What is the meaning of Second Life?

We have several frequent questions at the Hobo Island Community Gateway.  Two questions are about starter basics: changing appearance and going places.  I made two poster-givers to provide notecard  help for those questions.  (They are also in the Hobo Kit, but the posters make the notecards easier to fiind.)  

Another pair of questions represents a deeper view:

“What do people do here?  How do we play this game?”  

I made up a notecard answer to those questions with a little help from my hobo friends.  The notecard is in a giver at the Welcome Plaza along with a Welcome-to-Hobo-Island note.

Following is a copy ot the answer.  A few people will notice that this game concept is a lot like the game of living, starting with growing up.  But let’s keep that among ourselves.  Don’t spoil the game.  And never suggest that people might learn something useful from it. 

What do people do here?  How do we play this game?

Second Life is not a game in the usual sense.  It is a virtual reality environment.  Like the web, it is what people make it to be.  There are games here.  And you can make games yourself, if you develop enough skills in building, scripting, and writing.  But let's treat getting started as a game:  Exploring.

Every game has a quest.  The quest of exploring here is to find things that interest you.  If you find something that is really holds your interest, you have won this round.  And, BTW, that something does not have to be a Golden Fleece, King Solomon’s Mines, or the Lost Ark.  It can be friends you like to work with, skills you like to exercise, or activities you enjoy.     

Your first challenge in the opening game is to master your powers as Explorer.  Here are your most important powers:

• Clicking on things
• Communicating with other people
• Building a network of friends
• Searching for people, places, and things
• Looking closely at things
• Moving -- locally and by teleport
• Experimenting with things 
• Asking the right questions
• Making sense of clues in things you see and notecards you get

You can begin to master these powers by looking at the Hobo Kit  (the notecard actually has an embedded copy of the Hobo Kit). 

When the kit opens, you will find -- right near the top -- several notecards with information about how to use your Explorer powers.  So your next challenge in the game is to use that information to master you powers.   When you have reached that level, you will choose another set of powers to master – that is the next level.  

Some choices available to you:

• Entertainer, Musician, Comic, Writer, Actor, Videographer,
• Entrepreneur, Store manager, Realtor, Mall manager, Event manager
• Organizer, Instructor, Builder, Scripter, Artist, Theatrical director
• Starfleet Officer, Vulcan, Klingon, Jedi Knight, Imperial Storm Trooper, Jawa
• Stuntman, Superhero, Dancer, Fire Eater, Vampire
• Elf, Witch, Mermaid, Ogre, Dragon, Wizard, Mad Scientist, Timelord.
• Used Car Salesman, Mafia Don, Bum, Zombie, Shapeshifter

Thrifty Threads opens at Hobo Island Welcome Plaza

We needed to improve the way we make new avatars and clothes available to people.  So the hobos got busy and did that.  Got a lot more stuff available at the Thrifty Threads shop.  All free, of course – can’t be thriftier than that.   CarolRae Pidgeon put several organized boxes with hair, skins, shapes, eyes, and clothing for male and female.  The boxed organization helps people find what they want.      Other boxes offer vehicles and unusual avatars

The Thrifty Threads shop, BTW, is right next to the Welcome Plaza and just across the street from the Vagabond Theater.

Shakespeare at the Pavilion

Presented by SAN DIEGO CITY IN SL and AVATAR REPERTORY THEATER
May 30 & 31.

Excerpt from Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene 3:
MadamThespian Underhill (Maria), Joff Fassnacht (Sir Toby Belch), Prospero Frobozz (Sir Andew Aguecheek)

Excerpt from Julius Caesar Act 3 Scene 2:
Prospero Frobozz (Brutus), Kayden Oconnell (Antony), Em Jannings (First Citizen), Thundergas Menges (Second Citizen) Rowan Shamroy, (Third Citizen), Sodovan Torok (Fourth Citizen, Ada Radius, MadameThespian Underhill, Joff Fassnacht (Citizens), JubJub Forder (Caesar)

Excerpts from A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 3 Scene 1, Act 4, Scene 1:
Thundergas Menges (Bottom), Ada Radius (Titania)

Soliloquy from Hamlet Act 3 Scene 3:
Em Jannings (Claudius)

Excerpt from As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 5:
MadamThespian Underhill (Rosalind), Suzy Yue (Phebe), Sodovan Torok (Silvius)

Excerpt from Hamlet A4 Scene 5:
Kayden Oconnell (Claudius), AvaJean Westland (Gertrude), Sodovan Torok (Gentleman), Joff Fassnacht (Laertes), Ada Radius (Ophelia), Em Jannings, Prospero Frobozz, Rowan Shamroy, Thundergas Menges (Danes)

Excerpt from A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 5:
Avajean Westland (Prologue), Em Jannings (Pyramus), Rowan Shamroy (Thisbe), Sodovan Torok (Wall), Thundergas Menges (Moonbeam), Joff Fassnacht (Philostrate, Lion), Prospero Frobozz (Theseus), Ada Radius (Hippolyta), Kayden Oconnell (Demetrius), Suzy Yue (Lysander), MadameThespian Underhill (Hermia)

Director:  MadameThespian Underhill
Assistant Directors:  AvaJean Westland, Em Jannings
Dramaturg: Dolgoruky Umarov
Sets and props:  JubJub Forder, Ada  Radius, Rowan Shamroy, Sodovan Torok, MadameThespian Underhill
House manager:   Prospero Frobozz
Sound /music engineer:   Thundergas Menges
Poster, program, ad copy: Ada Radius, Kayden Oconnell,  MadameThespian Underhill

Promoting events (continued)

In our last episode we began the quest:  How can we promote events in Second Life?  This week, I will describe a few more methods. 

Spam-a-friend

There is another, less-well-known way to send IMs to multiple people.   Your friends list.  Here is how:

      Communicate (Bottom of screen.)> Contacts > Use Shift click or Ctrl Click to select names as you do with selecting in other lists > click send IM.  This creates a conference “call.”  

Glitches:  Technically this seems to work quite well.   It will also work to run off your friends if you use it much.  I drop people from my friends list if they spamalot on me. 

Outside notice lists

For promotions, groups are being used like mailing lists.  People who have been active in SL for a while cannot use these lists because they cannot afford to commit a group slot for that.  One method that seems to be growing in popularity is the use of outside notice lists such as Hippo or Subscribomatic.

These systems allow people to subscribe inworld (by clicking on a panel).  The messages can include a text note (delivered in chat) and a notecard or other attachment.  Subscribomatic is free for a modest number of subscribers.  The subscriptions do not take up group slot. 

Glitches:  I use the Hippo groups and find no technical glitches.  People problems, though:

• I have a number of list managers.  Some of managers have had problems getting their passwords to work. 
• My mangers can’t do everything they need to do to send notecards. 
• Some people have a problem unsubscribing.  You unsubscribe by clicking on the same panel (or another panel representing the same subscription list).  If you don’t remember where you subscribed, you can’t easily unsubscribe.  There are other ways to unsubscribe, but they are not easy.    In the active lists I have, I usually send out a notecard at least once a month with instructions on how to unsubscribe and a landmark to the place.   

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So much for the technical side of notice groups and mailing lists.  The other side of this promotional route is building group or list membership.  I have some free equipment to offer for that side of the job as well as some descriptions of how people do it.  So watch this space for more of our story on promoting  events in Second Life.