Location: Still on the virtual road

Earlier I ran a column of my students’ mid-semester’s observations to Second Life ®  . Now I have some from the second part of their journeys in-world.

I added more structure to the experience for this class, as compared to one I taught a year and a half back.  We had Second Life residents who served as mentors, the students had more structured tasks, and we had a few gatherings on the university’s island, such as the fly-in that student Drax Marksman did for me one day (pictured on left).

As in an earlier class, students’ initial reactions were mostly negative.  They felt that there “was no point” to Second Life, unlike for a goal-oriented online game.  On the other hand, some students—out of laziness or loathing—simply refused to go back in-world for one required part of their final projects, even though they lost a full letter-grade for this omission.

I was disappointed that more students did not learn to build, though we provided a sandbox area, yet I was also excited to see some of the students venturing into Steampunk and other roleplaying sims.  Overall, if the students I teach are representative, theirs is a rather timid demographic when it comes to online engagement. They love being in social networks, but mostly these involve individuals they already know.

But on to what the students said!  The reactions will run for two consecutive entries here. More may follow later…as well as more student columns.

Reaction #1: Gamers find more to do these days in SL™ and SL-style interaction in games matters more now than it may have recently:

Role-play itself is a rewarding activity for many people, of course, but why this setting? There are plenty of other more positive settings in Second Life….I doubt many people who visit Midian would really want to live there - whoever they are in real life likely would not survive the experience - but they all go there in Second Life, to get a taste of the darkness.

and this:

The concept of socializing in virtual worlds seems like nothing out of the ordinary; many people in our world regularly visit clubs in Second Life in the same way that characters in Stephenson’s Snow Crash frequent night clubs in the metaverse.. . .Globalized social gaming is also a major factor in today’s video game industry; although this feature was originally associated with computer games, the rise of Xbox Live and Playstation’s online community are redefining the demands for game development.

Yet gamers remain gamers:

The joy of Second Life is that you can be Santa Claus. . . holding an M16 and a laser-pointing brigade of weapons and yet not know how to shoot.

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

Very nice post and very interesting comments. What instantly popped into my mind , when reading all this, was a relationship between art and science.  Both ask us to learn a skill and to use our imagination to either solve a problem or create an idea.

SL, for the most part, is a bit like learning how to paint in that one needs to get through the basics of how to paint in order to reach a point where the mind’s exploration takes over to imagine something new or something beautiful.

Since America is falling far behind in science and art, it is no wonder that students may lack the necessary abilities to make use of something like the virtual world and would gravitate to something easily digestable, uniform, direct with a “clear” goal ie military or corporate mentalities.  Those mentalities are no better than an animal’s. It’s through art in particular that separates man from the beasts.

Just tossing in a grenade as usual.
-c

With regards to Iggy’s post, I was starting to see how crucial that first hour is for new users when my friend Matt first joined. I’m still convinced that he wouldn’t have found it enjoyable that first hour if it wasn’t for Tenchi and I. In hindsight, I wonder if it’s even really necessary. Once again, this might be a generational thing, but its general knowledge that a majority of instruction manuals won’t be read. Instead, many people nowadays prefer to just pick up and learn something from experience instead of being led by the hand. I guess this addresses Tenchi’s point with regards to my allegation that my generation has no passion for exploring. Tenchi, I both agree and disagree that one can say that my generation simply doesn’t have a lust for exploration. I disagree because, on one level, exploration is tied to a specific historical and cultural moment. During the years of the Apollo missions, there was still a frontier. I can’t identify one today. Maybe I’m wrong, but I honestly don’t know what it would be. But I do agree with you that it’s not that we just stopped using our brains. We are, as you said, as curious and adventurous as ever. I just feel like my generation expects direction, and guidance, and set paths. You’re right in saying that part of it is laziness, but I also feel like American culture tends to discourage exploration. Cynthia, I definitely agree that Morrowind was the more satisfying experience because it didn’t hold you by the hand. However, I think I was initially turned off b/c I’m used to the hand-holding U.S. adolescents receive through censorship and other methods of sheltering. I think that if the establishments tried to teach and inform U.S. youth instead of simply trying to build a wall between them and anything potentially “harmful,“ then maybe more of my generation would take to Second Life. However, since this hasn’t happened, the failure of Orientation Island to orient new residents and the structureless, purely open-ended experience of SL proper combine to turn off new users.

Good to hear from Mikhail!  Hope the RL Big Apple is treating you well.

Laura from our class is co-authoring an editorial with me about ADHD and how media exposure promotes/enhances its symptoms, even among older folks.

I’m not being critical, but it may be that many new users, accustomed to quick gratification, lack the attentiveness to get through those crucial first few hours of SL.  And the Orientation Island experience is pretty awful, too…not much “point” there.

See a recent post by Wagner James Au (http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/06/open-forum-what.html) for why only 10% of new residents stay past their first login…

Hmmm. The last passage of your post Mikhail really confirmed my general cultural pessimism which more and more took hold of me during the last years.
Is it really that simple that you (speaking of your generation since I think in that case you are [thank god] atypical) have lost the lust for exploration? 
I don´t think so. In my eyes the younger generations are even more curious then we are but that are more easily distracted then ... hey look at that rainbow!

Ok enough joking. I think the problem ist rather the fact that nowadays younger people tend to have trouble focussing on tasks and have an even harder time to focus on achieving goals (if they have any at all). People are lazier nowadays then they used to be. They want everything and they want it now but if it takes personal commitment and/or even worse personal sacrifice they become uninterested in it even faster then the interest arose. Going by public transport past 4 schools each day twice gives some interesting insights in that.

I just wish I am wrong :(

(and I’m not THAT much older than you are, hehe)

Sorry for being off-topic, but I thought that this very difference between Morrowind and Oblivion made Morrowind so much better!
The main quest in Morrowind was much longer, but you still had so many things to explore on your own. The directions you were given were vague at best (on purpose?) so finding a certain cave or hideout after looking for it for hours was more satisfying. In Oblivion, the main quest was very short and all you had to do to find something was following the compass or even follow a direct TP. Better graphics (less variety in landscapes etc. though), but weaker storyline.

Maybe the reason I like SL is that I prefer to find out things on my own and just like to explore instead of following quests to achieve “goals” of some sort.

I think another reason why many of my fellow students were turned off to Second Life is that the world is overwhelming, and with no task or mission to motivate a user’s actions, some people simply get turned off to the game. I believe the writers of Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com), one of the most influential gaming comic-blogs on the Net, actually touch on this in their May 2nd Podcast. In it, one of them comments about being surprised at how accessible Grand Theft Auto 4 is as compared to its predecessors. For those of you who don’t know, GTA is a series that casts you as a criminal of some form trying to survive and thrive in the underbelly of a large city. GTA4 is set in a parody of New York City, while others visit parodies of San Andreas and Las Vegas. Well, long story short, GTA4’s main quest is much more significant and central to the overall game experience than other entries that emphasized exploration, and this seems to make it more appealing to gamers that are turned off to similar sandbox RPGs.  I remember experiencing this phenomenon while playing the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I was dropped into a small town in an unfamiliar world full of things that could crush me with their thumb-claw-thing, given a sword and an incomplete suit of steel armor, and basically told to go and make a name for myself while my main quest-giver went off to do other, more important things. Needless to say, the mere size and scope of the world and my own noobishness turned me off to the game for over a month before I picked it back up and actually found a few guilds to guide me. Bethesda seemed to pick up on this turn-off in their subsequent title - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - and introduced a much more central and directed main quest, leaving exploration as something not imposed on the player but as a nice distraction from daily guild and Imperial business. In light of this, I guess it’s simply not that surprising that many students would be turned off from Second Life.

I also wonder if it’s not a generational issue. In my opinion, my generation is one without a great drive to explore. The previous generation grew up with the space race. Others were busy charting the world. Nowadays, there seems to be no fire for exploration. The world is charted and interest in space exploration is waning at best. So I guess we just have a different spirit than previous generations. I guess the question now becomes “what is that spirit and how can it be addressed in Second Life?“

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