What if someone threw a party....

I've been thinking about the general reluctance of people to use Secondlife, it's hard for regular users to understand why people don't give it a go.

I was very reluctant to try also, and now of course I wouldn't want to be without it.

My own reason was perhaps because I don't see myself as a videogames player, and that's mostly got to do with the themes of videogames... I don't like the idea of shooting, to me that seems really eight-bit... "there's the alien, shoot it" far too simple.

Or beat someone up... why? what is the point of it? to get some aggression out?
I remember my PE teacher advising that was a good thing to do, dunno why, my pillow was always my friend and I wished I'd had it during all those maths classes.

Yes I'm a number hater, or truthfully speaking, maths bore me.
Yes I realise they have a practical use.

Anyway, I don't think I had any aggression towards anyone, at least not at highschool, I was so laid back that I think that I must have slept through most of my school life.

Anyway, Videogames.... While always enthusiastic about the technology, the sounds and the graphics, I soon discovered that if you have two japanese kicking 10 kinds of shit out of each other on a 16-bit machine, it's going to be the same game on each new generation of machine making me wonder if there was any point in moving beyond the C-64.

So here I was, being asked to go on Secondlife, which I thought was going to be another naff computer game... until I saw it on Beyond Tomorrow, That's when I saw the possibilities that made it much richer than something with a pre-planned format.

I think this is one of the difficulties most new people have with it, the gamers who are so keen to sign up with this free software and get their guns and blast people.

The creators of secondlife, say "Here you go, here it is" the gamer responds "what is it?" and the reply is "Whatever you want it to be!"

When I was at help island, the training ground area on secondlife, I found a lot of people asking "where do I buy guns" and "where can I get a job" lots of WoW refugees with no idea, it's actually quite funny to go there and hear these poor confused buggers wonder what on earth they've struck.

The problem is with these folk is they lack any imagination at all, they want a pre-programmed, linear "something to do", they want to be told what to do, which isn't how secondlife works.

So those people leave pretty quick most of the time [the residents would say "good riddance"]

For people who have heard the right stuff about Secondlife, Help island is murder... it's a rotten laggy place with griefers [idiots who can't think about much else than blasting people and have a sixteen word vocabulary in the form of mutated acronyms]

These people I'd welcome into Secondlife with open arms, They're what we need, people who have a genuine need to chat, to explore ideas, try new things and bring something wonderful with them which we'll benefit from.

But I often wonder if people like this, see help island and disappear, with the impression that that is what secondlife is.

Yes there are technical reasons people don't join too... no broadband access, limited downloads... Oh you'll like this... not everyone understands megabytes and gigabytes, and because of this, I hear people on TV trying to make a molehill into a mountain... I have come up with a very easy way to understand what's impressive and what sucks.

Next time you hear XX Gigabytes per month, Think of a naked man, and in your head, imagine inches rather than Gigabytes... if you're not impressed, it's not worth it.

I get 25Gigabytes per month from internode, it's a much better deal than you'll get from the top players who offer lousy downloads like "A whopping five gigabytes a month!" Woo-Hoo!

There's computer limitations too, you need a good computer to run secondlife, but you can limp along on older ones too.

And finally, not all that many people know what it is, or that it's available, despite it being around since 2001.

What are your thoughts on this?

Wolfie!