@Jackie Wallace That's the trouble with virtual worlds.

The first thing about them that has newbies in awe is the technology. An entire big world to explore, all in 3-D, and all the possibilities it promises to have. Nowadays also, "The Metaverse exists! It's alive!"

Next, when they're finally in-world, they'll have to learn the ropes. It's that what keeps them busy now. And it'll keep them busy for the longer, the more complicated everything is, and the less help they get.

Second Life has the Eiger North Face of learning curves, no tutorials, precious little end user documentation, no official Linden helpdesk as a surrogate for documentation and next to no mentors who are able and willing to take a newbie by the hand, guide them to a sandbox and teach and train them for a few hours.* It'll keep newbies busy for weeks or months. OpenSim is even worse.

While learning the ropes, they enter the third phase. And that's being amazed about how awesome everything looks. Especially if they have a powerful enough machine that can really make stuff look good with lighting and shadows and materials and reflections and whatnot.

It'll take them quite a while until they even notice that the place has a culture in the first place. It'll take them even longer to learn about the culture, adopt it, live by it.

That does not mean, however, that they won't interact with anyone until that has happened. From when they've first entered the new world to when they really live and breathe its culture, they'll misbehave without even being aware that they're misbehaving.

In fact, I guess all this is also why there is no unified idea of what Second Life or OpenSim actually is. It is why there's constant friction between character players/light roleplayers on the one side and those who take it for a fancy 3-D chat app on the other side. It usually takes the chatters literal years to even only find out that character play exists, and even then, they'll never really tolerate the character players and their behaviour.

I guess the Jackie's Survivor Tips HUD would be the most useful if all newbies had it not only in their inventories, but actually attached the moment they rez for the first time.

*I've seen exactly this happen in my home grid a few years ago. Early during a DJ event, an absolute newbie with a hopelessly mangled avatar showed up. One of us ended up taking them to our sandbox and tutoring them for several hours.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds