When You Die In The Game, You Die For Real

I'm anti-anxious to write this post. Why? Because it's about Second Life and at this point in my life I could give two craps less about it.

The first article I read about Second Life (in my real life) was Even in a Virtual World, 'Stuff' Matters written in.. get this, the New York Times.

I've confessed my love for games to many of my classmates, my World of Warcraft-ing, my love for The Sims, and you can't leave out all my Time Management games that keep me up until the wee hours of the morning. But Second Life, as of now, I just don't get.

After reading that first article I decided the best way to understand the game was to play it, so I downloaded the software, created my avatar, and logged on. After "walking" a good 30ft in-game it crashed. That's a pretty good description of my feelings towards it for now.

It may even be that if I could've actually 'played' it for a little bit longer I could've gotten into it. BUT. a) the graphics aren't very good b) The rendering takes too long for my attention span and c) the pseudo tutorial wasn't working/making any sense.

Maybe you all will argue with me about this but I feel like it's an insult to my intelligence when the NY Times is writing about Second Life and treating it like more than entertainment and people are getting PAID to write books and blogs about it. Come on.

I am one of the few people in our class who can actually appreciate the 'starting a new life/image' aspect of it and I still can't treat it like real life.

From what I understand real business is being done from the Second Life platform, not just the selling of it's virtual goods, and not even the selling of real life virtual goods (images, mp3's etc) but of real life touch it and feel it goods. Nothing wrong with that as long as you're either enjoying it more than you would selling it "irl" or in real life OR you're making just as much money as you would irl and saving on the costs of actual real life American Dollar rents. This does make Second Life differ from most MMO's because even in World of Warcraft the only sales that occur (even when real American Dollars are being exchanged) are with in-game virtual goods. When Blizzard want to sell WoW products, maybe a t-shirt or specialized keyboard they do it through their website, not through in-game vendors. Though I wonder if it's something they've actually considered.

With this being said, my message to everyone is to stop treating SL like it's important!