Wondering about SL

I've not been a member of SL for very long although for years I've played multi-player games; Quake, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Medal Of Honor,etc. Still do.

In the multi-player games, you have some goals as in any game. The score, playing with the same people all the time enjoying playing together, bs'ing,etc.

What's interesting to me about Second Life is while in a first person shooter you have two opposing teams trying to beat each other, in Second Life you essentially have several teams.

Team A: Earns money by camping or begging.
Team B: Tries to sell to Team A & C & D & E
Team C: Tries to sell to Team A & B & D & E
Team D: Exploits the game to take money from A,B,C, D & E.
Team E: Hangs out doing whatever while buying from or giving to A,B,C,D or E.

I guess what I'm getting at is SL is like a town with a population of 20 having 10 BigMart stores but everyone in the town works at a BigMart except for the BigMart owners who pay part of their earnings to people for hanging out in their stores.

Team F: Creates things or landscapes of use and beauty and shares them with the community or sells them for a reasonable price.

Team G are the griefers. Those who's existance is quantified by the amount of grief they cause to teams A, B, C, D, E & F.

Team H logged on once, saw there was no goal and never logged on again.

Team I are the observers. Who watch the interactions of teams A, B, C, D, E & G. And need to search out the fruits of team F.

That's the majority of SL players. They purchase virtual money and spend it on fun stuff to realise their dreams, in other words "to do whatever". And that's the big difference between SL and regular MMORPGs / multiplayer games: you can do "whatever". Whatever you can think of, except for things that might upset german TV reporters.

Team P seeks her imagination in her world while fighting the inner shopping demons and talking to angels

Team Z spent so much time playing FPS games that they eventually saw the whole world as one big giant Capture the Flag game.

There are people who quitely build and create, seldomly sell anything to anyone too. Wonder what team those people are on?

Go Team F, P and...

J:

Sometimes people have no agenda other than exploring, sharing, connecting and letting SL take them where it wills.

I like that.

What Lucrezia said.

Team L has a serious land addiction and makes stuff to sell to Teams A - Z in order to support their habit

I have that too. Tiering down to 0 and staying away from the land search tab is the only known cure.

Buying an island sim does provide temporary relief, but only until you use up all 15k prims and discover you have another island worth of stuff you want to build....

Bottom line: SL does not impose goal or structure. You have to create that for yourself. If you don't, or won't, or absolutely have to have structure and purpose imposed on you from outside yourself, you will soon go elsewhere.

What does it say about the real world that so many have tried this platform, and soon went elsewhere?

(Wanders off into the high Himalaya, seeking a cave and enlightenment.)

My friend's kid joined the teen grid, and he said the same thing... "What's the point?" He's a huge WoW and EverQuest player. I said "there is no point... use your imagination and make your OWN world." He just looked at me like I was crazy.

Send us a LM when you find it?