Second Life

[Sc@tterbrain 0]

Side note but,

There was a interesting murder case in Texas where a wife was going to leave her husband for a guy she meet on Everquest. Turned out it was actually a chick. Her husband got so enraged he put the divorce papers under her head, shot her, and staged it to look like a suicide.

Weird part is they never would have caught on untill they learned that 15 years earlier his ex-girlfried had "mysteriously" shot herself in the head too....hmm.

Someone once showed me a funny web site showing how video games have caused deaths of all kinds, all be it in all cases to mental midgets.

If anyone knows what it is, please tell!

[jakerod 254]

Quote[/b] ]•Toyota offers Second Life users virtual Scion cars

• Second Life Scions will cost 300 Linden dollars, or $1

• Customize options include real-world and fantasy accessories

Full Story (CNN)

Just an article I found yesterday about Toyota offering their cars in Second Life.

[rundll.exe 12]

A month ago or something I discovered Second life with my squad (HotShots) And it was fun seeing what you could do. Building your own car, flying apaches, flying cows, fighting ninjas, robbing banks, annoying salesmen. etc etc. We had a good laugh (TS + Second life = fun) But now we never go there anymore. Its just so damn boring.

You are OR having a chat with strangers OR making fun with the engine OR having sex at one of the thousands sexhouses....

Its a fun and big world, but there isnt anything to do actually.

[xawery 0]

ZOMG. I just watched a documentary about... childpornography in Second Life. Apparently, you can purchase genitals (I shit you not! E-penis is real! ) using your credit card and engage in sexual activities with other users.

Sad but harmless one might say, but apparently there are whole servers where you can sodomise young boys who still hold a teddybear in their hand. And believe me, pacifiers are not the only thing these virtual children are sucking on.

This documentary caused an upheaval in the Dutch parliament. A majority of the chamber roared in righteous indignation and is in favour of banning such material. The question is: what good will that do? Censorship doesn't work in the internet age. The lawmakers may feel good about themselves for passing such a law, but would it matter? I highly doubt that. Unless, of course, we introduce a virtual police force in Second Life

[TrevorOfCrete 0]

find out whos using it and hang them. .

But no we need net censorship thats not cencoring freedom of speech, just nasty under 18 and alkieda related stuff.

[Sc@tterbrain 0]

I consider myself completely anit-censorship, but can't defend sickness to this degree in any way. It's really too bad that this was allowed to progress to such a level.

Trevor dose have a point. There was a time when crimes against children held such a punishment that people were influenced to supress their sick thoughts.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Maybe there should be the Second Life equivalent of the UN charta regarding Universal Human Rights - don't know exactly which document but I know it was one of the first things made by the UN. It should be made part of the license agreement, and violators should accordingly be banned...

Next step: International Second Life Tribunal?

But indeed, there can be no police. This would only be like court proceedings... Second Life is all about freedom.

[xawery 0]

True, but freedom != anarchy.

Actually, this game is an interesting experiment. Give people absolute freedom to do as they please, remove any negative consequences their actions may have and this is what you get. Flying penes, paedophiles and escapism. Three cheers for humanity!

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

You're just portraying the negative side there, Xavery - That also exists in real life, though it is restricted by the rules and laws of society. I'll try it out as soon as possible, but I wouldn't say that Second Life is all bad - otherwise, there wouldn't be so much notable (CNN, etc) coverage and hype about it. If our real society were perfect, then you could expect any virtual society to be equally so - or were you really expecting utopian behaviour? Of course most of us wish for a better world, but this is just a kind of place where EVIL rears its ugly head. One thing in life I've learned is that there is no good without evil, and vice-versa (without knowing evil, you cannot appreciate as much how good something good is, because you'd just expect it to be normally so).

It's up to us to decide which side to take and how to try to influence the world to be more close to our ideal - good or evil. Personally, I prefer to stand on the good side of things. But not all people are the same, so... just because there's a virtual reality it doesn't mean that that basic clash of good vs evil doesn't happen there as well.

[xawery 0]

BUZZARD @ Feb. 22 2007,13:38)]You're just portraying the negative side there, Xavery - That also exists in real life, though it is restricted by the rules and laws of society. I'll try it out as soon as possible, but I wouldn't say that Second Life is all bad - otherwise, there wouldn't be so much notable (CNN, etc) coverage and hype about it. If our real society were perfect, then you could expect any virtual society to be equally so - or were you really expecting utopian behaviour? Of course most of us wish for a better world, but this is just a kind of place where EVIL rears its ugly head. One thing in life I've learned is that there is no good without evil, and vice-versa (without knowing evil, you cannot appreciate as much how good something good is, because you'd just expect it to be normally so).

It's up to us to decide which side to take and how to try to influence the world to be more close to our ideal - good or evil. Personally, I prefer to stand on the good side of things. But not all people are the same, so... just because there's a virtual reality it doesn't mean that that basic clash of good vs evil doesn't happen there as well.

Good god man, you make it sound like it's some kind of Dark Side/Light Side dilemma straight out of Star Wars! Incidentally, you touch upon a philosophical issue: the existence of good and evil. Personally I believe that absolute good and absolute evil do not exist. There is no absolute authority upon which we may rely to make that distinction. 'Good' and 'bad' are the product of tthe societal and temporal framework. While polygamy is frowned upon (and illegal) in the Western world, other societies either tolerate it or encourage it. We may find paedophilia disgusting, but buggering young boys was quite normal in Sparta. Religious societies all over the world reject homosexuality and abortion, while liberal countries accept them in the name of personal freedom. Both sides think they are right; so who's good, and who's evil? It's all relative. Now that that is out of the way, let's move on to the matter at hand

The fact that there's such a hype around Second Life doesn't mean it's good. There was a hype around Big Brother too - does that mean it was a good show? The fact remains that Second Life offers nothing more than experiences which one can find in the Real World too (apart from flying). This alone makes SL escapist by default. Just like other MMO's SL is not suited for a casual gamer: you must invest time to enjoy it in any significant way. Put differently: you spend time doing virtually what you could be doing in reality.

Of course, there is one difference between First Life and Second Life: the lack of any consequences or social control in the latter. Second Life is the paradise of 19th century anarchists - no rules, no enforcement of any kind of behaviour... Just do as you please. This might seem harmless, after all, it's just a game, right? However, it is a game which explicitly aspires simulating 'normal life'. The name says it all. It's not too hard to imagine that such an environment may turn young, impressionable people into moral infants.

Of course, this is an old argument, which has been used time and time again to discredit games like GTA, or any other violent game for that matter. The difference lies in the fact that the aforementioned titles are truly GAMES - they do not aim to simulate life. They have their limitations. Also, their availability is (at least somewhat) limited to mature audiences. In contrast, anyone can lie about their age and play SL.

Furthermore, violence is rather clear-cut: it's obvious to anyone that it is not acceptable in Real Life, punishable by law etc. People who commit acts of violence under the influence of games (German highschool shooting for example) are always mentally unstable individuals.

The gameplay in SL is far more ambiguous: it revolves around social interaction, which has much more opaque rules. It's more difficult to say: what I am doing in-game right now is clearly unacceptable in the Real World. Add to this adolescents with uncristallised understanding of morals and you have a whole generation of moral retards on the horizon.

Bottomline: if you want to create a simulation of Life, be conscientuous and include behavioural inhibitors such as law enforcement. That's a game I'd like to play.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

I think that in Second Life one can do a lot more than one can do in real life, like flying, or building starships or whatever, things that are still impossible in real life, especially for one single person to accomplish (yeah, building a starship, well, that could take you a life-time and perhaps you could do it... but first you'd have to get the materials for it as well, which implies alot more...). Therefore, no matter how much they tote it as to be some sort of simulator, I would never view Second Life as being some kind of "Life Simulator", simply because the things one sees and is able to do there, are completely irrealistic. I'd rather more accurately define Second Life as being an "MMO Alternative Reality".

[xawery 0]

True, but interaction with other humans is still the core of the concept, otherwise it might as well have been a single player 'game'.

[Sc@tterbrain 0]

As someone who views second life only from his first life take this as you may.

Moral relativism...etc...we are sick, imperfect beings.

We cannot seem to attain "humanity" in our real life, why should I expect otherwise in a virtual reality.

As I left a University campus today I was cut off and flipped the bird by a young woman with a bumper sticker that read:

"PEACE"

and

"When Clinton lied, nobody died."

If god has no desire to wash it all away, then I hope mother nature dose.  I have a conflicting desire to pray for global warming to be true.  Just desserts.

[Infidel 0]

What's so interesting about SL is that people find it interesting.

After all the hype, I of course went to register and try it out. First you design your character, which may be fun for a while, but games like "The Sims" can't keep at least me happy for that long.

When your character is ready to explore the world, you come to a "welcome" island, where you'll be walked through the basic steps of interaction with others and the gameworld, as well as through further character personalisation.

After that, you can choose to explore the main world. Once having arrived there, you are greeted with advertisements for stuff you can buy (houses, shoes, clothes, etc.), using "Linden Dollars", the game's currency. This currency you can either get for hard earned real cash you pay to the game's company, or, in small amounts, through various tasks in game (like cleaning the windows of someone's house, which was the first time the thought "get a life" crossed my mind - cleaning digital windows?).

Just wanting to explore I didn't care for shoes or window cleaning, so I went my merry way. Really wondrous things people have built there. Floating spheres, castles, whatever - people's imagination runs wild there and you can spend a lot of time looking at it. However, if you look at all these individual contributions they become uniform, despite the best attempts of making them stick out. And that's because everyone tries to stick out.

Then there is a great emptiness. The world is huge and you can explore and explore and meet only a couple of other players. You can spend your time in dozens of empty virtual nightclubs and plazas. You can feel pretty lonely in SL. Linden Labs currently claims, IIRC, 30.000 simultaneously logged in users - I sure wondered where they were.

There are places where people gather, but from what I saw, a node in SL will get locked when a maximum of about thirty players is reached. If you are among the lucky ones to get access to a crowded node, you may, like me, visit a virtual beach where people lie around to get a virtual suntan, or a disco, where a bunny is busy negotiating cybersex with a dominatrix, while a couple of superbabes plan their next virtual shopping tour and others have their characters dancing on the virtual dancefloor. I again came to a question: What's the point of it? What's the point of doing all this mundane crap when you can easily have it in real life and so much better?

Finally I came to a conclusion: You can only enjoy "Second Life" when you lack the tasks you enjoy there in real life. And if that's the case you'd be better off to make reality fun instead of paying for a make believe version in poor graphics on your computer.

Although, trying to have sex with bunnies might stage a problem. I'm not sure on whos end, though.

Infidel

[xawery 0]

I hang my head in shame. My university has opened its virtual doors on Second Life.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

I must admit that I find it most amusing that "Second Life" has taken a sort of life of its own - no other "virtuality" has ever had that many maintained elements of real life in it!

P.S.: I mean that in a pure sense of MMORPG "virtualities" - wether "Second Life" is a good or bad MMORPG is besides the point I was making...

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

I had a great laugh reading your comment infidel.

I guess in the end SL is a complex-inverter. Ugly people can become beauties, the shy can become charismatic, the poor can be rich and men can play as women.

And system administrators can be rabbits searching for a dominatrix

[Infidel 0]

So that was you?

Infidel

[CG Man 0]

I've been in second life a while after you buy a real looking skin  hair and clothes and some weapons and explored all the popular places theirs nothing to do.  

You have to be a clothes designer or land developer or scriptor or gun maker to make any money to keep expanding and keep it interesting. For people who can't get out and socialise in real life it's a good idea.

Talk to any guys they think your gay or they are gay and want your ass right away. Talking to women is impossible as they want cash just for talking to them most of  the women are prostitutes in second life so you spend most of the time wondering around on your own thinking whats the point in this. It's def more a game for women as 90% of second like is prostitution. Just visit Second life's Amsterdam area and you will get a good idea of what Second life is all about.

[sputnik monroe 102]

THis sounds gross. From what I gather second life is just some sort of porn mmrop for kid rapers an stuff.

Pepole make fun of everyquest and stuff but I use tto play it about 4 or 5 years ago and I never say people having virtual rape and stuff. What in the hlle is wrong with poeple.

[AceTalker 0]

Yeah I heard about second life in NEWS! I can't believe the put it there. Never played it. looks too laggy for me.

AceTalker out.

wod:roflcopter

[AfrographX 0]

I found an intersting new alternative to Second Life: Second Life 3.0

[ebns72 0]

I'm going to butt in this thread again that once again I think you guys have little understanding of what SL is.

It's hardly an alternate reality - most other mmos are for more alternate realities than this one. This contains close to no relation to real life.

Second Life is a lot more a online MMO 3D modeler than any sort of alternate life. Star Wars Galaxies, a game I played for many years, far more resembled a "second life" than this - second life is more utility than living.

I know this because I have been playing the game occasionally for many years.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Second Life is a lot more a online MMO 3D modeler than any sort of alternate life. Star Wars Galaxies, a game I played for many years, far more resembled a "second life" than this - second life is more utility than living.

Haven't had the chance of trying it out, but before I do, Iet me just ask again, if "Second Life" is any good for learning how to model stuff? I mean, I've briefly tried my hand at Gmax and Wings3d but really haven't gotten the grip of it, although I'd really like to be able to model stuff, do you think "Second Life" would be easier for a complete modelling newb like me to learn modelling? Also, is it possible to export models made with "Second Life"? If not, I don't it would be worth the try - after Project Entropia I think I'll rather try out Anarchy Online...