other online worlds I’ve spent time in, this one felt very shallow and pointless, and the load time was annoying. The idea of the game is interesting, but the execution just feels lacking to me, as I’m used to fast, more streamline and, most importantly goal oriented worlds.

My avatar reflects my disinterest in the game. I named him/her/it Minmax. It was nice being able to customize what the character looked like to such degree, but then having to pay for anything else did not seem worth the cost. I looked through the character bio options and added a few basic things, but I simply didn’t feel connected enough to want to write a back story for an avatar that I had no connection with, as I could change it at any time and had spend no time developing it in any measurable sense.