So My biggest complaint with Second Life is that it gave me a set of avatars to choose and when I downloaded the program, I was a completely different person. When I got in the world I thought, "Hey, maybe it's like the Sims where I have to go to a mirror to change my appearance." So I ran through the world for a bit and got lost. So I looked at the preset options and choose one that was not completely strange, which was the Steampunk girl. After another half an hour running around, I Googled how to change my appearance, since it was obvious the character editor was not similar to the one on the Sims.
When I was editing my character, I found some problems. Unless I had a predesigned face, I couldn't pick the skin tone I wanted. The choices went from paper white to golden to a slightly red brown to like a chocolate brown. I was trying to get my skin tone, which is more pink than any of the options.
The editor also had a lot of choices on minor things. My time got lost on stuff like "the cheek bone hight" or "the amount of freckles." After a while, I just skipped most of these options and left them to the default. When I started out, I wanted to try to get it to look like me, but because there were too many options, I quickly decided against it. I instead tried to make the avatar look as generic as possible.
After wasting time on the face, I tried to go to a store to see if they had free clothes.. which they did not. So I went in the editor and tired to make the dress look a little better. I originally wanted her to wear pants and a t-shirt, but I didn't have that option. I tried to make the dress more modern, but all I could really to was change the top (which didn't turn out how I wanted).
So here is my avatar:
(Just hanging with Gabriella in Second Life)
Right now, this is the icon avatar I quickly drew up for most of my social networking sites (my user name usually goes to the left of my face):
I figured I would want my icons to look a bit more like me, so I just quickly drew up a basic picture. Besides my skin tone, I think it looks decently similar to me.
2 comments:
I had the same problems that you did regarding second life. I was clueless when it came to how to actually edit my avatar and when I did figure it out, it was like a whole new world. I agree that there were so many small details that could be changed that it was overwhelming, which is why I just decided to make a Wii character instead. I feel that a lot of people use generic avatars because it is easiest and they blend in the best. I feel that if I don't make my avatar look like myself, then I would use the generic avatar because it is the easiest.
I agree that once on Second Life it is extremely difficult to figure out how to edit yourself. I was able to edit my clothing, but still found that it was a challenge. It felt as though the layout of the site was slightly outdated and I question who the actual audience is targeted towards.
It was hard for me to be able to tell who would be interested in this site. It reminded me slightly as Sims also, but unlike on Sims, the interactions seemed to be for a older age.
I would be interested to see how more experienced users use the gaming features and are able to better create characters to resemble themselves.
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