This article are my own personal musings about the virtual world, and should not be taken any more seriously than my own subjective imagination.
I was recently reading about the recent surge of pornography in the world of Second Life. Second Life is much like the MMORPG games that online gamers are fond of playing. A 3D realm where one can pick a virtual representation of yourself, called an
avatar. But the people who are actually playing Second Life claim it is so much more than a chatroom with customizable characters.
Second Life provides people to spend a little cash to create your own virtual world, and interact with the other virtual worlds that people have created.
This is all great and fun. Create your own identity. Choose a different gender. Make yourself look fun, sexy, or furry. Give yourself a cadilac, a mansion, or a beachfront bungalo. Take a few nude pics of your character and show your stuff in the
Sluster porn e-zine.
Up to this point, I think you can imagine a certain seperation between "having fun" in the virtual world from the daily lives that people live in the real world. Real people, real jobs, and Second Life gives you a chance to escape for a little virtual R&R.
However...
WiReD magazine recently had an article explaining how
people in the real world are leaving their real jobs to make real money in the virtual world.
Now you start to see the line between the virtual world and the real world start to grow a little thin. People are now investing their careers, as well as their income and source of livelyhood, in a virtual realm where they are relying on a virtual economy for their real world wellbeing.
I don't know about you, but this raises a few red flags in my mind about the potential dangers when one starts to mix fantasy with reality.
Do you remember as a kid your parents warning you against roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons? This was a fear not of the physical game, but the stereotype that kids who play the game would start to lose the definition between the
imaginary world of the game where one could be an exciting hero or a villan and escape the sometimes boring or uncomfortable
real world of being a kid. Once you realize the distinction between the two, there is nothing wrong with rolling the occasional d20 to have a little fun with friends.
Well, I think the same goes for the virtual world of MMORPG's (remember the people addicted to Ever-crack? Have a spouse that spends too much time in World of War-crack?). Second Life takes that extension into the world of fantasy, and begins to bend the rules and make it more real.
With any multi-user online game, you always have a portion of the population of jerk kids who like to cheat the rules -- or other players -- for their own benefit. One of the side effects of this that you have victims of their cheating, and often a lot of whining from players who want someone to teach the jerks a lesson and keep things fair. But in those games, you aren't dealing with real money, you aren't fighting real foes, and often the enemy simply becomes the pimple-marked teenager with a little too much angst and caffiene for their own good.
Now, you have Second Life. A game where people are, literally, playing for real money. You craft services for your fellow citizens, they pay real money. People are leaving their real life jobs to sell pre-designed clothes, homes, characters or porn magazines. Now, add the jerk kid who decides to cheat the system, you start to have real crime.
Since we are starting to mix in the real world, let's take a step back from the virtual world and get a view of the bigger picture. Once you start to mix in the real world, what real world issues may start to infect the virtual world?
- petty crime (petty theft? bending the rules to get an advantage on other players? the jerk kid "script kiddies")
- racism (in-game or out-of-game)
- addiction (too much time spent in-game, for work and/or pleasure)
In the real world people have frustration. Fear. Even hatred. A desire to lash out at other people, regardless of the consequences, or who gets hurt.
In the virtual world, these lashings only damage the imaginary, virtual characters that we play. The less real these worlds are, the less these lashings hurt us, because it's only a game.
But when you start to mix in the real world, do you also run the risk of having real world problems?
What is to prevent someone from quite literally exercising in-game terrorism, hacking servers, or making use of the loopholes in the virtual system to take an unfair advantage?
Can you call 911 or the FBI if your livelyhood in a completely virtual world is slandered, robbed, or even more subtly the victim of a manipulated economy?
What is to prevent people who hate the western world, who hate our way of life, our freedom to play games and be beautiful and become rich, from targeting our virtual world for violence as a much more easily accessible target than in the real world?
As soon as you start to put real value into the virtual world, you start to inherit the real risks along with that value as well, whether you are aware or want to accept those risks or not.
OK, enough of my soapbox, doom-and-gloom prophecy. I will leave this to say simply that when you start to lose the distinction between the real world an the world of fantasy and escape it becomes very tricky to enjoy both worlds in a healthy, safe way.
So to all of your Second Life players who think I am taking this too seriously, really I hope you can go out there and enjoy your game. I hope those of you who work on Second Life for a living are able to be successful and raise and care for your families.
I just hope that someday when (for whatever reason) Second Life has to throw the "off-switch", you aren't too tied to that virtual world where it seriously affects your real lives.
