From Half Life to Second Life.
August 16, 2007
Most people are seeing the game industry evolve at a pace they cannot keep up with. the problem with that is that people watching the gaming industry are people who desperately want to be a part of that same industry. But I as a gamer have a different take on things. I see games evolving in parallel to my own life. You can pick a gaming platform of two, there isn’t such a major difference between the titles and game engines being released (I feel a bit forced to throw nintendo out of this batch, because since the dawn of the pixel they concentrated on creating addictive childish games that send us back to when our biggest decisions in life were between soccer outside or Super Mario inside). 
There are always too many titles, but they all seem like a remake of a remake. I’m talking about out own cornerstones of gaming. those games that immerse the player in it’s own universe. The first game that pops to mind is Gift From The Gods on Spectrum 48k, 
a platform game with no sound and a godess that leaded the way for us, medusas and snake infested skulls that would kill us at the slightest touch. The ambiance created with the complete absence of sound, the strange relationship with the godess and the labyrinths within the screen-after-screen platforms forced the player o get into trance, fighting for a goal that was not clear. I never ended that game, I still have no idea what the goal was. (crap! just found out what the gload was searching for the screenshot) .
Fastforwarding I can think of Beneath a Steel Sky (which by the way was the first release to ever be translated in full to portuguese), Wolfenstein 3D, Spiderman (the first PC version, with the big spiderman on the side, turning into a skelaton as energy decreased.), Rick Dangerous, Quake…
But something happend along he way: Games like Ghost Recon emerged and spawned into an nauseous array of remakes and repackaging. Unreal Tournament and Quake set the standard for multi-player games (having several thousand servers working till this day, and now surprisingly increasing the number of fans), if I was part of any gaming movement it was Unreal Torunament, I never joined a clan and as a prefix to my online nick I used [AO1] which stood for “Army Of One”, I never liked clans, just the name of it makes me fringe. I had friends online, we’d frag each other and congratulate one another when a a frag was artistic or especially hard. I alway enjoyed playing FPS’s with people who respawn in the split second they are fragged. In my point of view, if you feel a frag…you are a crap player. and in UT when all the players were at the same skill set the game would come down to sheer statistics, real time statistics mean that you can’t mourn your own death. frag along people…nothing to see here…
In between all this IRC networks were booming (back to UT, it had it’s own IRC client embedded in the game), they died as fast as they were born. Freenode is still interesting, but again…a bit like NNTP: not for the faint of heart.
Half-Life was a tremendous game (I catched that train a bit late, I was still addicted to Deus-EX at the time) amazing graphics, amazing plot…the works. but Half-Life felt lonely. unlike UT or Quake that had it’s roots in it’s community of users, Half-Life was like this Mercedes McLaren F1, it was awesome but a lonely 1 sitter. It never cought a community, and those addicted to the game were addicted for other reasons, it was not team play or anything of that sort, it was just the most kick-ass game at the time and they were proud to play it. (that’s my take on it).
Catching another late train a few days ago I finally got curious enough to give second life a chance. Impending doom. I am utterly addicted to it. Just today someone over at SL said “Real Life is chasing me away from Second Life…BRB” and with a few hours of game experience I felt what he was saying. my RL is intruding on my SL! I can’t even call it a game. can you call it a game? there’s no goal, there’s no rules, there is only a universe with real people behind an avatar, agressive people, kind people, nice people, dumb people, borderline retarded people..
Many years ago at IRC’s prime a friend who I never met in person told me on the phone “don’t you see man? IRC is the ultimate game, because it deals with real emotions” I agreed at the time, and I can’t say I totally disagree now but again we are repackaging what once worked but needs some refurbishing. So add a three dimentional world, two spoons of scripted interactivity with other “residents” and objects, a handful of web’s 2.0 “you make all the content, we make all the profit” and just the right amount of niche “zones” to make everybody happy.
I admit I was being rather unfair: Linden technologies do not make all the profit. it is totally possible to actually make money, real money, in their virtual universe. (yes, WoW has that too, Starwars had it before that) Second Life has it’s own currency exchange rules, things can be bought, sold, rented, auctioned or given away for free. Business thrives from real estate much like in real life and there is the usual clothing market, extra scripts (for gestures not default to the avatar like hugging, kissing, etc). From the little I’ve caught up on SL I’ve realized people invest in their own house, furniture, clothing. Some live alone, others with a partner or partners. It’s unbiased as to sexual orientation, or specification (I’ve seen a minotaur get lucky!) and at the end of the day it’s all very reminiscent of good old Fidonet’s saying “on Fidonet nobody knows you’re a dog”.
I’d like to wrap this up, but I can’t. It’s an expanding world in all senses, not just SL, not just gaming. like the zen mantra “the world is expanding” repeated ad nauseum reinforcing an undeniable truth. it is all expanding. we are expanding, as people. And as rather recent studies show that by being exposed to movies we become more experienced in our own lives (perhaps in a “seen that, almost done that” sense) I can’t even begin to imagine what mid term repercussions this platform will have in our future lives. I confess that in my mere 3 days in second life I’ve gone to places that I’d never set foot in real life (I even went to the beach…I hate beaches and can’t remember the last time I set foot in one), let alone personal conversations that were impossible to have in any other situation. Technology has given us the first very real and very tangible parallel universe.
August 17, 2007 at 8:17 am
I feel great after reading this post. People say obesity is the plague of the new century – I disagree. I believe that dubious honor belongs to attention defficit disorder. As we expand more and more, as you said it, our boundaries for social interaction, as we were taught to have, are slowly beginning to need constant redefinition, almost in a yearly basis. And our minds are struggling to keep up.”We’re all geeks now” is a comment I heard regarding these recent times. Gaming is no longer a stigmatizing hobby, and neither is being a fan of Spiderman comics or Tolkien novels… We, as a whole, are changing – and the greatest injustice of the world in the future will be the digital divide, since we will pretty much fail to know how to communicate with someone with no internet connection, much more so than someone who doesn’t watch TV.
Still, my opinion on Second Life is that it’s a bad start for something that could be truly wonderful – if it were open, decentralized, and if we were no longer bound by keyboards and mice and monitors to command our digital personal avatars. It is the ultimate game, since the goal is as allusive and subjective as First Life itself. Although that parallel universe statement could be traced back to the old ARPAnet days… just like comparing the ZX Spectrum’s gameworlds to XboX360 ones, the same basic principle aplies to NNTP or Netmail in the early 80s and SL these days.
August 17, 2007 at 9:53 am
I agree…with reservations.
I start my post talking of being emerged in a game, you start yours talking of ADD, which is kind of the opposite of immersion in a given task. But it’s okay, because at a very basic level I do agree. but I’m not blaming everything on networked environments and everything except face-to-face communication.
these days we end up meeting more people in a week then our grand parents did their whole lives, we travel faster and with such ease to any corner of the world, jet-lag is dealt with over breakfast at the hotel, we have crash-cultural-experiences, we eat paella at lunch and sushi at dinner. We are choosing dairy products with aloe-vera additives, calcium and anti-stress supplements. all and all what I’m trying to say is: ADD isn’t a plague, it’s our immune system to an ever changing, ever faster world.
So perhaps we are seeking the clear vision and goals we were raised to believe were there in entertainment. we concentrate wile watching Dr. House in the that same way we concentrate wile playing a game we love. There is no longer concentration at work for most of us, not wile we have mail boxes, cell phones, voice mail, crackberrys and hysterical bosses/project managers/team leaders.
So where do we fit in all this? do we have space, room and the mental disposition after years of this abuse to truly be happy? to be what we want to be? I find it natural to find alternatives. Natural to find a parallel life. for some it’s strip clubs, mexican whore houses, getting wasted on liquor every night or zap the remote at a flickering TV until we are numb enough to make that feel like meditation. we can’t turn our brains off. there’s no soft reset. So we find alternatives, cobol programmer by day, Hell’s Angel by night. Receptionist by day, College student by night, dance queen at weekends. Technical Coordinator for IPTV Services, bass player? where do we allow our brains do run on anything then 4th gear, foot to the floor? what activity do we choose to engage the 5th and let it run on really low rpms?
and you my friend are being far too pragmatic regarding SL. First of it’s a Grid system, so it is decentralized in a way. Brazil runs the official Brazilian quarter from their own local servers, if that goes down, brazil is out of second life. Secondly it’s open enough, with the built in scripting language that can animate avatars, objects or mixed interaction. There are 4 or 6 standard avatars but you can load anything you make with Poser, there is no limit in textures, what you can save as .tga can be texture. As too the mouse and keyboard I really don’t have comments on that… it’s what we’ve got and no one is seeing that going away any time soon.
ARPAnet didn’t get you a second job, a house, and income, you wouldn’t dress up an avatar to go to an 80’s disco. But I know what you are saying and all I can say is: I’m sure I’ll say that a few more times in my life span. I’m thankful for that. I love being in the middle of full blown revolutions.
August 17, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I wasn’t even mentioning the gaming part, and skipped right to the “need” for something like SL. Fragging isn’t much of a sport for me, it’s more like playing Mikado on acid. But I digress.
For me it’s a bad start – you couldn’t have something like speed dating in the 1870’s, just as much as (for me) having alternate reality experiences nowadays, in front of an ordinary PC. It’s fundamental, for something to work, for it to occur in the right time. Come on, VR in the 90s was cool, but it wasn’t *really* happening. That’s what’s so cool about the ‘net, and maybe before that BBSs – because it’s here, and it makes sense TODAY. SL does not – it’s controlled by a single company (if the ‘net was like that, we’d have thousands of little “internets” and would be stuck with paying tolls between them). It’s not open, so security fears are a must. It’s too plastic! “Cool, I’m doing the Travolta with my awesome textured suit and…*CRAP* my mouse’s batteries are dead. shit, did I buy new ones? Lemme check the OH CRAP what did the fucking dog do in the carpet? HONEEY! GET THE MOP, will ya?”
Something like SL is anyone’s dream come true, and maybe the fear of many if it gets too immersive and sucessful since we’ll be probably prefering a life that favors us instead of the “real” one, but it just can’t work for me right now.
Our minds wander. They get tired, and these days, a nap just doesn’t cut it. All these alternate ways of coping with change in our lives don’t change the fact that we are growing increasingly autistic by the minute, and we’re getting to a point where we, as human beings, will not have the skills to communicate with others without incredible ammounts of shared context. And that, my friend, is a huge thing for Mankind for all of it’s ramifications. This social revolution is so present as a background to all of our new found soul addictions that we don’t even grasp it.
I hope we don’t too dissociative. Part of my exercises to relax is to unplug sometimes, and I would like to think my geekness hasn’t made me uncapable of “normal” social interaction…
August 22, 2007 at 11:15 am
what drives you away is the fact that it’s a corporation behind it. it’s not it’s features, or lack of freedom (which is not an issue in SL)…it’s just a corporate concept you insist on not being a part of…it’s ok, I respect that. I don’t understand it, but I respect it.
as to the rest of the comment… we’ll always have physical friends, and communication in my humble opinion has never been mankind’s strongest soft skill, it’s an evolving issue and SL is just a part of that as well. it’s another layer of communication, and thinking that it will erase all other layers is being naive. people must have said the same regarding the telephone, not speaking face to face must have seemed unnatural and frowned upon. remember when TV was the source of all evil when we were kids? or now how playing America’s Army makes you waltz into a high school and pop your school mates (!?).
If people with communication problems can do it in SL, if people with socialization problems can do it in SL…I think that is positive, if nothing else it’s a way to address your social fears of rejection, insecurity and realize, online, that it’s ok: some people are nice and will be thrilled to talk to you, others want to be left alone like the player in real life wants. having no physical boundaries is a huge asset to overcome some mental blocks, and I firmly believe that that will inevitably bleed into real life, ending up in something positive for the player.
August 22, 2007 at 1:57 pm
The corporate control is really for me the biggest throw off. Guess the Internet spoiled me…
August 23, 2007 at 10:08 am
Second Life being controlled by one and only one corporation is bad, and there are lots of examples already regarding that, for several reasons, from doing stuff that doesn’t make sense for SL’ers but gives more money to LL, or things like the fact that SL, being a LL product, is subject to whatever laws are pushed on LL. Lack of freedom is a problem in SL: check this URL’s for some examples:
http://alaskametro.blogspot.com/2007/07/freedom-in-second-life-skin-20-options.html
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/linden_lab_stil.html
http://www.freakitude.com/2006/11/15/second-life-faces-threat-to-its-virtual-economy/
http://secondlla.googlepages.com/
August 23, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I stand corrected then. you are both right (links tend to substantiate an argument)
I was aware of the gambling issue, but everything else is new to me.
I can’t say I agree with any of this actions. There is no reason to ban gambling or politics, especially in a world that has a growing mafia movement taking place at this time.
I fear at this point that SL is growing (land wise) beyond what is reasonable for a satisfying user experience. I did the math today and the square mile per logged on user is ridiculous. I mused about Hipihi joying SL’s grid at some point. that would be interesting even at a political level. TwinTurbo’s “internet factions” would certainly apply, different rules for different “worlds”. would it be good? maybe. so all this begs the question: when will an opensource engine/grid start shaking things up?
August 23, 2007 at 12:34 pm
It’s too big for an open source initiative to show up without backing – the only way to do it would be peer to peer, and maybe decentralize it with something like Kademlia. And we have examples in the past of how fragile that is (Freenet, anyone?). The only I see this happening is some corporation or industry cohalition with an agenda other than LL’s. This IS the future of internet (a visual, fully immersive internet) but it’s so far away today that most companies don’t see it as interesting, I guess.
August 24, 2007 at 10:23 am
There are some Open Source efforts right at this moment. I think the most interesting nowadays is VOS (that will have some public news soon), but I still think that the really cool thing to appear is a Virtual World upon a peer-to-peer structure, and I’m planning on working on one, using GNUnet as a framework, which would overpass the problems you would get with Kademlia or Freenet. Of course that having industry backup on such effort would be mandatory at a certain point.
Finaly, I do not agree that companies don’t see it interesting, I just think that Virtual Worlds, like games, have a hard industry environment, where the goal usually isn’t “creating something better” but only “generatin the most revenue possible”, which is an understandable position, yet harmful for our point of view.
August 24, 2007 at 11:30 am
I’m glad that train is moving.
As to the industry it’s hard…it’s really hard. There is so much to reinvent at this point. Like the post in Paula’s blog regarding the Economist’s former editor that left SL because well…he couldn’t sell stuff, raving about ghost town syndrome and empty corporate buildings in SL. SL is not the place to sell books…well actually it’s the perfect place to sell e-books. you walk into a bookstore, you talk with other clients, they refere you to another author or another book and you buy it, everybody wins. Community, Business and You. I think it’s of utmost importance to get that triology working in virtual world business. I’m no market expert but I don’t identify that sort of business model in the real world, so where’s a lot of catching up to do.
Businesses like SLXchange are the tip of the iceberg, since they are selling something that can only be used in-world. Selling a car, an e-book, a house (houses would be easy to sell in SL, who wouldn’t like to walk into a virtual home before going there in person?) is a completely different ball game. you are selling virtual that affects real and that requires quite a lot of sexy market movement to get it in sustainable motion.
August 24, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I still maintain we’re not there yet – if a guy is huge in SL, most people will shun him in RL (“he must be a real geek, eeeugh!”). People don’t realize having a popular avatar online is hard, and they certainly don’t appreciate it’s worth. I read a post in Slashdot a while ago about how some guy had a fiercesome leader in WoW, and one day he wanted to talk to him and found out he was just 11 – the guy stopped playing, he couldn’t take it. Even among MMORPGers there are still barriers to cross regarding the relation between our online and offline personas, and how it changes our preceptions.
August 24, 2007 at 2:34 pm
you are the one maintaining that stereotype with that POV. Now in all honesty I find that rather strange (back to the original post “in fidonet no one knows you’re a dog”). People get their ego’s shattered very easily. in indestructible warlord in WOW can be 11, sure…he was practically raised in the game, wile the 20-something has other pending issues to attend (aka: life), the fact that he’s 11 and kicking serious ass should only imply that in 10 years time that kid will be a better strategist then the current batch of 20 year olds… we’d call that an evolution, not drama.
Again, I find that that is analogous to the other guy leaving because he couldn’t do business in SL.
We are not there yet? maybe, maybe we’re not, but you can’t hold that against SL or virtual worlds…you can hold that against people “labeling impaired”
And I think perceptions should be different, in these worlds one isn’t bounded to physical restrictions, so why shouldn’t they be different?