Do
you remember the day you first rezzed in in Second Life ©, entering a madhouse
chat area full of avatars, all in varied stages of confusion? Do you remember
how difficult it was to get started, and once you did, how humiliating it was
to realize that regardless of how you had learned to use the interface and to
interact with avatars, you still were a newbie? While the entrance into Second
Life for newbie avatars has improved, they still face similar challenges as we
more established residents did back in the day. I went out to prey on
unsuspecting newbies to get their first impressions on Second Life.
User
statistics [1] show that signups for new avatars exceed 10 000 daily. Where
there are about 30 000 to 60 000 users online at any given time,
these statistics mean that a significant portion of avatars online are less
than a day old. As to what purposes these avatars are created, one can only
surmise the reasons. However, in info hubs there seems to be a constant flux of
migrants, some new to the online virtual world experience, some transferring
from other platforms such as IMVU.
Newbie
avatars, in any case, face a culture shock entering Second Life. I had the
opportunity to stalk new avatars in the hope of pinning them down for an
interview. This was not an easy task, as you will soon see!