Bonus Mission 2

Yes, it's just a game," says Joi Ito. "The way that the real world is a game."(Levy, 2007)This is how the World of Warcraft was described in an article which discussed whether this massive multiplayer game was actually a 'game' or not. The same could be said about Second Life. The difference between the two, Second Life and WoW, is that there is a peak that can be reached in the latter. Second Life is a completely open ended virtual world, which is in many ways similar to the real world we live in. Orientation Island is where one learns to walk, talk and get a hang of the basics. Once we reach the main land, we have very little money and it depends on what we want to do. People could waste everything away, or could work there way up to become millionaires and live the good life.While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games (WikiPedia,2007). Apart from lacking the common characteristics of a game, Second Life offers people a wide variety of activities to engage in which can be immensely profitable. Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything (Hof, 2006).Anshe Chung is a resident in Second Life and a lot more than that. The name previously mentioned is not her real name and is used in the virtual world. She is a Chinese born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. Anshe started buying and developing land in Second Life and now rents these spaces to people within Second Life. She has turned the concept of a game around and proven how profitable the virtual world can be. Her estimated net worth is close to 250,000 US Dollars (Hof, 2006) However, I feel that this is the tip of the iceberg. Second life is relatively new and people like Anshe Chung will try to capitalize this virtual world. Second life offers places to gamble, and online gambling is a multi billion dollar industry. If improvements could be made to the interfaces of these activities within the program, it could be exploited. Sale of goods and trading within the community has a lot of potential to attract big businesses into its economy. Once this virtual world is examined in this way, the concept of it being a game fades further away.

References:

Robert D. Hof (2006) My Virtual World. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

Second Life. (2007, April 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved, April 6 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Life&oldid=120268909

Levy, S. (2007). In World of Warcraft: Is It a Game. Retrieved April 6 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/.

Qotw10:Second Life

The Grand casino.

Second Life, at first, sounded like a futile concept to me. I was under the impression that it was a virtual world created where people would just go to while away time online. This impression changed when i sat down to explore its horizons. At first i was stuck at orientation island becuase i lost my oihud and didnt know how to get of the island. After an hour of researching online, i got a walkthrough for the island, and was on my way to the mainland. I had fun editing my appearance, and i think i did a pretty good job at it. When i got to the main land, i was surrounded by all these signs which read "Nympho Paradise". This was a bit distrubing because there were tons of naked people running around getting upto all sorts of stuff. I came across one sign which read, "Grand Casino", and given that i had only 250 Linden dollars i thought it would be a good time to make some money. I headed straight to the poker tables. Thats where i took the first picture. I played with six other people, and in an hour i was up 500 Linden Dollars and called it quits. I headed to the black jack tables and had a good run there as well.

I got the hang of telelporting to differnt locations, and went to a ton of palces. I went to Hollywood, Paris, Tokyo, Lion City, Hawaii and lots more. I made a Friend at this island called Hawaii Kai which is a beautiful place, with a lot of nice houses. I strolled around for a while, and bumped into Nina Voom. We started talking and she showed me her house. It was really nice, and she told me she paid 950 Linden Dollars a week for it. After twenty minutes, she told me she had to go work. She used to sell Jewellery and make it herself.

On Ninas Beautiful Balcony.

After I left Ninas palce, I came across this one palce called 'Goddess of Love", which sounded like anpther one of those mass orgy palces. After i read a description of it, it said that it was the best club in Second life and so i checked it out. This was truly quite a nice palce. The design was great, the music was good and there were tons of people. As i got in i saw about a hundred people dancing in the middle of their dance floor. Five minutes into it, i had already made freinds with a girl and i asked her to dance. Her name was Starshine. we danced for about twenty minutes or so , and then she had to leave.

Starshine and myself at the Goddess of Love.

I had spent close to three or four hours on Second Life,and didnt even realize it. I made money, made friends had a good time at a club. Second life is very engaging and very open ended. While i did feel that there was a lot of sexual content in this world, i realized i can ignore it and still find hundreds of things to do and even more people to meet. All in all i had a great time on the program and am sure that I will spend a lot of lazy afternoons doing whatever i want to do in this ingenius virtual setting.