TECHNOLOGY
My Second Life
By Mitch Apley
I have always considered myself a gamer, albeit never on the cutting edge.
When all the other kids had Intellivision, I had pong. When Nintendo came along, I was stuck on Atari. Nonetheless, thanks to Doom, Halo and World of Warcraft, I have spent an almost sinful percentage of my adult life in front of a picture tube smashing buttons, solving puzzles and, more recently, making friends and enemies playing video games online.
Now comes Second Life, the online game that has quickly attracted over 1.2 million registrant into a virtual world where the only thing you can count on, like life itself, is that it’s ultimately going to cost you money.
Second Life is the product of Linden Labs in San Francisco, whose pedigree of investors includes Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon; Mitch Kapor, inventor of the first spreadsheet program Lotus 123; and Pierre Omidyar, a co-founder of ebay.
Since 1999, Second Life has been inviting guests to create their own digital versions of themselves (called avatars) to explore this 3-D world, buy property, set up stores, make dates and otherwise inhabit this parallel universe. You can sign-up for free, but to get the most out of Second Life, you’ll have to give them a credit card to buy “Linden Dollars” good at all the local outlet stores and, yes, redeemable for real dollars at various online currency exchanges. (The exchange rate is now 400 Lindens for $1.)
I first heard about Second Life a year ago, but since there were no enemies to destroy, monsters to vanquish or quests to undertake, I didn’t pay much attention. What's the point of this game, I always wondered. Then I read an article on the front page of The New York Times business section two weeks ago saying major corporations like Sony BMG Music, Nissan, Adidas, Reebok, Toyota and Starwood Hotels were buying properties and setting up shop. So I decided it was time to take a peek.
Getting into your Second Life, although free, is not easy. After you sign-up, download the interface software, choose a name and select a body type for your avatar (don’t worry you can change it later), you are dropped onto Orientation Island along with all the other game newbies.
The day I joined, there were 12,000 other players signed on – who, by the end of the day, would exchange a little over $400,000 of American dollars in Linden currency.
Orientation Island is where you learn to use the arrow keys to move around; how to fly over the terrain; chat with your island mates; “sit” on characters to let them control your avatar through java-scripting (this comes in handy when you get to the porn sites. More on that later); and click on anything that moves to see what it does.
Eventually, you’ll discover that you have to find the Orientation Temple (hint: on the south side of the island) to ever get off Orientation Island – and on to the good stufff.
In
my first foray onto the Mainland, I immediately stumbled into a porn site.
Some users estimate as much as 30% of the already developed land area in Second
Life is devoted to sex. Given the Garden of Eden origins of sex and prostitution’s
claim as the world’s oldest profession, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
I assume that the enticing screens will, upon a click, give me an opportunity to see a pornographic video. But since I don’t have any Linden dollars in my account – or know how to make a purchase - I moved on. Just in case, of course, I dropped the site into my “inventory” of frequently-visited places.
Down
the road, I found a little purple airplane hanging in space. It wasn’t
going anywhere and didn’t seem to do much of anything. Perhaps there
was a way to make it go, but I couldn’t get much more out of it than
a photo op.
Just below the frozen airplane, some Second
Life landowner had obviously gone to great lengths to create a very swank
swimming pool. It had a little ball on it labeled “Sunbathe.”
I
clicked and found myself prone on a raft. But I had no idea how to take off
my clothes so I felt pretty silly.
The more I explored, the more I realized that I needed to buy me some land. You can do this at the Second Life real estate office, but, as happens in real life, nobody was in the office. There were no hours of operation posted. I’m guessing the sales reps were off for the weekend.
I
found a little love pad way up high in the sky with a few activity balls.
I clicked on one, and suddenly found myself upside down in a purple den of
sin. The owner invited me to “sit” and, before I knew it, my hips
were gyrating, my legs splayed out all over the place, and I kept touching
myself in the most sensitive places. That was weird! I stood up and tried
another activity ball. This time I was upside down and someone else was manning
the controls.
Time to take a break.
My editor is hammering me for a report on what I’ve found so far in
Second Life. “Did you find the Toyota test track they talked
about in the New York Times?” he wants to know. And, of course,
the only commerce I’ve run across are little individual sites selling
virtual bikinis you can wear on your virtual avatar body.
So
I decided to go back into my Second Life yesterday, arriving on the
mainland and flying around until I landed in a gambling hall where I nearly
broke even playing the slots. Online gambling is addictive. I probably spent
a couple hours there. But the Wheel of Fortune killed me!
Finally, I decided it was time to meet somebody. You can find people by looking for green dots on the map, so I stumbled upon a guy named Giga Watts.
Giga was dressed up in a bear costume, and gave me all kinds of helpful advice. He sent me a link to a place called YadNI’s Junkyard where new players can go to pick up all kinds of free stuff: clothing, games, gizmos, etc.
He told me the main thing was to take it easy and have fun, but also to be careful.
“Be careful?” I was stunned.
Giga explained to me that some people like to go around Second Life with guns shooting other players. If I ever find myself in trouble, he said I should hit the “Teleport” button immediately to get back to my home location. “It’s the mace of cyberspace,” he said.
I thanked him and zipped over to the junkyard to get my free stuff, but I couldn’t help but wonder: what happens if you get shot in Second Life? Do you die? Falling from great heights in a video game doesn’t kill you. But, if another player actively tries to kill you, could you be damaged beyond repair or worse yet, die?
In
YadNi’s Junkyard a huge red sign spun around and around out in front
of me with the phrase “No Shooting” in bold letters. YadNi obviously
understands the problem. But now that the question has been asked . . . what
is Second Death like?
There is no actual set of rules for Second Life. When you sign up, they don’t give you a user’s manual. In that sense, I guess it’s like real life. You can always go to Help Island to search for answers. Online help is today’s equivalent of parents, teachers, schools and libraries.
Just join, just go, just do it. Does Facebook come with a manual? We’re building a community here. Dedicated to what? To building a community of consumers. Give us your credit card data, buy land, establish a homestead and sell a virtual product or your services (some people are making Linden dollars just helping people figure out how to live in the space.) It's all pretend -- or is it?
And what do all the citizens have in common? Too much time on their hands and too much money in their pockets.
