Dabbled in virtual worlds since 1997 though, I'm still pretty much unsure of how virtual worlds emerged and spread like wild fire and, for the worse, swallowed a hell lot of Earth souls in just about a decade.
Second Life is a MMOG(Massively Multiplayer Online Game) that subtly combines a virtual environment with a slew of realness. It promises the world is entirely built and owned by its "residents", don't call them "players", mind you.
In my view, "residents" make their world into their own space though, even when it's predesigned and visualized, it's the gamers that make the world a gaming environment. Second Life without its "residents" wouldn't be called a game. Then people enact in games, writing in full form of their visualizations of their own perception. This changes the gameplay and to some degree the game world. I personally admit that this system gives Second Life a notch up higher in playability.
But if you truly want to see how players enact upon their environment, you'll have to enter Second Life for a while and watch a fully user-generated content environment. Residents in there seek most of all is to create their own audiovisual Utopia. Second Life simply hands them the tools, but I think gamers in all types of cyberspace will do that to some extent already.
No comments:
Post a Comment