Sylectra and Nos fish in Blanda pond.
Two of my Second Life friends have invested in 7Seas fishing systems so that visitors to their land can entertain themselves with a game of “gentle” chance. I became intrigued as I saw my friends wearing their “pet fish” swimming in the air around their heads – a kaleidoscope of piscine variety that continues to grow. More about that in a moment.
Friend Splashinda Pond relaxes on the dock while fishing with Nostrum, Sylectra, and Jah (not pictured).
There are multiple ways to experience 3D online fishing. You can experience it as an interested observer, shaking your head with amazement as people holding fishing poles cast and fill up the chat window with catch reports from the fishing system. A changing guard of fishy pets pops into view around the heads of the fishers while people talk about the kinds of fish they’ve already caught.
You can experience it as the host of a fishing system, with a server set up in a region, and a vending machine in which people can buy bait, fishing tackle, and more, and which generates a percentage of income for the host and for 7Seas.
But you’ll have the most fun if you experience Second Life fishing as a fisherman or fisherwoman (or fisherwhatever, for the gender ambivalent). For $100 Lindens you can get a casual fishing pole; spring for the pro fishing pack for $250, though, because you get so much more. This is about one U.S. dollar for the more deluxe model. Along with some bait, this initial investment will get you hours of entertainment and conversation starters with potential friends.
Jah String fishes from the innertube tire as Nos looks on (seated). Nice balancing act, Jah!
I am new to the whole fishing thing – many of my online buddies have logged more hours than I have, but I will tell you about my experience with it. I have to admit the initial vending machine experience was confusing, at first. You approach a 7Seas vending machine and you have to use the forward and backward buttons and wait for the main screen to redraw. Then you right click and choose “Pay” to see the details of the item’s cost. Once you’ve paid your Lindens for your fishing rod and your bucket of bait, what next?
Well, you get an object for the pro fishing system in your inventory in your objects folder. You have to be somewhere it’s allowed to rez objects to the ground. Drag the pro fishing pack to the ground, if you are allowed, and if not, go to a sandbox or your home location and do it there.
Right click on it and choose “open” to save all the items into your inventory. They will land in a 7Seas folder loose in your inventory. I moved mine into the Objects folder. Then drag your bait package to the ground, and just single click it to load your bait – instructions on the chat window in yellow will guide you here. Now your fishing rod will load the bait automatically every time you cast.
Nos works on building the innertube seating while I fish UNDER the water. It works both ways. 
To cast, right click on your pro fishing rod and choose “wear” – then either click the rod and use the “cast” button or type /1 cast in your chat window. If your avatar fails to go through the casting motion, you might have another animation interfering. Be sure to deactivate or detach all other animations or animation overrides (AOs) and try again. You should see reports of your casts and the results in the chat window. A few seconds after casting you can expect to either not get a bite, lose the fish on the line, or catch one.
As a beginner, you won’t get a bite that often. In fact, the 7Seas Web site has percentages of catches by level – basic odds, not totally mathematically accurate. Their disclaimer says that you may still have winning or losing streaks sometimes. However, with each fish, you get “XP,” or experience points. After so many XP, you get moved up a level. If you get 50,000, you go into the 7Seas Hall of Fame. The top scorer (yes, they are recording this stuff) has about 617,402 XP.
In my four or so fishing sessions, I have caught a jellyfish, flounders, lampreys, mermaids and mermen, seahorses, old boots, starfish, and sea urchins. These items are given to you and when you accept them, they are added into your objects folder. Then you can right-click and wear them, and they will choose a spot to attach. Most will float around your head. A couple, like the starfish and the sea urchin, will sit on your shoulders. I experimented to see how many I could wear at once before they started reusing attachment points – the most I got was four, so far. Someone can let me know if they got more.
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve gotten if you have been fishing in SL? The system is distributed in such a way that hosts can actually custom design some additional fish, so that your experience as a fisherman will vary depending on where you go to fish.
How do you find places to fish? Easy. Do a search in SL on fishing. You’ll get there instantly. Ask your friends. Look around – if you see someone with floating fish around their head, ask them where they go fishing.
Flotsam Beach, home of the 7Seas Fishing system.
You might start by visiting the headquarters in SL of the 7Seas Fishing System. I followed the 7Seas headquarters “SLURL” link into the SL location today and discovered to my delight that it was Flotsam Beach, a spot where I had played on a water slide and met a nice lady named Jen Shikami on a dock. I took her pic for my Flickr site. She was fishing, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t even on my radar at the time. And now we come full circle! I love how SL works.
And now for some statistical exploration. After I saw the number of XP required to make it into the Hall of Fame, I of course wanted to estimate the cost of reaching those lofty heights. Based on the cost of bait in the vending machines and your odds on catching a fish based on your level, it’s possible to estimate how much you’ll pay getting to the 50,000 XP mark.
A look at the stats and the costs (based on the 7Seas stats and Hall of Fame pages):
A pro fishing rod kit costs 250 L.
1 bucket of bait (100 casts) is 30 L.
A bulk bucket of bait (600 casts) is 150 L.
At a cost of 30 L per 100 bait, that’s .3 L per cast.
At a cost of 150 L per 600 bait, that’s .25 L per cast.
Level 0 (0-19 XP):
Catching: 40%
20 XP points
Cost: 12.5 L
Assuming you’ll have to cast _50_ times to get 20 catches
40% of what is 20.
40 = 20
100 x
40x=2000
x=50
Level 1 (20-59 XP):
Catching: 45%
Cost: 22.25 L
40 XP points
45% of what is 40.
4000/45= 89 casts
Level 2 (60-119 XP):
Catching: 50%
120 XP points
Cost: 30 L
Level 3 (120-249 XP):
Catching: 55%
130 XP points
Cost: 59 L
55% of what is 130.
13000/55 = 236.36 casts
Level 4 (250-499 XP):
Catching: 60%
250 XP points
60% of what is 250.
25000/60=417 casts
Cost: 104 L.
Level 5 (500 and up):
Catching: 65%
49500 XP points
65% of what is 49500
4950000/65=76154 casts
Cost: 19038 L
Level 40 – 50000 XP (Hall of Fame!)
Approx cost to get into Hall of Fame -
$19,503 L or $75.31 U.S. dollars.
Beating front-runner Alice Xue in the Hall of Fame – priceless.
Metanomics presentation screen
Metanomics, a group that gathers in Second Life with a good “2D” Web showing as well, had a discussion March 2 on avatar culture.
The session preview stated that Anthropologists Tom Boellstorff and Celia Pearce are developing new methods and theories about human relationships in virtual worlds and would be discussing how traditional ethnography is being adapted to the study of online immersive environments and how virtual worlds shape identities, economies, communities and societies.
One of Metanomics’ many strengths is its ability to have a regular Web component at the same time that in-world meetings are held.
If you have a signon with Metanomics, you can participate in the chat even if you are not in-world, using ChatBridge.
The Metanomics group makes full use of its Web and its SL presences by delivering rich information in a variety of formats.
The first guest was Robin Gomboy of ReactionGrid, an alternative to Second Life which appeals more to some businesses and educational groups because it doesn’t have an in-world economy (although residents can buy and sell using shopping carts like people do on the “2D” Web) and the rules dictate PG content only. A single sim costs a “hosting fee” of only $25 a month, and a 6-sim private grid is only $75 a month. You can host your own server as well. In the near future they will be adding hypergridding to it (allows avatars to move between privately owned areas without getting a new signon, avatar, etc.).
For immersive education, Gomboy noted that the prerequisite seemed to be that there is not an in-world economy already in place. Educators typically don’t want an in-world economy.
Metanomics’ Beyers Sellers said he didn’t tend to agree but then he comes from a college economics environment and that may be coloring his perception.
Metanomics host Beyers Sellers asks questions of his guests during a discussion on virtual world cultures.
ReactionGrid’s terms of service stipulate that residents have PG-rated content only. There are some software tools which are being built just for ReactionGrid. Experience and leadership are playing an important role to help shape the culture and create trust among the other members, she added.
Advice for “Gridizens”? Remember how hard it was for you to learn the basics of getting around – help others out with teaching the technology, respect others’ meeting spaces, and respect others’ privacy.
ThinkBalm innovation community is a ReactionGrid participant. They decided to ask members to use their real names to increase the trust factor. Instead of using virtual chair and a copy of RL lecture setups, they experiment with 3D best practices in online learning.
First major cross-grid event last weekend. She is the speaker for the TechNet group in SL and in ReactionGrid. She was using HippoViewer and in both worlds at once. She used LiveMeeting to help in her presentations.
Next interview:
Tom Bellstorff, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Irvine, has done research on sexuality, globalization, etc., and cybersociality.
The session presentation screen shared these links:
CDS : Metanomics Messenger: Tom Boellstorff:
http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/boellstorff.php
Celia Pearce (Artemesia Sandgrain in SL) -
American Anthropologist
http://www.aaanet.org/publications/ameranthro.cfm
CDS : Metanomics Messenger: Celia Pearce’s Web sites:
Georgia Tech: http://www.gatech.edu/
Experimental Game Lab: http://egl.lcc.gatech.edu
Emergent Game Group: http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu
Mermaids Project: http://www.mermaidsgame.net
Ludica: http:www.ludica.org.uk
Virtual Cultures: http://virtualcultures.typepad.com
IndieCade: www.IndieCade.com
Celia Pearce & Friends (Design & Consulting): www.cpandfriends.com
Metanomics Messenger: A Ludicrous Discipline? from: Ethnography and Game Studies
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~douglast/620/tom.pdf
This work defines and discusses three phrases:
game cultures
the cultures of gaming
the gaming of cultures
Metanomics Messenger: The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Archipelago-Sexuality-Nation-Indonesia/dp/0691123349/
), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists
http://www.uvm.edu/~dlrh/solga/
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Age-Second-Life-Anthropologist/dp/0691135282/
Tom Boellstorff (Tom Bukowski in SL) – what would have to change in virtual worlds and what doesn’t have to change?
Boellstorff has been doing this research for a little over 5 years. He deliberately set it up to fail by using the classic methods he used in Indonesia and applying it to SL without consideration for the differences between the environments. Surprisingly he didn’t have to change a lot.
Would he use alts or not? He decided not to.
Questions about money and anonymity – have parallels in the real world.
He likes to refer to the non-cyber world as the physical world rather than as the Real World or RL, because he maintains that what you do in SL has real consequences and is real to its participants; just differently so.
IRB – institutional review board. When a researcher does research with people, they have to get approval from this board because you are working with human subjects. It’s about protecting people’s privacy and confidentiality.
He used a research design that was entirely inside of Second Life and didn’t try to get physical world information about the people. He only asked about the person’s SL life and used their SL names.
Pearce said in her research she kept encountering people who were in some way disabled and was surprised by the commonness of that scenario.
Demographics of Baby Boomer Computer Gamers – Players of the game Uru, which was closed in 2004. The majority of these players were baby boomers, she found.
Forums just for baby boomers – like Game Boomers. There is a myth that baby boomers want to play only casual games, but that turned out not to be true. Many of them were replacing their TV watching time with their gaming. They liked adventure games but don’t like to hang around with certain types of groups associated with online games. They want to play with people their own age for a more refined method of relating.
They all were really active in communities. Fav activity – exploring. 2nd fav – helping others learn the ropes.
Baby boomers with young people at home tended not to play with their kids. Most of the players used a PC rather than a console, which they tended to think were for the kids.
The Wii came out about the time her study was finishing up and they actually targeted the baby boomer generation.
Let’s talk about Uru – based on the game Myst – if anyone has a version of the Scarab of Ra on the PC, let him know (Beyers Sellers) because he misses it!
Crap Mariner noted that there was a hack of Myst called Pyst, in which you could see the ecological effects of 10 million users walking through the Myst landscapes. He called it crude, deranged and brilliant, which made everyone laugh.
Those who played in Uru became “Uru refugees” or “diaspora” when Uru shut down. They tried to recreate some of their favorite elements from the world later, which she calls a trans-culturization process.
Like refugees in the physical world, the Uru refugees were kind of moved around and given a hard time for the lag they caused everywhere they went.
Fleep Tuque said: “I’ve written about the total fail of trying to move the BBS community to here, I think you lose a lot when you try to switch platforms if new platforms don’t facilitate the kinds of ineraction that the community formed around in the first place.”
“We aren’t spending enough time in the question space. Sometimes it’s the question that matters more than the answers. There’s often a real interest in design or implementation research but we need to also stay in the question space so that we come up with some good questions to ask before we rush to those solutions.”
– Tom Boellstorff
His book – “Coming of Age in Second Life” – he tries to write for multiple audiences, some of which know a lot more than others about the basics of virtual worlds/online games.
This wonderful new mode of interaction has its problems but shouldn’t be dismissed outright. In The Matrix, the virtual world is used to enslave the humans, so there is a fear factor here towards virtual worlds.
For Pearce as a game designer, when you design games you are also designing cultures, and you may not know what kind of culture will emerge with your game.
AbaBrukh Aabye
I asked one participant, whose background is in anthropology, to tell me what he got out of the discussions:
AbaBrukh Aabye: well, the concept of culture in virtual worlds has interested me since I first was an early beta tester on what became AOL
AbaBrukh Aabye: and it’s clearly becoming a larger part of human culture in general
AbaBrukh Aabye: I discovered SL from a feature on NPR
AbaBrukh Aabye: but when I’ve talked about it to some of my RL friends, they just laugh
The way people think about virtual worlds is varied depending upon their experience and what they want out of life. Having a little imagination is helpful for enjoying the concept of spending time in a virtual world. The fact that real life (RL) is called the physical life by one of the speakers is very telling: real things are said here in Second Life and in other virtual worlds, real relationships are forged (my own present relationship included), and real struggles are fought. Anytime you have a mix of people interacting, that is real.
But it will be some time before a significant part of the Internet-visiting population will feel that way, too.
Aerial view of a Metanomics sound stage
