Is second life a game?

I vote for ALL of the Above.

As others say: It's what you make of it.

A game, a business tool, a social networking tool, a development platform, etc.

No, it's a reference to the lack of pie in the poll. Every poll on these forums is supposed to allow pie as an option.

True, it's not the most important issue in the world. The caring comes from seeing someone miscategorize something and the desire to correct them. Then the drama starts when the people doing the miscategorization refuse to learn.

Remember Usenet? Ever see someone post to rec.whatever about “this site” and watch as someone corrects them that rec.whatever is not a web site but a Usenet group and how Usenet works? Then, instead of learning about Usenet and what it really is, they come back with “no no no, this is a web site. See??? I use my web browser and it says groups.google.com see??? This is a web site!”

Just like those idiots are wrong (and probably just trolling), so are the people arguing that Second Life is a game.

HP

Second Life is the best place to meet a fat old hairy sweaty 56 year old guy named Lou dressed up like a slutty fox in leather and bling with enormous boobs and an automated vagina on the entire intraweb.

So I voted business.

Kind of, well, no. I don't subscribe to the "any pastime is a game" idea; I don't hold that watching paint dry is a game, though it's clearly a pastime. A game needs to have defined goals, whether they involve competition against other players or against a non-player challenge.

I'm not competing here. There is no way that somebody can say they've won.

I don't consider Sim City a game either, and neither does Will Wright - it's a toy.

SecondLife is a vegas casino, with rooms, slots, gamling tables, shops, clubs, artifical tropical pool and spa area, scenic attractions, hordes of tourists, lots of career people and nasty cigarette smoke.

Okay. Maybe without the 'vegas' and the 'cigarette smoke' parts.

That is a most unusual definition of a game.

Nah we have Vegas now! The new sim is wicked!

I never said that was the definition of a game. I said "Any time you have resources involved, that = game."

So there may be times when resources are not involved and it is still a game (like Rollercoaster tycoon in sandbox mode). But limited resources will = competition on some level which = game.

No one watches paint dry as a past time. Bad analogy.

And even if tehy did, it only counts as a game if they get enjoyment from doing it.

Really? What are the defined goals in Roller Coaster Tycoon (Sandbox mode)?

Of course you are. Stuff in the game costs (in-game) money. If it was a platform, you'd be given tools for "free".

If there were no competition, the value of the in-game money would not fluctuate.

The fact that there is no winner does not mean it is not a game.

So why is it in the game isle at best buy with all the other games?

By the dictionary definition, it is a game. By industry definition, it is a game.

I never said that was the definition of a game. I said "Any time you have resources involved, that = game."

So there may be times when resources are not involved and it is still a game (like Rollercoaster tycoon in sandbox mode). But limited resources will = competition on some level which = game.

No one watches paint dry as a past time. Bad analogy.

And even if they did, it only counts as a game if they get enjoyment from doing it.

Really? What are the defined goals in Roller Coaster Tycoon (Sandbox mode)?

Of course you are. Stuff in the game costs (in-game) money. If it was a platform, you'd be given tools for "free".

If there were no competition, the value of the in-game money would not fluctuate.

The fact that there is no winner does not mean it is not a game.

So why is it in the game isle at best buy with all the other games?

By the dictionary definition, it is a game. By industry definition, it is a game.

Same diff, and still doesn't make sense. 'Anytime you have resources involved, you have an economy' would hold more true.

these three suit me. SL is a game. yOu can make money at it, but it is a game.

If I could use SL to run a business that was not SL, it might still be a game.

If the intention of SL was to faciliatate commerce and development on a variety of application not dependent on SL itslef, then maybe its a platform. But anything done in SL is about SL, thus its still a game to me.

No, it's not.

I never said that all games require resources, which is what you implied.

Development tools and platforms dont have their own economies.

it's Second Life

Actually I think an important distinction is that 'gaming' occurs in situations where competition for resources exists, particularly when there is a relevant set of rules (imposed by physics, law, or just commonly accepted).

Of course, you could say that SecondLife is a 'stadium'... and stadium exist to house games (and concerts, which have tickets which are resources for which there can be competition for... so scalping tix counts as a game.) But stadiums aren't games...

And while we can say that the land and the economy are resources being competed for by a set of rules... and the money game and real estate game are inseperable components OF Second Life... there's more to SecondLife than that.

Boils down to whether SecondLife refers to the "container" or the "contents".

I think Linden Labs is focusing on defining SecondLife as a container... the contents of which are variable and determined more by us.

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Container or Content... Medium or Message... Platform or Game... Yin or Yang... Chicken or Egg?

But I would argue that the conatiner itself is a game. The enviroment is controlled by rules and policies that form part of the code itself. I cannot create prims of any size, I am limited byt the system to 10m X 10 m. In addition group tools limit the structure of my social interaction and mandate particular organizations-while others are possible, they operate outside the structure of the law.

My intellectual property rights and really my provate property rights are subject to LL and thier enforcement at whim.

Largely any business I create in SL will be limited to SL. I cannot sell ralphlauren polo shirts through SL.

Even the basic elements of movement and avatr intereation are limited by the rules and paradigms of the underlying simulation. In effect the very code of SL is the rules of the game.

I nearly missed this, I didn't realise this was partially a reply to me.


It wasn't a particular good analogy, no. Okay, take following soaps on TV - that's definitely a pastime, people spend a lot of time doing it and they enjoy it. It's not a game though.


I don't know, are there any? If there aren't, it's not a game, it's a toy, like Sim City.

I am given tools for free. I don't upload more animations, textures etc in a week than the money I get from my stipend (just). I script and build everything that I own for myself, with the occasional vanity purchase that costs me very little and doesn't involve competition. I'm not competing against anyone with whom I don't choose to compete as a subgame of the overall experience. I build things because I like to build them, not because somebody else has built something like that and I want to do one that's better. (Well, very occasionally.)



It fluctuates because some people compete on the Lindex, which is also a game in itself. But I don't need the Lindex. I'm not playing that game, even though I'm playing SL. (The use of the word "play" does not indicate that SL is a game either.)


No.


Where else are they going to put it? Do they have a toy section? It looks a bit like a game and you can play games with it, so they stick it in with the games.


I don't care what the industry thinks and as I've said, I don't think defining "game" as "pastime" is useful at all. Astronomy can be a pastime. Masturbation can be a pastime. Neither of them are games, unless you choose to make them into games ("can I spot a new comet before anyone else" or... okay, I'll not do an example for the second one).

Restrictions don't make something a game though. If you buy a sketchbook you're restricted in what you can sketch, but sketching's not a game.

I'm maintaining here that there needs to be some competition involved which is intrinsic to even engaging in the game/environment/whatever in the first place.

I've said it time and time again. Whether Second Life is a game depends on who is playing

Hrm. So "stadium" == "game". I'm still not convinced.

Is SecondLife ONE game or many? It was designed to be many different things, and includes several systems, some of which can be 'gamed' and allows for us to build more systems within it, (which can be 'gomed' ). It also includes many non-game aspects. Calling SecondLife A game seems to over trivialize and imply that there are common resources for which all are competing, which isn't always true. Some angle for money, some for reputation, some for exploration or building or just social interaction, or a combination.

The sticking point for most people, I suspect, is that SecondLife LOOKS like a game.

Even if it were merely a 3d chatroom and absolutely nothing else, it would still be referred to as a game because of guilt by association with other 3d online interactive recreational offerings.

Is creating art a game? You can play "the art game" and try to make a name for yoursef, get an agent, struggle to get shown at galleries, do the party circuit, and all that goes along with being an acknowledged 'artist' in RL... but is the creation of art in and of itself a game? It can be a pleasurable past time... You can play with light and shadow, form and hue, but I think few would consider creating art "a game". And yet for some that's their entire point of being in SecondLife

It's not necessarily a simulation(toy) either. L$ valuation is a very 'real' thing and monkeying around with it directly affects people RL.

Anyway... viewed in certain ways nearly anything could be viewed as a game.

But with regards to SecondLife... (both the container and the content) ...calling it a game seems to acknowledge only a subset of what SecondLife is... not the whole. Whatever we end up saying what secondlife IS... it shouldn't exclude significant aspects.

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dO yOu wAnT To pLaY a gAmE ?

Nope. Thats why I used it in my example. It is still a game even though there is no real levelling or even any competition.

To most people, there is no difference. A software toy is a subcatagory of game to most people. Thats why there is not "toy" Isle at Best Buy....they are all games.

There's a limit to how much you can upload though, because you have to spend an in-game commodity ($L) to upload them each time.

That commodity is a finite resource. It limits what you can do and how much. You cant have infinite land for free. Thats why it is a game. You have to accumulate the resources to do what you want.

As noted above, RCT is still a game to most people even though you are not actively competing.

Heh heh, caught in your own semantic trap?

If you arnt playing it, then what are you doing?



How about with the CAD/Photoshop software? It isnt a game, right?

Yeah. But they call their toy section the "games" section. Just like everyone else.

If someone is using RCT to simply dick about with trains, then it's stopped being a game and become a toy - just like a model railway. Model railways aren't games. Apparently it has a "game" mode and a "toy" mode, fair enough.

I don't compete to upload textures even if I go over the limit, because I'd just buy L$ on the Lindex if that happened, which isn't competition, not for the buyer anyway. If I want more land I can just pay for it. That's not a game within SL; the money doesn't come from SL. I *could* play the earning-L$-to-pay-tier game, but I don't, and SL doesn't make me.

I'm not caught in a semantic trap at all. One can play with lots of things which aren't games, equations, Lego, food, whatever. If I play with my food that doesn't make food a game.

And I don't care how Best Buy's shelving system works. There are lots more games than toys in software, so they have a games section, and they don't sit there debating the semantics of it, they don't care and probably wouldn't understand anyway.

I don't think calling second life a game some how trivializes it at all. You can do many things with a game, but the analogy of a sketch pad is inexact. If you go from sketching, to say paint by numbers, well paint by numbers is more of a game, and second life is closer to paint by numbers than a sketch pad. Well maybe its closer to playing with legos, which I would also call a game.

I think the notion that competition is necessry to a game is a bit outdated. One needs only to look at the plethora of pen and paper role playing games to find systems that are open ending, allow infinite creativity, and do not depende on the concept of "winning." Some have levels and some do not. The RPG is a vehicle for story telling. Somehow the MMPORPGS have mutated RP games back to the thirteen year old's level of kill monsters, get loot, gain levels. This is the definition of game that I see imposed here, and yet that is nothign like the true game.

I would also hardly trivialize the mathematical model of a game, which simulates a system and allows a person to determin probable outcomes of a course of action. Eliminate the predicatbility and I find SL is a wonderful simulation, whether it is economic, social or politcal. As a game, SL is a mini model of reality and in it we can simulate various kinds of interaction. However SL is not realit, and the interatcion is simualted, and thus it is a game.

Finally, and most determinative to me is that in its current configuration, SL can be used only for interesting things in SL (possibly with the exception of machinima). SL is atm largely only relevant to SL. Thus it is a game. If it developes general utility outside the resident base, I will re-examine it. But right now SL is only relevant to people who want to do SL and thus it is a game.

The mistake is not in trivializing SL as a game, the mistake is in trivializing games to hype up SL as something it is not. The concept of game is a very flexible and powerful notion. Calling SL a "platform" is nothing more that advertizing hype at best, and is serioulsy misleading at worst.

You said that resources=game, which is the same as saying that by having resources it fits 'a' definition of a game.



Why not? Platform is a very open-ended term.