interview | Gwyneth Llewelyn

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Ana Lutetia | 2 Comments

Second Life name Gwyneth Llewelyn
Rez Date July 31, 2004

1 – How did you discover Second Life and what made you create an account?
I’m really not into computer games (seriously!) even though some of them, like The Sims®, made me spend way too much time in front of a computer My roomie, however, was always the one who loved all sorts of intelligent, constructive, or strategy games, and in the summer of 2004 I was sort of looking for a new game that she could play. I have a Mac, she has a PC, so I googled for something that was “3D” and “multiplatform”, and, well, an article on Apple’s site had just announced Linden Lab’s release of their SL viewer for the Mac. I found it intriguing enough — “oh cool, a free, multi-user version of The Sims” I thought, so I registered for an account, intending to pass the account to my roomie if this was interesting enough.
Needless to say, after spending 90 minutes changing my avatar shape, I was totally and completely hooked

2 – How did you come up with your Second Life name?
The fun part of it is that I spent far less time thinking about the name than writing the answer to this question
At that time, I was actually being stalked iRL through the Internet (seriously!) and was sort of deleting all logins I had on all those sites and social networking tools (or at least not logging back again), which all carried my usual handle, the name of my role-playing character in Dungeons & Dragons — a stupid, fat, and lazy Elf magician
Second Life was probably the first “online” thing I was registering for during those months, and I definitely didn’t want to have anyone stalk me there; it seemed that the time was right to change to something completely untraceable, and, since Linden Lab fixed the choice of last names anyway, I wanted something as remote from my usual handle as possible. Also, I only meant it as a “temporary” name (I still had this idea in mind that it would be my roomie using that account, not me), and I had no clue you couldn’t change your name afterwards… Big mistake! Anyway, unlike many who just type “asdfg12675″ for temporary accounts, I tend to create real-sounding names with stupid puns in it
The process for picking my name was a bit random. I looked at the list of surnames, and wanted one that would sound the most alien possible, while still keeping the first letter of my RL name, which starts with an L. “Llewelyn” (apparently an older form of the transliterated Llywelyn; modern spelling usually doubles the second L, i.e. “Llewellyn”) seemed to be tongue-breaking enough, and it’s also used in Welsh, a language which I most definitely don’t speak!… Also, I’m quite fond of the “Q” character in the old James Bond movies, who was played by the late Desmond Llewelyn.
Keeping in theme, of course I needed a first name, and since I didn’t have a handy list of Welsh first names available, the first one that came to mind was “Gwyneth”, most likely because of lovely Gwyneth Paltrow.
Of course it also made sense in several different ways, and this is why my name is full of puns: I remembered that “Llewelyn” was the name of a king of Gwynedd (also written as “Gwyneth” of course), a region of Wales, so obviously “Gwyneth Llewelyn” would be an obvious choice (ie. inverting it) “Llewelyn” is also used to mean “leader” or “ruler” or even “prince” and apparently derives from “lion” or rather “like a lion”. Good attributes to have in a character! Gwyneth derives from “gwyn” (the common abbreviated nickname ), and means “white” or “blessed” or even “pure, virginal”. So mmh, yes, a role-playing character called White Leader or Virgin Lionheart would definitely sound cool enough, and, of course, with such an amount of inspiration for creating a character, I felt I was more than prepared to enter Second Life… and create a fair-skinned but freckled, green-eyed redhead
But all this took just a minute or two to cross my mind before finally typing the name and seeing that it was available. Surprisingly, I was the only Gwyneth in SL for many, many years

3 – Lots of people only stay inSL for a week or a month after creating an account. What made you stay and what motivates you to log back in?
Well, as said, the first reason was the ability to tweak your avatar waaaay beyond what anything else out there could do at that time. Like many people, I tried to create a “real me” avatar first. And like so many others, I found that I have absolutely no talent doing so, and Gwyn’s shape was what came out of it (surprisingly, after five years, I never changed my avatar shape again!). When I finally noticed that one and a half hours had gone past, and that was the best I could come up with, I went “wow — I usually get bored with games after 15 minutes!! Let’s see what else is there!”. I hurried across Orientation Island (which took me another hour; yes, I’m *very* clumsy navigating with game-y interfaces, and took 6 months to figure out how to move the camera so I could look at my avatar from the front!) and was dropped on the old Welcome Area. These days, there were far less griefers in the newbie areas, and things were actually more peaceful — mostly because the Lindens used to be around on those areas, and I was quickly befriended by Nova Linden (months before I knew what a Linden was!).
But what definitely made me stay was walking to the sandbox nearby and watch in fascination how people were creating things for SL, all the time, in front of my very own eyes. This was really what made me stay: looking how anyone could create things in real time, collaboratively, and see it all happen in front of me. I was so enthralled that I spent 20 hours online (mostly watching and asking stupid questions) that very first day, slept for 4 hours, and then logged back in for another 16 hours. After that, I was *sure* that Second Life was something special. Nothing else in my entire life had captivated me so thoroughly and intensely as that first impression of SL!
Every day afterwards I tell myself that one day, surely the novelty would wear off and I’ll give up on SL. Surprisingly, nothing has changed in 5 years. I’m still fascinated, every day I log back in. And every day I’m eagerly anticipating what the next enthralling thing in SL is going to be!

4 – What have you been doing in SL? Tell us your story: what have you been up to or what have you created.
I think that I’m the worst kind of SL resident: the one that figured out, after a few months, that I have absolutely no creative talent whatsoever I believe I tried to do everything in terms of content creation in SL: from building (yuck) to clothes design (eek), animations (argh) and scripting (pfft). I tried to host events and even foster some communities. And live music was not in fashion back in 2004, so I never even attempted that — I can’t sing anyway, and it’s been eons since I played a piano. So I actually stuck very soon with the only thing I *could* do: write about Second Life My initial idea was merely to give newbies something they could read about SL to start their journey in this virtual world.
I believe it’s ironical that after all those years I ended up doing what I usually do iRL — managing a company of talented, creative SL residents, who can’t be bothered with administrative tasks

5 – Have you found, developed or improved any skills because of SL?
Oh definitely. I always knew some basic photoshopping, but doing clothes design enhanced this to the point that Photoshop is not the ugly beast I have to fight with. I had absolutely no idea how animations worked, and learning Poser was really something I’ve enjoyed. And although it doesn’t show, I did enhance my programming skills, which were always a bit on the theoretical side and less on the practical one.
More important for me was to relearn the social skills to live and work in an international environment with a myriad cultures. I had a bit of experience on that, during the early 1990s, thanks to the advent of the Web, but it was a much more “closed” environment, restricted to academia and corporate types, who share similar values and goals, no matter where in the world they are; then I sort of turned inwards to my own country for over a decade and lost some of that contact with the whole world. Second Life changed all that — its
population is completely different!
Also, it was fun starting a blog in English again Like many non-English speakers, the first years on the Internet were an English-only experience (my first home page, still updated on the net somewhere, started to be in English), but moved to Portuguese after a few years. Going back to writing in English was actually fun, it was like experiencing those early years of the Internet all over again

6 – Could you share a funny or awkward story that happened to you inSL?
I could write a whole book on funny and awkward stories that happened to me But perhaps the one that comes to my mind was how once I had to try very hard to convince a newbie just arrived to SL that I was *not* a ‘bot. Since I have little experience with MMOGs and such, it seems that all of them have “help ‘bots” of some sort, and this particular newbie couldn’t believe that I was a real human helping him. I almost lost my temper, but of course it made me realise that from his point of view, how could he really know I was human or not?
That made me think quite a lot about myself, and what this strange “self” thing actually is
Ironically, yesterday, at the regular Thinkers meeting on Tuesdays, I spent an hour or so having a very engaging conversation with a ‘bot

7 – What would you change or improve in Second Life?
Definitely the first hour experience. I remained in SL because I could immediately figure out that its strength was user-generated content — because the sandboxes were just next to the Welcome Area, and there were actually *people* building there, not just automated tutorials. Then I would lose the “service provider” stance of Linden Lab, and just become a “carrier” type. Let people sort out things among themselves. No interference! This is actually a way more complex issue, one that has legal implications, and I’m aware that LL went the route they went not by choice, but because of pressure from several sides: government, lawyers, and in-world pressure groups.
But, oh well, there is so much more to be said about changes and improvements…

8 – Can you share your current and/or future projects for SL?
Currently I’m happily pushing ahead my metaverse development company, Beta Technologies. That pretty much occupies my whole time. I also intend to do a doctor’s degree in Second Life, which will naturally use up time I don’t have, and will be a long process
Ideally, after 2010, I’m hoping to be running a grid interconnected with Linden Lab’s own. Right now, it’s too early for that, in spite of so many good examples of companies doing the same. Without SL interconnection, all those grids are just isolated environments. We *need* integration, not isolation! But there are still a lot of technical and legal questions to deal with.
On a personal (e.g. not professional) side of things, I have so many unfinished/barely begun projects that I’m almost ashamed to list them all… I’d need several lives to implement them

9 – Have you ever had any issues whatsoever within Second Life? If so, how did you reported and was the feedback positive?
Oh, like anybody else, of course I had some issues, and resorted to file a bug report. Technical ones usually got fixed quickly enough.
Social ones — griefers and hackers and people using my name to post things — tended to be a bit harder to fix via an Abuse Report, but in general, things were also settled, sooner or later.
You have to understand that I’m quite used to a lot of different support systems from many companies selling all kinds of products and services On a scale of 0 (no support whatsoever; you have to figure it all out on your own) to 10 (you have a personal guide available 24/7 on a phone to help you with everything ), I’d rate Linden Lab’s services at a 7 — but this scale is not linear! I’d rate *most* organisations I work with on the scale of 2-3 Companies like Dreamhost or Codero/Aplus (hosting providers) would be rated with a 9, but these are extreme exceptions (and maybe I’m just lucky with them!)

10 – Is Second Life merely an online game or do you consider it more of a metaverse or a virtual world?
“Second Life” means a lot of things for different people:
- It’s a social environment which we call “a virtual world”, where people are at the focus of everything, and each experiences it differently
- It’s a brand name for a technological platform (applications, servers, tools, etc.)
- It’s a communication protocol enabling interconnection of different virtual worlds (thus, a “metaverse”)
- It’s a way to reflect on your self and your relation with an immersive environment, so in that sense it’s a philosophical/spiritual experience
I’m sure everybody will have a different definition

11 – Imagine a new resident asks for your help. What would do? What would you tell him/her?
I still routinely log in to the Help Island to help newbies The first thing I tell them is that this isn’t a “game”, so if you’re logging in searching for “goals” or “rules”, you’re on the wrong track entirely. I always tend to give people the broad, overall idea of what SL is and what it’s being used for.
This is called “managing expectations”. Almost all insatisfaction comes from either having too high expectations, or too low expectations about SL. I try to be fair and tell them about all the amazing things in SL, but also give them a good idea of what is fair to expect, e.g. “yes, you can become rich in SL, but it’s as hard as in RL, don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise”.
Then I send them to NCI or a similar group where they can learn more

12 – How would you describe yourself in one word?
Loudmouth

Your urls
Blog: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/ (personal)
http://blogs.betatechnologies.info/gwynethllewelyn/ (business)
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwyneth_llewelyn/
SLurls http://slurl.com/secondlife/Io/223/116/26 (home & shop)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beta%20Technologies/129/214/28 (business HQ)
Mentions http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/09/gwyneth-llewely.html

–
“I’m not building a game. I’m building a new country.”
— Philip “Linden” Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08

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