a milestone ?

hey friends. I was not a SL fan ,but my class was discussing this question days ago, and i got great interest in it and hav installed & I just wonder if SL is a milestone in online game ? and second life is impacting on marketing ? or is there any other game similar to SL?

Second Life is sold in GAMES stores. It's advertised in the GAMING world. You find information about it in the GAMING world's magazines and websites. You PLAY a role in it. It's made and produce by GAME designers {these are the real thing}

You would have to say, yes, it's a game and yes, you do play it.

The fact that people use it to make profit is something different altogether.. And yes, it's a virtual world but it's still a game no matter how you choose to slice it.

hey friends. I was not a SL fan ,but my class was discussing this question days ago, and i got great interest in it and hav installed & I just wonder if SL is a milestone in online game ? and second life is impacting on marketing ? or is there any other game similar to SL?

Second Life is sold in GAMES stores.

It's a platform game and I'm Super fuckin Mario.



People define what something is and for many people on this planet the activity of controlling a character on a computer screen is considered to be a game.

For others the thought of playing a computer game 24/7 is considered to be embarrassing and so it's defined as a platform!

That is your point of view and of course there are other with the same opinion. And like i said, you can play in SL. But many other, like me too, don't play a role in SL. Many are the same in SL like they are in RL. And I think this several opinions are a big problem in SL sometimes.

It's a side road leading to a dead end, that then makes you retrace your steps and try another route.

I like SL, but it's becoming an irrelevance. The most it has proved over the years is that there's a certain demographic that really, really dislike their lives and themselves but haven't got the bottle to get wasted on drugs and booze.

I was here at the beginning of 2006 and I agree, it looked like something back then. It seemed the majority of people were here to experiment in a brave new world.

I came back recently to find a wasteland populated for the most part by sex tourists and delusional fantasists.

Yeah, yeah.. I know. There are always exceptions and all credit to them, but in this case the minority will not be able to salvage the majority.

I guess on the whole, while SL gives enough freedom for it to be whatever you want it to be... a milestone on the way to technological and societal nirvana it ain't.

Obviously that's just my opinion.

B

Hey-ho, the old is/isn't a game debate? I'll bite for once and take a stab at this one. A lot of my 'evidence' is sourced for wikipedia, so my credentials are probably not all that credible, though.



"A game is a structured or semi-structured activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes also used as an educational tool. Games are generally distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work or art."

Well that sounds like SL to me, although the question of remuneration comes up. Not that big a percentage of residents use SL to make money though, so we can consider them a statistical anomaly and ignore them .



"Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interactivity. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational or psychological role."

Oh-oh, onto sticky ground. Where are the rules and goals? Excluding the ToS & CS, there are no rules to SL. And challenge? Like life, there's only as much challenge as you want in SL (apart from it being a challenge to get SL to run smoothly). Maybe it's not a game?



Greg Costikyan (a renowned writer of strategy and role-playing games) defines a game as "...a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” That word 'goals' again! And while we're at it, where are the resources & tokens? Yes, you've got L$, prims and land, but you don't have to manage any of them to actually 'play' SL.



So, off the the OED for another definition:
• noun 1 an activity engaged in for amusement. 2 a form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules. 3 a complete episode or period of play, ending in a final result. 4 a single portion of play, forming a scoring unit within a game. 5 (games) a meeting for sporting contests. 6 the equipment used in playing a board game, computer game, etc. 7 a type of activity or business regarded as a game. 8 a secret plan or trick. 9 wild mammals or birds hunted for sport or food.

hmmm, it's a game in sense 1, not in sense 2. Possibly parts of it qualify for sense 7 'the land rental game'.



I could throw in a few more arguments... If it's a game, model it in Game Theory. Tricky, isn't it? "You can buy it in games stores, so it's a game". Meh, you can buy bottle-openers and keyrings at my games store. Are they games too? Besides, I've never seen SL sold *anywhere*.



I can see this as a debate that'll run and run. My L$0.02-worth? It's not a game, it's a place, a virtual world. And yes, to answer the OP, it's a milestone.

Bartlebus, you and Rebecca should get together and compare notes. You have a lot in common.

I'm sorry Lindal I don't know who Rebecca is.

All I know is I come back to the forums, and I'm as inflammatory and reactionary as possible and still don't get a good argument....actually Trout did kick my *rse the other day so sometimes it works..

What happened .. where did all the pointless feistiness go..?