Second Life: The New New User Tutorial

Hamlet is on about a video that shows the new user experience. I find those interesting. You can see Hamlet’s comments here: Second Life First-Hour User Experience by Returning SLer. I have the video just below. It is an hour long. Sheeeesh. Will anyone watch the whole thing?

Beau Hindman (YouTube name) made the video. He says he was first in Second Life™ (SL) in 2004 and has not been in SL for some years. So, this is a semi-new user experience.

Beau rambles a lot and stumbles on what he wants to say. He keeps his umm, errr’s to a level I can tolerate. The first 10 minutes is more just telling us what SL is than it is a logical ordered tutorial.

Hamlet thinks we need more of these types of walk-through for the new user experience. I am not at all sure ones like this will help. I think this one shows the problems even a returning player with a good idea of how SL works has. It does show a new user a bit of an idea of what to expect in SL. It also shows us how inscrutable much of Second Life is.

I think the video is well done and shows Beau’s experience honestly. I think it also portrays Second Life well. Beau covers the possibilities, shows some neat stuff, and discusses the problems. He mentions sex, but only watching the first 20 minutes or so… I don’t know if he skipped sex in SL beyond just a mention or dealt with it later.

I am left wondering what the Lab will do with SANSAR, the Next Generation Platform. I think we tend to forget how many novice computer users there are in the world. There are even more people without any mental framework for understanding how interact with a computer and 3D virtual world. How is the Lab going to handle a rush of people coming to a virtual world for a virtual reality experience for the first time?

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