Saturday, April 7, 2007

Bonus Mission #2 : Game or no game, it sure is fascinating



Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 5,316,688 people from around the globe (www.secondlife.com). Abbreviated SL, Second Life residents can personally express themselves through an avatar. It is so personalized that it allows residents to intricately change their avatar from the tip of the nose to the tint of the skin. SL boasts many features from setting up one’s own business to dancing in a club of one’s choice. It is really not very different from real life. Residents can engage in practically everything they do in real life and the one difference would be that instead of the real ‘you’ a virtual you in the form of an avatar would be living in second life.

In the article discussing if World of Warcraft(WOW) is a game, it states that players of the game enjoy a form of community rarely seen in the real world; higher-level players go out of their way to tutor newbies and accompany them on quests. Deep friendships are forged. Relationships begin that flower into marriage (Levy, 2006). Likewise in SL residents are able to choose from a vast list of activities which include discussions, sports, commercial, entertainment, games, pageants, education, arts and culture and charity/Support Groups (SL, 2007). In SL residents are also able to communicate with each other through local chats and IM’s. Thus, I would consider SL to own a feature of an online community as well.

Games are played for amusement, diversion and entertainment. SL does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games (Second Life, 2007). Although people do play SL for entertainment and diversion they are also able to earn real money by opening a virtual shop and converting their Linden Dollars (L$) to real currency. Many real world companies also advertise and have set up virtual headquarters in SL like Adidas and Reebok (Businesses and Organizations in Second Life, 2007).
In SL residents can do what ever they want (apart from flying!). You would not have anything to hold you back and people really do things that they would not do in real life. Residents meet fascinating people, fulfill long buried fantasies and pretty much live a second yet, fantasized life.

The mere fact that over 60 of us are arguing whether SL is a game or not in this class alone, should be a major factor in determining if SL is really more than a game. For some of the SL residents who live life on SL more than they do on real life, I suspect SL is definitely more than a game. However, how much more can ‘more than a game’ be? Although people do confuse virtual reality and actual reality, SL, WOW or any other virtual world cannot be compared to the real world. Therefore, with all its innovative structure and realest of virtual realties, SL in the end is still a game.


Reference:


Businesses and Organizations in Second Life, (2007). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businesses_and_Organizations_in_Second_Life

Steven Levy (2007). Newsweek Technology, MSNBC.com. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/

Second Life, (2007). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life

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