Let me say right away that Karsten Rutledge rocks (as much as I hate that term). His builds within Second Life are divine, and his fabulous Neuspa (which for some reason isn’t on his website) is something a male friend introduced me to a long way back in time, and which is something I’ve had huge amounts of fun with barrelling around the mainland roads both exploring and bouncing off sim boundaries, or jetting around water sims and being catapulted into the middle of next week when hitting sim boundaries there…
But Karsten is probably most famous for his board games. These were really popular a few years ago, and now are enjoying a massive resurgence across SL. It seems that it is impossible to go anywhere on the grid without tripping over one in particular I’ve taken to calling “Addictive, Addictive” purely because so many are playing it constantly.
And this has got me wondering if we’re not seeing, in a very minor way something of a social commentary on the state of Second Life with so many logging on simply to play a game-in-a-game? Now, before you start campaigning for my head – this a) isn’t a rant against games in SL; b) nor do I miss the fact that playing board games anywhere can be an immensely social activity full of fun, chiding, teasing and general getting-to-know-one-another. I get that. Really.
But let’s be honest here a moment, and look at the other aspect of board games in modern life. The reality is, they are something comes out on three occasions: at family get-togethers, perhaps a couple of times a month (if we have kids, etc.), when we’re having a small social gathering of like minds (which is about the closest equivalent to SL, in fairness), or when we’re fed up with the rubbish on television and there is really nothing else to do…
Second Life is supposedly a rich, immersive experience offering a rich diversity of entertainment, distractions, opportunities and the like. Yet it seems that across the grid, even in sims that have been purpose-built to provide unique role play and other experiences – experiences one might have thought would naturally attract those wanting to available themselves of the facilities – it seems that the one guaranteed activity one will find in them is … people sitting playing a board game involving green baize and dice – frequently while the rest of the sim stands ignored and empty.
Could it be that, to paraphrase (or possibly update) Bruce Springsteen, Second Life is feeling to many like television – that while there may well be 357 channels, there is actually nothing on that appeals? I mean, again in fairness it’s not even as if something like Greed….”Addictive, Addictive” actually encourages direct interaction; unless Voice is used, conversations are hard to hold when focused on pointing at the game table, clicking, calculating and so on. Do is it really the case that playing a humble game with dice has usurped shopping, exploring, roleplay, dancing, skydiving, and so on?
Or are we all just a digital nation of closet gamblers?
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 