If you have come across the phrase “online virtual reality games” than you must have heard of second life. The game Second Life was first launched in June 2003 by a firm named Linden Lab. The community of Second Life was initially limited. It grew with time and was recorded to have almost 1 million users. Most of the people that play Second Life refers the game to be a role-playing multiplayer online one. But the company and the firm claim that what they have created is not just a game. According to them it is something beyond online gaming. They say that second life has no pre-defined objective.
What Second Life Actually is?
The users that use Second life are not referred as users, they are termed as Residents. The virtual world of Second Life can be accessed in a number of ways. One way of accessing the Second Life is via Linden Labs own client program but if you are unable to access the game form there you can take advantage of alternate Third-party Viewers. Second Life was launched on multiple platforms including Windows x86-32(vista and higher), macOS(10.6 or above) and Linux i686 or x86-64. In order to begin, the residents of Second Life are required to create their virtual representations. These virtual representations are called Avatars. During the course of Second Life the created avatars of a person is able to interact with objects and places of the game as well the other avatars. In Second Life the world is referred to as the Grid. In order to make the Second Life look real, the resident avatars are allowed to explore the grid. They can build their own properties just like in real world. Similarly, avatars can interact with others in group activities or they can work alone depending upon their own choice. The same way they can trade their virtual properties and offer their services to others as well take services from others.
Another astonishing thing about second life is that it has got its own currency which is named as the Linden Dollar. This virtual currency can be exchanged with real world currency. By exchange we mean that you can buy the Linden Dollar from someone outside the game by making any sort of deal of mutual understanding. There is an age restriction for this game. Someone who is below the age of 13 cannot play the game. The players with the age from 13-15 are limited only to a sponsoring institution only. In short, you have to be 16 years old in order to be able to play the Second Life with full features.
The Second Life is built on simple 3D modeling software and therefore allows the residents to shape many objects. Of course, in case you were wondering, the Second Life has its own language as well i.e., the Linden Scripting Language. The language is mainly used for interaction. Then there are additional things like colors, clothes, animations and a lot of gestures. These sorts of stuff are obtained in a couple of ways. Either you can use an external software or simply import them from the others. The copyrights of second life are handled in such a way that the users can have a copy of whatever they do in the game. The disadvantage of this was that customers could borrow anything from the third party and the textures that they used to take from third party was resulting in explicitly. As a result, the Linden Lab changed their rules about it and their new terms of service prevented the users from using the textures from the third party.
Second Life Facts:
If we talk about the facts of second life, here are some Second Life facts:
- The original name for Second Life was Linden World but the name was changed before beta testing in order to give a more creative and descriptive feel.
- Length of second life is 4 hours. Out of these four hours, daytime is 3 hours and night is constituted of 1 hour.
- Moon is always full in the second life.
- On holidays and festivals, the sun and moon are given special colors and textures with relation to festival and especially on U.S. Holidays.
- The most important day of the year in second life is April 1st. the April Fool’s day is the most celebrated day.
- The mascot of the second life is hippo. The mascot is un-official-official one.
- There are 2 “Easter Eggs” in the Second Life.
- The logo “the hand” shown throughout the second life is selected because the logo is found in real ancient civilizations.
- There is a tree named linden. Lime tree in Britain is called linden.
- The office of Linden lab has moved 3 times.
- By right clicking the mini-map, the zoom level of the map can be changed.
- You can create your own events in the Second Life that usually take place in real world. This thing here means that you can arrange a marriage in second life. This is not limited to marriages only.
- You will not die in the Second Life. When the person behind the avatar dies in the real world, you may not know that in the game immediately. If someone in the game knew the deceased outside the game than he can spread the news and the profile of the deceased is eventually deleted. But a lot of fake deaths have been reported as well. In short, it is possible for you to be alive in the game even after you are not alive in the real world any more.
- You can have kids and family as well. To give the game a more real look second life allows you to have kids. You can have kids by using different methods from adopting to making and from making to buying a kid.
- You cannot kill an avatar in the Second Life.
- Crimes like stealing can be committed but the penalty is quite big. If you are caught stealing in the second life, you can be banned from the game forever.
- There is no one to control law and order in second life. This means that there is no official police and other similar departments in second life.
- The laws of second life are based on the real laws in the country of the residence of the human behind the avatar.
- Natural disasters do take place in the second life as they happen in the real world. By this, it means that it is possible for you to have an earthquake or a flood as it takes place in the real world.
You can arrange fund raising activities in case of disasters. It is used a mode of publicity by different fund raising authorities.