Second life is fictitious

What do I think about the Second life at first? It is a space for the people who are not satisfy their community therefore they need to find a space belong to them. They don’t think that is a game, this is their new life. I haven’t played online game before such as The Sim, Second life and so on. I don’t know how exciting, interesting of the game. However, I only know that playing those games is really wasting my time and escaping the reality.

However, after I read the book and the article about the avatar which is controlled by the user. Afterwards I have another perspective in looking into the matter. In Second life, user can help their avatar to choose how they look like, the shape of the body, the hair style, the colour of the eye and the dressing style which looks like same as you. They can run a business, make friends, find a partner, get marry, have sex and communicate through the voice chat capabilities and text the message in the Second life. It makes me confused. I am not sure that is a game or a community but through the internet and media.

Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”

In regard to Meadows argues the suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief. The user have to pay the US dollars to exchange the Linden dollars ($5US can exchange over 1000 Linden dollars) then they can buy the stuffs in the store such as book which is published in our real life and they can send the content via your real-life email or in the game and the shop owner and author will receive the real dollars from you. Besides, people will get marry and hold a wedding party, dance during the party. All the things is controlled by themselves. Sometimes, they will hold an event or activities in some places in the Second life, they are using the inbox message to invite people to come and it is really successful. Moreover, identity and culture is a country or community symptoms. In the second life, people also have their own culture and identity, they will type “Tal” to replace shake hands, use the animation such as hug and so on. They will group together become a small community in the Second life. We can see that Second life is a kind of country and the user is their citizen. It makes second life and real life is overlapped.

However, I think that kind of game the purpose is not trying to replace our real life, they just want to providing a space for young people to practise and prepare step into the society after they graduate and a space for the people to extent their network because sometimes we will feel really stressful in our real life. Second life can help you to make more friends and share your feeling not that much responsibility you have to take. Also, they offer the community, goals, commerce let the player understand what they need in their real life.