Emergence in Second Life
Second Life
Upon first impression, Second Life seems like the perfect play world. It has several fun things to do, manipulating objects, creating objects, and interacting with others. And it just so happens that the vast possibilities when it comes to item creation and interaction come together to create a strong level of emergence. The description of the game alone satisfies the definition of emergence. As the writing by Salen and Zimmerman include, and what is a perfect definition of second life "A modest number of rules appleid again and again to a limited collection of objects leads to variety, novelty, and surprise..." I think a perfect example of this in Second Life is the limited rules of...
Me and my new friend with his snazzy gear
this situation. Creating objects (dice). Interacting with objects (sitting on the dice). Manipulating objects (picking up the dice). These three rules yield something quite differant than what you could do with only the first two rules in place. It is the vital third major ability that allows emergence to come from this situation. What does this situation yield? A person boringly sitting on a die? NO! A fun and hilarious scene in which the character goes flying through the air, all while seated on the die.
Identity and Emergence
When Celia first described second life as being highly avatar oriented, I didn't understand it. I understood that many things could be done to change a persons appearance, but I just didn't image the ability to create truly anything using the tools available in second life. Rather than having a simple pallete that allows you to create a character wearing differant colored clothing, and have varying sizes, Second Life allows you to alter every aspect of your persona. As I type this I am envisioning the Jedi I will have to try to create when I have free time. Emergence is clearly present in the avatar personalization aspect of this game, a few rules, objects, textures, and body manipulation, allow for characters ranging from space aliens, to robots, to dragons. As well as the avatar, your identity can be changed by the way you interact with other characters, adding another aspect that allows you to do just about anything. Your posessions also help define who you are, this person I ran into bought a Ferrari!
Emergence applies to your identity in that your identity itself is something in which there are infinite possiblities. Compared to something like lineage, where there are very few things distinguishing one character from another, Second Life allows users to modify their characters beyond their wildest dreams.