Second Life

BlueArsedFly · 18-12-2011 12:45pm #1

Anyone used this? Signed up for it the other night & found it fairly enjoyable wandering about but definitely a fair share of nutjobs running around.

SecondLife.com

A colleague mentioned briefly a few weeks back that there's money to be made on it. But how? Presumably it's in developing online stores for companies?

Beth · 18-12-2011 1:46pm

Yep, played it for a while but it got too expensive with land fees and because their releases of the software got worse and worse. Nearly everything that happens in the real world can happen in there - plenty of loons, plenty of scams, people property flipping and so on but the creativity in there can amaze you.

You can make money buying and selling land, making skins and selling them, making clothes, hair, furniture and so on and selling them from a shop. You either have to buy land to sell from or rent land to sell from (unless you can find the free spots that will allow you to sell up to 5 things - which wont make a lot of money). You also have to figure out how to market the things you sell, just like in the real world.

Its a good laugh when playing it with a few friends, and losing yourself for a few hours in it but can be quite dangerous and has wrecked some amount of lives. One girl that i used to explore SL with, got too involved in the make believe world, found herself a boyfriend in there and paid no attention to her real life hubby or kid. She used get up, log on and spend all day in there til it was time for bed (or 2 days later :rolleyes: ), nothing was done bar catering to the game. Eventually they split up and her only worry was how would she afford to pay for her internet connection and her land fees, rather than worrying about how to fix the marriage and her son.

If you go into it with the sense of it being just a game and a way to pass an hour or two, its good fun. But any of the clothing makers, furniture makers and so on, have to spend a lot of time on the computer dealing with design, before the stuff ever makes it in-world, then spend time in there making the stuff, then packaging it up and sorting it in their shops. Then you've the marketing on top of that so its very very easy to end up spending all day either in SL or doing "stuff" for SL.

I dont know if its still there or not, but there was a sim called the Greenies in there. Everythign was gigantic compared to the avatar, and it was a great sim to just explore and be amazed at what people can create. If its still there, its worth a look, because everything was made from a "prim" or many of them, all which would have started life as a square or a circle.

BlueArsedFly · 18-12-2011 1:55pm

Wow! Amazing to hear people can get so attached to a game! & very said in your friend's case who probably would've been better off on heroin from the sounds of things.

Certainly won't be getting into it to the extent required to make money, going by your synopsis there. Thanks for the reply.

Beth · 18-12-2011 4:14pm

Play it for a while - its a good place to explore and its very easy to meet groups of people that share the same interest as you. However, its also very easy to get absorbed in it just like any game.

CSI had a sim there a while back where you'd figure out the murderer, just like on TV

There's quite a few real world companies have a presence in there too.

Find a sandbox, and learn about building stuff (you cant build on private land owned by someone else, and you cant build on roadways - the only place is a sandbox unless you own your own land) - then when you can see how it is difficult enough to do, exploring the worlds will amaze you and you'd wonder how people did it!

Good fun though

niall_h · 22-12-2011 12:58pm

Hearing a lot about this game lately & thinking of signing up. Anyone else used it?

Nypd · 04-01-2012 4:34am

I operated within SL for over 3 years, originally I joIned out of curiosity And after a bit of wandering around I ended up on a role play sim.
The sim was medieval fantasy and I have to say it was very easy to get totally immersed into the environment.
I played constantly in the sim developing a caracter and became a designer making weapons for the game.
My weekly turnover became very good and I was regularly taking 300/400 dollars a month out of it.

As some posts said above it can become extremely addictive and in the end I needed to step away back into RL (real life)

SL is fun and I still have contact with a handfull of people that I met there but look at it as an advanced form of social media were time management is crucial otherwise you will spend all day on it.