I grew up with an interest in gaming since I was young. My father was heavily involved with Play-By-Mail gaming, which is the concept of doing role playing game adventures but with your game master being through postal mail. Postmark dates would serve as the deadline to get in your moves. The game master would then process all the requests sent in after that date, and send out the results with a new due date.
Additionally, I also grew up playing video games. We had the Sears version of the Atari 2600 and a bunch of videogames. I believe we were one of the first local families to have an Apple II as well. So I was completely comfortable with technology.
So, flash forward years later, when I heard about MMOGs such as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, I had to try them out – especially LOTRO, given that I grew up reading Tolkien. Ultimately realizing I only had time for one, I dropped World of Warcraft.
Somewhere in there, another friend of mine more interested in technology and media mentioned that companies started making presences known in a virtual world called Second Life from Linden Labs. Having studied media and technology, I wanted to know what this would look like, especially since my use of these environments had until now been for gaming.
On March 26, 2012, I created the avatar Kreatya (inspired by the word “creativity”) and explored Second Life. Though intriguing, I couldn’t figure out the best way to take advantage it. After a little while, I left, and at the time I thought never to return.
Boy, was I wrong…
