The Tradition Continues

A long-time tradition in Second Life seems to be waning, but it certainly isn't dead. "What might that be?" you ask. Away Games, of course! Whenever you encounter someone who is slumped over in the "Away" pose and is tagged as such and the land permits you to build, you are allowed (obligated, some might say) to enhance the appearance of the un-guarded avatar. I've written about Away Games a couple times on this blog (here) and tag such posts with "away" so they are easy to find.

Birdie Linden at center is a prime subject for enhancement by me and Hexapoda Resident (right).

Without explanation, my friend Hexapoda offered to teleport me to her location where she was standing with Birdie Linden in the aforementioned unattended state. Since Birdie might have woken up at any moment, I can understand the rush to have me drop in and immediately we began to plot. While Hexa was working on a mask to add (see it here) I started on my own addition but fought a fast Auto Return that kept us from getting too carried away.

Eventually I managed to add the word AWAY over Birdie's head and set up the Snapshot with all the name tags showing so I could enter the Decorate A Busy Linden game that Ansi Soderstrom started a few years ago. I used my main account but Birdie was Away not Busy so I figure I got 100 points out of this tagging.

When was the last time you decorated an unattended avatar? Feel free to leave URLs in comments to proudly show off your work. I'd love to see what you've done.

SL8B Away Games

Three Anonymous Residents play Away Games with SL8B Fearless Leader Doctor Gascoigne.

More (Away) Games

There was a time that a ghost -- an avatar that a simulator would continue to render even after the account logged out -- would be visible to only a few other residents and gradually disappear to all, but this one stuck around at the Isle of Lesbos for nearly a week. I first saw her standing in the spot you see and thought of playing some (Away) Games (see this earlier post) but got busy and forgot.

A little more than a day later I saw her encased in a glowing block of ice, courtesy of my friend Kaelin. The next day the sign appeared. The day after that I seriously thought about restarting the region to clear the presence buffers but decided this Away Game was just too good.

Alas, the avatar was gone the next day. Maybe the disappearance was part of the rolling restarts that hit the grid. Maybe the presence buffers were purged as part of a cleaning or when the avatar's human contacted customer support about not being able to log in. Or maybe another Isle officer restarted the region. In any case, this unique form of performance art is gone, captured only in pixels even more static that the originals. :::pout:::

(Away) Mosaics

This is why I don't go (Away) around people like me.

The Avie in the center went (Away) while (Editing Appearance) and stayed that way for a fair amount of time before I arrived. And as you can see, she was there long enough after I showed up that I and another staffer at the Isle of Lesbos managed to have some fun.

My first thought was to just send her Home. But a discussion of "(Away) Games" was struck and I decided instead to have some fun. I've done more elaborate (Away) Mosaics, but this was one of my rare collaborations. The nOObie male on the left was provided by the other staffer who was rather pleased with the texture I uploaded for the words behind the heads.

We were just getting ready to add more elements when the Avie "woke up" and flew off. I gave her this texture but she declined it. Sure, I can see how this might be annoying, possibly even embarrassing, but if it happened to me I'd laugh. But then again, I don't go (Away) around people like me.