The Noob Experiment

So recently I was reading an article about how Second Life's biggest downfall is the fact that it's not very new-user friendly. If you've heard about the new version of Second Life that Linden Labs is coming out with then you'll know one of their key aims is to make Second Life easier for "Noobs" to figure out. (While not taking anything away from the more experienced players, of course.)

How hard is it for the average noob to learn how to play this game? It's been years since most of us have been new players to Second Life and back then it was a completely different world. To find out the answer, I had to go back to the beginning... the very beginning. I had to be a noob again.

All of us have probably had our fair share of run-ins with newbies whether you recruited a friend or family member to SL or one was trying to bum lindens or... that other thing off of you. (Girls, you know what I mean.) Because of that, I was familiar with the kind of questions that I usually get asked. 

"How do I wear something?" 

"Where can I find people to hang out with?"

"How do I get this box off my face?"

You know... the usual.

When I first popped into SL on my new avatar, the first thing I saw was a small gathering of other avatars. Not all of them looked new, in fact one of them was a giant werewolf looking thing!

When did new avatars start getting decent clothing... or mesh for that matter?

I'm sure most people can figure out how to use WASD or the arrow keys on their own so I headed off down the path. I noticed the different land sections were named like instructions.

Find the path...

Cross the bridge...

Escape the island...

After crossing the obstacles (which weren't very difficult) I came across a portal leading to another island. I expected to be walked through different commands along the way, such as how to fly, jump or talk, but nothing ever popped up for me.

This new island also had a few people standing around and immediately I was given a teleport to the "London" sim. I wasn't going to act that noob to take it, but I'm sure that's where a lot of new players end up... confused in random sims.

Welcome New Players, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? 

I set off to explore this new island which was actually pretty cool. Second Life definitely did a good job designing the place. However, there still wasn't any explanation on how to play the game or where to go next. I did find some free shirts outside "Club SL" but I didn't know how to put on clothing, so I stuck with my Wizard of Oz dress.

After wandering around the island for about 20 minutes, I found some portals that reminded me of the holiday forest in Nightmare Before Christmas.

The portals each had different names of general activities... Art, Wilderness, Roleplay, Social... I picked "Popular" as I wasn't really sure what to even do in Second Life yet. All the portals let you walk right into them to teleport, which was handy considering no one had even taught me how yet.

Woosh! And I was shot off to a place called "Dance Island". Pretty generic... but I guess we can't overwhelm the new people all at once. There were handy arrows that showed me the path to the club. They probably get new people a lot since I imagine "Popular" is a pretty popular portal. *Ba-Dum Tink!*

Inside the club was packed full of people and I definitely felt like an outsider in my newbish dress and hair. I wandered around the club, bumping into people and right clicking on stuff, before deciding to head back to the island to go through a different portal.

The only problem was that there was no way back to that island! The portal that landed me here was a one-way route. Feeling confused and discouraged, I headed back into the club until someone gave me a landmark to "Freebie Dungeon" and sent a short message on how to use it.

Off I go again, but at least now I was getting somewhere. I excitedly started clicking on pictures of clothing I liked and buying it for 0 lindens. Since I didn't know how to wear clothes, I just checked the box "Wear Clothing Now" whenever I'd purchase something I wanted to change into. Before to long my avatar was beginning to look like a real Second Life-ian.

One concern though was that half the clothes I put on from the freebie store wouldn't actually show on my avatar. Only just then did I realize my avatar was completely mesh! Of course a newbie wouldn't even know what mesh is, so the confusion continued. At this point, being unaware of why none of the clothing was working, I could assume a noob would feel very frustrated... and more confused.

I stole the bowling ball from someone's game, but don't you think it matches so well?

Once I had... um... an outfit (or maybe like ten!) I started wandering around the Freebie Dungeon to try and find my way out. After bumping into boxes and people, I glitched my way through a wall at a sim boundary and wound up in some flat plains. Finally - The open road! By this time I had figured out how to fly and was zooming all over the place until... KICK! And back I landed in the freebie dungeon. (Good thing there is security systems designed to babysit noobs.)

After about thirty to forty-five minutes of running in circles and sliding around from lag, someone offered to help me.

Well, maybe I asked him for help but it was still sweet of him. He began asking me questions about what color hair I would like, my eye color and other traits my online self would have. After I few minutes he sent me a folder and walked me through how to use the "Replace Current Outfit" option and then detach a second hair that was thrown in there by accident.

To keep up the disguise I had to speak noob-talk.

The result... much, much better and just like that I wasn't feeling so noobish anymore. He also gave me a folder full of teleports to interesting places and places to go freebie shopping. I was surprised that the folder he gave me even came complete with an AO!

Perhaps there is some truth to the fact that SL could be more newbie friendly. If I really was a noob I would definitely have felt a lot of confusion. There is some comfort, though, in knowing that no matter what there will always be friendly players around to give you a helping hand. The people that play this game are truly what makes Second Life so unique. As a more experienced player, it's our duty in a way to offer knowledge and guidance to the confused populace of tutorial island that we encounter. 

After all, we were all noobs at one time.