Create another “you” in Second Life

by Louis Bedigian

 

Linden Lab’s clever new simulation game gives everyone the chance to create a ‘second life.’  Cory Ondrejka, Vice President of Product Development, explains how the game works.

 

 

Today was just another day.  We got up, ate some gross-looking goo with a guy who likes Tasty Wheat, and proceeded to jack into The GameZone.

 

Things got interesting - and a little scary - when word leaked that the world is in turmoil.  Supposedly, our only hope is a man who goes by the name of Neo.  That name sounds strangely familiar, though we were unable to put a finger on it at press time.

 

Not knowing what to do next, we visited the only person who knows everything: The Oreo.

 

"What if Neo fails?" we inquired.

 

The Oreo sighed, "Then GameZone will fall."

 

We couldn't believe it.  We were certain that if we could survive the release of several Mary Kate & Ashley games, we could survive anything.

 

"What do we do now?"

 

The Oreo told us to see the Codemaker.

 

It wasn't easy getting to him, but after blowing up two guys who could dematerialize faster than a stomach trying to digest a burrito from Taco Bell, the Codemaker told us what we needed to know.

 

"At the start menu, press Up, Down, Left, Right, A, B, A, B, Start."

 

"And that'll unlock all of the hidden characters?"

 

"That's correct."

 

So what if the world is going to collapse.  If Neo fails, we all fail.  Might as well spend the rest of our life enjoying games...

 

…Or we could always start a second life with the aptly titled Second Life.  Second Life is an online simulation game for the PC.  Its description is vast, and the game’s details practically go on into infinity, so we turned to Cory Ondrejka, Linden Lab’s Vice President of Product Development to get the answers about their intriguing new title.

 

Important Note:  Second Life launched to the public on Monday, June 23, 2003. Everyone is now welcome to explore Second Life - new Residents will receive a 5-day free trial at registration. www.secondlife.com

 

Second Life is described as an online society that is shaped entirely by its residents. What exactly does that mean? How much control, and how much influence do players have over Second Lifes world?

 

Cory Ondrejka: Residents in Second Life can shape the world in a number of different ways. That means you can create any physical object and give it whatever properties you want to, like a flying broomstick or a crashing gong or a glowing halo above your head. It also means you can start or join a group, build and run a business, rate your fellow residents, voice your opinions about in-world issues in a forum, snap photos and share them. You can be an in-world mentor if you want to meet new residents, show them the world, teach them tips and make some Linden Dollars, Second Life’s currency.

 

We say that Second Life is a "society" because the world is also shaped by the personalities residents bring and the way they choose to interact. Second Life already has a colorful multitude of residents, and the dynamic of your experience on any given log-in will be affected by what areas you explore or who you decide to socialize with. For example, we have had an influx of people who want to build in-world communities, as well as immigrants from online war games, and the ways these groups have shaped the society have been quite different.

 

Second Life’s residents also have a great deal of influence and control over the world. While there are some limits—you can’t make the sun rise or the clouds stop floating by—you can lobby for a cause, voice your opinions in Second Life’s active forum, or collaborate to develop themed communities within Second Life—like a Wild West town, a “Gangland” Chicago or a medieval forest village. One group recently carved an entire region into a network of canyons using Second Life’s in-world terra-forming tools. Another is developing an area dedicated to historical Americana, with an old-fashioned gas station and a classic movie set. Because Second Life is a persistent world, the creations you contribute remain for all to see, until you delete them. Residents have told us that collaborating on a project with others and knowing their creations will last gives them a real sense of accomplishment.

 

 

Want this house?

In Second Life, it and much more can be yours.

 

 

As a real-life simulator, it's hard to envision how Second Life will play. Could you describe the gameplay for us?

 

CO: It's an interesting question when you’re talking about Second Life, because unlike most traditional games, Second Life’s gameplay is what you make of it. Imagine in your head for a second what you ideally would want gameplay to be like in an interactive virtual world. Most likely you would want your Second Life to give you richly entertaining and rewarding experiences you can’t have in your first life. So we’ve implemented creation tools, rich economic and social systems, and plenty of leeway to enable residents to make their creative vision a reality.

 

If you are the type that wants to explore new places and people-watch, you can fly all over the place in Second Life, and there’s always something and someone new to see every time you log in. You can socialize, collaborate or conspire to run any type of organization you want. Second Life already has a rich diversity of businesses and social groups.  Also, there are plenty of individual and team competitions to participate in. If you like to build or create, Second Life’s robust in-world creation tools allow you to make anything—from simple to complex, from functional to decorative. If you want to fly around on a dinosaur, fine.

 

If you’re the tycoon type who wants to build Fort Knox to store all your Linden Dollars, be our guest—just be prepared to pay higher taxes if you’re not nice to the little people. You see, any other resident has the power to rate you favorably or unfavorably. Wealth is just one of the leader boards you can try to climb. Basically, if what you want to do in a virtual world isn’t already in Second Life, we invite you to come in, team up with some residents who would be interested in your idea, and make it a reality.

 

 

Second Life’s characters have a unique fashion sense.

 

Second Life features a number of contests and games, such as trivia, sword fights and sporting events. Are these point-and-click-style games, or are they more involved than that?

CO: You’re right, Second Life already has games and contests abounding, including those you mentioned. As for the range of complexity, just about anyone can create their own simple game in Second Life, but many of the ones you’ll find offer more complex gameplay experiences and strategy. Second Life has surf animation and scripts to propel objects very fast, so you can race hoverboards or flying carpets—whatever you want. You can drive a jet ski or walk up to a beach boardwalk and put down a few Linden Dollars on a county fair-style horse race booth. Second Life also has dancing and fighting animation, and you can attach scripts to an object so that the moment your avatar picks it up, it automatically maps relevant movement capabilities to particular keyboard keys. For instance, you could wield a sword and spontaneously work in combination moves. Or pick up a cane and cap and be off dancing like Fred Astaire.

 

How much power do players have to create their own objects in the game? Are there any limits?

 

CO: In Second Life, you can pretty much create whatever your imagination dreams up. You start with geometric primitives that can be molded, stretched, twisted and affixed to one another, and you can attach scripts to any object to give it kinetic qualities. This opens the door to doing just about anything, from marking the entrance to your ice cave with burning fireballs to mounting missile launchers on the wall of your secret fortress to keep out invaders. When you start out, you can get a lot of great tips about building and scripting from helpful residents or readily available scheduled group lessons. You can develop your building skills as much or as little as you would like. If it’s not your thing, there are plenty of residents creating amazingly cool things who would be happy to sell you their goods.

 

As for limits, the ones we’ve put in place serve to make things a little more interesting and challenging in Second Life. To begin with, you have to use the world’s physical properties that run on the in-world physics engine. Although your avatar is free to fly, to make a rocket fly takes energy, and when you’re giving objects active scripts, there are energy limitations. For example, you might be able to accelerate a pellet-sized object incredibly fast across a long distance, but you aren’t going to do the same with a boulder. Also, you have a finite amount of Linden Dollars at any given point in time. You receive a regular stipend and you can make money through free enterprise, but you have to pay a regular tax on all the content you keep in the world. This both taxes those with the most, and it also keeps the world from becoming a trash heap of rejected hand-me-down objects. If you no longer want something—say you’ve bought a better guitar or a bigger gun—just delete it or sell it, and you no longer have to pay taxes on it. Second Life’s economy has been geared to encourage people to create interesting objects that other residents will demand.

 

Also, residents can set limitations to protect and benefit from their creations. For instance, let’s say a resident hones her skills in crafting houses and builds a prairie-style house and a haunted mansion. She could set the prairie house to allow an unlimited number of modifiable duplicates and sell them at a modest price, but then only allow one non-modifiable duplicate of the haunted mansion and command a higher price. You can see how the ability to own your creations, in conjunction with Second Life’s economy encourages the creation of desirable content and entrepreneurial imagination.

 

 

The Rolling GameZones will be performing at the Imaginary Amphitheater on July 25^th.

 

Will there be a modification tool in the final version of the game, allowing programmers to expand on the Second Life universe and take it even further?

 

CO: Yes, since Second Life’s in-world creation tools are one of the signature elements of what makes it unlike any other virtual world—ultimately your world—we will continue to emphasize them in the commercial version. Avatar modification and creation tools help residents personally shape an ever-evolving landscape and narrative history in Second Life. As I mentioned before, the things residents build in the world, whether it’s a fortress, forest village or cyberpunk café, shapes both the environment and the experience from that point on. We have spent a lot of effort making the tools powerful enough for those who might bring 3-D modeling or scripting skills into Second Life, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t so complex that you couldn’t learn through tips and trials. I think we’ve struck a good balance.

 

We also wanted to let residents collaboratively build in real time. In order to do this, we had to be able to stream the whole experience over a broadband Internet connection, so we pioneered our patent-pending advanced compression technology and implemented a scalable grid of servers on which the whole world resides. These two innovations allowed the world to be infinitely expandable and completely dynamic and malleable to the user’s imagination. This set in motion the continuous evolution you now see in Second Life. It’s been extremely rewarding to watch some residents become more proficient users of our system than some of us at Linden Lab. On a couple occasions, someone has created something so inventive that we find ourselves asking, "How did they do that?" So while a majority of the new content will be generated from our inventive residents, we will continue to seed content by way of monthly events. We will also optimize the 10MB client with any new features that would improve the product and overall experience.

 

Are any romantic themes promoted in Second Life? Can players date others within the game, and eventually get married?
 

CO: While we've promoted bringing people together for amicable interaction in Second Life, we have stayed away from making it seem like a dating service. To be consistent with Second Life's open-ended experience, we wanted to leave it up to residents to choose how and with whom they socialize. Not surprisingly, with thousands of interesting people already living a Second Life in the current beta, romance has come about naturally, including large, ornate weddings. Some have been for in-world only marriages, and others pour over into residents' first lives. I remember the first resident-created wedding. It was completely organized and attended by the residents, who built an incredibly detailed church, decorations, a cake, and hors d'oeuvres to boot!

 

Also, as you might imagine, many of the social barriers that might stand in your way from interacting with a stranger in the real world are removed in a virtual world like Second Life, so that automatically makes interaction easier. Still, events like campfire chats, treasure hunts or trivia contests are a great way to make friends by sharing fun experiences. When Second Life was early in closed beta testing, Linden Lab was organizing a lot of these activities. Over time we’ve handed Second Life over to the residents more and more, and at this point, residents have been hosting a majority of these events. Lately, there have been over 50 events each week.

 

I want a house like this...

 

The soundtrack of the real world is any CD, radio station or instrument that we happen to be playing. How is music incorporated into Second Life? [Are any specific genres featured in the game -- pop, rock, techno, etc.?]

 

CO: Second Life’s is a rich world of physical sounds and boundless possibilities for music. If you drop a metal rod, it clangs. Drop wood, it thuds. You can also easily attach short sound clips to objects. One example is when you cross over the wall to enter into the anything-goes Outlands, you hear an ominous undercurrent of foreboding music. You can also synchronize sounds with your avatar’s gestures. So you can wink and wolf whistle, or you can grimace and growl.

 

But as you referred to, we also wanted to enable and encourage people to bring their musical creativity into the world rather than impose a soundtrack on it. We worked with a couple of professional musicians, who helped us implement metronomic synchronization within Second Life, which basically means, when you’re making music, it synthesizes instruments so that every note seamlessly fits into the right beats. Based on this we introduced a simple band-in-a-box kit a couple months back. It consists of a drum set, a guitar, bass and keyboard, and literally anyone with a musical cell in their body can open it up and start fooling around with four-part musical compositions. Of course, some people are more musically inclined than others, so some of our residents can do things that just blow us away. You can also go into a Second Life disco to try out your DJ skills in front of a dance floor audience. You start out with a number of preset licks and beats to choose from, but you can also download your own sound clips onto the sliders of the mixing board. Neither of these was complicated to build, and we fully expect for residents to come along and far out-do these basic but amazingly fun musical instruments.

How was Second Life's price point of $14.95 per month received at E3?

CO: Our pricing has been well received. I think people appreciate that they can download the free Second Life viewer in under a minute, and that they don’t have to buy a $30-50 box product before they start their subscription as with some other online games. It’s also important to note that we’ll be offering discounts to beta testers and people who sign up for longer-term subscriptions. We’ve even had substantial demand for lifetime memberships, so we’re going to offer a limited number of them. We’ll make all of those details available when Second Life releases commercially later this month.

 

 

…Or maybe this.

 

 

Have you heard any feedback from anyone who is participating in the beta version? How do they feel about the price?

 

CO: We have been lucky to have a lot of great feedback from beta participants about all kinds of things, anything from in-world policies to simplifying our in-world creation tools to pricing. Their feedback has been an invaluable contribution to why we’ve been successful in creating a virtual world that allows so much room for creative expression. For that reason, as I mentioned, we wanted to reward our beta testers by offering special subscription rates to those who register before June 23^rd. So now is a great time to sign up by going to www.secondlife.com.

 

Very cool.

 

Thank you for your time Cory.