Final Project - Places

West of Ireland:

Both Laura and I have always wanted to go to Ireland so we searched for an island that would portray our interests. When we arrived on the West of Ireland island, it was night. There were stars in the sky and it seemed to be quite cold. When we teleported, we landed in an information center with many places to teleport to on the island. It seemed to be a small village remeniscent of a small Irish town. There were Christmas lights on the trees, as well as Christmas trees, snowmen and holiday decorations on the store fronts. No one else seemed to be on the island. Wandering around, we found an area with smoke and strange boxes. We learned that this island was a charity island to support children in need. People can donate money to the organzation and in return can roam the island for free. Since it was night and no one was around, the island seemed pretty dead. On to the next!

Dino Park:

While traveling around Second Life we also happened to find a Dinosaur Park, a theme park along the lines of Jurassic Park where you can see Dinosaurs “up close”. The person who programmed the island even had a mystery for the guests to solve. Someone had broken in and taken the security barrier down, and we had to find out why. Inside the park were different shops that sold things. You could rent a dinosaur to ride around on, or as a pet. You could by t-shirts and food at concession stands around the park. All in all it seemed like we were really in a theme park! It was pleasantly surprising.

Sleek Beach:

When we arrived at Sleek Beach it seemed very modern. It was daytime and the island was filled with people. The sun was shining and it was obviously a beach dedicated to the body. There was a gym overlooking a beautiful ocean with palm trees. You could try out the equipment simply by clicking on the machine and clicking train. We tried running on the treadmills and an ab workout on the floor mats, it was a great workout! When we explored more there was a sort of aerobic class going on. Everyone was dancing and there was music on. There were spots to relax in, with large flowered chairs overlooking the beach. It seemed as though everyone on the island knew each other or had at least been there before.Everyone was talking and it was obvious they were more experienced on Second Life due to their attire and the way they acted. It was interesting to see how everyone interacted with each other.

Tahoa Mounatin Ski Resort

Since it has been snowy here in Morgantown, we decided to visit a ski resort where we could play around with some cold weather sports. When we arrived at the resort it was early in the evening and snowing. The ground and trees were covered in thick white snow. When we teleported, we landed in the village nestled in between the mountains. There were shops around and people wandering through them. There were two taxis, one to take you to the top of the mountain and the other to take you to the ice rink. We took the ice rink taxi to the Mountain Top ice rink. During the ride up, we noticed very large houses nestled into the side of the mountain. When we arrived at the top of the mountain, there was a lounge called "The Grizzly Bear Pub." We first tried to skate with the free basic skates that were offered next to the rink but did not have much luck. Our skates would not attach to our bodies. Instead we decided to just walk on the ice rink. There was a holdifay setup in the middle of the rink with a snowman and holly. It was a pretty place. Although there weren't many people around at first, more people started to show up. There was a woman ice skating and someone who seemed to be confused because they had skiis on trying to skate on the rink. We decided then to travel inside of the pub. There was a nice dance floor with different ways you could learn how to dance. There was a fire place on the opposite of the dance floor where you could drink free hot coffee and relax in comfortable chairs.

Candy Land:

As we were searching through the map on Second Life we saw a square called Candy Land. Curiosity got the better of us, so we went to see what it was about. The teleport point that we chose put us in a forest, but the trees didn’t look like normal trees. After clicking on a few of them we realized that in Second Life they have gardeners; people who program different types of trees and sell them, kind of like a geneticist. The other things we found on the island were a little town with a merry-go-round in the middle, a cottage called Storybrook Cottage, with nothing inside, and at the very top of one of the mountain peaks, a piano and a dance floor with, what we assumed were dresses.

Final Project - Thoughts on Second Life

Second Life has become, for me something that I view as an alternate world. I do not know if I agree with Dibble’s theories about the economic market in Second Life that he discussed in his book “Play Money” but I do know that I am now starting to see what he meant by an alternate reality. The reality of Second Life merges so often with the reality of the outside world. Dibbell’s observations on the ‘noob’ and how they become immersed in the game are starting to become real to me.
Dibble gives us a look inside the players world with his statement about how he, “knew the lizard men were only computer programs, but they had killed me often enough when I was just starting out that I still felt a tiny thrill of revenge watching them die.” His description of how the lizard men killed him is something that most video game players can identify with, feeling as though their avatars represent themselves. This identification with an avatar, as I have found, seems to come more with time than anything else. I don't feel as though I have played in Second Life long enough to feel the strong emotions that Dibbell has towards his avatar, but in other video games that I have played I have experienced it.
I have found though, that the difference between Second Life and a MMORPG is that Second Life seems to me to be an alternate life, the players fantasy, rather than a fantastical one. Creating an avatar in Second Life allows you to recreate yourself and to live your life with seemingly more control than we are allowed to have in a life outside of the video game. I compare Second Life to a giant chat room that has visuals. It allows you to reach out to other people and to live your life vicariously through your avatar. Whereas, with Dibbell’s experiences in Ultima Online there was a goal, earning money and prestige for yourself within the confines of the game, Second Life does not have a goal, XP or completing quests, like your typical MMORPG. Instead Second Life allows people to live out their lives normally, but to be able to express things that they can’t in real life or to meet people that they otherwise would not have an opportunity of meeting.
Second Life, like a few other programs also affords its users the opportunity to meet and chat with people in an environment that they can control. They have visuals and different types of settings. You can go on online dates and walk through parks and see beautiful flowers, and it is almost like you are there with the person. It is a substitute for reality, but not always a replacement for it. This is one of the main advantages of Second Life, you can use it as a way of communicating with other friends and meeting new people, but it does not, as online games often do, become a need to win or to constantly improve. There is no winning because there is no challenge. It is just for fun!

Project 2

My persona was one that I used in a previous class. Her name is Cally Ducane and she lives in New Orleans, LA. I used her old facebook, myspace, delicious account, and blog, but I added a twitter account and a few google maps to flesh out her persona.

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=676949123
Myspace - http://www.myspace.com/callyla
Delicious - http://delicious.com/CallyD
Blogger - http://callyla.blogspot.com/
Twitter - http://twitter.com/CallyD
Google Maps - Cally's Cruise , Hometown Places

Swoon

I'm not really sure how I feel about this book. One thing that I have not been able to get past is the idea that has been drilled into our heads as children of the internet, don't trust people that you meet online. It is something that has come up so many times in the reading, but does not really work with this book. There is a certain discord that I get from reading the conversations, even knowing that the person is being honest. I just can't seem to get past all of that to consider their relationship as something that is real and honest.
I do like the idea of this, being that you are representing yourself completely online, not over the phone or on a web cam, which are more common nowadays. This is the truest expression of identity online.

Instigation

The topic of today's reading seems to be the line between virtual reality and real life. Or rather, in more specific terms, the line in which an online game can become a danger to its players and how much of the online world should affect the people that are involved in it. In previous classes we have discussed the issues of online attacks or abuse causing real life harm, but what is it when the harm is online as well. Julian Dibbell's A Rape in Cyberspace is an article that raises this very question. Players were harmed virtually in the world, but what was the perpetrator's punishment to be? The players in the virtual world of LamdaMOO decided that the punishment should be in the world of the MOO, where the crime was committed. The problem with this is that there is no set form of punishment for the players who commit crimes such as these, and there is no way to keep them from coming back onto the game with a different login. Dibbell's other article shows us just this. The members of the group The Patrotic Nigras, after getting their Second Life personas banned or frozen, just kept creating new accounts in order to harass the players in the SL world. The questions that come to mind when reading these two articles are: What, if any, are the effective punishments for the crimes committed in online games? Is it even worth it to punish these players at all? Do you think they have a point in their mockery of the people of the Second Life and LamdaMOO communities? What are your thoughts on the fact that some of these “greifers” make a living solely based on their activities online? Is this a moral thing to do or to be, or is this taking advantage of people who just want to be left alone, and should be?

Wikipedia Project

I put the final edits on our wikipeida project. I am not too happy with the final product because, along with most of our group, I feel that it could look a little prettier. We did seem to have some trouble with learning how to post pictures and organize things to look right. The final page can be found here. The tasks that I ended up doing were some basic copy editing on the page for dog food and some style editing on the page for a book called Rainbow Boys.

Trolling...

I think that the pleasure of trolling is the same pleasure that someone gets out of teasing someone in school. He is a bit smarter than your average schoolyard bully, so his teasing and pranks are a bit more extreme, but it is the equivalent of a snotty girl spreading rumors or a bully taking kids lunch money. It is an online version of making yourself feel better by making others feel small, with the results and the intentions being the same, but representing itself as fighting for justice or helping out society.