Isn’t it amazing that you can design your life and choose your age, your appearance, and your job as you like? That may sound crazy to some people, but the truth is that everyone can enjoy such life through the online game—second life. From my perspective, the second life is a great idea and it makes the best use of the internet and social media.
Second life is an online virtual world designed by Linden lab. Till 2011, the online game has about one million active users. The users are called residents and they can design their own images, called avatars, which can be children or adult no matter how old the user really is. The reason why the game is called second life is that the users can choose their jobs, make money, travel around, and even get married in the game. Almost all the things people might do in the real world are able to be done in the game and the life in the game is no different to the real life. Just as the term media equation, put up by Byton Reeves and Clifford Nass, indicates that media experiences equal real-life experience. (Meadows, M. S. 2008, I, Avatar: the culture and consequences of having a second life)
I think the game is great because it offers people a platform to escape from the pressure in the real world for a moment and chill out for a bit. In the second life, residents can hang around, get involved into the discussion about the topics that they are interested in or realize their dreams that they cannot achieve in the real world. Just like the name of the game, the users have their second life from the game, which is as real as their first life. The most important thing I think about Second Life is that users can experience their life all over again and make up for the losses in their first life.
Meanwhile, second life can practice the users’ creativity. Second life is not all about playing or dating, if residents want to enjoy their second life, they also have to work hard to get money, called Linden dollar. The work in the second life is not easier than that in the real world. If you want to make millions of Linden dollars, you have to be very creative; otherwise, all you can do is those less skill required but very hard work. For example, the first vitual millionaire, Anshe Chung (a Chinese player) became the wealthiest user in second life by building her own online business of selling virtual lands, buildings and other items. She creatively practices the theory and success of real estate into the virtual game and thus achieves great success.
However, just like all the online games, second life is a virtual game after all. It is very dangerous for the users to get addicted to it. What’s worse, since the second life is so real, some users say sometimes they might confuse the real world with it. There are some people who even spend more than 10 hours per day online and might ignore their real life. Even though people can find love, earn money in the second life, and everything in the game seems as same as what is in the real world, there is a difference between the real world and the virtual world and life in the virtual world can never be replaced by the virtual world. One worry is that as virtual reality environments become much higher quality and immersive, they will become attractive to those wishing to escape real life. (Warren Bennett, Advantages & Disadvantages of virtual reality)
All in all, I still think second life is a great idea, for it creates a virtual world for people to realize their dreams, experience a different life and relax themselves. It is a new form of social media for people to make friends and enjoy social life. On the other hand, I think the users should view the game objectively, it is a virtual game after all, and cannot be viewed as a replacement to the real world.
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