Students Blog

Nearly all MMOs hook players by making them invest in their character’s reputation, and SL is no exception. (Pearce, “Emergent Authorship” p.23) However, where other MMOs define reputation by an achieved experience level- a number- SL has redirected the fervor of leveling-up into the creation of impressive content that attracts attention and reputation. The detail of an SL player’s virtual home and avatar are status symbols that are physical evidence of that player’s technical skill and creativity. This is a much different reward system as it allows the player to be judged by the community and be rewarded with respect and sales of their created content. This system allows players with talent to eclipse the status of full-time players who have hegemony of status due to an unhealthy number of hours spent online leveling up their numbers. This redirection of effort to user content vastly accelerates to generation of unexpected content and use of that content. The complex object creation tool and content-based reputation are the primordial soup from which the next generation of virtual lives will emerge.

Second Life has encouraged the creation of user content through facilitating productive play. The library of shapes and textures allow a vast variety of creative possibilities, the floor plans of many virtual homes show the ambitions of amateur architects. The level of detail and thought that is being put in to some of this content is enough to warrant it as a form of folk art. (Pearce,” Productive Play” p.24) Many may not understand the motivations for investing so much time into an alternate life, or whether online community promotes anti-social behavior in real life.

When Hollywood depicts virtual spaces, it feels a need to relate the virtual world to the real world. In reality, a person drives their car on the highway to their home, spends much of their time at home with their stuff, and shops in stores at malls. In the virtual world- dubbed cyberspace- a person traveling to SL online is like driving and electron on an information superhighway, hanging out in the virtual home with their virtual stuff, and shopping in other users home shops. Look at TRON and Lawnmower Man too see how intently we want to make digital information exchange and assets function in a way that is familiar. The computer is still a mysterious black box to generations that were born before the dot-com boom, and tangibility of virtual space is a deep psychological need that has emerged as a dominating motivation among players.

E-Commerce has efficient search tools to find shoppers what they want at the lowest price. However, the media continues to project the future of e-commerce as walking your avatar through a virtual mall. This is a less efficient system than search tools, but it is familiar to how the aging population shops in real life. It prompts one to question the magnitude to which instinctual hunter-gather forward vision plays in shopping and commerce- spot the product you want on the shelf, stalk it, and kill it with the credit card. Second Life is not the first game to set up virtual MMO shops, but the tool set complexity have passed the complexity barrier to creating functioning stores. One example is a DVD movie rental company that operates a SL virtual store as a front for getting people to shop off their website. Rather than use a search engine, Second Lifers browse racks of little boxes that have textures of real movies, and they can download them as a rental. The people running the current SL stores employ traditional customer service and salesman roles and even follow up with buyers to ensure their satisfaction- real money is on the line to encourage this behavior. There are 4 design structures that allow SL to achieve a workable economy:
1) $L Linden dollars have real $US value
2) Players have land and inventory where they can packrat owned content.
3) Land and content has security permissions so content is a resource with
ownership.
4) The content generation tool is complex enough to create content that is unique and has value because not everyone can make it, or has the time
How close will virtual commerce get to the real thing?

I predict that an emergent trend will materialize in SL, where retailers purchase large areas of land and build the first virtual mall that looks like a real mall and has many stores. “The Gap” in SL will have textures of their real product styles, and the virtual models will try to make your avatar’s butt look better. Not forgetting, “The Gap” makes real money off this store too. The virtual mall is an inefficient shopping system, inferior to websites because they cannot possibly show all of the clothing stiles, but it appeals to players familiar with real world shops. As the baby boomers stop shopping and e-commerce sales are made by shoppers who grew up with the internet, this need to mock the real world will diminish. I predict a hybrid system of efficient, secure e-commerce shopping tools behind a 3D virtual product showroom will emerge as the future of US retail commerce, and SL is pioneering it.

When we talk about buying land to build a virtual mall, the next logical question may center on what Linden Labs is doing with zoning of land. You can buy land and do almost anything you want with it, except mature content is zoned. While flying through SL, I find that it is a mess of urban sprawl that makes LA look like a utopia. Virtual homes are on the same lots as content shops, and one can’t help but feel lost. My biggest gripe about SL is that I have no range of sight; I cannot project where I can navigate my character- it’s like flying blind. SL has proven itself as evidence that city planning is a necessity because neighbors will build a floating castle next to your gorgeous view of the virtual ocean, without a permit! Emergent behaviors explored by Bartle explained that online worlds will need law to keep the populace happy (MUDs). This applies to player killing in most other MMOs, but SL will probably pioneer more complex laws around content creation that mimic the real world.

Second Life achieves much of its rules and laws through data permissions. Second Lifers have a strong sense of property rights so “permissions” keep players secure that their homes will not be vandalized, and their hover cars not stolen. Since SL $ has real value, time spent creating content has become a full-time job for some inhabitants. Content is like a real intellectual property that must be developed, and protected. When an object is developed for commerce, this removes it as a form of folk art meant for the masses to enjoy, and must have a system to protect it. One of the most significant laws in SL is the “kick” feature where roaming trespassers are automatically expelled from your territory. Not just a content security feature, this system is evidence of our society’s fixation on a right to privacy.

The virtual home is a major indicator of a player’s reputation and status. A nice home is usually a major investment of time and even money. The detail of a SL home shows that a player is technically skilled, creative, and may have something to teach. The proficient SL architect attracts adventurous explorers into his land with this creative content, and this benefits him in 2 ways: 1- his social network expands by greeting these explorers and 2- he can sell them content or services. This mechanic promotes utilizing a positive reputation rather than a player-killer reputation. But what other reasons are there for a virtual home?

Maslow and other intellectuals explained that motivations of the human subconscious are predictable, and that we often are in one of 5 states of emotional maturity. On a base level, we are fight-or-flight creatures with a need for physical safety. Next we need shelter, such as a cave. Then we need food and water. After that, social needs, such as love and status dominate the human motivation scale. At the highest level, we search for meaning of life or focus on helping others as a selfless humanitarian. Second Life has allowed this behavior to emerge in its system through the virtual home. As was discussed earlier, the cyberspace inhabitant desires to work in a physical space with familiar environments. On the base levels, SL satisfies the human needs through the exemption of physical harm- the game won’t really hurt you- and the virtual home. The virtual home provides the cave that our base instincts desire. We own the land and the house and we hoard our resources in them. Instead of floating through the intangible cyberspace, we can relax and anchor ourselves in the familiarity and physical security of a 3D home. Instead of a club and torch, we defend our home with the security kick feature or abuse reporting system (unless you have an orbital cage gun and some C4). I truly believe this a significant development in creating the environment for people to utilize the complexity of the system to create new emergent behaviors. Without this physical security and sense of being in a real place, the player is in between a system of chaos and periodicity. (Rules of Play) A FPS like Quake always has the player moving and worrying about where enemies will pop out and threaten them from; I find this as chaotic. On the other hand, simple puzzles and exploration games have predictable patterns and display the attributes of a periodic complexity system. SL has the complexity to make your own objectives, without the chaos of defending your security.

Another great emergent feature of second life is the creation of games and online collaboration. As a student working on a prototype with 4 others, we often found it hard to meet and collaborate. I found it easy for us to meet online, from our homes, and still be productive. Our mentor lit a light bulb in my head when he spend less than a minute to create a Gant chart to visualize the stages of production of our project. The communication research explored with “OnLiveTraveler” (“Social Metaphor” 3) showed that online avater communication is powerful and effective. Collaborating on making a graded game in SL, instead of doing the usual expected actions of exploring and building toys, showed me an emergent use of the space that can expand exponentially into new areas. Features from MS PowerPoint and NetMeeting could be incorporated into an SL environment and object creation and rapid prototyping could replace business meetings. We even sat down in an SL amphitheater and took an class on SL scripting. The applications to this are powerful. Distance education could be immensely more engaging, the growing percentage of telecommuters could move beyond the conference calls that have only a camera on each person’s face… if you have a good system. I doubt this was designed for, and is a wonderful example of productive emergence.

The last topic I wish to discuss is the emergent social aspects that SL has achieved, and will achieve. I have brought up several predictions of what might emerge in SL, but emergence- by definition- is something completely unexpected; so I would like to reiterate that my predictions are based off of real observations and perceived developments that are made possible by the complexity of the system.

The virtual world is heralded as a place to be somebody else. The name of the game, Second Life, makes it obvious that this is the point. However, I find that the complexity of character creation has reached a point where something unexpected occurs; you can no longer hide who you are. That’s right, I said it, you are no longer as anonymous as you think. In regular MMOs, you are restricted to minimally modified characters and are unable to express significant design choices in the appearance of your character. SL is a leap ahead in that there are extensive modeling tools that change everything from body shape, to hair style, to outfits. Because all of this choice is present, you are now much more vulnerable to being exposed by the choices you have, or have not made in creating the avatar you created to represent YOU. The judgment a player makes on another’s avatar will depend on the psychological school of thought that the observer subscribes to, which I will not delve into because I am an electrical engineer, not a psychologist. However, I did feel like it was an unexpected surprise to find myself analyzing avatars and changing my social demeanor with them based upon the conjectures I make about the person behind the avatar. We would like to think that people are socializing with our great avatar but this is not the case, it is evident that online players are aware that there is another player behind the avatar, that the wants and needs of the shell character are not as mysterious or interesting as the person at the keyboard. When looking at other avatars, I used the common conjecture that players create avatars the way that they want to be. Female characters tended to be played by female players, and fashion & sex appeal continue to dominate the desires of such avatars. Looking at a sexy vixen is SL may very well tell you that the real person is not so attractive. Looking at players who were very serious, orderly, and designed austere and impressive avatars lead me to believe the real player was lacking respect from others in their true life. Looking at my own character- described by some as the ugliest avatar in SL- does not expose my as someone who wants to be ugly, but accurately expresses my goofiness and attitude that SL is a place to play, not live.

T.L. Taylor made observations on intentional design of bodies and made an effort to describe how racial and gender lines are intentionally blurred. This allows players to escape from possible racial or sexual discrimination in their real life, but I believe the other choices a player incorporates in avatar design will still give them away and illicit subconscious prejudices on the minds of other players who interact with them. If Taylor saw a Rastafarian character in SL, he may predict they are white and interact with them based on that assumption. (Intentional Bodies 32) If I were to see an avatar without detail put into hair, fashion, accessories, or sexiness, I would assume they are male. Even with the designation of “Spivak” (see Intentional 32) available through shaping body and facial features, sex is always a strong social motivation and players will be curious as to the gender and attractiveness of the person at the other terminal, and this prompts users to look for other design choices that identify a user’s gender and what social interactions are appropriate. All of this is significant because it affects gameplay through influencing social interactions and dispositions. It is ironic, but characteristic of the definition of emergence, that the concept of the game- a second life- and its name are eroded by an emergent development- your first life being exposed in your second life.