Second Life: What about our first one?

Are we as a people heading towards the online addiction of living our lives through a virtual reality such as second life?

This seems to be happening more and more especially on an ever growing online virtual reality known as Second Life. This virtual world has become something that is beyond a game where now people live through this environment and some even run businessed through it.

Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”

This is one statement I cannot fault. Upon leading my own investigation into Second Life, I was able to see just what the hype is about. From the word go I was able to customise my avatar. I could keep it realistic to make it look similar to me as done by Bill Lichtenstein of Lichtenstein Creative Media. Otherwise I can make my avatar to look like a green goblin.

From creating your avatar in the image of yourself or how you would like to look, you gain an almost emotional attachment right from the word go. Avatars can only control objects which they build or create and with the introduction of a Second Life currency that can be traded with real life currency, this means we can buy/sell objects for a profit. Many companies have already jumped on board to this such as corporate giants such as Dell computers who have recreated their head office in this virtual world.

But with the practice of running a business of Second Life the question is raised, how much do you really own your property? ABC's 4 Corners looked into the Virtual rights of Second Life.

But by all definitions, it would seem I have come to agree with Meadows. Second Life is in fact a series of 'real' interactions where people have real attachments to their avatars and the actions they commit. But this phenomenon is not just isolated to Second Life but rather the broader genre of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) that Second Life belongs to that encorporate a virtual world with a sense of achievement, the biggest of which being Blizzard's World Of Warcraft.

So I ask you this. If people are spending 10-14 hours a day "in-world" on these games, do they really have much of a first life to talk about?