Upon my first arrival in the world of Secondlife, I was immediately struck by how slow it ran. In my immersion of the game and its idea of living a new life, this is a major flaw. I run a very fast computer, and games that I play are immensely more complicated than this one, and yet, life doesn't 'flow' quite like it should. looking past that, the idea that you can customize your avatar to be anything is quite enticing.
My first step in this game was to change the settings so that my computer wasn't chugging along to run the program. I was... unsuccessful in my attempt.
Second I tried to change the way the cursor was used when exploring the game's world to be more familiar to me (I play other mmorpg games, and the control scheme is a bit specific.) once again, I was defeated. This is another huge disappointment for me. without comfortable control over my avatar, I struggle to get into the immersion process, as I am trying to hard to re-learn something that has become second nature to me through other games. (I think I finally understand what it's like to be an old dog trying to learn a new trick, it just doesn't feel right.)
The first place I landed was a tutorial town that showed how to manipulate my character. I stood in one spot trying to learn how to move for a good ten minutes. After doing that, I checked out the travel system, and boy, that is one complicated mess of confusion. I clicked around for some time and eventually landed on the original tutorial Island (different from the one I landed in upon entry). I wandered around this Island for a bit, but none of the items that told me to click them did anything. Bored.
I then fiddled around with my avatar, and decided that I would rather play a female avatar, one that looked like my girlfriend, so that I could feel like I was living a second life, different from my own, but still somewhat familiar to me. I think this is where this game really shines. You can essentially change everything about your character if you learn enough about this game. But that's the problem to me. This (I keep calling it a game, but it's more a simulation) 'game' has an incredibly high learning curve. I am sure that if I was seriously interested in living a new life, I would have a bit more motivation to learn exactly how to use this tool to my advantage, but for the time being, this game is lacking on the immersion scale for me. I feel more immersed when I have an end goal in sight, and with a game like this, I have no motivation at all. In Role playing games that I have played, the game has a story for you to follow, and it often forces you to follow it. There are games like World of Warcraft, however, that have a story, but you can choose not to follow it, and if you wish, you can simply create your own tale. You can act as if you were them, do things they would do, and, if you ever got tired of that, still have the option of becoming that giant hero in the story that they have for you.
I digress.
This game is a step in the virtual world direction, but it's not good enough (in my opinion). If you really want to become immersed and have it feel like a new life, Virtual reality needs to make some leaps and bounds. The Steam VR is one such leap. I had the opportunity to use my brother's set up and I was thoroughly enjoying my time as an archer in training. Those ten minutes I played in VR were more immersive than anything I have ever played in my entire life.
Long post short, This is a step towards virtual living, but is not nearly enough to entice me to dump my own life to play it.
