Building Blocks

When I first logged in to Second Life, I was concerned with two things: making sure my character didn't look like a noob, and learning how to build. After searching some freebies for my avatar, I asked someone at help island how to start building.

My first trip to the sandbox was an interesting one. Spaceships, smoke machines, modern buildings, strange objects and colorful characters filled the stretching sands of the playground. As I worked my way through the sideshow of people yelling and trying to report each other, I finally found a small spot to begin. Like many gamers in SL have figured out, land is hard to come by, even when its temporary and free. So faced with this small square and some big ideas, there was no other way to go but up!

I began with stretching a rectangular prim as far as it would go, then copying it to make a row of large panels. When the pieces would overlap slightly, you could see a sort of flickering in the seems of the panels. At this point I was wishing there was a locking grid for building in SL, something to snap objects together with ease. Of course this existed, and it was only a youtube tutorial away. This is what I like and also what I don't like about second life: there's a huge database of how-to videos and written tutorials, but there needs to be because SL isn't initially very user friendly. Having an in-game building system that isn't easy to figure out on your own makes it hard for new players to get started in SL. From my experience, I'd always rather build the IKEA desk and chair without the instruction manual, its part of the fun and definitely part of the reward (unless you forget a screw.) So for me, building was mostly getting a little done, running into a snag and then hunting for the answers on Google.

Our recent SL building workshop also cleared up some questions of mine and opened up some creative doors. It was really interesting to see a momentum build up as classmates were trying to out-do each other with their creations. Lucky for us, we've all now have a sturdy foundation to build on now.

Building in Secondlife

Being a gamer most of my life, when I first heard about Second Life I was intrigued. Unfortunately, the first time I tried it I was at a loss and had no one to show me the ropes of this huge online world. This time, however, I have been having a lot of fun in the world and have a basic understanding of how things work. I've met people and gone to some interesting places, both good and bad. But building was something I had no idea how to do.

Building in Second Life seemed overwhelming. I've seen amazing creations in the world, and couldn't imagine how it was created. Especially when it comes to drawing, that is not my forte. The building workshop in class was a big help. I was able to quickly learn the basics of how things are created in the game. I made a silly shape that swirled up, and put my calico cat skin on it then painted it red. I was pretty proud of this insanely useless creation.

For me, however, building seems to tedious. I feel like it's a good thing to know how to do, but I couldn't imagine sitting at my computer for hours trying to create something and make the textures for it. As far as Second Life goes, I'd rather go explore the world and meet new people then build. It would be nice to create some things I have wondering around in my head, but I don't have the patience.

I can say though, that so far this time around I am really enjoying Second Life, and hope to learn more about how the game works. Maybe one day I will start building. But for now I'll just wonder aimlessly until I come across something else in the world that looks fun and interesting.

Building for Second Life

I found the built in Second Life tools to be a little limited and frustrating to use, so I decided to see what other programs could be used to model objects for Second Life. After a quick Google search, I found out that most 3D modeling programs could be used, although getting the finished model into SL was the hard part. There is a free program called Blender (download here), another program called AC3D (here) that offers a free 14 day trial, as well as many other options that cost anywhere from $50 to $3000 or more, such as Maya.

One way I discovered to get objects into SL uses AC3D. After your object is modeled, you can export it as a triangle and follow these directions here. Using the triangle importer, I was able to get my model into SL but it was in many pieces. This can be rectified by linking them all together which got frustrating because I always seemed to miss one or two pieces. There is also an artifact left from the triangle importer that has to be manually deleted one face at a time.

Another way I found to import objects was a script for Maya that would theoretically allow exporting for SL, but I was unable to get that to work. It may be that my version of Maya is outdated (it is 3 years old after all) or it could be that I was not executing it properly.

Problems aside, I really enjoyed creating objects. Building in a virtual world, whether Second Life, an animated movie, or a video game, is a fascinating experience. The possibilities are endless and, as Castronova suggests, this may truly be the next step in human evolution.

Second Life Building Experience

Even though I am very familiar with massively multiplayer games, the building experience that I had in Second Life was very intriguing and exciting to me. There are very few games in recent memory that allow such a large amount of customization when it comes to user generated content. Especially ones that allow you to change the world you play in so significantly.

Although all I have experienced so far when it comes to building in Second Life is the basics, it is almost impossible to ignore the potential that can be exploited with the tools at hand. The fact that you can take the simplest shapes and edit, shape, customize, and place them anywhere is a great display of virtual agency.

Speaking of potential, wandering around the game world showed some great examples of what can be done within the game world. Although this veers a bit off of an analysis of my own personal building experience within the game world, some of the locations and assets I have seen are quite impressive, especially upon the realization that these users have access to the same tools that I do.

This kind of in-game creation process can definitely heighten the sense of both individuality and community within the game world. As I get more and more into Second Life, I am sure I will be even more impressed with the ability for the individual to create their own world within a world.

CRITERIA FOR ANALYZING GAME EXPERIENCES

This is an assignment due later this week. First we have the blog entry about play and building in Second Life, and then this one. I post this to ask if anyone out there has a comment on ways of talking about gaming experiences. I am trying to get at the subjective experience of playing the game, rather than looking for a review of the game (although we will also look at those, too).

Assignment 7: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF YOUR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE PLAYING 2 GAMES

This assignment asks you to reflect on and discuss your subjective experience of playing at least 2 games.

As a way of giving you some structure, think through the aspects of virtual subjectivity I suggest in the “Kino-Eye” essay:

1) Point of view

2) Self-design

3) Social relationships/interactions

4) Space and place

5) Agency

Also think about the INTERFACE, and how the game uses elements of text, cinema, and computer forms in it. (Manovich)

Finally, consider the kinds of immersion and interactivity that you experience in the game.

Considering Play

After thinking through Huizinga's essay on Play yesterday as we had a building workshop in Second Life in class and students attached stuff to their heads :), I was interested to see this question on rezzable.com: "Shall we call creative activity play?" Take a look.

AND Roger Travis, UConn Classics prof, explains how he uses "practomime" to teach his students more about the ancient world than they can glean from translating Latin. Read about it here.

Onward and Forward with Digital Narrative

Projects are due today, so I am completely excited to see what everyone has created. In class, we'll see those, and also come up with a group working definition of digital narrative, now that we are all digital narrative makers.

Some useful links to help us in our endeavor:

Georgetown Narrative Wiki

CATMA markup and analysis software

Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies

Center for Digital Storytelling (at the other Berkleley)

Adobe Guide to Digital Storytelling