SL shares many properties with many (video) games. It also has many properties that are not in any game. It is also missing many properties that nearly all games have. Saying it *is* or *is not* a game achieves nothing, communicates nothing.

Kiss my hairy ass!

s’not a game

Let me give you two situations on which I am basing my editorial viewpoint.

1. The dating situation; I like to say that people are “all emotion” on SL because without the physical input, the emotional senses are heightened. So while some people might call it drama or drama inducing, people fall in love, or hate, on SL. And people become immersed, and possible enmeshed, with their avatars. If I or someone else was dating someone on SL, then its not considered my sprite is dating someone on SL, its looked at as “I” am dating someone.

But then you are dating someone, and they turn out to be a liar and/or a cheater. You trusted someone and they have hurt you. Yes, the hurt party eventually must get over it and move on. And there is a point to be made that maybe you shouldn’t date someone on SL because you don’t have the same ques and signals that you would get in RL. But the liar and/or cheater isn’t innocent in their actions. My point is the cheater doesn’t or shouldn’t get to say “its only a game, too bad for you” as an excuse for what they did. Their actions still hurt the person that they betrayed.

2. The Business situation. I’ll keep the stock exchanges out because that will drive everyone nuts. But I used to work with friends who decided to open a club in SL. There were four partners who all chipped in to finance and run the place. Two of them decided to close up shop, sell everything and leave, leaving the other two people out. That’s stealing from my two friends. And yes, I can hear Alyx already saying you shouldn’t spend any money in SL even though if some people didn’t spend money in SL there wouldn’t be an SL.

Now the two people who made off with the money might be able to say that they are justified for some reason or another. But saying that they are justified in shutting out the other partners because “its a game” isn’t a valid argument.
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Okay, time for a counterpoint. First..dating is actually harder in SL than it is IRL. The other person has far more opportunities to be devious..and for all you know that person has a googling of alts and runs things as a professional scam session. Remember what I said..about it being choices? You check something out *before* you jump into something.

And many of the relationship ads i’ve seen in SL tend to go “SL only..”, refuse to give out First Life details..etc. These are people that clearly are attempting to separate the two. But that *aside*? You’re going out with someone and you partner them. Does that make you partnered in real life? No. Any benefits whatsoever? No. You might bring something into SL..or actually get to know someone..meet..etc..but then you’re playing the dating game as if you were utilizing an online dating site. Is that part just a game? Not necessarily…however, it is part *of* a game.

If someone goes onto World of Warcraft and opens up a dating service..that doesn’t make it any less than an online game. It just has an online player’s personals area.

And the business strategem? They should have had that worked out well beforehand. When you have four people splitting something up, and two of them bail..that means that it was not well thought over. Again, world of warcraft..a guild or a trading block. YES, you put real money into the content and the tier..however..look at a free-to-play MMO with say, a cash shop. They utilized real cash to get in game content/items..sometimes on a temporary basis. And it is STILL..just a game.

My point stands. The only loss to yourself is the loss you create for *yourself*. The game -itself- does not cause you physical pain..and no more emotional trauma than any other game out there…again, unless you allow it to do so yourself..like the pen and paper roleplayers that take gaming sessions too far and hurt someone..or hurt themselves after something happened to their character. Guess what? Dating happens there too. Usually as part of a storyline. YOU might not see it that way, but that doesn’t speak for the other person. There’s a fellow on SL that has had a bunch of alts, partnered a bunch of folks..and what? He should be charged with bigamy now?

No. Granted, his behavior’s retarded..but he didn’t actually marry someone. He just ran wild..and what goes around comes around.

However, when you take the attitude of.. “This isn’t a game!” Your own sense of reality becomes skewed. You take things MUCH more personally, and SL goes from a somewhat amusing and bizarre past-time to something akin to a poison that creeps in, removes any sense of real vitality..and finally shuts you down altogether.A casual bump becomes a grave insult. Someone laughs at your avatar and you blow up in rage. You can’t even have a decent conversation because you’re paranoid about whether that person you’re talking to is a guy..a girl..an alt of someone that dislikes you..etc,etc,etc.

A social experiment. How and what we will do to ourselves when taken outside of our usual perspectives and placed in a rigid, very different perspective that seems more open but is pretty well locked down tight. Then, for kicks..add a normal (Mature) and a control (PG) group to maintain and study the results. You’re a lab mouse and you can’t even see the test tubes for what they are..and you are *making* the choice to be such. You are -making- the choice to be owned by the game, rather than owning it..and thus, you are following a strange but definitive form of self-enslavement that would otherwise not be possible but for your own permission and behaviors.

Second Life is a game. If it shut down tommorrow, you would still exist. You might have to find other things to occupy your time..but in fact, it would still exist. You could go a week..a month..even a YEAR without it and your life would not be impacted in much of anyway. (Unless you lived off income of SL..which isn’t wise in the first place.) Your COMPUTER could shut down..and your life and vital signs wouldn’t even skip a beat aside from anything induced by the general shock of such an event.

Oh, right. IT RUNS on a COMPUTER. Not your body, not your brain. Your computer. It is a program on that computer. Logic beats insanity more often than not..and LOGIC dictates that Second Life is a game and does not truly affect your life in any way *unless* *you* *let* *it*..and then you have no one but yourself to blame. Again, victimization.

The defense rests.

and that means,

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing GAME!

nuff said.

Quote:
“If your RL partner breaks up with you by email or phone, does that mean it’s not “real” either and you shouldn’t be hurt or upset?”

You’re talking about RL partner. Real Life. As in, nothing to do with SL and wether or not SL is a game.

If you apply above situation to SL partner, have them break up with me by email, phone, or notecard or IM (or even voice chat) I wouldnt be hurt or upset: I dont let myself get emotionally attached because to me, SL is a game.

The way I see SL affects how I play it: I am wiser then to go look for romance and love on SL, mostly because that wont work for me.
I have played family RP mind you, partner, kids, house, and all that. Great fun was had.

Quote:

“The difference between a “game” and “life” is just that.
- A game has rules and a goal, whether it’s GTA (virtual) or chess (RL). You know it’s not real, it’s an activity you and other people chose to do, following a set of rules, for the enjoyment of it.”

You mention rules here. I’ll get back to that.

You know SL is not real, everyone knows that. The people playing may be real, but nothing in SL is. Not even your AV’s name, the way it looks, the house you might have or that extremely cool car on it’s pixel driveway. Not even the emotions other AV’s display. My AV can cry while I’m behind the screen laughing.

SL is an activity we all choose to do. No-one plays SL against their will, everyone can log off when they choose to.

Everyone plays SL for the enjoyment of it, no-one logs off with the feeling of “Dammit I hate mondays, another gruelling evening on SL”. There’s an exception here: those that have turned a game into work. But that doesnt mean it’s no longer a game: I myself have stopped playing WoW because my group started demanding I play at certain times, so that we could do the more difficult missions together. A game can become work, and that’s the point where you have to stop playing, or start playing differently. This has no effect on what WoW is; a game.

Now of course, the rules.

Everyone knows games have to have rules… But do they really? Who ever said that a game should have set rules? And who says that SL *doesnt* have rules?

There is a very fun little game called “linerider”. There are only a few rules, and no goal. At least, not a set goal. The game works by letting you draw a line in the playing field, and you can let the computer let a little guy on a sled roll along those lines as if they were snowcovered hills. The few rules that are in place have to do with the lines, wether or not the sled sees them as a surface (enabling you to draw anything without it affecting the sled as well), and simple gravity.

There’s no goal, you wont get more points if you manage to make a nice course with loops and jumps and not have the little guy fall, then if you were to make a giant pit of doom to have the guy bounce left and right off the walls on it’s way down.

The goal basically is what you want.

You mention GTA as having rules. But, does it really? The beauty of GTA is, that you can do anything you want. You can follow the set goal and storyline if you choose, and finish the game. But even after finishing the game, and at any point during the game, you can choose to not follow it’s rules.

GTA does have a goal, and endboss and you can finish it. But you dont have to, and wether or not you follow the creator’s goal, has no effect on what GTA is, a game. It’s how you choose to play it, that is the real goal of GTA and also SL.

There’s several cheat ways, so you can bypass the rule that you have to find a gun or car before you can use it, and you can also go into multiplayer where guns are lying around on every streetcorner and in between, so you dont even have to cheat for them.

Whereas in SL, you have to either find a freebie gun, or earn money following SL’s rules, to buy a better one. Or, ‘cheat’ and make one out of thin air or buy some L$. (but in this case it’s not cheating as SL’s rules allow it)

Another one of the rules of GTA is the law, and it has a quite strong arm, too. But as no killing is one of the laws, no one really follows that rule of the gameworld. Not because one of the rules of the game says you have to break the law, but because its less fun if you never even run a red light.

The only real rules of GTA, and SL with it, are the technical rules and possibilities of the programs behind the screens creating the grid or Liberty City: you cant walk trough walls, there’s a limit to the maximum number of objects, faces, and textures, you cant walk trough some walls but you can trough others if the designers intend to, cars drive on the ground unless it’s super awesome, there is gravity, and so on and so on. Real Life, Not a Game, follows it’s own set of rules.

“- A life is just that … something you do on a day to day basis, including interaction with other people, sharing emotions, thoughts and feelings. What is the real difference between listening to a live performer in an SL club or a RL club, other than the fact you can be in your RL jammies while in SL?”

What is the difference between listening to the radio and talking about it via the phone with friends who are listening to the same thing?

This has not to do with the game itself: you can play monopoly with friends, including interactions, sharing emotions, thoughts and feelings. But that doesn’t mean that monopoly is not a game. You can apply the same to GTA multiplayer: I for one find myself getting pissed off for a moment if another player kills me. And I can imagine that one could start to play someone if they kill you off again and again and again. There’s emotions in every game, and interactions, sharing of thought and feelings in every game with more then one player.

I think the difficult part here, is that I see SL for a game for what it technically is. You see SL as not a game for what the human interaction part trough SL is. It’s looking at the game VS looking at it’s players.