In less than 20 minutes upon arrival, I found myself running around in a strange place with angel wings attached to my back and a beer bottle in hand. No, I’m not talking about my Halloween experience last year. I’m talking about my avatar, Rosie Osterham.
Second life is a virtual world video game on the internet in which you can choose your own character (called an avatar) as well as what it does. The possibilities to this are endless. Your avatar doesn’t even have to be human — some are even animals (or so I’m told…I’m still a novice so I haven’t seen one just yet). As I started to fiddle around with my avatar’s appearance, I was given the option to have a double chin or not! (By the way, who would WANT a double chin?)
I’m still not entirely sure how I came across the wings (I think I found them in a box labeled “Free Stuff”), but I was able to use them to my advantage. Not only did it give me the option to fly, but a very nice man named Eugene started a conversation with me which began, “Nice wings.” Turns out he wanted a pair too. So I just did a click-and-drag from my inventory box to him (still having no idea if that would even work), and he got them! He was very happy about it. In fact, he decided to give me a box of women’s clothing in return. This was a great surprise to me because I was still in the generic dress that comes with the standard avatar. I didn’t know how popular my avatar was until I arrived at “Orientation Island” and found about 8 other girls with brown hair and a pink dress roaming the island. Although, I did stand out slightly since I had angel wings.
I probably spent a total of 4 hours exploring Second Life. I barely scratched the surface. There is so much to do, so much to see, so many people to talk to, so much to buy, SO MANY OPTIONS! It is so open-ended, I was a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of this game. If Second Life has a point or message to get across to its users, I think I have a good idea of what it is: Anything you can do in the real world, you can do here. Anything you can’t do in the real world, you can also do here.
Second Life uses “Linden dollars” as its currency. But make no mistake, this isn’t monopoly money. It’s real. That’s right, real. People are actually paying for things that exist only in the virtual world. Ailin Graef (avatar name: Anshe Chung) and her husband Guntram Graef created Anshe Chung Studios in Second Life. CNET News reported that their company’s total holdings, mostly virtual land, were worth more than a million real-life dollars. Wow.
Before you cry Emperor’s New Clothes on me, just think about this a little deeper. REAL money is being exchanged in a FAKE world. But is this world really fake? I think we need to be careful with this one. It’s virtual, not fake. Although I can’t feel it, smell it, or taste it, I can see it and hear it. That’s 2 out of 5 senses. Having money factor into this virtual world makes it a virtual economy, which I think is a Pandora’s box just waiting to be opened.
Also pretty interesting is that some people participating in Second Life have gone so far as to attempt to perform Euripides’ The Bacchae. Here is a clip of their rehearsals where they work out techinical difficulties with skin changes, etc.
