Iris Wants to Know: Have The Skills You've Learned in Second Life Helped You Out in Real Life?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Last weekend, Second Life skin maker Mochi Milena asked an interesting question over on Plurk: Has the skillset you've developed in SL helped you in RL? I answered her at the time, but yesterday as I soaked in all the amazing studies and process work that designer Maylee Oh has shared on her Tumblr (including the low-poly flower models pictured above) the question rolled around inside my head even more. People do such different things in Second Life, and whether you're there to work or play it's impossible not to have one skill or another honed in the process.

Mochi shared how her experience managing and marketing a brand has transferred easily into real life work she does with charities, while several others talked about the confidence and slightly thicker skin they've developed for dealing with customers. In my case...

Before I joined Second Life I had a passing familiarity with Adobe Photoshop and a bare bones understanding of how to animate models in Poser. While SL helped me to build on this foundation and learn more about both animating and image editing, I also picked up some knowledge that was entirely new to me as I experimented with various forms of content creation. I gained a much better understanding of how the visual elements of games are composed in particular, from the initial modelling to UV mapping, texturing, and rigging right up to the effects (and importance) of environmental shaders.

While I absolutely still lack anything approaching a professional understanding of these subjects, they've changed the way I look at games and given me that much more confidence when I talk/write about them. I'm comfortable explaining the impact that normal mapping has had on game graphics, I have no problem wrapping my head around why it's often simpler to uprez a polygonal game compared to a fully-2D one, and I won't shy away from any discussion about how hard women may or may not be to animate. Simply put I feel better equipped to write about this topic I adore than I would otherwise.

What about you? Has your time in Second Life honed any skills you use outside of the virtual world, or even helped you learn entirely new ones? As always, share your experiences in the comments below!

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Kotaku, Jezebel, and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Michael "Crash Prefect" Adams]

I used secondlife to practice game development while I was getting my Associates, a friend of mine and I worked on a game we called Darklife from 04 till about 2012 on the Navora sim. I later got my bachelor in game art and haven't been able to check out SL for quite some time...usually opting to use UDK or Unity instead as I never really hung out in SL.

I owe a lot to SL for when I was starting out though for sure...

[Arwyn]

Interpersonal skills. Being an admin of a roleplay sim is a taxing job. There's always someone who needs help, moderation calls that need to be done, disruptions that have to be dealt with, things that need to be improved, and all of those require excellent communication and interpersonal skills. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

A good deal of credit for my new job is owed to the communication and conflict management skills I learned from admining a sim. I now work in a high-visibility position, dealing with customers online all day, and I wouldn't be half as good at it if it wasn't for the time I've spent as an admin.

[Elrik Merlin]

Filming and editing a weekly in-world created TV show has certainly enabled me to significantly improve my video editing and production chops along with developing other skills on the video side (my background is audio). As a result I have been able to take on a number of nicely-paid RL video projects. In addition I've landed voiceover and writing projects as a result of my TV work in SL.

[Nalates]

I have WAY better comebacks for bad pickup lines...

[Salle LaSalle]

8 years ago when i joined SL , I couldn't program, after learning LSL, I now write and sell Apps for real :)

[Shining Sea]

Thismay sound weird, but sailing in SL led me to take sailing lessons in RL. I found that many of the reasoning skills from SL transferred, like understanding the relationship between wind direction and the general trim of the sail. I began as someone who knew more than a beginner - in fact, a lot more.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"While I absolutely still lack anything approaching a professional understanding of these subjects..."

Iris, most full-time professionals don't fully understand any more than a small slice of these subjects. There are exceptions, but if your understanding is too deep and broad they take away all your projects and make you babysit the newbies :)

I don't say this to dis the professionals, but I run across too many fabulous Second Life creators who think they're being realistic about the limitations of their abilities and knowledge when they're actually selling themselves short. There are studios that would KILL to get their hands on some of the talent I see in even the more obscure corners of Second Life. Even if that's not you, you should have no question that your writing about these topics is exceptionally well-informed, lucid, and professional-grade.

Tools and techniques can be taught, but the combination of an artistic vision and the will to realize that vision is a valuable commoditiy.

[Iggy]

I SL I learned the not-too-gentle art of moderating a LARGE (30 or more) group of academics, all of whom want to hold the floor. Okay, that is redundant. All academics want to hold the floor.

Yet these SL skills have really improved my ability to moderate a RL workshop in a stuffy conference room of some nameless cube of a hotel.

That none of the RL academics I moderate look like Dali sculptures or robots or furries comes, however, as a bit of a disappointment.

[Cake]

Realizing who I was an artist!

Artists don't get that much of an opportunity to step outside of themselves and look at their work, and where they're going. With the help of SL, I was able to determine who I was by putting all of my work on a virtual wall and identifying a linear progression between the images. Second Life also inspired me to take up a bit of surrealism; since playing this game, I've dressed up irl with large, paper mache masks. It's what people remember me by and was the quickest way for me to stand out.

Recognizing PR practices in Second Life has helped me, too. The easiest way to do this was to observe popular store owners and bloggers, look at how they faced challenges, and if their way of dealing with 'scandals' worked for them or not. I recently had my own issue irl that landed me in the paper. I remembered something Gogo did in a similar instance and copied her behavior. It worked and I managed to past the situation with hardly any burns.

Second Life is like a petri dish in which you can look at business management practices, and then enlarge those practices for what you want to pursue in real life. I'm a publisher and fine artist now... all the lessons I've taken away from here will help me as I navigate the real world.

[Adam Weinberg]

I learned from LSL how to program, how to stand up a database on a server, and get in world objects to communicate. I learned modeling starting with Blender and then moving to Maya and finally Modo.

I currently am a software developer in Portland, OR and I have had no formal education.

I broke my foot in a motorcycle accident and was chair ridden throughout multiple surgeries so I got to spend quite the amount of time in Second Life starting out. It has really paid off in spades!