Location: UR Island, deciding between traveling in my Orthinopter or steam-powered dirigible

“If I were to define it, I would call it a simulation of what would happen if men were gods.” Mikhail Albatross (shown here with me and Mikhail’s classmate, Seraphine Larkham).

Inspired by my student’s words, I decided that it was high time to go to Caledon, a part of Second Life that creates a Victorian era that never was: one with steam-powered airships, computers powered by analog “analytical engines,” and Martian fighting machines out of H.G. Wells.

As Mikhail puts it in his class blog for me,

As a gamer, I keep using Second Life and expecting there to be a coherent gaming experience. I expect plot. I expect measurable growth. I expect direction. These do not exist in Second Life. It truly is what you make it. This causes Second Life to be just as mind-numbingly difficult to comprehend as 1st Life is during senior year, when you realize that your dual major prepares you for any number of fields and does not give you any direction as to which to pick. Its scope is literally awe-inspiring in the archaic sense, and I am lost in it. Yet, I am not sure if this is altogether undesirable. I am not even sure if this was not the exact desire of Linden Labs: to make the user feel lost in the face of the realization of near infinite possibility. As one particular Caledonian responded upon my realization of this, “I think you’ve got it exactly, Mr. Albatros.“

The owners of Caledon wanted to create a “Steampunk” setting where, in godlike fashion, we can transcend the limitations of physics (how WOULD a steam engine run the flapping wings of a giant airship?) and collaborate to keep the invented world (one that never was, or was in a parallel universe to ours) pure to its rules.

Expect Caledon dispatches here as the students and I explore it.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Actually, Caledon’s rules are pretty patchy, at least in terms of keeping one pure world.  *grin.  It’s so huge that different parts of it resemble more or less slightly different Victorian-esque fantasies.  People disagree a fair amount even on when in the Victorian period it’s set (in terms of culture, fashion, etc, if not technology), and then there are parts of it that are more steampunk than others and parts of it inspired by a hodgepodge of different Victorian-esque fictions - Phillip Pullman and HG Wells and CS Lewis just to start.  And there’s an R2D2 running around in one part of it giving away drinks, including Tatooine fire whiskey.

Can’t wait!

Post Your Comments: