Quick thoughts on SL

I've spent about 2 weeks in SL with a couple different alts, and I've noticed a few things. These are just personal findings, so I hope nobody gets offended.


-First off, the audience SL attracts by offering an escape from reality is not universal. This is why there is such a high percentage of unorthodox communities, from the sexually perverted to the anthropomorphically inclined. This can alienate people with more traditional views of society and is in no way representative of the real world.

-The TOS and community standards promote a sort of idealistic dystopia. When facing any problems, the veteran SL player will immediately try to contact a higher authority, such as a Linden. This sort of dutiful sense of upholding the game's standards and dependency on others promotes the negative behavior it tries to restrain.

-As much as many members of the community were against allowing unverified registration due to attracting younger members, the general discourse of in-game conversations and forum discussions shows a long-standing immaturity that could not possibly sink any lower.

-The major problem perceived to be plaguing SL right now is griefing. Griefing is a symptom of a much greater problem, and that problem is that SL is not altogether entertaining to people outside the veteran niche. With a game based on acquiring money, sex, and material goods, SL has effectively recreated all the negative aspects of the real world. Given the opportunity to rebel against this, many people will.


There's probably a lot more to be said, but I just thought I'd jot these down quickly and see what others think.

My suggestion is spend more time and also spend some time in several other MMOGs. For the reasons, see below.



This is no different from other MMOGs. There is no MMOG that has some form of universal attraction (as per your definition).



Again, this is no different from any other MMOG. SL, like other MMOGs is a service and as such we have recourse to contact the gamehost when there are issues regarding the TOS. SL's TOS is in concept no different from those of other MMOGs.



Again, no different from other MMOGs and even non-MMOG fora. Only the heavily policed (moderated) ones have a semblance of maturity. I'm speaking here as a moderator of a group forum and a past moderator of an MMOG forum.



Once again, no different from other MMOGs. Fact is, if a method for griefing exists, it will be used. More recent examples I can cite are Everquest (spawnpoint griefing), World of Warcraft (the memorial service raid) and Eve Online (stargate camping). Griefing is a phenomenon with roots in real life society. As such social controls generally don't work inside the game.

Furthermore, nearly ALL MMOGs have money and material goods as a goal.

As a counterpoint, if you have enough real-world skill it's possible to make your own functional items in SL for FREE (no L$ outlay).


You have my thoughts above.

It's a replacement for the real world, a "better" version as Philip explains it.

I've spent some time in a few other MMOGs and there has been a few similarities, but instead of going into how SL's problems are different, I'll pose a couple questions: Do you want Second Life to be like the other MMOGs? Is it designed to be like other MMOGs?

Edit: And Khamon, is it better? Where casinos fight strip clubs for the top rung of the economy?

I think you have fundamentally missed the boat on your analysis. Without doing endless re-enumeration of your points, let me synthesize:

Dystopia/not Real World: of course. It is a microcosm of huge proportions, it attracts certain sets of individuals for a wide variety of activities - socially it is more diverse than you have apparently experienced, because you have not obviously been in-world long enough to be able to have experienced a significant amount of diversity in activity.

Limited set of activities money/sex/etc.: Again your short-term status in-world is the most profound indicator of your ignorance of activities here. There is an incredible range of socialization going on - an amazing array of games to indulge in, creativity groups leveraging incredible feats of virtual expression, engineering groups deepening the utilization of the native tools and expanding the library of secondary tools, effects, and yes including the aforementioned adult activities and making money.

At the risk of not addressing all of your points this may be a good point for you to pause and launch yourself in an exploration of the world - seek out the less popular areas, go to a variety of the sandbox and gaming areas and experience this environment at a more profound level.

Pax!

I can't say SL's problems are different. The only difference is that sex in SL is more graphic. People still cyber in other MMOGs. Gambling is available too.

Despite the underpinning similarities as far as the social aspect goes. SL isn't like other MMOGs at all for me, and it won't ever be. I will never need to "level up" or advance my in-game skills using arbitrary skill points or by killing monsters or whatnot. I do not need to purchase learning modules to advance my abilities.

My real world investment in learning art, physics, math, and programming directly contribute to the growth of my character in SL. I can build anything I want without having to spend any in-game currency or hunt some boss monster for some rare component. My investment is my own learning, searching online for information, and computing on spreadsheets and such.

In SL, the way to treasures is not slaying in-game monsters but slaying the real-world monsters of ignorance and poor self-image. Our weapons are learning. patience and friendships.

I come to SL to build, script, socialize, make money, and idle. I don't really like to look as SL as a game, though others do. Anyway I spend most my time doing the stuff i mentioned. I don't do internet sex that often. Only when it's someone close who i know real well.

SL is the only MMO i have really been successful in. So IMo it isn't like any other. In Sl i don't have to fight tons of monsters to earn enough money to start crafting. I can start right away! I usually try to build replicas of stuff. Or inovative solutions to how things currently work.

With all that said, by no meens would i EVER wan't SL to be like those other MMOs. The thought of that would sicken me. We have our share of griefers who abuse features of the system. If we didn't have those i would be able to finally get some work done.

You are clearly not using the same program I am (not a game, for one).

If, to you, SL is only about money, sex, and materials goods, then you need to explore more of what SL is capable of being.

-Ghoti

I would not be too hasty in dismissing all of the OP's points out of hand based on his SL "youth."

Griefing is a much larger problem in SL than it is in any other MMO I have ever played, and I have played quite a few. Denying this is pure folly. Also, even if arguing that SL is no worse than any other MMO were true (which it isn't), that's still not much of a rebuttal of the OP's point. In essence it's an agreement. I think the OP is correct in deducing that griefing is a major problem in SL because for a major portion of the playerbase, the fun to be had from SL is not nearly as accessible as it is in, say, World of Warcraft. Having fun in SL takes effort and creativity. It's not handed to you on a platter. And I tend to think that the interface with which one interacts with the universe makes things unnecessarily difficult. SL is a clunky universe to interact with. There are great things to be found here but often at an unnecessarily great cost in terms of difficulty.

I, too, have occasionally been disappointed by the maturity level of participants in SL. However, here I disagree a bit with the OP. In my experience, SL's participants are generally much more mature than your average WoW or EQ gamer. There are exceptions but I don't think they're the rule. Obviously, this is purely anecdotal and any player will have different experiences. Perhaps this point is less relevant.

As far as abuse reporting and the TOS are concerned, I share some of the OP's concerns. Frankly, I think this ties more into the griefing phenomenon in SL more than anything else. There is so much griefing activity that people are VERY prone to a sort of "shoot first and ask questions later" attitude. On numerous occasions I have been threatened with abuse reports for simply flying into a sim while in an odd looking avie. When I protest people will say "oh, well you LOOKED like a griefer." I do not intend to impugn the actions of the abuse reporters here -- I sympathize with their reactions because they are based on a justifiable assumption that stranger = griefer. It's an unfortunate truth here. But I do feel that having more in-game methods of working out difficulties would be beneficial, rather than having the obvious knee-jerk recourse of reporting everyone to a higher power. Obviously, in a more traditional MMORPG, the in-game recourse is to find your friends and beat the hell out of the person who's "offended," hehe. I do not know what the SL equivalent of this would be.

Anyway, interesting post by the OP and some interesting replies.

Thanks, Barry Weary, not so much for agreeing with some of my points, but for not going straight to the common SL response of "ignorance" on behalf of anyone who disagrees with them.

I didn't really feel like responding to the other posts claiming I didn't know what I was talking about because there was no point. I know what I know. My lack of interest in replying to those sorts of posts highlights my problems with SL. Sure, there are lots of aspects of SL that could be fun, but what's the point when the tide is against you? It's like when my mother used to tell me cleaning could be fun if I used my imagination. It wasn't.

Throw in some sadomasochism and sports mascots and you've got yourself Second Life.

This is all very cute, but doesn't really justify your griefing.

I'm just quoting Philip. My thoughts on the subject are posted in this thread.

I'll give you points for trying though.

These are the sorts of things I was referring to when I said immature. It's just absurdism that you'd start attacking me for my inoffensive comments. They were directed at the structure of Second Life, not its individual members.

@5oClock

I don't know which MMOGs you've been to, but where I've been, I can experience more grief in 2 hours (by killstealing bots) than I have in my entire stay in SL.

I've had to deal with characters that are leveled by tireless automatons, killstealers, and raiders who prey on low levelers and logout to escape the counter-raid teams.

Overall my otherwise normal blood pressure shot up too much.

But not here. Even with all the griefing I've been through here it still doesn't come close to the places I came from. You think one has to be a masochist to stay here? Au contraire, here I'm very relaxed, my creativity has gone up, I generally feel better about life since arriving.

Because at least here, you can avoid grief by going somewhere else for a while until the griefer gets bored.

Ignorant is one thing I'm not. There are immature people on the board but the average maturity and intellect level I've seen is higher than elsewhere.

We have a griefing problem, but that's caused by society, not SL. I also remain optimistic that LL will be working stuff in to counter griefing, though I'd like to see the tools now I'm giving them time for them to work it.

Bullshit and "oh pleez" at the same time. You attack the quality of in world conversations, describe them in contemptible terms and then try and hide behind a pitiable excuse of not attacking individuals.

Sweet Christmas Carrots, Batman, it's individual users that have convesations, OK, Bucky? Not abstract structures.


You didn't make any exceptions, you didn't make any qualifications of your statement. It was sweeping and broad and utterly asinine.

And you want to bleat and cry about being attacked?

Good for the goose, good for the gander, coolio.

Well, yes and no. Obviously, there are societal factors at work here. But isn't it true that griefing in SL was greatly exacerbated when account creation rules were changed such that anonymous account creation became possible?

No other MMO allows one to do this. And certainly no other MMO allows one to do this -and- to program your own weapons.

I really must say, your ultra-sensitive attitude to some criticism put in utterly inoffensive terms (please direct me to the so-called "contemptible" terms you refer to) only serves to back up his assertions.

Why don't you disagree with him in a mature, cool tone rather than come back calling him names like some angry brat? You can see my own first post in this thread for an example of how to disagree with someone without calling them "Bucky."

Must you? Oh darn.

Luciftias Neurocam, if I made it sound like there were no exceptions to the bad aspects of Second Life, your post surely didn't prove me wrong.


On the other hand, if I were trying to say that, Barry's posts are the exception.

There are other MMOs that have a no-verification registration via trial accounts. There are some MMOs that are outright free-to-play without any verification. Though it's only in SL that we can make the weapons, griefing is NOT limited to weapons. In other MMOGs there are methods of causing grief that don't involve weapons, in one game for example it was the ability to block access to an NPC.

There's no question that the griefing situation got worse with the open reg, that's been argued to death already. I had stated my stand on this issue elsewhere. I understand exactly why Linden Lab opened registration the way they did and it's a good thing for the long run.

The only complaint I have about Linden Lab policy is that they opened up the registration process BEFORE completing the anti-griefing tools.

I am glad however that they are developing anti-grief tools as we speak.

To clarify where I stand: Open registration exacerbated the griefing problem but under no circumstances is it a source. Putting verification back will not end the griefer problem at all. I had been griefed more times when there was verification than now when there is none. Griefing is caused by only two things.

1) Existence of the attitude, which is part of real-world society. LL can do NOTHING about this, no MMO can.

2) The ability to grief. This is where the griefing functions come into play. THIS LL can do something about by identifying the griefing conditions and shutting down the functions when those conditions exist.

I'm beginning to suspect that LL deliberately lets all the griefing happen so that they can see more approaches to griefing then make the anti-griefing tools they're designing more robust.

Somebody didn't play ultima online during the dread days. Anyone else remember sprinting to the britain moongate on the backs of corpses of players who were murdered trying to make the same run? Freaking out any time you saw another player or heard hoofbeats outside of town? Having to bank from the roof of the bank as that guy next to you was rifling through your inventory looking for your house key?

The last one was my favorite. Immagine if someone could just sidle up to you in SL, rifle your inventory and take what they wanted.

I'd be swimming in starax's wands now....

Thanks -- and I'm certainly not the only "exception." If you didn't, I'd recommend reading the post Khamon linked to. It was an exceptional post and one with which I believe you would agree (more or less).

One thing is true among every MMO I have ever played: the people who frequent the Forums do not necessarily reflect the general character of those who frequent the MMO (I am laboring to avoid using the word "game" here, hehe). If conversing with people in SL were anything like the "conversation" being had with Luciftias here, I would have given up a long, long time ago .

Good points, all around. That's actually an excellent point -- that the real problem is that open verification was released -before- a complete set of anti-griefing tools existed. Frankly, I suspect you are correct in fingering that as being a big part of the problem.

I do tend to also subscribe to the theory that griefing is a wider phenomenon in SL because so many people don't know what else to do with themselves. It's obviously a more difficult property (at first, anyway) to enjoy than a more traditional MMO. People don't know what to do at first so perhaps they fall back to the traditional ways of enjoying an MMO -- rampant slaughter! Ultimately, who knows?

As for the Ultima Online post -- I didn't play UO during that period but I've certainly heard tons of horror stories like yours! I suppose one could draw some encouragement from the fact that UO was eventually able to address these problems and subsequent MMOs have not encountered anything like them.

About your first point, I don't think this is the case. You guys have mentioned a lot of MMOG griefing, but what about other multiplayer games? There's almost no griefing in Battlefield 2. I'm talking about things like verbal griefing and teamkilling. I think this is because it doesn't bore its players. You can go into the maturity level of the consumer, but griefing is everyone's problem, and saying just because some people can't appreciate the game as it is doesn't fix that. As a community, you can make it more fun.

It's sort of like the way the world deals with terrorism. Wouldn't it be nice to turn the other cheek and try to make life better for the terrorists so that they would stop? Personally, I don't side with terrorists in any situation because of their tactics, but this is just a game. Griefers aren't altogether monsters.

As per your second point, this is very true. Going with my BF2 analogy, if EA didn't put in a anti-hacking software, it would be rife with hacking. This is a form of griefing. I personally used to hack Battlefield 1942, but I think I can honestly say that if there was a safe hack for BF2 that I didn't have to use to keep up, I wouldn't use it because BF2 was enough fun without it.

LL's responsibility, in my mind, is to make the game more fun. (And clean up their shoddy coding)

P.S. After Lupus Delacroix's post, I didn't feel like playing SL ever again because his post exemplified everything that is wrong with SL. You changed my mind, Barry, and I hope to find this minority of reasonable people in the game.