What is Second Life? Well, for those that have no clue what this game is, a description:

In 2003 a company called Linden Lab created this game, that could be played online. A virtual 3 dimensional world. I bet they had no idea it would become so populair. Today there is a total of about 7,100,000 residents. They come from all over the world.

You can make a character and enter the world of Second Life. There you can become whoever you want to be. You can go wherever you want to go, there are no limits, only those of your imagination. Everything you see in the game is created by its players. The buildings, clothing, hair and more. Some users have some great skills, so there is some beautiful things to be seen in the game.

In this game you can do pretty much all that you can do in real life. There are clubs, shopping malls, apartments to rent. But that is not all, it is possible to intergrate other kind of gameplay into Second Life. In other words, there are places where you can carry guns and shoot, just like shooter games. Other places are all about roleplaying.

Many different worlds and subjects are within this game, from science fiction sims with real working aircrafts to fairy lands where the ‘elfs’ live. Giant Gothic castles swarming with vampires and undead. For everyone there is something.

Second Life can often be found in the news(papers), this is because the game is not just a game. More and more real life companies start a bussines within SL. Nike, ABN and more are already here.

You can use your creativity to build, make textures and clothes, and any object really, you can sell it for good money. Others work at clubs as dancers or DJ, others do real estate. It is all here.

If you haven’t started Second Life yet, and feel like trying it out. It seems very difficult and confusing at first. Don’t let it freak you out. Just take your time, begin with a free account, and see what there is to do in the game.

But let me tell you, this game is unlike any I have ever played. There is so much to do, so much freedom. Some hate it because it is not one particulair genre, as if the game does not know what it wants to be. Others love it, because this game is a second life, where everything is possible. 

 And who knows, if you manage to start a brilliant bussiness, and make some great money in the game. You can change the digital money into real cash. and some have managed to make some big real cash already.

So come take a look, and who knows, you might see me there.

(Second Life is owned by Linden Lab)

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Maybe you will find some words in my blog that you can’t understand, so here is  a wordlist. In it are all the basic words that we players often use.

Second Life Wordlist

prim

A prim is a single object, they are used to construct buildings or other complicated objects. They are like buiding blocks. So basically everything that you see around you, is made out of prims. Trees, walls, fountains, chairs. a prim can be manipulated in several ways, to change color, shape and size. You can make your prim give light, like a lamp, or become very movable, like pudding.  This way, trees will react to the ‘wind’, they will move like a real tree would. There are many smart people that have managed to make incredible structures with these prims.

sim

The second life game is separated by many different sims. These are huge pieces of land on where you can build and live.

lagging or lag

This one is difficult to explain, yet we have it everyday in SL. Let me try to put it down in words. Sometimes the server does not work like it should work, it has more work to do than it can do, or a network is poorly designed, it could be several things that cause it. How do you experience lag in the virtual world? Everything will take ages before it happens. I stand in a busy mall, and want to walk to the other end of the room. I keep pushing the button, but it takes several seconds before my avatar reacts. It is always very annoying when this happens. Sometimes the best way is to restart the sim where the lag is(for owners), visitors can try and ignore the lag or just leave and wait for a better time to return.

rez or rezzing

Every avatar/player has his or her own inventory. In that inventory you can stock many items. To put an object from your inventory on to the ground, is called rezzing. To make an object appear on the ground.

landmark

Landmarks are very important for when you need to find your way around. Every location has its own unique ‘adress’. These can be landmarked. If a player ends up in a place he or she likes and wants to add to favourite locations, all that needs to be done is ‘create landmark’. This way you will have the exact location in your inventory, and you can return to that place whenever you like.

teleport

It is very easy to move from one place to another in SL, all you need is a landmark. Just open the landmark and use the teleport option. This will transport you to the exact location within a blink of an eye.

texture

A texture is a image, that can be made in photoshop, paint etc. These images are uploaded to Second Life and usedfor several causes. A wall is not a wall without the wall texture, nor is clothing any good if it doesn’t have a texture. Same goes with skin, it is a texture that is layered upon a shape(more about that later) If there was no texture, everything would probably look grey. And grey is not a happy color to live in.

shape

An avatar consists of several basics. A shape, skin, hair and even animation. The right combination of these will make you look unique. A shape is exactly what it sounds like, the shape of your body. When you first start the game, you will look very basic, you have a very basic shape, nothing too fancy. You can go to edit appearance and change your look. Do you want to be shorter? Skinnier? Have bigger bottom? That is all possible. Quite a few avatars, like myself are able to make their own shape. Others, that don’t have this skill will need to go to shops and buy themselves a good shape. The popular male shape seems to be, tall and masculine. The female one, skinny, decent boobs and bottom size… And long legs.

skin

A skin is a texture layer that is put on top of the shape. Without the skin, everyone would look grey. Same with shape, we all start with a very basic skin, and it is fully editable. It is extremely difficult to make a good looking quality skin yourself, so most people buy them. These skins can hardly be edited, but they look very good and realistic.

hair

You also start out with some basic hair, but really noone likes this kind of hair. It looks fake and there are not much options. One day, a brilliant person in SL figured out that prims could be used to make hair. It was original, good looking and fun. Because we all love a good hairdo. And then another person came up with the idea to make these prim wigs flexible… This way the hair would react more natural, instead of looking like a piece of plastic that is stuck on your head. There are many stores to buy hair, all kinds of hair. And we all need some good hair don’t we?

I probably missed a few words, but I will add them later. I hope this was usefull to you.

to be added later: sandbox – burst effects – animation – poseball – scripts – newbie