After playing SL, I can see that it falls into more than one category stated above. I shall now zoom into each category and further analyze how does SL falls under it.
Agon(Competition)
Eventhough SL is sort of like an open-ended game with no specific target/goal to achieve, there is still intense competitions among players themselves. What kind of competition will depend on what the player intends to achieve in the game. To be the most beautiful? To possess the most amount of land? To be the richest? To have the most amount of high value possessions(house)? All these can be classified under Agon since every player is trying to outdo and outplay each other in the same aspect.
Mimicry(Simulation)
I think SL falls under mimicry the most. It's almost like the definition of Second Life that maybe SL can rename itself as Mimicry. Usually players in SL will try to be a person which they can never be in reality, which is why it's called Second Life. A fat man can portray himself in SL as a hunky and well dressed character. He can have a car, a nice house and many admirers in the game, which in actual fact is a dream for him in reality. He wants to be that, but is not able to achieve his dream in reality, thus making use of SL to "fill in the gaps". It is the fastest, easiest and surest way to get what he wants, and he can even customize everything according to his choice. He has total control over everything, an aspect in reality which is not totally possible.
Alea(Chance)
I don't really know if this is considered as chance, but a player needs some form of luck too. For example a property seller in the game who sells beautiful in-game houses. He's gonna need some luck to find willing buyers and also characters who will chance upon his houses and take a look at them. This is especially tough when SL is a very big game with many places to teleport to.
Paidia vs Ludus
Of course, being a Sandbox game, Paidia will be the dominating aspect of the game with lesser influence of Ludus in it. There is absolutely no restriction on what you wanna do in SL. You can choose to play the game anyway you like, some examples were already stated above. You explore an open virtual world which mimics the real world. You can play the game alone, or collaborate with other players to achieve your goals within the game. However, it is not exactly 100% open. What the character can do is limited by what the game developer allows the character to do. There are only a set of programmed functions which one can do in the game. Example, one can't kill another character because this function is not coded into the game. This is the Ludus part, when things are more controlled and rigid.
What keeps the player in the game is the Paidia part. I can't stop myself from exploring more places and see what's nice in them. SL is so big that I haven't seen any houses that is of the same deisgn architecture. I get to meet different players from different parts of the world too. I guess this is wha keeps SL going strong even though there isn't any concrete agenda in the game.
So, is Paidia or Ludus based games more addictive?
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