Real Life Game

1 POINT
Colour Cluster of 3

3 POINTS
Face Logo

5 POINTS
Cat(Real life)


Wallets

Soft toys

Face

Pooh Bears

Arcade Buttons

Bananas

Arcade Machine

Penguins

Boxes

T-shirt

--

Poster

Balloons

Bags

Chips

US$

A million dollar

Ajisen

Signs

Lights

Barriers

Money & Life

Interesting reads this week about being submerged into the virtual world(McKenzie Wark) and Real Money Trading(Julian Dibbell) in the MMOs. I shall first touch on the part about "The Cave"

Not all that is mentioned about The Cave is applicable to SL though. Yes, players can get very addicted to SL too but it's perhaps for a different reason compared to the article. Firstly, SL is not competitive. You don't have to level up or defeat other players. Secondly, you will never see the legend Game Over on your screen. The game just goes on and on forever and your avatar doesn't die unless you shut down your account.

So what are the players doing to keep them plugged-in to SL? One big reason I can think of is escapism from reality. As the game title suggested, it can be your second life, literally. You can do almost everything in there which you can do in the real world. In fact, you can even become a totally different person in SL. Rich, powerful, beautiful etc etc which you aren't in reality. It gets you so sucked in that you want to be the avatar of yours than being yourself. This bring us to the topic of Mimicry which was mentioned in past blog post. You're not engrossed with monster slaying. You're engrossed with being somebody else you're not, whom you hope you are.

Reality VS Virtual. Real Life VS Second Life

Next to RMT. Further evaluation to the point above, RMT can be a playing point of SL which gets them addicted. I've mentioned it in previous posts about the game's virtual properties and other digital goods are allowed to be sold in SL for real money legally. SL's virtual market totally thrives within the game. If not for it, it won't be as popular as it is today

Linden US$??

Unlike WoW, Linden Dollar can be directly bought using real life currency. Gold in WoW needs to be earned by playing the game, which can be time consuming. You can be cash rich in SL within a few minutes as long as you're willing to pump in the US$.

Be rich in Second Life

I guess Gold Farming is something that won't happen in SL. My guess to the closest equivalence of SL to WoW's gold farming is perhaps "Designing Shops"?? Because in order to earn money in SL, you can provide a service(camping, working in stores, custom content creation), become a real estate trader or simply buy/sell digital goods within the game. The design shops can create virtual goods including buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art. With these, the shops can sell them to players who are willing to buy for them.

Instead of lowly educated topless men in terrible living conditions farming for gold in China, SL's version might be well dressed digital designers creating beautiful content in an air-conditioned office in Silicon Valley. The irony.


Things that you can only dream of buying in real life

Of course, the in-game economy is very much similar in SL to the real world. Demand and supply applies too. The exchange rates of L$ fluctuates everyday and an over/under supply of certain virtual goods will affect the price of it as well.


It may not be evident over here in Asia, but in the US it's a pretty common thing to buy/sell virtual goods in SL. Players play the game to earn money and that has created a massive amount of money being circulated within the game according to this report.

How far can SL thrive with its open source nature of in-game content creation and virtual economy? It's going pretty well as of now even without much governance. But then, governance is actually handled by the game programmers, since there are restrictions in the game which were set down by the code writers. SL doesn't need explicitly a government figure to check on everything.



Question this week: Should we encourage more of games like SL which mixes fun with money or should we just play the game as it is? Which MMO kind of will be more popular?

FeMale vs Male

Investigating on gender differences in the gaming world is fast becoming an interesting topic today considering the increasing number of female gamers as compared to the 1990s. I myself have seen an alarming number of female players clicking away at Local Area Network(LAN) Gaming shops nowadays, a huge contrast of what I saw during my younger years when it was mainly male dominated.



Second Life(SL) is definitely one online game which has a substantial number of female players behind those avatars. When I first logged in, I could see a fairly even distribution of male and female avatars. However, SL doesn't restrict its players from choosing the OTHER gender as their avatar. Thus I'm quite skeptical as to whether the female avatar in front of me is indeed a female in reality. I admit, I was tempted to choose a female avatar myself.

Anne-Marie article mentioned about games being open source. Upon some reading up, SL didn't start up as open source. It only happened in 2008 according to this article. I believe that is a fantastic move by Linden Labs. Had it not done that, I will not be seeing beautiful houses and avatars while playing the game today. Apparently, you own the digital goods(houses, cars) which you created yourself. There are a number of tools which you can use to create your own "products". You can even sell them to other players as Linden Labs deem it as your property, not theirs. How cool is that!!

A reason I feel why SL is able to attract a large number of female players is due to its Sandbox nature. As we've seen in The Sims which was introduced to the gaming world in year 2000, it was immensely popular with females. According to the reading, females are slowly breaking the tradition though, venturing into more violent and monstrous games. However, I feel that majority of the female gender still prefer a more laid back game mechanics with less violence, less competition and more cutesy stuffs. It is not evident in SL only, the increasing number of Facebook games(Bejewelled, Restaurent City) infested with female players has also proven it.

I like the idea of playing a game with females. They are able to inject a different kind of gaming experience as compared to a single gender game. The way they handle things, react to certain situations etc are very different from what a male gamer would do. As a result, females make the game more interesting, less rigid and not so one-dimensional.

Advantages aside, the female gender can also be a problem. When you mix the two genders in a common world, there are bound to be conflicts and trouble. Sexual harrassement, stalking, online prostitution are just some examples. I haven't encountered any of these during my time in SL though, but I think that's because I haven't gone to the correct places where such activities are raging. And then with the open source nature, people may create undesirable contents which make the game sleazy and unsuitable for the young.


Nudity


Cybersex


Undesirable Content

There has also been cases of what happened in SL leading to devastating consequences in real life with regards to the female gender playing the game. One example is an online affair leading to a real life divorce. I doubt such things will occur if the other gender is not within the game.

There are pros and cons to this phenomenon of increasing female gamers. At the end of the day, it is still how an individual approach the game that matters the most, especially so in an open game like SL. Discussion question I suggesting this week is "Male vs Female, how does a game affect them psychologically. Same in-game occurence, but how different can it affect them?"