SL中的工作介绍[D2论坛]

SL中的工作介绍
Guide to Jobs in Second Life
//SL工作向导                           文章来源：secondlife.com     翻译：www.d2life.net
Second Life is quite unlike a MMORPG in the sense that you need skills to get a job - or rather, make a living in SL - but, unlike MMORPGs, the skills you need are your own!
//SL与一般MMORPG不同的是你需要足够的技巧来找到一份工作甚至以SL为生，但是，不同与一般的MMORPG，你所拥有的技巧是独一无二的。
So, there are no buttons to press on dialog boxes that make you "instantly" upgrade an artificial skill which will bump your character into the world of professional services. Instead, you have to apply your own RL skills in SL in order to succeed. During this session, we will try to cover the following types of jobs:
//所以没有所谓的对话框让你点击按钮升级所谓的技能来提高你的人物属性达到SL的专业水平。取而代之的是，你需要将你的现实技能应用于SL来获得成功。这篇文章中，我们试图概括SL中所有的职业类型。
Unskilled Jobs          //非技术类工作
Dancer            //舞者
Model              //模特
Shop Attendant         //商店服务员
Bouncer/Security Agent     //保镖、安全人员
Skilled Jobs             //技术类工作
Builder/Modeller       //建筑师、造型师
Texturer                     //图案设计师
Fashion Designer    //时装设计师
Scripter                     //脚本设计师
Animator                  //动作设计师
Event Hoster           //活动策划
DJ                            //主持人
Free-lancers & Entrepeneurs     //自由职业类
Land Baron                       //地产商
Linden Dollar Brokers     //林登币经纪人
Unclassified Jobs                     //未分类工作
Unskilled jobs are those that do not require any "outside" skill (ie. RL-related) to be hired. Not surprisingly, there are not many around, and they don't pay very well.
//非技术性工作是那些不需要现实世界技能的工作，不要感到意外，这些工作机会不是很多，而且通常报酬不是很好。
Dancer
The first type of unskilled job is the night club "dancer". Since club owners earn some Linden Dollars simply by attracting crowds - through a complex formula that converts the time and number of people that are inside their club for a period of time into a weekly L$ stipend - it's natural for them to hire people to attract these crowds and make sure they stay there as long as possible. Dancers are one way to do that.
To become a dancer, you have three alternatives. Sometimes, jobs are offered on the Classified section of thehttp://forums.secondlife.com/ forums. You can browse the forum groups to see if someone is hiring. The second way is, some clubs sometimes announce special events just to hire dancers. This has become slightly more rare in later months, so perhaps you should try the third way: go to a club you like, try to get in touch with a club owner, and ask him if a job is available.
//要成为一名舞者，你有三种方式。一，通常这些机会会在http://forums.secondlife.com/ forums提供。第二种方式是，一些俱乐部会有一些特殊活动临时雇用舞者，这种情况并不多见，通常你得去考虑第三种方式，即去一个你喜欢的俱乐部，找到该俱乐部的老板，向他寻求工作机会。
Some club owners pay a fixed salary, but expect you to be at their club for a certain amount of hours per week (including mostly all announced events at the club, to get a "full house"). Others rely on tips - either paid directly to the dancers, or through tip boxes. Some dancers also do stripping or offer escort services.
//一些俱乐部主会付固定薪水，但前提是你每周要保持一定的工作时间。多数舞者只能得到小费，要么是客人直接支付，要么是客人付给小费箱的。舞者通常参与脱衣服或提供“三陪”服务。
Another very glamorous unskilled job is becoming a model. Hiring is done in similar way as dancers, but the truth is, there are not many job offerings in these areas. There are a few modelling agencies around, and clothes designers usually contact them to organize big fashion events, like in RL. These attract very large crowds and are certainly one of the best and more fun way to present your clothes lines to the SL public.
//另一个充满魅力的职业是充当模特，获得此类工作的方式与舞者类似，但事实是此类工作的机会非常难得。只有非常少的模特中介机构，与现实一样，时装设计师会联系这些中介机构举行时装发布会。这通常吸引非常多的人群并不失为一种非常好的在SL展示服装的方式。
To become a professional model, you'll have to do a serious investment in yourself. To earn a large amount of L$, you not only need a gorgeous avatar, but highly priced items like a special skin, hair (often prim hair, which is expensive), good make-up techniques, and catwalking animations, preferable unique (thus, often you have to pay someone to do them for you). To become a famous model, expect a recurring investment in more animations. Still, the job usually pays well. And you get the glamour and fame that comes with this job :-)
//成为一名专业的模特，你需要做很多投资。要赚取大量的林登币，你不仅需要华丽的服装，一些高价的皮肤，发型，好的装扮技巧，令人着迷的小动作同样重要（这些通常需要花钱打造）。要成为一名名模，需要在动作上不断投资。然后，报酬同样丰厚。而且这份工作通常伴随着魅力和名望。
//最近，与自动售货对立的是，商店营业员再次风行。通常人比机器更懂得销售，所有一些品牌开始雇用销售人员。这些销售通常不局限于固定场所。售货员的报酬与业绩息息相关。当然，如果店主想要销售人员在固定场所每周工作一段时间，那他就得支付一份额外的固定薪水了。
In any case - and perhaps excepting models and escorts - unskilled jobs do not really pay well, so lets take a look at skilled jobs.
//无论如何，或许该剔除模特与保镖，非技术类工作真的不能得到丰厚的报酬，所以我们来看看技术类工作。
"Skilled jobs" are of two types - "classical skilled jobs", where you employ one of your RL skills directly towards an activity in SL, and free-lancers/business owners, where you bring in other skills, that do not relate directly to SL, but which can be employed successfully to give you a steady income.
//技术类工作分为两种，一种是传统技术类工作——将你的现实社会技能直接应用于SL。另一种是自由职业者或生意人，需要一些不与SL直接相关的技巧，却能给你带来丰厚的利润。
Let's see the first type of skilled jobs. The classical skilled jobs in SL can be broadly divided in two different types as well - the first type, you just require Second Life's client application to do your job. The second type requires external tools.
//我们来看第一种类型的技术工作。传统技术型工作可以广义的分为两种，一种是只需要利用SL客户端的，另一种需要其它的开发工具。
//下面的自己看，既然要学习技巧，首先去提高英文吧：）
The first job is building - using SL's 3D modelling interface to create unique objects that you can sell. This is probably one area of SL that everybody has tried at least once - sticking prims together to build new objects. There are several sorts of "builders" - architects, who specialize in building homes; furniture designers; weapons; vehicles; miscellaneous objects. In the latter you may include artists, who use the 3D modelling tools of SL to create sculptures or similar artistical objects.
While everybody is able to learn the 3D modelling interface of SL - and there are classes teaching both beginner and advanced levels - the truth is, to become successful in this business, you need an aesthethical sense much more than a thorough knowledge of the tools. It's not surprising that the best architects/designers in SL are actually architects in RL, or 3D graphical designers, 3D modellers, or even people from the FX effects industry. For them, SL is just another tool to be learned - like a different word processor for a talented writer. As soon as they grasp the way SL's modelling tool works, they can easily create fantastic pieces of art that they can sell very well - much faster than someone who has no talent but has been in-world for a year or two and really knows all the tricks of the modelling interface. Technique is not a substitute for imagination, creativity, and a well-developed aesthetical sense.
Lately, as SL's society complexifies, we have seen a specialization of builders. A talented architect will probably not design vehicles or furniture, and the reverse is also true. Some people concentrate their efforts in building tiny objects - like jewelry or gadgets - and would probably do a bad job of creating a large building. If you're talented, pick up a niche in SL, and focus your efforts in producing objects for that niche. Trying to compete with the well-established masters, with a solid reputation, is very, very hard - unless you wish to work for them instead of competing. Teams of builders work often together to meet deadlines (and also have more fun together!).
Associated with builders we often see texturers. Due to the nature of 3D worlds, you cannot really have good builds if you don't have wonderful textures, and these are much harder to do properly - it's not a question of simply uploading one freebie texture, apply it to a building, and expect it to work! Textures are done with "external programs", like Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or the open-source GIMP - you'll need to be proficient with those tools in order to do good textures. Professional graphical designers or artists will have a much easier entry in the texturing market - colleges really teach semester courses on texturing. Some of the best examples in SL go even a step ahead - you create 3D models outside SL, apply the proper lighting to make your 3D model realistic, and grab the textures to upload them into SL. These types of builds achive a higher level of outstanding realism.
A slightly different type of specialized texturing is clothes design. Clothes in SL are designed using special templates - which you can get for free at the SL web site - over which you apply your skills and creativity, again using an external tool like the ones mentioned before. Clothes are perhaps easier to do than textures, but to do them *well*, takes a lot of time and patience. Simply grabbing a picture from a Web site and tweaking it on Photoshop, expecting to make a lot of Linden Dollars, will not work - the highly acclaimed top clothiers in SL do their own designs from scratch, and they make L$ for being unique, and for the high quality of their finished work - it's very, very hard to do the seams properly (that is, aligning the front, back and sleeves properly), and people will expect to pay a premium for "perfect" clothes, but next to nothing for crude attempts.
As with building, clothiers are starting to specialize on certain styles. The very big brands usually have all sorts of clothes, but smaller designers concentrate on a specific niche - say, lingerie, vampire clothing, T-shirts, or shoes. There are thousands of clothes designers in SL and it's quite hard to build your reputation quickly (but there certainly are a few that succeeded). You will also need to own several shops to advertise your products - unlike architects which often are hired for the hour - and sponsor some events where you can show off your new clothes lines. There are even a very few "real world" brands designing clothes for SL avatars, so the competition is really increasing...
Another type of job which does not require any external tool is scripting. SL has a built-in language, called Linden Scripting LanguageLSL, which is used to "program" all objects to make them react to and interact with avatars. Scripting is not hard for a professional programmer - it's just another language to be learned, and it's relatively easy to learn and master. However, unlike other jobs, traditionally, you cannot sell scripts directly - you sell mostly scripted objects. This means that many scripters partner up either with architects or object builders, and split the profit from scripted objects. Experienced scripters will also be very proficient in doing scripts that reduce lag (which is not obvious for a beginning scripter). If you can make a reputation from selling a few good scripted objects, it's not unusual that you may get hired as a free-lancer in a large-scale project. Remember, a large part of SL's population are professional programmers in RL, so this is a field with lots of competition from professionals. As usual, creativity and imagination are the key to success!
A different job type - which pays well and has almost no competition - is the animator. Animations are done on an external program, usually Poser from Curious Labs - an expensive, semi-professional tool which LL has favoured (you can use some open-source or free tools like Blender, but you probably need to tweak the final animation in Poser to import it properly into SL). Poser is fun to learn and relatively easy to use for simple animations. Complex, realistic animations like walking or dancing are another matter entirely - to get good results, you need to use a very expensive technology called "motion capturing", envolving complex devices and harnesses and several video cameras. Not unsurprisingly, there are just a handful of good animators in Second Life, and they can almost get a RL living from the animations they do (one of the leading dance animators has over 10,000 happy customers, and each of his animations sells for L$ 350 - and many buy several!). This is a very specialized job and one that certainly has lots of room for new players!
Event hosters are a type of job that has lately suffered from a big change in SL's economic model. To attract people to your place, the best way is to announce events in the Events list, where everybody in-world can see the announcements. Event hosting rely upon your own RL communication skills, your ability to entertain other people and make them have fun by attending your events, and the degree of imagination in coming up with new ideas. Events can be simple things like discussions - no need for much preparation! - or highly complex, like a fashion show, a boxing or chess competition, or a medieval tournament. In the latter cases, it means to coordinate a team of builders and scripters to create lots of objects that will interact with the people attending your event. Classes are also a type of event that need some preparation and some experience in teaching.
A different type of event hoster enriches a certain environment. The typical example is a DJ - streaming life music into a night club. While almost anybody with a large music collection, a tool likeWinAmp and access to a streaming server likeShoutcast is able to DJ, good DJs have a talent to entertain people for a few hours by reacting to the audience's moods and being able to adjust the musical selection accordingly. Some DJs have their own clubs, other roam SL offering their talents. Other similar jobs are stand-up comediants or trivia event hosters.
We come now to other types of jobs that use skills which are not directly related to things in-world but which can be surprisingly employed to making a living.
The first and more obvious one is the real estate agent - also nicknamed Land Baron by the residents of SL. Land Barons buy land wholesale, either from the auctions or directly, parcel it out, and announce it for resale - or they act merely as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, charging a fee. It needs good taste to pick up good spots, an understanding of how the market works and which plots will sell well, and a capacity to establish an unblemished reputation, in order to make continued sales.
Some Land Barons rent land instead of selling. Renting is a good choice if you don't want to pay tier, just have a Basic account, or just need a temporary piece of land for some particular reason. There are basically three types of renting. You can rent un-terraformed land free of buildings, and set up your place just like you want. Or you can rent some land with the buildings already set up for your use - like prefab houses. The third type is the mall, where you rent very small places to set up your shops, and expect that the mall owner sets up events and advertising to attract people to the mall.
You also have people making a living by exchanging their L$ for real-world currency (USD$, Euros, etc), as covered in theSelling L$ for USD$/Purchasing L$ with USD$ topic. Making a profit by buying cheap and selling high is not for the faint of heart - you're dealing with "real money" and need to have a very good understanding on how a stock exchange works. Other "external" jobs include web sites which sell SL items and charge a comission on sales - the best examples being SL Exchange (http://www.slexchange.com) and Second Server (http://www.secondserver.net) from the Gigas group. In this case, the "job" is completely out of SL, and is just plain e-Commerce, using Second Life as the marketplace, but using RL tools, RL programming, and RL advertising (or discussions on the SL forums) to promote their business.
Other jobs are not so clearly defined. For instance, you have all sorts of people organizing companies, groups, associations, even cartels. They have skills organizing people together. There are people using their marketing or advertising skills in-world. There even are lawyers and economists! All carve their niches in their Second Lifes, using all sorts of skills they have IRL, and putting them into use.
Every one of us is talented in a special way. Some of us discover new talents while in-world. The trick for having fun in SL, and even earn some Linden Dollars while having fun, is learning about our own talents and skills, apply our imagination and creativity, and make the most of it!