“Second Life is not a game.” How often have we heard that claim? And it’s true in many respects. Second Life doesn’t by default have any of the mechanisms associated with games. There are no levels to achieve, no goals to attain, no objectives to meet, and so on. So to simply dismiss it as a “game” is to both underestimate the potential of the platform and demonstrate a lack of understanding about it, and we’re right to point out that it isn’t, of itself “a game”.
However, there are times when “Second Life is not a game” can be used as a rolling-pin with which to thwack Linden Lab because of changes they bring to the system which appear to be focused on gaming or because of initiatives the Lab takes to reach out to potential users. When I come across this latter aspect of the rallying-cry in forum threads blog comments, etc., I’m actually surprised and not a little disappointed.
True, Second Life may not itself be a game – but that doesn’t rule out the fact that it is a very legitimate platform for game play in a wide variety of forms (of which role-play is perhaps the largest, and possibly the reason why (leaving the sex aside) a good proportion of SL users keep logging into the platform. It’s also a more than capable platform for game development and offering people many and varied means of game-like entertainment.
The fact is that Second Life is a platform which allows you to log-in and say, “OK, today, I will be a pirate!” and go off and sail the high seas,” or, “Time to go dogfight over the trenches of World War 1”, or don a period costume and explore some of the history of 18th Century France where yesterday you logged-in a followed the clues to solve a mystery (and gained some nice prizes and trinkets along the way) before engaging in some combat with friends, and tomorrow you might set-out to kill a few zombies before sitting down and enjoying a few rounds of a board game.
One team of people who perhaps best exemplify the ability of Second Life as an environment which can enable and support games are MadPea Games, the subject of the eighth segment of The Drax Files.
Started five years ago by Kiana Writer (Mari Mitchell in real life), MadPea Games has become synonymous with the provision of immersive, imaginative and genre-leading games in Second Life and stands as a shining example of something Rod Humble recently pointed-out in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle: that while it may be true that “big business” initially jumping into SL and then deserting SL, this didn’t leave the platform dead. Rather, it left the way clear for “amateurs” and “specialists in it” (the platform) to establish very successful business presences in Second Life – and in some cases, extend their reach well beyond SL.
MadPea Games is an international team. With Kiana leading the operation out of Finland, other team members are based in France, Germany, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Over the years they have created a broad range of games in Second Life, spanning the genres of mystery, adventure, horror, cartoons, hunts, role-play – and more.
“I really don’t know why more people are not using virtual worlds like we do,” Kiana states at the start of the video. Looking at MadPea’s résumé, she makes a fair point. Not only have the team produced some of the most memorable games in Second Life, they’ve also worked on a number of SL / real-world cross-over projects as well. In 2009 they produced The Kaaos Effect interactive adventure in collaboration with Orange. A second collaboration with Orange in 2012 resulted in Firefly, described as a “haunting love story”.
MadPea have also worked with Nature Publishing Group and MacMillan Publishers to produce Notes from the Voyage, an educational game about the travels of Charles Darwin, and with Sigma-Aldrich to create Reaction, an interactive means to learn about chemistry. All of these demonstrate the sheer power of Second Life as a immersive medium – and the value in allowing gameplay and game-like mechanisms within it.
Kiana was not herself a “gamer” but more of a storyteller, and in Second Life she immediately saw a new potential, “I came to Second Life and I was, ‘Hey! This is a great place! I could actually bring my stories to life here!'” In describing the uniqueness of the platform compared to other games, she observes, “Immersive storytelling is when you get so lost in the story that you become the hero of the story; you’re feeling the whole environment. This is why our games are working … because with a lot of console games you become a totally different person, but in Second Life, so many people identify themselves as their avatars, so they get to play as themselves, and that’s really huge.”
Of course, there are limits to what can be achieved in Second Life; as a dynamic environment where so much is open to the users themselves in terms of how they develop their avatars, there has to be a number of checks and balances to keep gameplay in line with some of the more limiting factors of the platform, as Kiana notes, “I don’t think many people actually realise how much work it is to make sure the island is smooth. Everything is so optimised that there is absolutely zero lag. And then the crowds come in, (laughs) and then they start complaining, ‘there’s a lag! there’s a lag!’, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, because you are, as an avatar, taking most of the resources of the sim!'”
Throughout their time in SL, MadPea Games have constantly pushed the boundaries and repeatedly raised the bar on what they strive to achieve. In keeping with this – and as teased during the show – their next project Unia, promises to do so again, as they work to implement an action game within SL.
Fittingly, this segment of the show is itself a rich piece of storytelling, demonstrating not only the power of creativity within Second Life, but also the way in which it can bring people from around the globe together both as colleagues engaged in collaborative efforts and as friends. It is also one which dives into the complexities of creating immersive, interactive environments not so much by what is said, but by what is shown – kudos again to Drax for bringing together an ideal mix images and scenes to perfectly underline Kiana’s words and views.
And I have to say, I really like the role-reversal!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 