Second Life like most other online role playing games have a
variety of real world aspects incorporated into them. However, in the case of second life any
individual can alter or create worlds and platforms to promote ideas, educate
on topics, and interact socially like actual life. I used a Wikipedia (don’t hate) page
as an outline for all effective uses of second life. These real life uses
include: Education(scholarly and job),
arts, science, religion, embassies, competition, and relationships (digitally
sexual and social). Since a good amount
of these overlap the actual uses of the game I tried to distill them down to
certain categories. These categories
include: Education, Expression, Group
Cooperation, and Social Experiences. Each
of the original uses outlined by Wikipedia can fit into two or more categories
but fit the best into only one.
Education:
Education through second life can be divided into two types
and they are scholarly, such as elementary or college, and employment or life
skills, like emergency responders and community activists. In the case of scholarly education various
different institutions
use second life. This can be an
effective way for students to meet and discuss topics in a digital way (example
of crossing categories such as group cooperation). As for employment and life skills second life
provides training programs saving huge amounts of money that could have been
spent on actual simulations of scenarios.
Expression:
The ability for any user to build and create sets Second
Life apart from almost every other online game like it. Through this ability to create users have
made various different art galleries of original works of art as well as
digital duplicates of real works. There
is also many galleries devoted to natural areas to show the beauty of the areas
online with people who could never others wise get a 3d view. Furthermore, second life’s highly detailed
editing mode and availability to any user allows for unbound creative works of art. Also, on a side note social expression can
call into the category.
Group Cooperation:
Cooperative work is becoming an increasingly important
aspect in many dimensions of employment, government, and social constructs in
our world today. Second life provides a
platform for that to occur in a 3d way miles and miles away from one
another. Whether it is a company or a
real life social group that wishes to meet in second life all are welcome. When related to planning this could be a
particularly useful tool for citizen participation. A town council meeting could be held via
second life where everyone could have their own avatar and even the town could be
recreated. This may be a long way away
since it is a relatively informal game and many people may not be
technologically savy creating bias.
Social Experiences:
One of the major reasons online games like second life are
so popular in comparison to games off the internet is the availability for
social interactions. Making friends you
would never meet in real life who may be from exotic places and have
interesting perspectives. In second life
various people and groups have created clubs and bars and social places to
interact. There are even the possibility
of relationships and marriages in second life.
The addition of age verification and “adult”
features to second life came with increased media attention yet seemed to be preferred
by some users. It was the cap to the
amount of real life social interaction you can have in second life.
No comments:
Post a Comment