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?
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