It took me a while, but as I promised, this post is dedicated to “Second Life”.
Before I start writing my personal impression of the virtual realm, I want to explain, in short, what is “Second Life” (which from now on will be called SL as everybody nicknames it) and why the hell am I picking on SL from all the virtual worlds out there.
The first time I heard about SL was about 3 years ago, during my undergraduate studies, in a theory oriented course. The idea of SL was presented as a just another array of ways in which people could escape from the real world- some people start playing “hide and seek” in the streets of Tel Aviv, while others play in the streets of SL. The discussion was so short and superficial, I didn’t even think about trying SL myself.
Since we moved to the US the numbers of times in which I’ve heard about SL has risen dramatically. It seems that everyone has their own second life world: I’m sitting as a listener in a class about video games that has dedicated some time for SL, I paid a visit to “Linden Lab” (SL company) offices and heard the people that create SL talk about it, some faculties at MIT have their a SL island, I went to a conference about SL in Harvard and the list goes on. As time passed by my curiosity increased, until one day I decided that I need to know what it is all about!?
Well, as I have been told at “Linden Lab” offices, SL is a platform, not a game. Basically it’s a free virtual world: everybody can download it, sign in, pick a name and a character and dive in. After signing in you can be whoever you like, build your own house or business, make new friends and be part of events and groups. It’s not a game in the sense that you don’t have a narrative or a mission, and similar to the real world, one has to find something to do in SL or else be bored to death.
After this short introduction I think it’s time to share my experience as a freshwoman in SL.
The first thing you have to do is pick a name, you can create any first name you want, but you have to choose a last name from a list. Being a little lazy in the creative name department, I choose the name: Gila Gregan, - it sounds a little Irish and who knows, it might turn out to be a superhero name (like Peter Parker and Peter Petrelli). I’m not sure why I had to choose a last name, or why I had to display it, my dream was to be “Madonna” in my second life. Another unresolved issue is am I automatically related to all the other Gregans? Maybe we’re a big virtual family and from now on I’ll have to celebrate Jewish holydays with them in SL?
instead I chose a female figure, and then, unnoticeably, spent about an hour and a half until getting it to look like this:
The interface allows you to change every feature in your avatar: general height, leg height, upper body width, boobs yes / no, large / small, firm / saggy, separated / tight, skin tone (almost every RGB color you can imagine) eye size and shape, nose size, wide / narrow, opened / close, up / down, lip size and shape- wide / opened / lifted, hair color, shape, haircut, shoes, gloves, clothes, and the list goes on, you can make all these changes without spending any money. If you do want to spend money you can make yourself really pretty with smoother skin and much more realistic character.
So without paying attention and although I decided prior to entering, not to spend time on my appearance, I found myself choosing a new nose, and without even realizing trying to find my own nose. I know that a lot of people create their avatar in their own shape, or at least with a few improvements they would have done in the real world if they had the money, the courage, or the ability to avoid social critic. Like for example if you’re slightly fat you’d make a slim version of yourself as your avatar, if you feel you would have been happier being just a little bit taller, you’d make an avatar that looks like you but a bit taller. I know that there are a lot of people whose main goal in going into SL is making their avatar looks as close as possible to their real image, to accomplish this goal they spend a lot of money and time. So eventually it turns out that one spends real time and money to become the same as the real self in the virtual world.
After making your new identity you can start your journey in SL. Then it hits you. You realize that the SL interface resembles much more a video game’s interface than a computer program. Your avatar is right in the middle of the screen, you are controlling it by the arrow keys and when you want to do something, you have this circle of options, which I spent a lot of hours using in “Monkey Island 2”.
For me, this interface gives the feeling of a game and with it the notion that I have some kind of mission to complete (save the world, maybe), that’s when I realize that I have no mission at all but to be the character I’ve created and to make something of my virtual life. I think the people at “Linden Lab” need to update the interface to something much brighter that looks more like a program interface or a web interface, and just to get them started I created this rough sketch:
There’s something deceiving in the name “Second Life”, and I think that it has to do with unclear intentions as most deceiving things are. The creators of SL wanted it to be a platform, a tool, for the real life. And indeed SL is slowly becoming more and more relevant in business life. For example companies make their transatlantic conferences through SL and save money time and CO2 emission. In this case SL is a tool that serves the real life of a specific time and space, the intersection between the real lives and the virtual is specific and well defined. In this case SL is not an alternative to the real lives and not running parallel to them. The same way one goes to work, to the shop or the bank, one goes to SL in order to do stuff. A very interesting example of using SL as a tool and expanding the connections between the real and the virtual life is presented in the work of Drew Harry from the Media lab http://web.media.mit.edu/~dharry/.
But if people will only use SL as a tool “Linden Lab” won’t earn any money, so they also need people that don’t see SL as a platform but as a game (the same way the interface indicates) or more specifically as some kind of an MMO. If it’s an MMO, like “World of War Craft”, or if you have other reasons to spend most of your time in the virtual world, SL is not your SECOND LIFE, it’s your first and maybe your only. Maybe the real life becomes your virtual life because it’s as surreal as the virtual world to other people and the existence in the virtual world replace your existence in the real world. In the year 2008 one can have the opportunity to choose a side dish with his hamburger meal, a cellular phone company, to choose between 6 pairs of jeans and “virtual” or “real” existence. But just as you can’t wear two pairs of jeans and talk on the phone through two cellular companies at the same time, you can’t be present in the real and in the virtual world at the same time, you have to choose. It doesn’t mean you can’t be sometimes here and sometimes there and it doesn’t mean that these two world don’t collide and interact with each-other (they do, all the time, and I found these interactions the most interesting part of time) but they are not a mirror image of each-other, and it isn’t possible to be in both places at the same time, as someone once said, “…you have to choose… the blue pill or the red pill”.
SL for me was an unfulfilling experience; right now my real life provides the drama of a medium size soap opera. My new real life seems like a virtual world to me, so I can’t find myself really concentrating in the virtual one. My real life mission of finding a new life is too intensive for adopting another mission of creating a new virtual life. It’s a very interesting tool and I’m sure that I’ll get back to it from time to time.
it's the boobs sale day, and I can't choose.
