I was getting a little nervous about Second Life. The much-discussed online service always gets described as a "virtual world," which sounds a little dystopian, but doesn't really tell us much. Isn't the whole Internet a virtual world? Isn't the inside of my head a virtual world most days? Do I really need another?
But the more I read about Second Life, the more curious its success made me. What do these millions of users, who are generating all this media hype, do with their time? Can it possibly be healthy? I downloaded the free software, sacrificed a good number of evenings, and went looking for answers to the obvious questions. To wit:
What is Second Life? (And don't just tell me it's a open-ended, free-form, interactive, multiplayer 3-D virtual world.)
Second Life is what you get when you cross a dollhouse with a chat room. Every user gets a doll to play with. You give your doll a name, and you can dress it up in as many outfits as you like. Then you move your doll around a 3-D world, and when you run into other people's little dolls, you type messages to them. That's pretty much it.
Can I change what my doll looks like?
The dolls are actually called "avatars," but they're so stiff and hard to control, they're more like Barbies. On the upside, you can reshape your doll's body as often as you like. A massive in-game economy provides an endless supply of clothing and accessories. You can also add attachments, like wigs and wings. But more important, you can change from a male to female doll with the press of a button. In fact, the only thing you can't change is your doll's name. (You'll run into trouble, for instance, if you sign up as "Larry," and later decide that you might be better off as a woman.)
If everybody can pick their ideal body, won't they all choose to look like a model?
Some players do interesting things with their dolls, turning them into robots or rabbits or superheroes. But the overwhelming majority of characters you meet are tall, thin, winsome and fair-skinned. Second Life is a body-image-counsellor's worst nightmare.
Are the people you meet nice or strange?
On the whole, they are very nice, possibly even normal. They're usually eager to talk about their real lives, and are much more civil and articulate than what you'll find on the Internet at large. Maybe putting an avatar on one's online character makes you more accountable.
Second Life is really the second coming of the Internet chat room. For decades, anonymous people have gathered in chat rooms for international, cross-cultural, text-only discussions that range from sublime to ridiculous to obscene. Second Life offers the same thing, but with a visual side to it — the dolls, and the 3-D world they walk around in. But in the end, the graphics merely complement the chat. You can pose your doll, but that's slow and clumsy, so text is the only way to really express yourself. Perhaps for that reason, Second Life favours people who enjoy expressing themselves in text. (That will change, though: An upgrade that will allow chatting with real voices is being tested.)
So once people are inside Second Life, what do they do?
As best as I can tell, they talk to other dolls, purchase doll clothing and have awkward doll sex. Second Life is stuffed to the gills with places — like virtual nightclubs and virtual clothing stores — that sell doll clothing and promise doll sex. In fact, most of the Second Life world is sparsely populated, except for these places.
Doll sex?
Living down to expectations is a human specialty. Where there are dolls, there are doll clothes on the floor. Doll loving is achieved, I discovered, by having dolls act out pre-programmed animations. The effect is roughly that of watching Barbie and Ken bumping their plastic nether regions together for a while. Lurid? Kind of. Sexy? No.
Are the dolls anatomically correct?
Remember what I said about adding attachments. Ew.
So how much does it all cost?
It's free to get a doll and wander around. You can exchange real money for Second Life money, which will let you purchase clothing, land and other objects. If you earn Second Life money by selling virtual goods or — ahem — services, you can cash it out. And yes, business is indeed booming for the world's oldest profession.
Aren't you selling Second Life a little short? I heard it was a fantastic playground, a virtual world where anything is possible.
It can be. If you're willing to shell out a bit of money, Second Life will give you a bit of land and the tools to build whatever you like on it. It's a brilliant, Meccano-like system, and people have built some incredible things — cities in the sky, castles, beaches, even cathedrals where evangelical dolls try to convert you.
But the creatively minded don't seem to be running the show these days. With all the media attention that Second Life has been getting, its population has skyrocketed (as I write, there are more than 36,000 players online). Hardly anybody you meet has been in the game for more than a couple of months. And the new player who wanders around talking to dolls, asking about the world's most popular places, will find the same things over and over again: clothes for sale, and the opportunity to witness awkward doll sex with a girl named Larry.
So?
There are fantastic people out there, and a cross-cultural online chat is every bit as much fun as it was 10 years ago. If you can find it through the crushing sameness of Second Life's vain, libidinous dollhouse, it can be a real-world pleasure.
webseven@globeandmail.com
