Second Life

Second Life

Second Life is a large on-line game of network, in which you will have an incarnation and it will be on behalf of you to communicate with others through the computer. The players can through Second Life to create their own world and characters. Second Life is similar as the other normal RPG (Role Play Games), for example, players in the game is to control a character, but its goal and focus are different from RPG. The game does not preset any goals and missions for the players, and the each action of players are completed in freely, which without any restrictions. Many issues people cannot achieve in the real life, in Second Life, they will be free to have some properties and real rights. There is a no rules and laws world, as long as you have ability, and then you can get any you want, such buildings, farms and even islands, which all you cannot imagine beyond the reality. Actually, Second life gives you a vast modernization in 3D world, and you can build it with your own wishes. Although Second Life consisted in a virtual world, some Second Life residents think that “their virtual world is closer to their real self than their actual world self”. (Tom Boellstorff, 2008, p122) However, the facts and fiction still will collide. There was an English woman divorced with her husband because she found her husband had sexual relations with a woman in Second Life. Although after that the man said he did not think he did anything wrong, this is a public on-line game of network and he just used an ideological way to make friend. That is a tragedy for this couple, while as the outsiders maybe people will feel so funny and unbelievable for that. “Ideology is distorted knowledge, producing a state of false consciousness for all those living within its understanding of reality.”(Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, Meaghan Morris, Raymond Williams, 2005, p176)

Reference

Tom Boellstorff (2008) Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Princeton University Press, p122

Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, Meaghan Morris, Raymond Williams (2005) New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Blackwell Publishing, p176