Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

Shaggy, who recommends designers to “understand those constraints and how you can use them;
not fight against them but live with them”, several constraints shaped the overall design, including
the maximum number of prims (‘prim-limit’), and requirements to produce a “fast rez-ing” place
with few textures and simple objects.
Unlike Shaggy or Curiza, Xavier has professional experience with game-design and necessary
competences with the game creation tools such as Unity and Unreal engines. He mentions how his
professional team asked the question ‘Can you make a real computer game in SL’ and found out
that it was not as easy. As to Xavier, one of the main differences between creating a game in SL
than in other specialized software is the limitation of changing, modifying and affecting other
people’s avatars and possessions, and adding satisfactory interactive affordances to the designed
places/artifacts. On the other hand, the pros of SL for Xavier are the ability to work and build
together, and being able to use the world’s socio-cultural resources as semiotic resources in design
processes.
As professional users cannot find their tools, or use them the way they are used to, and get
frustrated. On the other hand, builders also feel frustrated when they feel like they do not have the
necessary knowledge and skills to keep up with the pace of technological advances; they seem to
develop a sense of resistance to change and improvement. In the case of PAL, both Shaggy and
AmyLee comment on the effect of limitations of participation in relation to technological
development of SL’s infrastructure (such as introduction of sculpted prims) and their social
consequences (such as less venues and chance for amateurs to create and compete). AmyLee claims
that “SL shows a lot of examples where amateurs are more creative than established
professionals” and this is why she wishes “things would stay like this.” For Shaggy, “if the creation
process becomes technically more difficult, it would be more difficult for newcomers to build.”
Finally, he undecidedly adds: “If I was coming to SL now, maybe I wouldn’t start building because
it would all appear so complex.”
For the workshop students, the initial solution spaces and potential resources depended on the
structure of supervision, as they lacked the necessary first-hand experience. Within the progression
of the course, students had the chance to learn the tools and try to develop techniques for more
effective processes, whereas they still needed frequent support. For the students, a major challenge
in the building process was to create a desired shape that they have sketched, imagined or found
before with prims in 3D space. Students often conformed to the next best thing, by appropriating
their designs to what was conceived as possible by resources accessible/usable by them.
Students who had little or no experiences with SL’s controls for navigating the avatar and the
camera mentioned how their content creation activities were hindered by their inability to properly
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