Re: Travels in hyperreality: the Mineshaft edition.

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You have to buy your genitalia? Wow.

Dan Savage had a recent column up about whether Second Life cheating is really cheating. His verdict: no.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 8:31 AM
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I wonder if you can buy both sets.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 8:46 AM
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And make them fight.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 8:50 AM
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I've probably said this a hundred times, but it bears repeating. I cannot fathom spending thousands of dollars on a gaming system and fees to simulate running around shooting guns, swinging swords, etc. when this stuff can be done in real life. Similarly, why roll around with a woman in Second Life? I've been off the market for a while, but I hear there's still single women in the world with whom one can have actual sex.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:10 AM
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Shooting guns? Swinging swords? I'd get in trouble if those were my hobbies. There are much better examples of things that can be done in real life so why bother wasting your time in Second Life.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:14 AM
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4. I agree with you on Second Life, but I think it might be hard to kill a dragon in real life. Or even pretend real life. That having been said, the whole re-enactor subculture fascinates me, but not enough to actually spend the weekend in the park pretending to be my great- grandfather at Pickett's Charge.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:16 AM
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4: (a) Because it's fun and (b) because I am lazy and (c) because I am significantly less likely to chop off my own hand or shoot off my own toe if I do it in a game.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:18 AM
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5: How would you get in trouble? We're talking firing guns and swinging swords, not actually murdering people.

That's not what I don't get about Second Life or the Sims. I can get having fantastic hobbies. What I can't get is why I'd want to play someone making a bed or doing the dishes.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:19 AM
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Well yeah, but come on. This is America people. Take a Kendo class and buy some guns or something.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:19 AM
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4: My understanding that IRL you're not supposed to shoot people. Also, that IRL women often heartlessly refuse to have sex with you. If I'm wrong about these things, my whole life has been one big mistake, especially the not-shooting-people part.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:20 AM
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Second Life always seems to me to be the dreariest of virtual worlds, and frankly not particularly noteworthy or innovative in most ways. How it fails to delight me, therefore, that a lot of people at my current academic institution think that it is the Coolestest Awesomest Next Big Thing, and therefore are pouring oodles of IT time and money into it. Bleah.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:20 AM
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Oh! Kendo! That shit is fun!


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:24 AM
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Kendo is awesome.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:26 AM
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That's not what I don't get about Second Life or the Sims. I can get having fantastic hobbies. What I can't get is why I'd want to play someone making a bed or doing the dishes.

Or someone jumping over mushrooms and hitting his head on blocks. A lot of times, playing a video game is a comforting experience, running through the paces of something until you can do it better and better, while it remains somewhat unpredictable.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:27 AM
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Second Life isn't a game, though. It's more like a social networking site. The Sims is a game.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:28 AM
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Unlike refreshing comment pages.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:28 AM
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I think there's probably a lot to like about SL, or at least certain aspects of it. I know some people who use it as a cheap way to accomplish teleconferencing and distance learning. I have a friend who uses it for her RPG, an obscure and customized system she can't access by just running down to the gaming store. I think its value in terms of study is likely to be found in observing the aspects of a society or community the players are willing to ditch completely, redesign from the ground up or cling to out of habit.

I don't think it's going to change the world but the concept is a persistent one; SL could be more or less accurately described as a descendant of MOOs or even MUDs with a GUI and some surprising tendrils into the real world that those games simply didn't have. Maybe all that's really driving it is that people like to have their own sandboxes to play in, I don't know, but I also don't see any harm in it.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:31 AM
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11: I totally know what you mean. I was so delighted to recently read a post containing the below at the otherwise extremely pro-Second Life blog Musematic:

Second-Lifers, I mean you no disrespect and I can see the appeal that creating these worlds has for many of you. I hear the excitement in your voices, see the gleam of creativity in your eye, and yet some small part of my brain keeps whispering, "People creating museums in Second Life are avoiding the huge issue facings museums in First Life, we need to work together if we are going to survive."

Too true. Of course, I'm spending my days trying to convince my colleagues to start a blog, which isn't much better, if a lot easier and cheaper.


Posted by: JL | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:37 AM
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♥ 16


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:39 AM
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My only problem with second life is that the 3D engine was written by a third grader in 1993.

People make fairly large sums of money in Second Life; I think that's the real driver. They were the first people to really solve transferable currency and ownership.

Still, have you tried it? It's like a cut-rate cell phone game. So ugly.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 9:54 AM
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I haven't tried it, no. Rah has dipped a toe in it and a friend of ours is pretty hardcore into it. I don't see that it's a big deal. If anyone could trace a museum closing down in the real world to its development staff deciding to chuck meatspace altogether, that would be problematic. If programs at rfts' institution are suffering because someone is studying SL, I think that stinks. In the meantime, it's hard for me to criticize it. For one thing, I spend a lot of time playing games that are arguably even more without point in the real world and I'm not interested in throwing stones; for another, I think any outrage of the "but what about the real world!" variety tends to forget that people in the real world who don't find ways to channel their energy into leisurely, creative pursuits are going to be too exhausted to save any real world institutions anyway.

If the engine is crap, well, that's the kind of thumbs-down I can get behind.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:24 AM
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I should clarify that I'm not really trying to defend it. I don't think it or any game or online experiment is more important than the real world. I simply don't see it as worthy of scorn.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:28 AM
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Admit it, you used to play D&D.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:41 AM
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Didn't we all?


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:47 AM
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Uh, no.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:50 AM
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Those who played D&D were losers in the 5th grade; those who didn't play D&D are losers today.


Posted by: Hamilton Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:52 AM
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If anyone could trace a museum closing down in the real world to its development staff deciding to chuck meatspace altogether, that would be problematic.

A little bit more than problematic, don't you think? Despite the hyperbole in the quote I gave, the options are not that stark. It's a question of the best allocation of time and resources. I'm all for leisurely, creative pursuits (as is the author of the quote, who heads New Media Initiatives for the Cleveland Museum--she's hardly the sort of person who's going to cast scorn on these sorts of things); but from my observation, the impulse to turn to Second Life because it's (as 16 put it) the Coolestest Awesomest Next Big Thing and devote significant resources to it doesn't seem to have a rational payoff beyond the alleged awesomestness of it all. Which isn't enough.


Posted by: JL | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:53 AM
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23: Co-Dictator of the Strategic Games Club, baby.

Hey, Vin Diesel plays D&D, and he's cool! Oh, damn.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 10:57 AM
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23. Started with the three books, baby. Such excitement when the supplements came out!


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 11:04 AM
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Those who played D&D were losers in the 5th grade; those who didn't play D&D are losers today.

"One day you'll be working for me!" he cried as Ogged kicked sand in his face.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 11:05 AM
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Admit it, you used to play D&D.

Not as a kid, no, but I do now. I'm sorry, gswift, did my gaming group run over into your time block at the kendo/shooting range? I hate it when we schedule our games there anyway, all Ya! Ya! Ya! Bang! all the goddamn time and always some jackass n00b trying to load d8's into a clip right when I need mine.

A little bit more than problematic, don't you think?

Yes, I would think that but I was actively trying to counter the hyperbole with understatement.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 11:40 AM
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If programs at rfts' institution are suffering because someone is studying SL, I think that stinks.

They aren't studying it, it's a case of the central IT administration spending money and lots of labor resources on it instead of on many other things that I think would be vastly more useful.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 11:45 AM
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What is Second Life? Should I try it? Isn't second childhood enough?


Posted by: David | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 11:46 AM
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Not as a kid, no, but I do now.

Not only do you play D & D, but your character blogs about it. Is that the mark of teh cool or teh loser?


Posted by: dob | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 2:27 PM
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I dunno, He Whose Retired Characters Comment On Said Character's Blog.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 2:48 PM
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Why is CVG reprinting a four month old PC Gamer article?


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 2:53 PM
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For the benefit of those of us who don't read PC Gamer, obviously. I only came across it because it has the word testicles in the article.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 3:06 PM
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Not as a kid, no, but I do now. I'm sorry, gswift, did my gaming group run over into your time block at the kendo/shooting range?

I just like giving people shit about D&D.

Seriously though, in my casual observations it seems like WOW often enables someone already feeling isolated to just further withdraw from the world around them. But, maybe I'm seeing a skewed group or something.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 7:35 PM
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WOW is like grad school? Who knew?


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 7:38 PM
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Except in WoW you can turn your ingame cash into money, unlike grad school where they just suck out your soul.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 7:46 PM
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I wonder who Second Life's PR person is. Because they are PHENOMENAL.

Everyone played D&D. I remember feeling very guilty when I discovered alcohol in college and stopped hanging out with the gamers.


Posted by: Jake | Link to this comment | 05-10-07 7:48 PM
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Dude, the gamers are the ones who got me to stop drinking by introducing me to drugs.

Seriously though, in my casual observations it seems like WOW often enables someone already feeling isolated to just further withdraw from the world around them. But, maybe I'm seeing a skewed group or something.

For me, WoW is a powerfully social activity but this is potentially in large part because my guildmates are almost universally friends from offline who started playing WoW at the same time I did. It drives us to spend time together away from computers rather than to spend more time playing the game. I don't doubt that there are those for whom it is an unhealthy escape, but I also think anything can become an unhealthy escape and that there are those who might be harmed by willful misuse of something - tool, activity, game, gun, pot, whatever - makes a poor reason to criticize its other users.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-11-07 9:21 AM
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And of course on re-reading it I think I sound like a tremendously condescending prick with that last sentence when in fact what I was aiming for was your own enjoyment of perfectly legitimate leisure activities that others might find problematic as a way to build sympathy, not a way to chastise you - something in which I have no interest.

If you know people who have real problems with WoW, though, or anything else, you are IMO perfectly right to worry about the McGuffin in question. I don't want to downplay that yes, there probably are people for whom it's a problem. There was some talk of that about one of my guildies, actually, a few months ago; happily, he quit the game instead of developing real issues and we're all relieved to see him happy offline.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-11-07 9:51 AM
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Well, given I'm still stuck in Hell, awaiting the vast trumpeting that will announce my imminent doom, WoW seems like a pleasant diversion in comparison.


Posted by: Wallace | Link to this comment | 05-11-07 8:13 PM
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