Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

« Thoughts and Prayers for the People of Mumbai | Main | Web 2.0 Reading in the Sky »

July 13, 2006

A Slice of Second Life

My Second Life avatar, Abdi Kembla.

The latest issue of the Boston Phoenix has one of the best articles I've ever read about Second Life. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Second Life is an immersive, multiuser virtual environment where the entire world is created by the participants. More than 200,000 people have created virtual characters, or avatars, which they use to construct their own islands. What's on these islands? Everything you can imagine - surf shops, casinos, libraries, drive-in movie theatres, even refugee camps. If you've never tried it, Second Life is an extraordinary experience.

As it turns out, I was interviewed for the article, because my SL avatar, Abdi Kembla, is African. Most SL avatars tend to look like idealized versions of the people who created them, or bizarre fantasy characters straight out of the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars. So I decided to try something different and create an avatar modeled on a former child soldier from Somalia.

Here's my small contribution to the article:

Another real-world person experimenting with an entirely different SL persona is Boston-based blogger Andy Carvin. Last fall he joined SL as Andy Chowderhead, but he got "bored with it" and decided to create Abdi Kembla, an African refugee he modeled after photos he found online of former Somalian child soldiers.

"Previously, when I used my old Andy Chowderhead avatar, I found people were more likely to come over, say hello, and start a conversation. But with Abdi, people tended to just act as if I just weren't even there," says Carvin, who estimates that he spent between 20 and 30 hours in February and March exploring as Abdi. "The more I traveled through SL, the more I realized I seemed to be the only African-looking character around anywhere." He adds, "I encountered gnomes, floating beams of light, characters that were shaped like boxes, elves, everything you can imagine — but no African-looking characters."

"I think Second Life will be like the Web eventually," says Aimee Weber. "Almost everything cool will need to have a 3-d presence online."
In general, you can lump Second Life avatars into two categories: hot or fantastic. Women are mostly busty, hourglass-figured, and sexy. Men tend to be buff and handsome. "More often than not, people have a picture in their head of what they look like at their best: very few people want to have their avatar look like they just woke up, haven't shaved, [have] bad breath, and gained a few pounds after the wedding," theorizes Andy Carvin. Otherwise, avatars tend to be surreal — think Snoopy, dragons, and "furries."

Anyway, it's a very well-done, well-researched article, so please check it out. -andy

Posted by acarvin at July 13, 2006 3:36 PM

Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article