Second Life - I just don't get it

Last year, I read an article on the first person to become a "Second Life" millionaire. This person had accumulated enough virtual wealth to become the equivalent of a millionaire in real life. At the time I had no idea what Second Life even was, so I looked into it a little.

What is Second Life, you may ask? The description from Linden Lab, the creators of the phenomenon, say "Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents". Residents are represented by online avatars, that they can modify to look like whatever they want, and interact with each other in the virtual world.

Second Life has its own economy, and subscribing residents are alloted a certain amount of Linden Dollars a week, based on their level of subscription. Older free accounts get a monthly allotment, but newer free accounts do not, after their initial signup. Subscribing residents can also purchase additional Linden dollars using real currency (the going rate is US$10 will buy you L$2580). These $L can be used to purchase things within the Second Life environment, like clothing, cars, even rent on housing for your avatar (I am pretty sure about this one). L$ can be converted back to real currency, although that rate isn't nearly as good (L$2580 gets you US$8.99 back). Linden Labs takes a cut of every transaction that occurs (a flat US$0.30 for buying L$ and 3.5% of the transaction for the sale of L$).

Where the real money appears to come in, however, is in the purchase of "land" in the virtual 3D world. Every paying subscriber can "own" 512 square meters of land, free of any maintenance fees (these monthly fees can get to be quite steep). Land first needs to be purchased. This is where the money comes in. More Residents want land than there is land available, so the price of land within Second Life has risen dramatically (also, you must be a premium member, at $9.95/month).

There apparently is tons of stuff to do in Second Life, social interactions, games, "creating" objects to sell to other residents, making, in fact a "second life" for yourself. It sounded terribly time consuming and actually pretty dull to me at the time, so I thought, "huh, that's interesting, but not for me", and promptly forgot about it.

Every so often in the next few months, I would see a reference to Second Life somewhere, and thought, " I should really take a look at it", but didn't. About a month ago, I changed my mind and signed myself up for a free basic account (My name is Angua Villota), just to check out the basics.

Well, I was not impressed. Your avatar starts out in a basic tutorial site, where you are supposed to learn the basics, like how to move around, how to buy things, how to change the physical appearance of your avatar, etc. There is a tutorial window that is supposed to help you through the 4 sections that teach you things, but I accidentally closed it and couldn't figure out how to reopen it, even after extensive searches in the Knowledge base.

After the basic tutorials, you go onto Help Island, where you are supposed to figure out how to do more complicated things, like build items. This was very frustrating for me, because the instructions are displayed on these huge billboards, which in a word, Suck. Most of the time, when I tried to advance to the next screen of text, it came out really blurry and completely unreadable. I would have to reload it multiple times to get to view it.

I really didn't find Help Island all that helpful.

The other annoyance was the other newbies that either kept bumping into me all of the time, or just walking right in front of me when I was trying to learn something and blocking my view.

I stayed on Help Island as long as I could stand it (because once you leave it you can never go back), not really learning very much, getting pushed around, and being invited to join several "harems" of mostly Greek men for some reason. I decided to take the plunge into the "real" second life.

I teleported in. I now am in some random place with little understanding where I am and what to do. I may go back sometime and try and figure this out, but most likely I will not. I did not find any of the experience fun or remotely interesting.

Doing a little research, it seems that Second Life and Linden Labs are having several issues. They have been going through explosive growth the past 6-8 months, and their servers can't keep up. Members are worried about losing their inventories. I won't go into details here, but several high profile members have published an open letter to Linden Labs asking them to address major concerns. I think they are being responsive, but time will tell.

This review is NOT a knock on the scores of people who have figured out the fun and interesting parts of Second Life. I am glad that they can enjoy it. I certainly spend my fair share of time on my computer, working, playing games, and reading the news. I just don't see the point of spending so much time, and money on a virtual life. I would rather deal with the issues and relationships of my "first" life.