Sunday, April 17, 2011

Practicum #5 - Randi Russell



Since I have been getting so many emails from Second Life that normally either go to junk or I delete them immediately, I decided to see what they are all about. Second Life sends a newsletter out to its users every few weeks and the most recent one that I received was "The Bunny Jams and Virtual Pets" issue for April (I'm guessing in the spirit of Easter). I looked through the newsletter and it contained all different activities that they were offering for the month. The first of which was an Easter egg decorating and hunt competition. I scrolled through a few postings and found one for virtual pets, obviously catching my eye I clicked it to see where it would bring me. The ad from the newsletter brings you to Second Life's website where you can scroll through all different options of places to go, things to buy and activities to partake in in Second Life. Once on the website, they had a plethora of options for how to get a virtual pet and different pet shops in Second Life. I picked one and by clicking "visit now," the website opened up Second Life on my computer and transported me to the pet shop. Once at the pet shop, I tried to chat with the other people there asking them how it worked to get a pet but no one responded. I think what you do is buy a box that has a pet in it and then once you buy it you watch the pet grow and take care of it. The only options of pets that I saw was Beagles, Pugs and Labradors. I totally would have bought one because it would have made my Second Life experience fabulous, but again, they cost money. While most of the things are only a couple of US dollars, it is frustrating to have to pay for add ons. It seems like you can only get so far in Second Life and only do so many things until you have to start spending money. If it was something that I was using religiously like a lot of people do, I could definitely see myself spending money on homes, pets, clothes and other things. For my purposes, though, even a virtual puppy isn't worth my money :)


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