User Created Content

            After playing Lord of the Rings online for a few weeks, our class moved onto a new game called Second Life. Second Life is a cool game where you can create almost anything out of basic shapes and actually make real world money off of your creations. Our first official Second Life reading was Escaping the Gilded Cage: User-Created Content and Building the Metaverse by Cory Ondrejka.Ondrejka talks about the importance of user created content for virtual worlds. He claims that by having more user created content in world, we are moving closer to a metaverse (which is basically a place where people can effectively connect and be productive). Many games have come close to this metaverse but no one has been able to achieve it yet. Ondrejka thinks that Second Life is the closest virtual world to being a metaverse due to the allowance of user created content in games. Because people can create rather than craft (crafting is not creating, rather just helping your player get achievements accomplished) in game, "this allows users to create iteratively and interactively, while sharing the act of creation with other users" thus creating a closer community. Ondrejka says that because so many Second Life players contribute to creating their world it makes a strong and diverse social network.

            I have actually played Second Life before so this was not my first time building objects in game. So when we played in class it was a refresher for me. But even though I had played before it took me a bit of playing around to figure out how to create shapes properly (along with doing tasks like coloring, texturing and connecting shapes). It is a lot of fun to create things in Second Life.

I actually ended up creating a small doghouse-like structure as my object. I chose to create a doghouse because my avatar at the time was a German Sheppard so I thought that it would be funny to create a house for him.

For the creation of the doghouse, I used the basic prism tools to create the house. I used the cube and cylinder tool to do most of my work. I created a base, and three back wall panels of the doghouse by stretching out the cube prim to make a floor and walls. I then used stretched cylinders to create columns for the front of the doghouse. I finally finished the house by placing a large pyramid shaped roof over the structure. As for textures, I just used the basic textures that came in my texture pack. I didn’t really feel the need to go out and buy new textures because the ones that I already had were fine for what I was building.

While some people get help building things, I did not end up collaborating with anyone on making my doghouse because I didn’t feel the need to. I was just building something for fun, nothing too big that I would need someone’s help with.

             I think that the user created content really does make Second Life different from most if not all of the games that I have played. Having all of creative creations in world really does make it a different experience. Creating houses, automobiles, and even clothing makes the in game experience awesome. Even though I did not have help creating my doghouse I am pretty sure that if I was creating something bigger, I could get the help I needed considering most of the people I met in-game were quite helpful. If I play Second Life more I feel as though Ondrejka’s argument would apply more than it does to me now.