My Second Life

I decided to make take on a second life in Second Life. My avatar's name is Nabi Dragoone, a precocious and inquisitive, simplistic person who is trying to figure out her life in Second Life. She is the opposite of my actual self with long brown hair, pale skin and brown eyes. I decided to make her pretty simplistic. She's wearing a black long sleeve tee shirt with gray pants and black heels. I'd like to say Nabi is quiet, precocious and inquisitive when she wants to be, but otherwise she's a loner and stays in the background. An observer, for the most part, Nabi's first encounter was with a group of people who gathered in an area of Second Life called Bear. In Bear, the weather is some what crappy with grey skies.







1) SL provides a general local chat area that is located at the bottom on the game screen. Chat lines only run up to about 5 lines on screen to provide maximum display. There is also an IM section which pops open a mini screen to allow for private messages between avatars. The interface design is text based which provides you information on location (map), your inventory, searching for locations and people, where to communicate with people and how, snapshots and flying. The interface is located at the bottom of the screen in a simple sleek one lined design.

2) The non-interface designs consists of volume control, music playback and stop, directional arrows, and building structures.

3) Motion for my avatar is some what gilchy, I first worked on getting my avatar made, modeling and shaping her character design with an interface that had options on the left with a previewed image of my avatar on the right. Shapes are very smooth, ranging from characters to buildings they all contain geometric shapes that are smooth and fluid in shape.

4) Goals and tasks are giving to the character at the beginning of the game in the form of a box located in the upper left corner. This is obviously not part of the normal game play so it draws your attention to the box automatically. It at first contained information on how to move your avatar, change appearances, fly, map location, etc

5) The chat feature makes me feel like I am really in the world. Because of the extensive amount of people I have encountered and the number of people I have talked to the chat feature is the most immersive feature in the entire game. Second would be the ability to move around anywhere you want. I think the idea of inventory is good in a game, its like carrying around a wallet, but the way inventory is featured as a popup box is weird. It should be more immersive like going back to ones home base and putting the inventory away to be picked out again.

6) I spoke with a few avatars, one spoke to me about their college years and that they were doing research for educational purposes and another game me free hair to use.

7) I have yet to get into the full economy of the world, but people use actually dollar currencies to buy and participate in events. The few that I've participated in were free.

8) My favorite activity was participating in a new Hip Hop DJ group that held dance parties every night from 8pm to 10pm.

9) Hovering over objects tell how what they are otherwise they are obvious and are labelled on how to use them.