Week 1: The Nature of SL

Second Life is meant to be a virtual means for people to come together and, at the broadest level, interact. What exactly is the nature of that interaction? What is meant to be accomplished through digitally communicating with other people, with very few of them actually knowing who the others really are? From the sign-up page of Second Life, it becomes immediately evident that there is more than just "people talking to people about ideas." The first page of the sign-up process shows a carousel of characters (avatars) that the player may use to represent themselves in the world. The strange part comes in when it's realized that there are more than just humanoid avatars available.

Pick your poison: Choosing an avatar

From the screenshot, we can see a few random avatars selected from the categorical tabs along the top of the page. We see there are humanoids available, though many of them are still fantasy-related. Vampires, robots, and even evil bunny costumes make up the swatch. It's important to note that there are even vehicle avatars available! While these aren't the avatars you are stuck with (a player can customize their avatar later on), I feel it does speak a lot about the purpose of the game to have these sorts of avatars as the defaults. In fact, clicking the People tab still doesn't bring up any "Everyday Joe"-type avatars. There are rock stars, divas, bums, and suavely dressed people, but nothing that could easily blend into a crowd.

Inside the game, people are able to buy pieces of land and build multi-purpose structures. Much like the default avatars, they range from realistic yet exaggerated, to flat-out ridiculous. Related, large lots of land usually with specific purposes set out for them also exist, called regions. These buildings and purposed patches of land become the main pubs for people to meet and interact. Generally, the buildings don't seem to convey obvious purpose unless they are distribution centers for virtual goods (shops and service outlets). People in clubs, like people in regions, take on their own interested roles with no concern for the overarching action and conversation around them, each person having their own fanatic agenda to pursue. One of the first regions I visited was a train station, where people were busier dancing around the tracks than actually going anywhere or accomplishing anything.

From the nature of the default avatars and the ways in which people mingle, I can make an educated assumption that the overall nature of social interaction in this game, from the point of view of both the game's maintainers and the small sample of players I've observed, is more about role-playing than the spread of ideas and contemporary banter. This project is already beginning to show the vast difference between real and virtual social interaction, in Second Life at least.