Second Life is one of the world’s largest online virtual worlds. Millions of “residents” interact with each other everyday through Second Life. Seeing how Second Life has so many users, it seems logical that it would be used for collaboration. On Tuesday, Professor McLeod discussed collaboration in 3-D virtual environments like Second Life.
One benefit of collaborating on Second Life is that it has more of a Face-to-Face feel than other computer-mediated communication tools such as instant messaging. Boellstorff states in his book that virtual worlds may simulate abstractions of reality (91). Second Life allows users to depict themselves through avatars. These avatars can then create communities, go to concerts, find friendship, fall in love, etc.
Second Life also lets many people to meet in one “place”. As shown in the Second Life demonstration in class, many users were able to come together in Professor McLeod’s ‘living room’, creating a much more intimate feel. Although many critics say that there no such thing as a ‘place’ in a virtual world, Boellstorff concludes that “the simultaneous presence of more than one person is why … virtual worlds … could be understood as places” (92).
Another benefit of collaboration in Second Life is the fact that users can experiment with different parts of their personalities. I believe that Professor McLeod brought this example up on Tuesday. People that may be socially awkward can attempt social interactions without such a big consequence. This is because if the conversation does turn awkward, it is not as big of a deal. Chances are you will never see that person, or you can just create a new avatar. This factor of Second Life allows a quiet person to experiment being more outgoing, determine which techniques work best, and bring that into their real life.
Despite the benefits of collaboration in Second Life, it also has drawbacks. As demonstrated through the lecture, Second Life can be very complex and confusing. It was very difficult for Professor McLeod to show the class how to make a couch. In fact, I don’t think anyone was successful in completing the task. This may also be because Second Life can be very distracting. Many classmates ran around the ‘living room’ and played their boxes. As stated before there are millions of users. These users are also very distracting. While on the way to Professor McLeod’s ‘living room’, I ran into users with moving spiky blue hair, users dressed as cats, fairies, and even a firecracker!
Finally, Second Life slang can be a drawback of collaboration. As stated in the lecture, maybe users, especially noobs, may not be familiar with the language and social norms of Second Life.
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I definitely agree with your last point. When Prof McLeod showed the list of slang and talked about the norms, I was kind of intimidated. It seemed like in order to fit in and be successful in-game, it would take a fair amount of learning and adapting to these norms. SL is great because of how easy it is to communicate, but by having a barrier to entry and a well-formed in-group of experienced users, it could be intimidating for noobs to sign up.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting how you mentioned that "avatars can create communities, go to concerts, find friendship, fall in love, etc." The way you said it kind of makes it seem like it's not really millions of REAL people coming together to do things, but millions of empty avatars. I would argue that "avatars" can't fall in love, but the people controlling them do.
ReplyDeleteThat kind of relates to your point about the removal of gating factors and experimentation with personality. It's as if the avatar is a second chance for a person to explore themselves (Second life is a surprisingly appropriate name).