Week 6: Unveiling the Study

As the end of this project draws closer, the time has come to spring the news to the subjects of the study. How will the Second Life players respond when told they have been the target of a research project? The first meaningful connection(s) I made with someone in the game was with a virtual couple. They had been playing the game for five years and described their relationship to me as being a romantic one. I learned a lot from these two individuals. They were incredibly open to questions, friendly toward "newbies" like myself, and actively participative in conversation to the point that I didn't have to directly ask questions to gain understanding of the world.

The news about the project seems well-received

When I explained that I was there to conduct a study, the two of them were far from upset. They actually seemed excited to have been beneficial to my academic pursuits. In the screenshot above, the two of them were met where our relationship had started, a more than fitting location for the study to be concluded. They happily welcomed the news and asked what the details of my notes were. "So are you like copying pasting everything we say into a word document?" one of them asked. "Not necessarily," I explained, "I'm more interested in interactions than specific dialogs." After a little more explanation, the conversation continued normally into how their days in-game had gone and what they thought of the quality of the world between when they started playing five years ago and now. I took this as meaning the news was well-received and my work was considered non-instrusive.

Behaviors in Second Life are closely related to real-world ones. Couples, like this one, travel from place to place interacting with the world together. Individuals create their own identities out of the things they say, the experiences they have, and the properties they possess. The inhabitants pride themselves on the effects they have upon those around them and the environment in general. They establish a sense of belonging, a scope of importance extending far beyond themselves. These philosophies are akin to humanistic ones observable in reality. I conclude that this world has been molded by those living in it to be as similar to the real one as possible, spare some of the technical differences. In example, anxiety is possible in this medium, therefore it exists. However, war is not possible, therefore it does not. The differences between Second Life and real life are forced by the world's maintainers, not it's people.